of Maidens & Swords

by Melissa Marr

  "I don't question what you believe, but--"

  "I believe in truth," Margaret insists. "The things I see. The things I touch with my hands."

  "Me, too," I agree.

  "Then you'll want to hear about the selchie and the Finman. They weren't from the same place, but they wanted the same things." Margaret's voice rises and falls, as if heartbeat and the breath and the sea all aligned at once. Her voice was all of them, pulling my lungs to motion as she pulled the waves to her. It was foolish, and fanciful, but I would swear on my father's grave that she was somehow controlling all of it.

  "The people forget that the selchies aren't as kind as the stories say. They forget that water folk are kin to the fey things that live in the isles," Margaret sing-speaks. "The Finfolk, though, if they are remembered at all, are known to be man-stealers. No one forgets their cruelty."

  "But both are cruel? And . . . steal people?"

  "They're fey," Margaret answers with a half-shrug, as of that's an answer. Maybe, to her, it is. "What they wanted, they took. What they needed, they stole. Who among us doesn't want to do the same?"

  I don't reply. What is there is to say?

  "Do not ever lie to me, Isabel." Margaret reaches up and cups the side of my face. "I am not so different from the sea. My anger is damning."

  I'm not sure what the right reaction is in that moment, but I'm fairly certain that mine is far from wise.

  "Come to my hotel?"

  Margaret shakes her head. "I am not much for buildings. Even when a pretty woman will be there to greet me. I came inside once today. For you. Another day, though."

  The next night I'm in front of the hotel where we're all staying when Jack comes outside for a smoke. He startles at seeing me there. After a moment, he lights a cigarette, takes a long drag, and says, "You're not at the bar."

  I shrug. There's no polite way of telling my boss that I decided that I ought to stop drinking entirely because I've almost doubled my up close and personal contact with corpses in the past week.

  "Did Mitchell say anything about a trip?"

  "No . . . ?"

  Jack scowls. "I wanted him to research the fairy tales that woman was talking about."

  "Margaret."

  He glances at me, motioning the hand holding the cigarette as if reeling a reply from me.

  "Her name is Margaret."

  "Right." He smokes silently for several moments before saying, "I don't need an assistant."

  "Are you firing me, Jack?"

  "No, I'm just pointing out the obvious. You knew that when I hired you, right?" He is hazy with the halo of smoke around his head. "It's more of a liking someone to handle details and any other needs I have. I have needs, Isabel."

  "Sex wasn't in the contract."

  He shrugs. "True, but if it's not offered, I won't keep you on payroll. That's not a secret, Isabel."

  As much as I want to argue, claim insult, I don't feel like lying. I've started to think I lie to protect other people, avoid conflict, as much as to get my way. I don't actually care about conflict, and my way is not what I thought it was. I glance over at Jack and admit, "I figured I'd have a few drinks and let you take me to your room when you got around to it."

  "But?"

  "I don't care about the job enough any more." It feels good to be so honest with him, to not feel so trapped. After a pause, I add, "And you're not as handsome as you think."

  He stares at me in shock.

  "Success didn't change your looks or the flab at your middle or your horrible manners." I know better, but I keep on talking. "You're rude, and if you weren't famous, you'd never get laid without paying for it. And truthfully, I'm not enough of a whore these days to trade sex for a paycheck."

  Jack's quiet for several minutes before saying, "You're fired, Isabel. Find your own way back to L.A. And you can pay for the rest of your trip if you stay past tomorrow's check-out."

  He walks away, dropping his cigarette on the ground where it smolders.

  I stomp on it before I collect it and toss it in the rubbish bin. Rain or not, that's an asshole move. He's not too good to care about the environment. Litter, especially in an area where rain is constant, makes its way to the sea. He's adding poison to the sea where the creatures he supposedly adores live and eat. Rage fills me. I want to scream at him, to make him pick it up.

  "Fuckhead," I mutter.

  Melodic laughter drifts from behind me. I know it's her before I turn. Margaret. Something of the sea is in her every sound and move.

  "Who offended you this time?" she asks.

