Secrets of Carrick: Merrow

by Ananda Braxton-Smith

  In my mind’s eye I saw Mam floating downward and her body settling soft and pink upon the grit and shells. She surged quietly on the tide. Her fingers and toes waved like anemones and swelled like the puffers. A cloud of tiny silver fish swam over her head and she stared upward through them, giving me the morbid and pitiful eye. I couldn’t help seeing it — in spite of not quite believing it.

  Because she would never have done that. I knew it, I just knew.

  Mam was happy-natured and bright, Ushag said so herself. She was to take over the household at her father’s death, so she must have been a sensible sort of person, too. She walked Carrick alone for a year after Pa died, so she must have been brave. And she was patient, Ma said so. She was good at just sitting through troubles until they were over. A bright, brave, sensible and patient person wouldn’t do that terrible thing. She couldn’t have. I just knew it.

  A sea otter gliding through the kelp fixed its eye on the urchin-herds grazing at the edges of the forest. Picking one out, it rolled onto its back and rested the spiky thing on its belly as it swam. It gripped a rock in one sweet-looking paw and bashed the urchin until the water filled with blood all around, and then it carried it to the surface to eat.

  The kelp seemed to reach out for me with its clinging wrack and stingers. The awful undertow hid itself in there and I could hear it forever rushing on, pouring toward the future, and wanting to drag me with it. I let go the stone-sack and rose to the sun, breathing again. Deep, long breaths. I breathed like this all the way up the cliff-path.

  Back at home, in spite of her recent tears, my aunt was all high spirits. Ulf was out of the byre and sat by our hearth dressed in what looked to be a set of tapestries and a pearl hat. The corner trunk was open. He waved a mug at me as I came in. ‘Ho! Nin,’ he greeted me. The pot was full and on the fire; I couldn’t help noticing that it smelt better than it had for some time. Neither of them talked but the house still rang with cheerfulness and a sort of fellow-feeling. The fire crackled, the pot bubbled and our Northman hummed bits of airs and parts of tunes, which Ushag joined in now and then. The mead jug sat by the hearth, almost empty. A fresh one waited nearby.

  ‘All right?’ My aunt glanced at me and handed me a stew.

  ‘Suppose so,’ I said, tucking in. I ate for a while and then said quietly with a full mouth, ‘Except obviously I don’t believe it.’

  Standing like a standing stone with Ulf’s stew in her hand, Ushag’s face fell. She raised one eyebrow. ‘Don’t believe what?’ She handed him the trencher.

  ‘Don’t believe what you said about Mam.’ I let it sink in. ‘How do you know that she was…you know? Drowning herself.’

  ‘I know it because I saw it.’ She sat and served herself while giving me the full show of tutting, raising her eyes to heaven, and shaking her head. I didn’t let on I saw any of it. I wanted to have this out to its end, wherever that was.

  ‘You don’t know,’ I said. ‘All you saw was that she walked into the water.’

  ‘I saw what I saw.’

  ‘You saw her walk into the water…’

  ‘That’s right.’ Ushag poured herself another brew.

  ‘…And then you settled for yourself that she’d drowned herself.’ I finished.

  My aunt looked bothered. Ulf was following the talk closely while spooning stew into mouth. He stopped for a moment to search about the hearth for something.

  ‘I did not decide. I saw,’ insisted my aunt, finding and handing the salt-bowl to him.

  ‘Denk-yoo,’ he said.

  ‘You saw her walk into the water. You didn’t see her drown.’

  ‘Heishan! You talk like the priest,’ she snapped. ‘Slippery as a greased pig.’

  ‘There’s no point in being rude,’ I said and I meant it truly, but Ushag sat back on her heels and hissed at me through her teeth. Ulf hardly put his spoon down by his empty trencher before she filled it again, slopping stew all about him as she did so. She also slammed him down another brew.

  ‘Denk-yoo. Denk-yoo,’ he said and smiled into his mug as he drank.

  ‘I saw her.’ Ushag was stubborn. ‘I know.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I know what you think you saw. But you’re wrong.’

  ‘You know.’ She was shouting now. ‘How can you know anything? You were only three. You never knew her.’

