The Last Chance Of Tom Riddle

The shaman was old. So old that time had turned her face into a baked apple and bent her back into a bow. But the expression in her faded black eyes remained deep and piercing. She cast a sharp glance at the visitor from under drooping eyelids and returned to her task—stirring a concoction in a cauldron. Inside the felt yurt, everything smelled of smoke rising toward the hole in the ceiling, of herbs, and of animal skins. Aola bowed her head respectfully in greeting, pressing her palms together. “Peace be with you, Tseren-Shulam*.” The old woman twitched her nose and suddenly cackled. “Khyeokh**! Look who has come to visit!” she rasped. “Why come to a simple herbalist, daughter of the peri? How can the likes of me help an immortal?” “You return life, Tseren-Shulam. I am merely living mine.” “Who says so?” the mistress of the yurt asked, turning to her. “The steppe is full of rumors,” Aola replied evasively but politely. “Rumors are like grain with chaff,” the old woman grunted and nodded toward a skin spread by the fire. “Sit. Tell your story.” Aola, who had been trembling inwardly with tension, felt a slight relief at her heart. She didn’t just sit; she nearly collapsed onto the skin, her strength spent. Two of those who could have helped her had already refused, and she had begun to lose hope. Without rushing, making sure not to omit a single detail, she began to tell the shaman why she had come. After listening, the woman extended a hand like a bird’s claw and demanded, “Show me.” Aola removed the locket from her neck and handed it over with visible reluctance. “Don’t trust me?” the woman smirked. “I treasure it…” Drawing a large Damascus steel knife from its patterned sheath, the old woman held it over the fire, hung the locket on the tip, and brought it to her eyes. She examined it from all angles, muttering something. Then she said: “Purer than a tear. I see no evil.” Aola nodded. “But the piece that remained after the death is not at peace. It is lost between heaven and earth, in the Great Void, and as soon as it senses an opportunity, it will return. Are you sure that this part,” the old woman shook the locket, “will overcome that one?” “No…” the Duchess admitted honestly, lowering her head. “He has done much evil. If he does not realize it, it will be bad. If he does, it will be even worse.” “I cannot leave him like this… not again…” the girl almost whispered, clenching her fingers. The shaman used the hilt of the knife to tip her chin up, forcing her to look into her eyes. “Do you love him?” “I love him…” “A soul is like that… if you feed it, it grows. The main thing is what you feed it with. It will be hard, oh, so hard…” she clicked her tongue. “Swear to me, and I will take the task.” “To what?” the Lady asked, trying to master the wave of anxiety washing over her. “Give your word, swear on your blood, that you will kill him yourself if he ever thinks to do dark deeds again!” Aola could only nod in response. “Memorize what is needed for the ritual,” the shaman grumbled and began to list the components. Then she added: “This is not dark power; it will take a long time. You will live with me for now. I am old; I could use an assistant.” Aola nodded again, then asked, “What do you want as a reward, Tseren-Shulam? Ask for anything you wish.” The old woman smiled slyly and muttered, “What do I want? Heh-heh… will you give me your firstborn?” The Lady recoiled, turning as pale as chalk. Her firstborn?! Her own flesh and blood, which wasn’t even in the plans yet, but which, even in theory, was more precious than anything in the world?! “Doubt has crept in, has it?” the old woman sneered. “Such love!” Aola swallowed, feverishly searching her heart for an answer, and then the shaman burst into laughter, slapping her thighs covered in faded rags. “Ai, caught like a fool! You young ones have no sense of humor. What do I need with your unaga***! Once the work is done, you shall decide for yourself what he is worth, your beloved. Give what you think is fair.” Abu grumbled incessantly. He did not like the cranky old woman—she treated his mistress with too much disrespect. Of course, he had heard their conversation from the first to the last word. The thought of Aola living in a soot-stained yurt and helping a shaman seemed like pure sacrilege to him. His mistress’s own plan didn’t please him much either. “If anything happens—I’ll finish him off myself,” he promised fiercely, making a vivid throat-cutting gesture with his finger. “I think we’re here,” Aola interrupted his stream of indignation. Little Hangleton cemetery looked the same as thousands of other old English churchyards: moss-covered headstones behind a low stone wall, statues of sorrowful angels, and silence under the shade of old elms. Finding the Riddle grave was not difficult; they had been wealthy people, and the burial site was still in good condition. However, she didn’t like the statue on the grave at all. The girl glanced at the figure with the scythe with some trepidation. Symbolic, of course, but… Aola tried her best not to think about who had laid an entire family in a row under these slabs. Or about the filthy ritual performed here over twenty years ago… If she dwelled on it, she might change her mind about returning life to this scoundrel. “My apologies, Mr. Riddle…” she muttered. “I’m going to borrow a bit of genetic material, as they say these days… In the end, your fault in what your child became is not small either.” She whispered a spell, and the packed earth trembled, set into motion, cracking and bubbling from within like a volcano, pushing a small bone to the surface. Aola tucked it into her bag, tidied the grave, and reached out to the jinni so they could Apparate together. Finding Merope Riddle’s resting place was far more complicated. Praise be to the English, whose pedantry rivals the Germans'—all records of women admitted to the orphanage and their orphans over the past hundred years were faithfully kept in the city archives. Merope had been buried at state expense in the old All Saints Cemetery in south London. It had long been closed to new burials, but how to find one single grave among thousands? Was Tom’s mother’s name even carved on it, or was that an unaffordable luxury for the final resting place