  "My boss." I pause and correct myself, "My ex-boss now. He fired me because I don't want to sleep with him."

  Margaret stares at me. And I am afraid. There is something feral in her that I'd not seen until now, and I can't decide if I should run or cling to her.

  "It's okay. I shouldn't have said--"

  "Filth." Margaret glances behind us, to the closed door. "I try to correct them, to make them understand. They destroy everything they touch with their filthy ways."

  "I'm sorry . . . ? "

  Margaret looks at me, her eyes brighter than seems possible. "You don't understand, Isabel. I thought you were different, but human women never understand either."

  "Human . . .?"

  She makes a gesture like she is cutting the air. "You will not have relations with him."

  "Right. That's why I'm fired."

  Margaret nods. "I shall fix this as well."

  "My being fired?"

  Her attention snaps to me. "His offense."

  I wake several days later to the sound of someone hammering on my door. My resolve to surrender booze fell apart after I was fired, and I ended up on a bender of the most pitiful sort. I am alone in my room with a bunch of empty bottles and food wrappers. Obviously, I've left the room at some point as not all of the food was stuff I had here when I started drinking.

  On the other side of the door is Margaret. Behind her is Jack.

  "I won't go on the boat with men alone." She crosses her arms. "He says I must, but unless you are there, I shall not. I signed nothing."

  "It'll cost you," I tell Jack. "Hotel tab. All of it."

  I know the project is behind schedule. He's lost a researcher, and he's lost me. I can't imagine he knew exactly how much I did for him--actual tasks, that is, even though I refused the one he'd apparently hired me to do.

  "No plane ticket," he says.

  I shrug. I'm not sure when I want to leave—or if I will. I've fallen a bit in love with Orkney.

  "Fine. Hotel bill in full for another week. Downstairs. Five minutes." He walks away.

  Margaret lingers. She reaches out and strokes my cheek. Then she's gone, too.

  "Pay my bill, or I'm not getting on the boat," I call.

  He says nothing, but fifteen minutes later, I'm standing at the front desk as he prepays another week's lodging.

  For reasons unknown to anyone but Jason, we are to go out onto the sea in a rigid inflatable boat. These "rib" contraptions seem sketchy to me, but half the tour companies in the islands and over in the Hebrides use them. I guess I'd rather trust the locals than my land-loving fears. Honestly, I'd have climbed aboard a Minke whale if it meant seeing Margaret.

  When we set out, the small boat holds a captain, the camera man, Jack, Margaret, and me. The captain watches Margaret carefully, and unless my eyes deceived me, he made the sign of the cross when she boarded the craft.

  "I have great respect for the sea," he tells me in an overly loud voice. "Those things that live in it are why these islands thrive. They protected us from the Norsemen in years gone by, and they protect us now."

  Margaret smiles at him. "Indeed."

  Jack rolls his eyes, not that she sees, but I do. Maybe he's right to doubt in the stories of the island, but there's a long space between doubt and mockery. I don't believe in selchies, or lindwurms, or faeries, or any number of things I hear of in the tales here, but I realize as well that we all
believe in things that seem a touch far-fetched if we put them out on the table in front of strangers. That's what she's doing. For his film. For me. I wasn't sure how it was for me, but I got the sense that it was in some way that only Margaret knew.

  "Once . . . a selchie lay with a Finman," she begins once we are far from land.

  The camera's eye is trained on her, as is mine. The boat's captain does not look back at her, at any of us. He's not in the frame of the film.

  There is only Margaret and the sea.

  "Their child, a girl, grew up with the need to bring mortals into the sea," she continues. "She offered them like gifts, tithes to the waves. She culled the herd of men that came to the edges of the sea. It was not enough. Never enough."

  Jason, to my side, opens his mouth like he's about to object.

  "The men were cruel, and the women weak. Too afraid to shed blood." She glances at me, smiles, and leans forward to tug Jason into the frame of the film. "The daughter of the sea found a way when she could, culling them as a shepherd with a flock."

