by Sandra Waugh
I pretended not to mind and turned to the villagers. “I am looking for the White Healer who lives somewhere near. Do you know of her?” I waited, heart sinking. “None of you? Is there another village nearby?” No answer. The wind blew sturdy, hollow-dry. I glanced at the sky and judged how soon nightfall, then how weary I was, and then turned back. “I am a Healer. I’ll teach you the uses of any plants that grow nearby, in return for a place to sleep tonight and a share of your food.”
There was absolute silence, flat stares. Finally one spoke: “Wait here.”
They walked as a group down to the water’s edge, the adults and two children, huddled in conversation as twilight cast the sky the same color as the sea. I looked around at the ruined village. It might have been pretty once, nestled close to the shore. They must have had boats too, but most likely were dashed to bits by that wave. I felt sorry for them. To rebuild from scratch would be a tremendous challenge, with their tools, materials, and even will all gone.
I looked back at the darkening water beyond the clump of villagers. Why would this take so long? When had any in Merith needed to discuss offering hospitality or the worthiness of a traveler? I wiped my brow, reshouldered my satchel, wanting to sit, to sleep. My hair chafed like straw against my neck, my skin scratched from all the salt. I wondered if it would be too much to ask for more water to wash with. And then I thought of Laurent and Arro, and of the pool of water where I met Harker, and whether he led me wrong as Laurent always assumed.
My mind was wandering, dejection creeping in. No sign of the White Healer, nothing accomplished yet by leaving the Rider and the path to Tarnec. I brushed my hands on my frock. So grim, these days, these months. The need to curl away, to shut out the dark of it all, swelled inside. Laurent had said if I saved the shell, I’d save so many…I’d saved one. One small girl. How misguided that her mother—the entire village—would have left it to fate that she recover or not.
There it was: Fate. I shut my eyes tightly for a moment, and then opened them. Fate was why I was here. Harker, the books, the forbidden reading, and Lark’s wound reopened…All for me. All a loss unless I did something.
I turned. I would not stay the night in this village. Of course these sad people did not know any White Healer, or they’d not be so frightened of a simple stomach remedy. Harker had said south to the sea—and here I stood on that last spit of sickle-curved sand he’d described. I was annoyed with myself then, worried that time was wasting and that I did not know which direction.
I tied my cloak around my neck and started toward the villagers to bid them goodbye. They were no longer huddled but strung in a line like uneven fence posts, holding hands and silently watching the water—the taller adults, the smallish boy. How dull their ragged clothing, all the shades of black, gray, and brown, how opposite the colors of sand and sea. Like a barrier. Like protection. Warding against those sea witches—
I gagged, horror-struck, began to run. “No! NO! What have you DONE?” Laurent’s words to me, a thousand times more ghastly. The figures were turning at my screaming, opening that barrier so I could see. “No. No. No…” Waves rolling in to shore, beyond which a small dark head was sinking. “NO!”
I shoved right through them, tore into the water, leaping over the surf, splashing headlong—but I was yanked back, hands grabbing, hooking my arms, dragging me up the beach and throwing me facedown onto the wet sand. I lunged up, screaming, tried to crawl between their legs. “Stop! Let me save her!” The villagers crowded in front of me—a wall. I clawed at them, scrambled up, trying to force my way between unyielding bodies. “You put her in to drown! You’ve killed her! She was safe—!”
A hard slap across my cheek shut me up. I fell to my knees, stunned. I’d never been hit before. It burned like fire.
“She’s one. She’s one of ’em! A sea witch!”
I spit some blood onto the sand and mumbled, “I am no witch.” But it was lost in the gasps of fear and excitement at such a title. I looked up and around at the small crowd, recognizing the one who hit me, who accused. It was the scrawny, long-jawed fellow from the beach. The one who’d tried to open my pack. His finger stabbed the air, accusing. I pushed myself up; the crowd shuffled back. “No witch,” I gritted, louder. “You lie.” But the man yelled over me, “I saw her come out of the sea! Look at her!”
“I was swimming—my clothes were on shore. You were picking through them!”