of a wretched beggar? Pretending to be a bored tourist, Aola asked an equally bored caretaker where the burials from the 1920s were located and headed to the indicated square. Once far from the gates, she released Abu from her bag. They split up and began combing the territory. The cemetery was so overgrown and neglected that Aola quickly grew despondent—searching for a grave in what was practically a forest was difficult. Reaching the burials from early 1927, she could think of nothing better than using Accio. “Accio Merope Riddle’s headstone!” she commanded. At first, it was quiet. Then, a crash erupted from the side, as if a rampaging elephant were crashing through a thicket; something large and dark burst from the bushes and thudded at her feet. “Thank you for not landing on my head…” Aola lifted the slab into the air and ordered it back to its place. Her wings were more useful than ever. The jinni rushed over, alarmed by the noise, and on the way noticed the patch from which the Lady had rather vandalistically ripped the headstone. “My apologies, Madame,” the girl extracted a bone of Merope from the grave, returned the stone to its place, and lingered beside it. Only the name of the deceased was carved on the modest, crudely fashioned slab. For Tommy’s father, the Lady felt nothing but mild contempt. Merope, however, suddenly felt a little closer. After all, this woman had given Tom life… Right now, Aola was experiencing complex, mixed feelings… In essence, she was about to do the same thing. “We both left him when we were so needed…” she said softly. After a pause, she conjured a bouquet of wildflowers and placed it on the grave. “Bones—check. Blood—check…” The shaman threw the bones and a handkerchief with brownish spots (Tommy had hurt himself once on a picnic; the handkerchief had miraculously remained with Aola and was preserved in her tent) into a vessel shaped like a giant egg, made of camel leather. The Duchess herself had cured the hide for it, ignoring Abu’s indignant cries, and had hauled water from a distant spring. “The more love and manual labor you put in, the better,” Tseren-Shulam explained. Aola believed her. Then the old woman poured a handful of salt into a wooden bowl and brought her constant knife to the Lady’s temple. “Give me the memories,” she ordered. “All of them.” “All of them? Every single one?” the girl asked, blushing slightly. The shaman cackled: “All of them… unless you want a toy of a boy, smooth between the legs like the forehead of a newborn foal.” Aola blushed even deeper but gave up everything that was demanded. The memories flowed in colored threads into the bowl along the blade of the knife and were absorbed into the salt. “Khyeokh!” the shaman snorted, continuing to enjoy herself. “Don’t want to fix anything? Speak while you can. I can do it. Want me to…” “No need to fix anything!” Aola interrupted, her pretty cheeks now a deep crimson. “Everything there is perfect… Just make it as it was; that will be enough.” It was fortunate that Abu was sitting in the tent he had forced her to set up—fearing the Duchess might catch fleas in the shaman’s dwelling—and couldn’t hear this talk. The old witch would certainly have suffered for it… “Well, as you wish…” the old woman drawled, pouring the salt into the water. Next went a clump of clay, some powders, and herbs. Then, suddenly, the shaman grabbed the girl’s hand and, with a quick movement, pricked her finger with the tip of the knife. Aola had no time to be frightened or to pull away. “What was that for?” she only asked. “Necessary…” the old woman grunted, shaking the blood into the vessel. The locket was the last thing to go in. Then the shaman grabbed a large tambourine decorated with bells and chased Aola out, telling her to wait outside. The Lady did not see the completion of the ritual. She sat on a flat stone by the entrance, listening to the hum of the tambourine and the guttural sounds of the voice that now sang melodically, now rose to a shout, now fell to a hoarse mutter. Above the Lady’s head, stars shone in the black void of space. The steppe smelled strongly of feather grass, dust, and horse manure. It was a bit strange that she hadn’t been refused help exactly here… Not in her native Persia, famous for great wizards. Not in Africa, whose sorcerers inspire terror even in their own kind. But here, where nature is simple and harsh, and all magic comes from it, from nature—equally simple and incomprehensible to outsiders at the same time… Abu slipped out of the tent standing a little way off, flew up to Aola, and, nodding toward the yurt, asked: “How is it going, my Mistress?” “It seems… everything is as it should be…” she stanched the blood and watched as the pink scar at the site of the cut faded, disappearing completely. The shaman sang and drummed for a good half of the night. Then she demanded tea with milk. When Aola brought it, the vessel was covered with a piece of white felt. “Did it work?” she asked. “Wait and see,” the old woman answered curtly. The wait was long. The days passed, the steppe turned yellow, the Duchess carried water and firewood for the hearth, cooked food, and served tea to the shaman’s rare visitors. If anything was happening inside the vessel, it was hidden from sight. Sometimes she would press her palm or her ear to the leather side, and it seemed to her that she felt some movement inside. On the first day of autumn, the old woman said—it is time. Aola’s heart was pounding so hard and her legs were so weak that she could barely stand. The jinni carried the vessel outside and set it on the ground in front of the yurt. Spitting three times, the shaman slit the leather with her knife. Water gushed from the cut—ordinary, transparent water. Aola stepped closer, her fingers gripping the edge. The old woman widened the opening, pulling the “cradle” apart, and the Lady saw within it a naked human body, curled in a fetal position with knees pressed tight to the chest. The shaman gave his cheek a sharp slap; the man coughed, taking his first breath… and then opened clear blue eyes, looked at the old woman, and shifted his gaze to the Lady… The look was conscious, and the joy of recognition in it struck Aola right in the heart. *Shulam (Mong.) — witch. **An exclamation of surprise (Mong.) ***Foal (Mong.)