In the water – a decent-sized pond – not so far from this grassy bank, is what looks like a woman. Long green hair woven with waterweed, slanting pebble-dark eyes that stretch from either side of a narrow, thin-nostrilled nose and backtowards her temples, skin scaled and with a luminescent green tinge. Sharp teeth in her gappy smile that widens – somehow, she realises my soul can see her. Those eyes see more than what’s easily perceivable, more than the prey swimming in the lake where she lives. Not a mer, for they’re generally sea-born and bred, seldom taking to fresh water unless for a very good reason – mostly revenge-related according to the old tales. Not a rusalky, either; long-haired maidens, murdered and refusing to move on, becoming something else instead – but they sing, siren-like, in a river far to the south, around the port-city of Bellsholm. So this one, perhaps, is a mari-morgan; similar, but they sometimes go on two legs, taking mortal lovers, other times by tail. While mer can only gain legs at great cost and favours purchased from the sea hags who tally such things, the mari-morgan can do it at will, and some say they can possess a body if the whim takes them. Not mine, apparently.
‘Can’t speak, can you?’ The voice fair gurgles, tripping from her lips like a waterfall. ‘Can’t nod either. Never mind.’
She swims closer to where I lie, rears out of the water, straight up, then flops her top half onto the grass an arm’s length away. A scaly hand with long sharp nails reaches out and winds itself into my wet greying curls; not to pull them or tear them out, but merely to rearrange them as if my appearance might be improved by the gesture. Then she gives the most phenomenal shout – it sounds like a name if all the leaves in the forest sighed at once. How she gets her ichthyoid mouth around such a noise is beyond me – but then again, I’m a dead witch with a soggy soul clinging to me, witnessing all that’s going on, so my definition of “possible” might be toonarrow. Around us, a grove with no trace of winter, vibrant colours, trees and shrubs and flowers and vines, many I can’t even recognise, and a warm breeze that smells like jasmine and rose.
Anyone would think my expression was one of shock from the way she gentles me, pats my shoulder. ‘There, there. It’s all right. She comes when she’s called. Well, mostly.’
She pats the rest of my hair away from my face, out of my eyes, off my forehead and cheeks; she pushes my slack bottom jaw back up, trying to mend my smile so I look less like a dullard. She frowns as the jaw flops, my mouth lolling open again. So much for that.
‘What a waste they made of you. Such beauty a woman has when her autumn’s upon her. Silver beginning in the temples, lines of laughter and pain to show the life she’s lived, carrying a little more fat to help through hard times – and oh, that temper! Funny, isn’t it, how cares fall away with so many memories you didn’t need? But the lessons, oh the lessons stick – and you’ve no patience for any who try to make you do what you don’t want to, and you can pick a liar like a rotten berry!’ Another grin, wider and wider, and she speaks like a mortal creature, so I wonder if she spent time among us, learning how we are, or if she loved a human woman once. Her amusement seems genuine, delighted; her fondness true.
‘What a waste,’ she repeats mournfully. ‘I saw you that night, by my lake, felt you jump in to get away fromit. That shadowy thing and his horse of bone and blight. You were in there a long time and I can’t say I blame you – I warmed the water, did you notice? Didn’t want you catching your death – such fragilethings you are. Every time you’ve come and used my lake for your visions, spilling your blood into the water – is it any wonder I felt your death in that mill pond? All that blood you’ve given me…’
She laughs again, looks sly. ‘And that man of yours! That big man in the clearing by the river, on the night of the harvest moon. Him all over you and in you, god-like one might say, and you enjoying him right back.’
And if I had a pulse, any blood circulating around my body, I’d blush so fiercely at the thought of being watched that night. I think about Faolan, wonder where he was when they took me, wonder if he hid away, too scared to be associated with a witch even as his neighbours bore witness against me. The heart in me, dead and cold, seems to ache but perhaps that’s just a memory, a fantasy, a phantom feeling.Where was he?
If I could, I’d cry for self-pity. If I could, I’d scream and swear for rage. If I could, I’d march back to Berhta’s Forge and take my revenge on the god-hounds, whip them until their blood soaked the green or better yet, the fields of my holding to make them so rich and red they’d never need to lie fallow again, an inheritance for Rhea and the baby. But I can’t. I’m trapped here, neither able to haunt nor go beneath nor find a better place to be.
The mari-morgan’s hand on my shoulder tightens. ‘Ah. Be patient, my friend. She comes.’
31
‘What is it?’ The voice is so deep it rattles the very earth beneath me, yet also sounds like the breath of leaves, the sough of wind around trunks and through branches. It issues from a naked woman, half my height again, hair a verdant tangle of moss and vines and red-purple berries and white and pink blossoms, even though outside – back in the world or wherever we’re not – it’s verging on winter. Deep-set black eyes, broad cheekbones, full lips. Up close the greenish-brown skin has the slightest sign of crackles and runnels, like bark. I look for traces of horns on her forehead – because she looks exactly like the foliate head over my cottage door, the green woman, but I can’t see anything. I do note, however, that her feet end in things that are almost hooves, the toes splitting and beginning to curl, almost prehensile. ‘What have you brought me, Fishwife?’
‘Don’t call me that, you old log.’ Hissing asperity. ‘You know I hate that.’
‘No sense of humour, that’s your problem.’ A laugh like a storm. ‘What is this dead thing?’
‘Not dead, or not quite. See? The shimmering golden murk on the chest? A little like a tree rat or a squirrel, surely you’re familiar with those? Her soul. Not gone yet.’
‘It will. It’s just confused now the mortal meat is done. Ignore it long enough and it’ll move on.’
‘Why are you being wilfully obdurate?’
‘Why areyou?’
I listen, I watch; I’ve no other choice.
The mari-morgan gestures to me again. ‘She needs to be brought back. The water refused her. She’s important.’
‘And how do you know?’
‘She’s the one who comes to my lake—’
‘Yours?’
‘—mylake. You may rule the earth and things that grow, but the waters here aremine. Now stop dickering and listen. She’s the one who usesmylake to see other places, she buys that with her blood. As you know, I usually take tears as my payment, but blood has both salt and water, so close enough. Yet she’s never asked me for anything. So many gifts over these years. I owe her something.’
‘But I don’t.’
‘Oh, but you do.’
‘Mortal meat,’ mutters the woman again.
‘Notjust mortal meat. She iswitch. And that thing that’s been tearing throughyourforest the last half a century, give or take? That thing of shadow and spite, his wish-hounds and that mount barely worthy of the name “horse”?’ The mari-morgan points at me – my corpse, my shimmering soul – and grins, all teeth. ‘She’s resisted its call – and itiscallingfor her, I’ve heard it.Shehas the power to do something about it. But only if you put her back together.’
The green woman snorts, dismissive, while the mari-morgan continues airily: ‘Ican avoid the huntsman and its hounds, thanks to their terror of the water. But you… it’s been hunting your kind for a long while now… So very few of you left with its predations across north and east… You’ve hidden so long in this bower that memory of you is nearly gone from the Great Forest.’