  Margaret stands and pulls Jack to his feet. The boat shifts, but the captain keeps us steady. Maybe that's easy, but I'm terrified.

  She leans in and kisses Jack.

  And I am no longer thinking of anything but this, but him touching her.

  Steadily, as if it's nothing, she reaches up and chokes him. He flails, trying to pull away, clawing at her wrists and forearms, kicking.

  "What the--"

  "Don't stop filming," I whisper. There is no other way to believe this. I'm not sure why I want to, but a tiny sliver of logic reminds me that there were two other dead men I've seen lately. Men I have wondered if I killed.

  The camera man drops his camera and leaps overboard. The captain does not look behind us. I, however, cannot look away. She chokes Jack, kisses him, cradles him as he goes limp, and when she stops kissing him, he is dead.

  Margaret sighs, and I am certain that her sigh is why the winds have begun to churn the sea. Suddenly, the waters seem more like the edge of a storm than the calm sea of an hour ago.

  "If he were pure, he would've survived. I'd have tasted goodness, and he would've lived." Margaret meets my gaze. "Three for sacrifice."

  * * *

  "You . . . killed them."

  "Did I, Isabel?" Margaret's voice is a whisper of waves, so slight that I barely hear her even as I am next to her.

  "You did. The camera. You killed Jack on camera." I point at the camera, which is sideways at the bottom of the boat. "It's on there. Proof."

  "Maybe."

  "You killed all of them. The men. The ones I found." I sound a bit manic, but I thought I thought I'd murdered a few men again.

  It happens, you know?

  "I thought it was me," I whisper.

  "Perhaps it was." She motions me to the camera.

  I debate between watching and letting it record. It's the only proof I have. I left the shore in a boat with a captain and three people. Two others are dead—because the cameraman won’t survive that cold water.

  "Come with me, or they'll send you to prison," Margaret points out calmly, voice still a murmured whisper.

  "I'm innocent."

  She shakes her head. "No. You chose them. Each dead man. You chose him. I paid your dowry."

  I pick up the camera, stop the recording, and watch it. There is no proof. Margaret's face is never in the frame. I try to back it up, to see earlier footage of her telling a tale. The cameraman must've done something wrong in his fear. None of it is there.

  Margaret opens a rucksack, pulls out a fur, and strips. She stands bare naked for a moment and says, "Come with me, Isabel."

  She clutches the fur to her and jumps into the water.

  I scan the waves, for her and for the missing camera man, but all I find is a seal.

  "Are you going?" the captain asks, finally glancing back at me but steadfastly not looking over the edge of the boat. "I'm headed to shore, miss, so if you're going . . ."

  I look back into the waves, and I am faced with the same beautiful woman I've found fascinating. The only significant difference is that she's blue now and as she moves I see a tail fin.

  "What . . . this is . . .Is that a costume?"

  Margaret laughs, and the sound is the lure of the sea. She is the voice that drowns sailors, that crashes ships on rocks, that invites a woman to her doom.

  Still blue, Margaret shifts so she's floating on her back, bare breasts breaking the surface of the water like a mermaid. When my gaze lifts from her chest to her face, she says, "You are not afraid, Isabel. Not of death or blood. And you are not happy. Do you want to be happy?"

  I glance at the men, think of the recording, of my empty life, of the fate that will await me on land. There is no hope on shore. I'm not sure if death or life awaits me if I agree, but I see no other answer. I leap overboard, and in moments, I feel Margaret's arms wrap around me. Her bare skin against my layers of clothes and jacket.

  Together, we sink into the sea.

  Days later, the boat is found, drifting. Empty but for a camera. The crew attaches a tow rope.

  Silently, the fishermen haul the boat to shore.

  After they dock, their captain lifts the camera from the boat. After a few moments, the men start playing the footage. The captain watches as one man is tossed overboard by a woman's hand. The camera drops. Another splash.

  "You . . . killed them," a woman's voice says in the recording.

  "You did. The camera. You killed Jack on camera. It's on there. Proof."

  "You killed all of them. The men. The ones I found. I thought it was me."

  There are pauses as if she's speaking to someone, but no other voice is recorded.