  ‘No, but I know myself. And I know I’m just like her. You told me so.’ Ushag lowered her eyes. ‘And I know that she would never do that thing.’

  There was a silence I couldn’t read. Ushag took me suddenly by the shoulders and studied my face with something that looked like love in spite of her curses.

  ‘Spit-hag! You are like her. She also took no mind of the real world and its regular folk. She had her Scale; it made her special.’ She shook me a bit, but not hard. ‘And she too ran to the sea whenever there was trouble, or any hard thing, to be dealt with.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ A cold stone had settled in my belly.

  ‘It means that when trouble came, as it always does, she only had her stories and the sea to help her.’ The stone had risen into my throat. ‘Those of us who weren’t special just had to get on with it. She didn’t. She gave up.’

  Now the heat in my throat and the cold in my belly met, and a storm rolled right into the middle of my chest. I wanted to walk out of there and never come back. ‘Why are you telling me all this now?’ I asked my aunt.

  ‘Because you asked. And you asked. And you keep on asking,’ said Ushag. ‘And because you are so like her…’ she added almost in a whisper and with a groan.

  I knew what she was thinking, then. She thought I would do it too, the thing she thought Ven had done. I stood up. ‘Well, and because I’m so like her I can tell you that what you thought you saw — you didn’t!’ I had never bellowed like that in my life. ‘I would never do that, so you needn’t trouble yourself about me — and neither would my mother. She didn’t just walk away or drown herself. She just went home to her real family. And I don’t blame her! Why would she want to stay with you?’ Startled, Ulf jumped to his feet and my aunt leant away from me. Not for long, though. She crossed her arms against me, and her voice was cold.

  ‘Well. There we are. You asked and I told.’ She turned her back to me and, unasked, filled Ulf’s mug once more. He held the mug in both hands to his chest and watched us. The merrow on his hand flickered in the firelight. ‘Now it’s your story as well as mine. You must do with it as you see fit. As I have had to.’ Ulf and Ushag’s eyes met over the mug. His eyes were soft, even beyond that silly softness caused by a few brews, but she met them with ice and gravel and turned back to me with a closed face. ‘I’m done,’ she said and got up and left. The room’s cheer melted away.

  ‘Orraht, Nin?’ Ulf asked me.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Gott,’ he said and taking a third helping and the jug with him, he followed my aunt outside. I was left alone by the fire. My heart thundered, black clouds filled my head and the lightning shot through me like shock-eels. My aunt had fixed her sister in the worst of stories, and I was going to have to find another way to get her to open her mind and see the truth. In this humour, I went to my bed.

  I dreamt I swam again in the kelp forest. In tangled light and flowing undertow, a wrecked hull rocked white and skeletal in the long grass. Its keel, ribs and battens were marked all over with hands sinuous, like anemones, and right in its middle sat an ornate locked trunk. I opened it and the water around me filled at once with pearls, all floating upward. I grabbed at one as it rose and brought it to my face. I saw the kraken inside with all its hooked legs; another held a line of people with torches walking forever along undersea-paths; another, a wailing changeling child. I woke up. I had a feeling of doom.

  Words weren’t working. They weren’t proof. I was going to have to take my aunt to see for herself even if I had to drag her.

  Chapter Twelve

  Cave of Hands

  I WOKE AT DAWN
BUT AUNTIE USHAG was still up before me, cutting and dipping rushes. We’re lucky to have the grove of bees just up behind us; Ma and Scully burn tallow for light and have to live with the stink of it — it’s like the back of the butcher’s after a hot day. Beeswax burns clean and sweet and I’ve heard that the Brothers even have rules about it; such as it’s only to be used by the highest of their priests, but my aunt says that’s the kind of rule just made to be broken.

  She’d already stripped and cut the bundle, and was now warming the beeswax. The morning washed in pearly and calm; even Ushag moved slowly at her work. I went and sat by her.

  ‘Put your clothes on,’ she said. I fetched my tunic. ‘You’re too old to get about like that anymore.’ She gave me a handful of rushes. ‘And Ulf is here now.’

  ‘Ulf,’ I said.