“Clothes?” he cried. “Those things were all magicked!”
“What magic?” I thrust at the crowd again, trying to break through. They caught my arms and held me back from the tide, then pulled me around to the needle-faced accuser. I twisted back, eyes raking the waves—nothing but a swirl of foam—then screamed at them, “Why did you kill her? She was healed! She was healed—!” I had no breath left.
The man sneered while I panted. “Look at the witch: straight from the sea. Can’t breathe the air. She’s drying out.” He reached forward and lifted a salt-crusted chunk of my hair, singing, “Sea witch.”
I yanked back from him. “I’m not!” I tossed my hair over my shoulder away from him, looking down as I did so and seeing that the fine coating of salt shone white. Hair and skin…fairly shimmering, powdery dry, as if turning to dust. I spit out the last of the blood in my mouth, thinking fast. I had to get away from these people. I could prove nothing. Already it was picked up as a chant: “Sea witch. Sea witch. Sea witch.”
It came to my head suddenly: Raif’s silly childhood trick. I pulled around toward the sea with a horrified gasp and shouted in warning, “Look out! They’re coming!” The villagers all turned—’twas quick, but their grip on my arms relaxed and I wrenched from them, running for the only place I could think of: the rock outcropping.
“Take her!” They were on me fast, like the reaping hounds. I reached the rocks, climbing quick; one of them had fingers on my cloak, trying to tug me down. I jerked it away and whipped around, my back pressed against the rock, the satchel caught between. I tugged it to the front; thrust it out. “Stay back! This will hurt you!”
The needle-faced man shrieked, “See? Magicked!” But he hesitated.
“Foolish man!” I yelled at him, at all of them. “You know nothing!” With the satchel still lifted, threatening, I reached for a handhold on the rock and heaved myself up backward. They watched as I grabbed for the rock again. Another step, and another, gaining height. Finally I was far enough that I could turn away, scramble faster. I could outrun these people. I would outrun them. There were grunts that I was escaping, and I thought, I am! I am!
But then the first stone smacked against my head.
“Ahh—!” Reeling, I cringed, then yelled, “Don’t! Please! Just let me go.” A second stone knocked my shoulder, stealing my grip. I grabbed wildly for the rocks and looked back, stunned.
All the villagers held stones, but I seemed to focus only on one hand—the one scratching the next little weapon from out of the sand and lifting to aim—the hand of the boy who’d brought me the butterfly.
And then I was pleading, “Why?”
And then the boy’s hand was empty.
And then nothing.
THE LIGHT WAS gray. My mouth swollen, and sticky-dry. I still had my pack.
Those things occurred to me before the rest: that I was bound hand and foot and lying on hardened sand, that my forehead was tender, my hair caked with blood, that thirst and hunger gnawed sharp. That I’d been struck by a child.
Full-on madness. Chaos catching hold. Or maybe this village was already one of those Breeder bastions that Laurent implied were among us always—gnawing away at reason, gnawing away our souls. I thought of Lill, of her abandoning me on the other side of the bridge to Gren Fort, of her wanting to push me off Hooded Falls. And then I couldn’t think on any of this.
I rolled gingerly to my other side. I kicked my feet up behind, trying to reach them to my hands, get my fingers to the knots. The binds were tightly woven, sharp-edged sea grass; my fi
ngers bled without making headway. All the while the gray light paled. ’Twas dawn, the sun creeping up. If the villagers had left me for the night, then I hadn’t much time before they came back.
Damn the sea grass! Like blades they sliced into my wrists and ankles and fingertips and yet nothing would give. I was still worrying at it, fighting the bonds—stretching, scraping, fumbling, even—when two of the village men came for me, lifted the flap of blanket I’d been tossed under, and pulled me out into the morning.
I fought them. Hard. I think, even, I hoped to hurt. I was dragged over the sand, kicking and punching, over what must once have been a path between cottages, and propped up against half a wall. The two men pinned my shoulders back to keep me upright while the rest of the group shuffled over to watch.
There was some surprise. “She survives out of water!” was the general murmur. “How?” “Her fishtail has not grown back!”
