Heaven's Gate

"It's the most romantic story you'll ever have heard," a young woman told her group of friends. "I can't believe you don't know it, I thought everyone did!"

Geralt took a sip from his beer. Arriving at villages when they had their summer feasts was a useful and well honed witcher skill; even if they disliked him enough not to invite him, he'd usually get some good food and drink for his coin and could sit at the fringe of the festivities and watch the merriment.

"And it's not made up, I swear," the woman swore. "It's old aunty Toni. She's lived all by herself her whole life in the small house by the river. She helps my mama with the sewing."

"Of course we know her," one of the friends said, and it sounded like she was rolling her eyes with it. "Old hag is a bit funny in the head."

"When she was a girl she had a suitor," the narrator continued with the story, unperturbed. "He was a young lord from the old castle over the hill."

"That's just an abandoned ruin," the girl's antagonistic friend interjected.

"It wasn't, over 60 years ago." The narrator took a sip from her wine. "He'd seen her doing laundry in the river when he was out on a hunt. Her blouse was all wet and clung to her body and he was immediately smitten."

Her friends groaned. "Did she tell you the part with her wet garments clinging to her perky tits herself?" one of them mocked.

"Shut up, I'm just filling in some gaps," the narrator pouted. "Do you want to hear it or not?" She had them there, they wanted to hear it. "So he took her with him to the castle and married her immediately," she continued.

"Had he knocked her up?" one of the friends asked, rather sensibly.

"Nooo! Let me tell my story, it's completely different! Didn't I say it was romantic?" The others nodded and made encouraging sounds, so she continued. "But then! Right in their wedding night! The castle was attacked and raided! The nobles and their household fought for their lives and most of them lost it. Everything was burning! The young lord fought valiantly, defending his bride's life and honour and she herself could escape the inferno but he expired in her arms."

"Uh. That was it? I don't know, maybe you should have embellished the wedding night a little--"

"Shush! That was not it!" The story teller had fortified herself for the crescendo with a mouthful of pie and sounded a bit muffled. "On the evening of his death -- she was back with her parents, you see -- she stood outside and looked out to the hill; the smoke plumes rising from the castle were meeting the dense clouds of the late autumn skies when she felt his cold hands on her shoulders. Snow flakes were falling like ash when he held her close and told her he would never leave her side; and then they danced in the early snow. She never married anyone else -- because he's still with her."

There was a long moment of silence. Then her friends clapped. "That was beautiful!"

"Thank you." The narrator mimed a bow. "But it's all true."

"Yes of course!" This time they indulged her because the story had been good.

Geralt had finished his meal and got up to find the house by the river. The old woman looked at him with desperate hope in her faded eyes. "Can you...?"

Geralt nodded. She made him tea and told him the story again. In the evening he fought and dispelled the vicious old ghost and the old woman wept.

"He sat by my bed every night and told me, soon I would die and come to him, and then we'd be together again. It made me want to live a long live but I won't be able to hold on much longer. Thank you, witcher. But as I said, I can't pay you. My family's money was spent to hire the men who rescued me."

Geralt assured her she owed him nothing and went back on the road, hoping the woman would still have a few years left, all by herself.