  Finally, the same woman says, "I'm innocent."

  Another splash, and then nothing but the sounds of the sea.

  On the whole of the recording, there is only the sea and the voice of one woman, a drunken one that they'd all heard at the pub more than once. No one knew her, only that she'd come with the filmmakers, and like them, she'd vanished.

  "Toss it in the rubbish bin," the man closest to him says. "The sea took them. Her, too, from the sound of it."

  Murmured prayers and gestures ripple over the crew. Not a man there has a family without a tale of someone lost to a storm. Death was the price paid for a life drawn from the waves. The sea gave, but the sea demanded tithing.

  "Better strangers than our own," one of the fisherman says.

  A seal watches them as they discard the camera, and then a fin--that several of them will swear was blue--flashes in the waves as the seal departs.

  * * *

  END

  “The Devil’s Due”

  Fall is upon us as I sit in my stolen cottage and plan. Should I survive my next few months, I’d rather not dangle from a noose in the center of town. If my soon-to-be husband does not kill me, I have to hope that the citizens of Prudence will spare me. Some folks frown upon murder, and if I get caught, I’ll hang for it.

  While I’m not planning on dying or getting caught, I know that both are possible. I’ve been tossed in various jails, one dungeon, and even had one whipping—which is, truly, more than anyone needs. I worry over the questions that will come when my husband-to-be sees the lash scars on my back, but I have a plan for that, too. I always have a plan at this point in my life. I’ve managed twenty-seven years in a world that is not kind to women, and I’ve lived ten of those on my own. Given the choice, I’d never be in a village like Prudence, but the devil I seek is on his way here. So, I ponder both my defense and his death, and I pray to any gods that still listen that all will be well.

  “I was a fool,” Mother whispers from behind me. She haunts me wherever I go. My ship. The stolen cottage. Taverns in far flung ports. The woman is inescapable.

  “No one blames you,” I mutter the lie without looking up from my tinctures and herbs.

  Mother had outwitted death, and I have the great fortune of having her at my si
de as she knitted spectral scarves and shrouds at all hours of the day and night. We’ve spent ten months this way, and although she no longer shrieks at me, we both know that she is with me because I am to blame.

  “My poor babies,” she wails, her lament sending icy air cascading through the cottage.

  She does not, of course, include me in her wails. I am not yet dead, and even if I die, I doubt that she’ll mourn me. Mother haunts me. She jabs at me with knitting needles as though the ghostly things could pierce me. In my idle hours, I wonder if they will once I’m dead, too. An eternity with her wailing and stabbing me sounds like my personal hell.

  The sky grows darker as I read my sister’s last letter. Again. There are no clues left to find in the paper so creased that slight holes are wearing in it from my reading and re-reading the damning words.

  Dear Adelaide,

  Mother seems not to realize that the captain who has offered for me is the same man who offered for Lucy last winter. Her vision is long gone, but it is not so simple as that. Hayes is poisoning her, spoonfuls of laudanum in her tea, and I cannot get her to believe me. She’s drifting away, and I cannot help but think that he must have given her this same thing when he was asking for Lucy’s hand. He tells me he’ll stop if I go with him quietly and willingly. What else can I do?

  Sister, he is not without charm. When he takes my hand, it feels as if I am already sinning. My soul is at risk with one such as him. The virtue I’ve held on to is but a memory already.

  His ship, the Fitcher’s Bird, is a magnificent thing, but unlike you, I fear the sea. I fear being on the ship with no escape, and if he has already wed our Lucy, where is she? I believe the worst, Adelaide, but I cannot let him destroy Mother. I go to my sin, and undoubtedly, to my wretched end.

  Find me, sister.

  Yours,

  Biddy

  By the time I’d read the letter, my mother had passed on to her eternal unrest and both of my beloved sisters had vanished. I’d been caught up with work, delayed by a storm at sea, and though my work was what paid for their linens and gowns, I’d had a duty to look after them in other ways, too. No father or brother. I was all they had. The care and protection of their needs was my burden for a third of my lifetime so far.