“I am no witch; I have no tail!” I gritted. “Do you see my hair? My head? ’Tis red blood. I am no different from you!”
“Hush your mouth, fiend!”
That was shouted from the needle-faced man who’d first accused me. He pushed himself front and center. “We’ve caught a sea witch!” he proclaimed to the others. “We have advantage at last! We’ll throw her back trussed—an accepted trade, else her sea sisters let her drown for their fear of us, of what we can do to them! There will be no more waves; the rains will come and fill our cisterns. Haver shall be free of their plague!”
“You kill an innocent!” I hissed. “Like you killed Duni! No good comes of that!”
“Quiet! You have no voice here, witch!”
“Healer!”
It was a useless term; it fell on deaf ears. I searched the eyes, the faces of this gathering. Gathering? This was hardly a communal debate. “Where are your elders?” I demanded. “Let me speak to them. Let me be understood!”
“I am your elder,” the needle-faced man said. “I judge.”
“What sort of judgment is a single opinion?” I shouted. “What sort of trial when I am already damned?”
“Trial?” He echoed as if he did not understand the word. “You rose from the sea, dripping water and seaweed. Your claim of swimming is proof itself. We on land cannot swim without a rope to guide us home! Where is your rope?”
“And if I say I need no rope, you will say ’tis because I am a witch.” I looked around at all the haggard, tight faces, my own flushed hot with anger. “I am not from here, true enough, but I only meant to help! What harm was there in healing a child? Asking to share a meal?”
“You are crafty in your speak. You do not fool us!” The man pointed at my pack. “What do you keep in there that causes explosion?”
“Beyond your concern, what I keep,” I said recklessly.
One of the men holding my shoulders had no patience for belligerence. He grabbed for my satchel, stuffed his hand in, and was immediately flung back in a brilliant flash of white and thunderous crack. It did not harm me, but the man was prostate, the crowd cowering and crying out in fear.
The needle-faced man was the first to return. He shuffled forward, snarling, “We will know what is in your pack.” He gestured to another one of the men. “Cut her wrists loose.”
The man hesitated at coming close, but did what was ordered, taking out a blade fashioned from a long thin shell, and yanking my arms far from the satchel before sawing through the binds.
The needle-faced man kicked at my skirts. “Show us.”
Stiffly, I tugged the shoulder strap over my head, then dug into the pack while the others shuffled back. I took out the shell and held it up for all to see.
Shell. A collective gasp. Even I recognized how wrong this looked. I jerked my arm back, pushed the shell into the satchel. But before I could even tie it closed, hands gripped me and dragged me out of reach.
“Sea witch.” The needle-faced man turned on me. “We take you back!” A cry went up.
I twisted, trying to shrug them off. “Fools! All of you! Don’t do this!”
“To the sea!” the man crowed, and the group roared in approval.
“Hear me!” I managed to yank one arm free and lurched toward the stupid man, spitting threats before they caught me again: “ ’Twill be very bad for you if you do not let me go!”
“Oh, we let you go, witch,” he spit back. “We return you to the sea, but no more will you be able to leave it.” The man called out some names and a few villagers came forward, hauling something between them. It was another roping of sea grass, this one thick and sturdy. Bound into the rope were stones—all large, all heavy.
“Don’t!” I cried. But I was one against many. I was forced to my feet, wrapped in that weighted cord—over shoulders, neck, around my waist, hips, and thighs. And then I was tipped over, lifted, and marched down to the sea. “Don’t! Don’t!” I kept yelling, thoughts swirling. ’Twas insane. It could not be that all would end here, Lark unsaved, the amulet—
The amulet! It was back in the ruined village in that piled sand, abandoned. I fought, bucked against their hold but could not break free. They were wading now, and I was screaming, pleading for them to stop. Knees, thighs, waist…all the way to the neck—most of the crowd had dropped away, all but for the tallest of them, their arms raised straight above their heads so they could, on a collective “Heave!” throw me far into the sea.
