The Preacher's Marsh

by David Niall Wilson

  “Did she tell you?” Gideon asked.

  “Not me,” Elijah said, shaking his head. “She told my ma, and the others. I was too young.”

  Gideon turned back to the trees. Elijah watched him for a minute, and then tugged on his arm.

  “Why you want to know ‘bout that?” the boy asked. “Did they cast bones in The Bible?”

  “No,” Gideon replied. “I don’t think they did. That was a long time ago, though, Elijah. It was a different world. Who’s to say what they did, and didn’t do? They had oracles, and they had prophets. They sacrificed animals – even in the Old Testament God called for sacrifices.”

  “Like Abraham and Isaac?” Elijah asked.

  Gideon looked down at the boy proudly. “Exactly like that,” he said. “Sometimes it’s the things that mean the most to you that you have to be willing to let go of.”

  “Is that why you left your church – the one in Illinois?” Elijah asked.

  “Maybe,” Gideon said softly. He turned to stare at the uneven walls of the church in the clearing and smiled. “I think, though, that I gave up that church, which was never really mine at all, so that I could find this one. What do you think?”

  Elijah’s eyes twinkled.

  “I think Miss Desdemona is coming. I’ll see you tomorrow, Mr. Gideon.”

  He turned, and he was gone, and suddenly Desdemona was there, sliding between the trees like a shadow. She had a bag in one hand, and a pack in the other. She tossed him the pack as she cleared the trees, and he caught it easily.

  “You ready, preacher man?” she asked. Her expression was lost somewhere between a smile and a mystery, and he smiled in return.

  “What’s in the bag?” he asked, shaking it at her.

  “First rule,” she said, turning her back on him and heading off through the trees toward the swamp. “When I listen to you preach I won’t interrupt you. When you come with me to the swamp, you don’t ask questions.”

  He stood still and watched her for a long moment, hefting the bag. He was tempted to peek inside and answer his own question, but the swaying of her hips and his own curiosity held him in check. He shouldered the back and set off on Desdemona's heels. He felt a small, nagging guilt at the idea of following a swamp witch out to watch her perform her “magic,” but it wasn’t as strong as it seemed like it ought to be.

  Gideon’s world was expanding, and not slowly. He’d stepped right out of one reality and entered another that was denser, richer, and felt closer to the spirit inside him than any Sunday service in Random Illinois could have aspired to. There was no doubt in his mind that he had received a calling. He had known from a young age that he was different from the boys that he played with, and that – though he was interested – the girls he knew that planned to grow up, marry, and raise housefuls of children were not the draw for him that they could have been, if he’d allowed it … if the voice in his heart that spoke to him more often than any other had allowed it.

  That voice was silent now, but he didn’t feel a sense of disapproval. It was a sense of wonder that drew him into the forest -- a connection with the land, and another being, that transcended anything in his experience.

  Desdemona didn’t talk as they walked. At first he thought she might be drunk, or drugged, because she swayed from side to side, dodging trees at what seemed the last possible second and sliding over fallen trees sinuously. Then he realized that there was a rhythm to her motion. She danced down the trail, swaying and rocking, and as he followed, trying not to get too close, or to interfere in any way, he began to believe he could hear the rhythm that she moved to. Shadows shifted to the right, and to the left, but he ignored them. He had no idea why, but he trusted this strange, beautiful woman, and if she saw anything out of the ordinary, she paid no attention to it. Gideon followed her lead.

  They eventually came out in a clearing that bordered on the swamp. The water was fetid and green. The scent was pungent, loamy, and mixed the taste of decay and fresh and deep roots. Desdemona stopped in the center of the clearing, and Gideon saw that she – or someone – had been there before. A circle of smooth stones had been placed in a wide circle, concentric with the outer ring of the clearing. Desdemona stepped into the circle, and turned.

  “You better come in here, preacher man,” she said softly. “What I’m going to do, the things we’re going to see, they don’t like the insides of things. They won’t cross my circle, but if you stay out there, I can’t make any promises.”

