Page 8 of The Washwoman at the River’s End

I examine the symbol of a circle with three lines engraved into the front—the dàn of dexterity. It’s a unique dàn. While some of them require the wearer to choose to activate it, this one would have simply become a part of them. This child would have been blessed with nimble, steady fingers and would likely have grown up to be a seamstress or dressmaker. Maybe a carpenter or an artisan.

Hands shaking, I pry the locket open, my breath coming in quick pants.

The locket clicks, and I hold my breath as I wipe away the water blurring the surface. The inside is worn, as if fingers have rubbed the metal in an unending rhythm like a talisman, with tarnished gold on the decorated lip surrounding a picture of a beautiful little girl. And on the other side—a name.

I suck in a breath.

Except… I wipe away the mud, dread pooling in my stomach—hot and acrid. Where a name had once been engraved, the letters have been smoothed away, only a D and an O still slightly visible.

I flip the locket over, searching for another place where the name could be engraved, because this has to be a mistake. This is a naming pendant. There can’t be no name.

And yet, there isn’t.

Defeat pierces my heart, sharper than a barbed arrow. I open the locket again, staring at the picture of the little girl. How could fate be so cruel as to bring me this pendant, and yet, I cannot use it? Stroking the tiny picture, I wonder where the child is right now. Have I washed her clothes already? Is that why her name is smoothed away, the metal around her picture worn?

Maybe I washed them years ago, and Victor chose to follow her into the After tonight because he couldn’t bear the thought of being left behind any longer.

Once again, I fight to swallow down my disappointment. There’s a reason finding the items for the spell isn’t easy. I must suffer to find them if I am to be forgiven for my sins. Carrying my locket with me, I return to the mound of moss, bog cotton, bracken, and heather I use as my bed. It may not serve me in my spell, but it’s beautiful, nonetheless, made of gold, and could be a potential bargaining chip to be used in the future.

Maybe a kind soul will stumble upon my river, and I can trade it in exchange for a loaf of bread. Some shoes, maybe, or a cloak. It’s unlikely, but I’m close enough to Dalbàsail and a few other small villages that it’s possible.

I lift the stone I use as my pillow, digging a few finger-widths or so into the damp dirt beneath to where the rest of my belongings hide. My possessions are few: a sewing needle made of bone and half a bar of soap, a few brass coins, a fragment of a beeswax candle—though I have no way to light it.

And then, hidden deeper beneath my collection, I find them.

Two old, rolled-up pieces of parchment. An old wood pipe, a vessel that carries breath. An adder stone, a piece of home and hearth. A rusted mourning brooch, an ending mourned.

The reason I search the pockets of the dead.

The words of the spell have long faded from the papers, but it doesn't matter. They are engraved in the depths of my soul.

Since the dawn of the kingdom of Na Trì, the magic of the Bàsail washed the sins of the dying of its own accord. For your crimes against the Fates, it is now your bones that will carry the task you stole. You will cleanse the death-clothes of the departed for eternity, the blood of each and every soul passing through your fingers, staining your hands forever.

Hands that will never again know rest.

You will wish for death.

May it never find you.

I can remember the moment I read it with perfect clarity. What a fool I’d been. I’d been certain I would never wish for death, and yet, now that I cannot have it, it is all I want. I close my eyes, picturing the second note I’d found tucked between two rocks a dragon’s length away, as if the Fates hadn’t wanted me to find it at all.

With every curse, there must be a counter.

Gather the pieces of a life completed—a vessel that carries breath, a name given in love, a piece of home and hearth, a promise broken, and an ending mourned. Bind them in tartan. Seal them in true faith and a changed heart, and send them into the After.

Only then, if the river accepts your plea, may you choose to follow.

A promise broken.

A name given in love.

That’s all that’s left for me to find.

With another surge of disappointment, I place the locket among my other treasures and wonder if the last pieces of the spell will ever find me, or if another century will pass without the things I need to send my own clothes down the river and set myself free. Will the Fates simply kill me once I do, taking another choice away from me?

I hope not. I’d like to go to my rest on my own terms, and only once I am certain I have done everything I can to atone for my crimes. I’d like to go to peace when I die. Not continue to suffer below just as I have above.

The wind gusts again, and I put my belongings back into the soft earth and turn to the river.