  She couldn’t help herself. Her lips twitched and pressed together in a tight grin. She reddened.

  ‘Will you wed with him?’ I asked.

  Her grin vanished and she looked at me straight and steady. ‘I will never marry,’ she said in such a way as I knew it to be true.

  We stripped the rushes for a while in the cool before the day got up. My aunt was in a milder humour than she had been all summer. The night before seemed forgotten. I slipped a close look at her face. Perhaps it was. She had drunk a lot. There were even small, friendly smiles between us.

  ‘I want you to come up the gorge with me,’ I said, on the strength of the change.

  ‘When?’ she asked.

  ‘Today.’ I watched her struggle not to ask me what for. ‘There’s a giant eel landlocked in a cave up there.’ I told her, and showed its measure with my hands. I held them as apart as they’d stretch.

  Her face lit up somewhat; she never lets go a chance to fill the pot. ‘Well, it should be all right.’ I waited while she thought some more, and then she clinched it. ‘I suppose so,’ she said.

  As we left the yard a warm, salty breeze lifted the corners of the eel-bag, and played with our hair. After our weeks of stillness this little wind cheered us no end and when we reached the shore even Ushag was sprightly in her step. On the beach it strengthened and we had to lean into it to stay upright; at the mouth of the gorge it was pushing at us from behind and we kept breaking into helpless canters and trots upon its back. We couldn’t help it. Even my aunt was laughing and whooping as we were buffeted into and up the gorge.

  There was some change come over Auntie Ushag since yesterday, since she told about her and Ven. She seemed smoothed somehow; in spite of the terrible story her movements were more of a piece, her speech softer, her face more open. Already a grin and two bursts of laughter this morning, and she was meeting my eyes with no sliding or slipperiness. I didn’t know why she was so good-natured all of a sudden, but I was counting on it to get us through what I had to show her.

  Ushag led us along the stony river for a while, and then turned onto a path running under an overhanging ledge and hidden by creepers and fern. This sheltered path was just tall enough for a small person to stand up and walk along. It saved us some time splashing and clambering up the river. Watching my aunt ahead of me, she seemed a goat or some other rough, skilful beast. Neither slowing nor quickening, her feet just kept plodding on through the green light of the overhang. This was plainly her own shortcut that she knew well; it struck me that perhaps she and Ven had used it.

  We reached the place of the carvings. The tremblings had shaken the cliffs, and rocks had fallen into the chasm closing some openings and opening others. Some of the stones lay on the ground now, their figures broken up and scattered. Others were still standing although the openings they marked were all changed. I spotted the deep-cut spiral stone that marked the cave of hands. The entrance was smaller but there was still enough room to crawl.

  ‘There,’ I said, and we shuffled inside on our knees.

  The merrows started up as soon as we touched the darkness, just as we could stand up again. The song travelled along rocky steeps in the cliff’s belly, and flowed into all its gaps and passages. It sang into our ears and down through the hallways of our bodies until it filled our hearts with all its lonely wilderness. Ushag was shaken, I could tell. She flattened herself against the wall and her sweat gleamed in the dark-light.

  ‘All right?’ I said.

  ‘I suppose so,’ she replied but I could see she wasn’t. ‘Where’s this eel, then?’

  I took her hand and led her to the dark pool. Words not working so well between her and me these days, I didn’t want to tell her about the hand-marks; I wanted her to find them for herself. So, I stepped back and left her to it. It didn’t take long. I heard her murmuring.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Come here.’ Her voice sounded angry, but when I moved closer and could see her face better I saw she was only baffled. ‘Is this what you really brought me up here to see?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Well?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, what?’ she said.

  ‘Have you seen this before?’ I asked.

  ‘Not really,’ she answered.

  ‘Well, have you or haven’t you?’ I couldn’t take anymore of this foggy, circling talk. My aunt gave me a sharp eye and stood up as if to leave. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’ I said. She couldn’t leave now. I pulled at her hands. ‘Please?’ She knelt again. ‘Have you seen them before?’

  ‘I have seen hand-marks like these, but it was down south and a long time ago. They were on the cliff near the harbour and the men had found them long before me. They’d drawn all over them and…’ She glanced at me and stopped.