  Gideon crossed the circle and stood at her side. He stared out into the trees to one side, and over the brackish water of the swamp in the other. The sunlight was long gone from the horizon, and the moon hadn’t quite reached the center of the sky. The shadows were long, stretching from the trees surrounding the clearing toward the circle, but somehow falling just short.

  Desdemona gestured to the ground at her side, and Gideon sank down, dropped the bag beside him and gazed about the clearing nervously. He wasn’t really worried about what might come – he trusted his faith, and he trusted Desdemona. Still, something kept him on edge, and he made no move to come closer to the ring of stones.

  Desdemona circled him slowly. From the bag he’d carried with them, she took candles. She placed them on each of the stones. When they were in place, she took out three bags of powder. The first she sprinkled around the outer rim of the circle.

  “What is it?” Gideon asked.

  She glanced at him, and then turned back to her work. “Remember the rules preacher man, no questions.”

  He started to protest, then thought better of it and sat back. As she finished her circuit of the stones, she dropped the pouch beside him.

  “Salt,” she said softly.

  She grabbed a second pouch and three small bowls. These she placed at points around the circle so that if lines had been drawn through one to intersect the others, a triangle would be formed. This time, Gideon held his silence and watched as she poured the powder into the three bowls. A moment later she pulled a small tinderbox free from the bag and lit each of the bowls. Pungent smoke rose and misted around them. Combined with the shadows it made it difficult, if not impossible to see the trees or the swamp and after a moment or two an odd vertigo washed over him. He wasn’t certain which direction he’d entered from, and he thought if he jumped to his feet and ran, he’d be as likely to splash into the swamp as to find his way through the trees.

  He remained seated. Desdemona returned and placed her tinderbox carefully back in the bag. She took a small branch soaked in some kind of oil and lit it by placing the tip into one of the braziers and flowing on it to feed the heat. With this small torch she lit each of he candles in turn. Gideon couldn’t be sure at this point if she’d lit the candle in the north first, or that in the south, but she circled in a counter-clockwise direction until they were all lit, then snuffed her torn in the soil at her feet.

  There was one pouch left, and Gideon eyed it suspiciously. It was smaller than the first two, and from its shape he didn’t believe it to be filled with powder. The scent of whatever burned in the bowls permeated the air near them, and seeped languidly through his senses. The glowing light from the three bowls lit the smoke and he thought he saw shapes flying, or swimming through the smoke. He ignored them. It was a trick, and illusion, and he’d learn nothing if he hooked his mind on the first thing she tossed his way.

  Desdemona sat across from him. They were dead center in the circle, only a small patch of ground between them. Desdemona pulled out a carved wooden box and set it on the ground beside her thigh. Gideon watched her carefully. She grabbed the last of the pouches and opened the drawstrings that bound it. She pulled it open and dipped her fingers in. What she pulled out was two small strips of something. It was brown, and at first Gideon mistook it for jerky. She pulled the strings tight, and the pouch disappeared, though he didn’t see where she’d put it. His gaze was locked on her eyes now.

  “You gotta trust me, if you want to see,” she said.


  The words were as soft as her breath, but he heard them clearly. He nodded, and did not drop his gaze. She leaned in across toward him and held out one of the two brown strips between thumb and forefinger. With her other hand, she brought the second to her lips and slid it in. Taking a deep breath, Gideon parted his lips and accepted what she offered. He thought, just for a moment, that he saw a dark sparkle in her eye.

  “Don’t chew,” she warned. “Let it sit on your tongue, or tucked behind your lips. You might feel a little numb. You might hate the taste. Don’t’ spit it out, don’t swallow the strip. Let it melt as it will. Don’t think about it.”

  Gideon thought about saying that now that she’d told him not to think about it, it was unlikely that he could think about anything but the odd-tasting, bitter thing on his tongue, but even as the words formed, she dropped her gaze and drew the wooden box around in front of her. He forgot about the odd, sticky substance almost immediately.