I had one deep breath before the gray-blue closed over my head. Instinct made me struggle; fear made me struggle. So did rage. I could not clear my head of the wrong of this; I could not accept my drowning the way the villagers of Merith accepted death, with dignity. I wrestled my binds—hands fast to my sides, my ankles trussed tightly—losing to the weight. They’d not taken me far; it wasn’t even particularly deep, only impossible to return to the air. I battled on, frantic to swim up, to touch that glittering light of sky that wavered just out of reach. There was nothing noble in this stupid, ignorant verdict; it simply could not happen.
And when breath was spent, I bit my lips together. My head shook violently, insides roiling from the fight, the refusal to let go…and the terror and fury that I would not be able to stop myself from letting go.
My lungs would burst. It was the death-clouding, I thought, that shimmer of something pale at the corner of my eye. But then another swish flicked by and another, and then I truly looked, my body finally ceasing its struggle. Figures were coming toward me. Nay, not coming, but swimming to me—sylphlike creatures, four, five, six of them. They neared, circled, then came close. My eyes were bulged, staring. Recognizing.
They were not beautiful, these things. Perhaps at distance their seaweed tresses and grace of swim could be imagined as beauty, but face to face these were hollowed, barnacled, deep-eyed things, horrible and needy, like the Hag that had surfaced inside the cave at Hooded Falls. They were her sisters: not witches, but Sea Hags. One of them stroked my hair that flowed out around me as if she liked its special color; another ducked down and with her long fingernails sliced through the sea grass around my ankles. Three others did the same with the rope—razor nails that made their fingers look like the claws of the hermit crabs that sometimes crept along the edge of Dark Wood. My mind was swirling to these odd thoughts, fuzzing away. The Sea Hag who’d petted at my hair now tugged it hard with those clawlike fingers, forcing me to focus.
“You must ask for help, Guardian,” she said. “Go back.”
The last of the rope was pulled away and I was pushed, propelled forward to the shore, until my toes then knees scraped the bottom. And they left me there to struggle up on all fours, choking and gagging. My lungs burned, my throat grated, but every breath was a privilege. And the Sea Hags flicked back into the depths as if they’d never existed.
I sat in the surf, shuddering, not wanting to return to this village, this strand, but even if I’d had the strength to swim around the rock outcropping, to land somewhere far from this wretched place, I still had to get the amulet. There was nothing t
o do but crawl, retching, back to the village.
Shouts came fast and furious. The villagers swarmed back, enraged that I was emerging, whole, alive—all proof that I was other, that I was a witch. And if the sea would not claim me, something else would. They were splashing into the shallows to grab me, drag me to some new torture.
“The shell,” I rasped. “Let me take the shell.”
They wanted no part of the amulet. I was carried up the beach, then thrown down by my satchel. “Pick it up!” they screamed, and poked me with pronged sticks until I fumbled the strap over my shoulder and felt the lump of shell inside the pouch. And then they yanked me up and dragged me on.
There was no debate, no protest. My arms were half wrenched from their sockets; my feet scraped raw across the sand. I barely noticed. Somewhere in my head there was a song repeating—a little nursery rhyme young Healers learned the first set of herbs by: Alium for hands, mint for toes, but all defer as the minion grows….
Mint for toes—’twould heal my cuts. Minion would be best, though. And where did I leave the minion? Oh…Laurent.
The villagers of Haver had a second plan ready in case the sea spit me out. A long timber from one of their ruined cottages was sunk vertically into the sand; thatch and beams and chunks of driftwood all stacked around it. I didn’t understand, it was simply an upended plank—the sort a bow pig might be roasted on for a feast. But they were dragging me up over the scavenged logs and brush, fixing me to this plank with another length of braided sea grass. And then recognition dawned and I panted, dull and disbelieving, “You cannot mean this.”
“Stack the pyre!” someone yelled.
My eyes rolled, trying to catch a gaze, any gaze—there was Duni’s mother, who killed her own daughter. There was the seven year’d boy, who’d thrown his stones. There was needle-faced man, who relished this sentence of death. ’Twas stupid to think I could mean anything to these people. All the townsfolk were contributing things to the pile while shouting victorious affirmations: “The sea refuses you, so shall you burn!”