  ‘Go on,’ I said.

  ‘Well,’ she carried on. ‘All right. They’d turned them into figures of women. It was hard to see what they’d been before the…additions.’

  Ushag bent to look closer. She followed the cloud of hand-marks as they drifted down the rock-wall. Near the ground she found the small webbed hands and squatted by them for some time. She did what I’d done and put her hand into the hand-mark. It matched in every singularity but the webbing. Still touching it, Ushag spoke.

  ‘I heard that the Old-ones used to do this,’ she said softly. ‘I’ve seen markings like those outside. The shapes and such. They’re all over Carrick. I’ve seen pictures in the caves by Merton, and up by Strangers’ Croft. Mostly fish.’

  ‘Were any of those markings like these?’ I had a feeling my aunt would just keep talking about everything but the point if I let her. I had to ask. I had to finish it. ‘Were they webbed?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ said Auntie Ushag. She put her hand on my shoulder and we looked at the wall together. ‘They weren’t webbed.’ The merrow song had faded and seemed to be now just one lone voice wailing somewhere faraway. My aunt slid her hand down my arm and stroked my Scale. She was trembling.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, and her voice became a groan as she talked. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’

  This sounded to me like the start of a conversation, a real conversation, but before I could say a word Ushag tore off her tunic and jumped into the dark pool. For a moment I thought she’d run mad and was trying to drown herself in the waist-deep water. She was thrashing about with both arms under the surface. ‘Bag!’ she shouted. ‘Bag!’

  I grabbed the eel-bag and pushed it down into the pool. I had thought the cave cold, and had been starting to shiver, but that black water changed my mind. It seemed to cut through the flesh and freeze the very blood of my hands. And there was Auntie Ushag crashing about in it up to her waist and her arms right under, holding something down there.

  I opened the bag’s mouth. ‘Ho!’ I called to her. Under the water all was writhing parts and I couldn’t tell slimy eel from slippery arms and legs. Ushag wrestled something into the bag, something with length and girth and icy vigour. With a swing of her arm and a twist of her hand, then, the bag was tied and on the ground where it lay struggling and twisting.

  Panting, Ushag gripped my shoulder with a wet, cold hand and lau
ghed. She made as if to pull me in with her, but lost her footing and went under. Her feet appeared, like she’d stood on her head down there, and then disappeared as she righted herself.

  ‘There’s a tunnel,’ she said. ‘Right down the bottom, there’s a tunnel.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I saw a tunnel. It’s not long. There’s light at the end.’

  I watched her face show all the marks of excitement. She bobbed up and down in the water to keep from freezing. She grabbed me and pulled.

  ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with you? It’s a tunnel,’ she said as if that was all there was to it. She pulled at me again, and at once I was in the dark pool with her.

  My breath was knocked from my chest, and I believe my mind left my body for a moment too. I had never known such cold. Even snow was warmer. Within moments countless blades pricked at my feet and hands, and in a few moments more the blades were stabbing.

  ‘What! Whaaat?’ My brain and teeth hurt so much I was worried I would die from it. Auntie Ushag shook me and softly slapped at me until that was worse than the cold. ‘All right!’ I said. ‘All right!’ She slapped at me once more for fun. ‘Stop it!’ She did and grinned.

  ‘You’re a delicate lady now, you are,’ she laughed, poking me until I had to grab her finger and twist it. ‘Tender. And. Fair.’

  ‘It’s all very well for you,’ I said through chattering teeth. ‘With your leathery old hide. You feel nothing. But just you remember — I am a shy wood-violet and you should treat me so.’ I started laughing and so did she, but as usual I couldn’t stop and soon the waves of tears broke. I fought to master my flushes and tics and sobs. It was like I had become somebody else; somebody with no sense at all. Then as quickly as it came it was gone and I didn’t know how to feel again. Except that I was to freeze to death if I didn’t do something quickly.

  We stood dripping side-by-side for a moment in the dark and cold. Ushag took my hand and I couldn’t help noticing that hers didn’t shake at all. I was a chattering mass of bones and teeth from the marrow out.