  Desdemona didn’t open the box immediately. She watched it and ran her long, slender fingers over the wooden lid. Gideon was curious, and he nearly spoke. He wanted to tell her to open it, to get it over with and show him what she’d brought him to the clearing to see, but his lips were thick and tacky and it was too much trouble to part them. Besides, he noticed something else then.

  She was singing very softly. He would have almost called it a chant, but it had a melody, rising and falling in a rhythm that caught his senses and trapped them. He tried to look away, but only managed to shift his eyes, staring at things on the periphery of his sight. The mist circled them and formed a wall of mist against the outside world. Things moved in those depths, he was sure of it, but he couldn’t bring himself to look directly, and a tiny voice in the back of his head suggested that if he did, he wouldn’t see them at all.

  Or was it Desdemona who said it? Sang it? He was disoriented, and his head was thick with – what? He vaguely remembered that she’d placed something in his mouth. Had he been drugged? Was she drugged?

  There was a sharp sound to his left, and he started. He wanted to look – needed to see what had made the sound, but he couldn’t do it. The sound repeated, behind Desdemona, but again he couldn’t lift his gaze. This would have been an even easier motion than turning to the side, but there was no chance he’d pull it off. He watched her face; he knew she was lifting the lid of that box.

  He could see it in his mind. It was small, only a few inches across and maybe six inches long. It was maybe three inches deep though, so it would hold – what?

  Desdemona dropped her gaze slowly, and as she did so, he was drawn along in her wake. When she broke eye contact completely and gazed into the box, he was able to move again – and to think, a little. He didn’t move. He watched her reach into the box, and one by one she plucked them free.

  Bones. What she drew from the box was a small collection of white, sun worn, bones. Some were smooth, as if they’d been in running water for a very long time. Others were jagged and broken. There were teeth, tiny ribs, and one was, Gideon believed, a human knuckle. He stared in fascination as she lined them up carefully in some pattern he couldn’t name.

  From somewhere, she had produced a sharp stick. She jabbed the point of it into the dirt between them and drew it back toward her crossed legs. She worked quickly, and Gideon saw that she was writing something, or tracing a pattern. The stick twitched and shot from side to side so violently it nearly flew from her hands. He couldn’t tell if she was moving it, or hanging on for dear life as it moved her. Her song grew louder. He knew none of the words, but the rhythm drew the pulse of his heart into syncopation and bound him to her. He didn’t know how, or why, but he knew that it had happened.

  As suddenly as the motion of the stick through the earth had begun, it stopped. She tossed the stylus aside impatiently and leaned in close. Her hair fell forward, and hung over the smaller circle within a circle within a circle where she’d drawn the symbols. Her hand shot out and circled the pile of bones, scooping them from the earth in a swift, graceful motion.

  “Close your eyes.”

  He heard the words, but he couldn’t focus on a source. She might have insinuated them into the rhythm of her chant, or her song, or whatever it was. It might have come from somewhere in the mist, from one of the floating, swimming, swirling shapes. His eyes grew so suddenly heavy that nothing he might have done could have kept them open. He fought it, and they fluttered, and then closed. The world spun, and then righted itself.

  He stared into the eyes of a wolf.

  He tried to scream, but the sound was so distant, so quiet that it whispered through his mind and he couldn’t catch it. The wolf’s skin dried and cracked. Fissures ran through it, starting at the nose, and below the bottom lip. Its teeth were bared, but the skin fractured and peeled away to bone. The jaws snapped so suddenly and loudly that the air moved and washed around him and he heard a soft click in the void of silence. It was a tooth, bouncing off the ground, though he saw no dust or dirt or grass, only the bone.

  Then a sequence of forms grew from the dark surface where the ground should be. There were birds, and rats, a raccoon and some sort of lizard. He saw deep brown eyes and hard scales, limbs contorting and wrapping around one another, serpents and eagles and then, very suddenly, her eyes.

