Lux Esoterica (Nifiluz)

The green mountain country of Cantabria has given this chronicle its one-eyed giant and its three-eyed cradle-thief; it remains to introduce the quietest member of that formidable provincial family, and in some ways the most unsettling, because her whole legend fits inside a bedroom. The Guajona is a night visitor: a hag of the deep valleys, described by the tradition with the miniaturist's precision Cantabria brings to all its horrors — an old woman, small and stooped, wrapped entirely in black, her hands and face the only flesh showing, and that flesh yellow : sallow as old wax, drawn tight over the bones; her nose long and hooked till it nearly meets her chin; her eyes small, black, and quick. And her mouth holds the single feature by which every Cantabrian child could draw her: one tooth. One only — long, black, sharp as an awl, standing alone in the empty gums — and that tooth is not for eating. The Guajona comes by night, silent as settling dust, into the rooms of the sleep...