  Desdemona’s eyes were wide and wild. They were deep and glowed with a greenish yellow light that was no reflection of the fire, or trick of the mist. He leaned closer. Her hair rose and danced, as if caught in some mystic, invisible whirlwind. He felt it, and he didn’t.

  She raised her hand between them, knuckles aimed at his face, fingers curled back like talons. He saw her eyes over the top, and now the flames danced across them, reflected and intensified. She stared at him with such intensity he was afraid the vision of the wolf was himself, and his skin was melting and cracking away – but he held that gaze, and after a moment, she smiled.

  With a flick of her wrist she sent the handful of bones whirling into the air. They danced before his eyes, and he tried to pick them out in flight. The wolf’s tooth. The beaver’s rib. The lizard’s spine – the knuckle. His hand ached and he fought the urge to look down. The bones dropped, but he did not follow their flight. He watched her eyes.

  The fire roared and popped. Desdemona arched her back as if she’d been shot. She clasped her hands violently to the sides of her head and screamed. He could only watch. As she arched, the fabric of her dress pressed tightly to her body. Her thighs were muscled and straining, and he feared she would break in half, bowed and overwhelmed by – what? There was a rush of energy – not wind, exactly, though it fanned the flames – but something that washed over him and heated his skin. He felt as if the flames ate at his skin from within, but it wasn’t pain, it was sensation. It wasn’t death, it was a birth, a new life, a thing he’d never imagined, and dreamed of every night of his life in some dark moment between lucidity and prayer.

  And then it was silent.

  The world stilled. The mist hung like a shroud around their circle, and even the fire seemed brittle and solid. Something passed between them, linked their eyes, then tucked itself away. She dropped her gaze, and his followed. The symbols she’d drawn in the dirt stood out dark and liquid. Their color would not remain stable, and he couldn’t stop tracing their patterns, following the motions of the stick she no longer held as the earth offered the motion back to his senses.

  The bones lay across the top, jumbled, warped, and scattered. He stared, and at first they broke the patterns of the symbols and interfered with the symmetry of the vision. He frowned, and if he could have moved his arms he would have reached out to brush them away. He wanted to make sense of the letters, or pictures, or patterns, but then he saw it.

  The bones had fallen in a pattern of their own. They shimmered, and he stared, trying to make sense of it. It was there, just beyond his grasp. And then it was gone. He stared, but the image receded. The bones were just bones. The dirt was just dirt. He felt the
cool, clammy sensation of mist on his cheeks. He smelled the suddenly cloying reek of the incense. He glanced up, and the breath caught in his throat.

  Desdemona unwound slowly from her arch. She shook her head, and her hair fell in wild disarray over her shoulders. Her skin was moist – maybe from sweat, maybe from the same mist that dampened his clothes and his face and his hair. She was absolutely beautiful in that moment and he found that, though he could move again, he could not speak.

  Desdemona closed her eyes for a long, endless moment, and he stared at her, unable to look away. Then she returned her attention to the bones and studied them closely. She traced each one with the tip of one long finger, trailing off at times along the symbols she’d drawn beneath. Her lips moved silently, but he didn’t think she was singing, or chanting. She was thinking out loud, sorting something he couldn’t fathom, or conceive, and all he could do was stare at her in fascination, wondering how he had missed that unbelievable heat, that overwhelming primal sensation, for so many years and called himself a man of God.

  Could there be a sensation so intense without divine presence? His tongue felt thick and dry, and he thought about asking her for a drink, but held himself in check. He had made a promise, and that was the one rational thought remaining to him from an evening that faded more and more quickly as he tried to force it back from his memory. She looked at him and this time her smile was pretty, but just that. She seemed timid, just for a second, as if waiting to see what he’d do, or say – as if waiting for acceptance.

  Gideon licked his lips and she leaned back, grabbed a small jug, and handed it to him. He took it, sniffed it, and she laughed softly.

  “Water, preacher man,” she said softly. “It is only water. Drink.”