Chapter 17 A Sea Witch’s Offer #3
Beneath my boots the sandy path shifts this way and that as I follow it around the back of the cottage, determined to empty my bladder in the tall grasses.
Perhaps Rhyland was onto something when he mentioned the strong effects of his sister’s wine.
Everything feels blurry, warm, a bit unfocused—my footsteps are clumsy and uneven.
I find a good patch of tall grass to relieve myself in, trying not to stumble down the dune behind me, when a voice echoes through the night.
“We have a room for that inside, you know.”
“Shit.” The word slips out of me in surprise and I almost piss on myself fumbling to get my pants back up around my waist.
Mòr laughs and uses both hands to part the grass and smiles, offering a lift out of the pile of sand.
I take it and let her hoist me from the thicket.
She drapes my arm over her shoulders and tucks her own around my hips.
“You should be careful not to wander off alone again; there are dangerous things on my isle. Even the plant life can kill you.” She gestures toward a tangle of black vine-like bushes.
The same ones that grew up around the watchtower.
I wonder again what they could be—I've never seen such a plant before. Not in Aurorae, or in Ethirya.
Mòr makes no attempt to elaborate and instead prattles on. “My brother got worried when you slipped off, thought you were making a run for it. I told him it was nonsense. I know when someone’s pissing on my island; it’s a very warm sensation.”
The look I give her makes her bellow with laughter, the kind from deep down in her stomach. I try to compose myself, but a small hiccup slips out when I speak. “H-how do you know he was worried about that? Did he mention he kidnapped me?”
Her face, which I thought had been fairly plain at first glimpse, comes alive under the moonlight, something almost too glorious to look at, so I blink down at the sand.
“He didn’t have to tell me.”
We step together but, surprisingly, not toward the warm cottage that spills with laughter and light.
Instead, she guides me further up the path I followed here until we reach a circle of benches crafted from driftwood.
Tall stone statues have been carved from the giant boulders here, surrounded by more wooden sculptures.
I stare at them, awed, almost transfixed.
“Aren’t you worried about leaving your handmaiden behind with a bunch of pirates?” I whisper without looking away. The stones seem to glow under the moon beams, their chiseled faces shifting from one thing to another. I have to wonder if I’m hallucinating, or if this is all some strange dream.
“Talon’s men? Never. My brother would see any man who tried to force a woman dead on their feet before they got their cock loose from their trousers.
In fact, I believe the men who sail with him feel much the same, or else my boundary spell would have flayed their minds during the crossing, plugged ears or not.
” Her voice takes on a bitter but satisfied twist, as though she’s picturing men who came before.
Men who suffered such a fate. The dangling skulls become a vivid backdrop to my thoughts.
The feeling of it gathers to me. I can’t help but think of Harlow.
Though he didn’t rape me that night on the beach—the night before everything changed—he’d damaged me in other ways.
Ways I’m not sure I’ll ever recover from.
Somehow it almost feels worse to have wanted the press of his lips against me.
To have savored every soft brush of his hand, the exploration of his silver tongue.
I shiver and force the memory away. Mòr settles us onto one of the smooth benches, letting our arms fall from around each other.
“You have questions for me.” She says it after a long stretch of quiet only interrupted by the sound of the waves lapping at the distant shore paired with some sort of insect buzz.
I almost don’t ask the question that presses at the back of my mind, insistent as a hungry hound. It’s not my business. Certainly doesn’t feel like my place. But her wine has loosened my tongue. “Why did you tell your brother something was in Ethirya that wasn’t?”
She laughs again, the sound in perfect harmony with the eve around us and in the move of her mouth, the tilt of her head, I see her brother. It’s uncanny—there and then gone. But I glimpsed it.
“It was. You know it was.”
“I don’t—”
“Avalon, lying to me is a waste of your time.” She pauses, letting me absorb the shock of my name uttered off her lips. “After all, I was the one who told you of the crown pieces’ whereabouts.”
Before I can ask, or even twist my face into a mask of confusion, she stands and steps a few feet away, waving a hand over her head, down the length of her body, and I watch her transform beneath the moonlight, skin rippling. A sense of horror bleeds through me.
“You!” I gasp, falling from my perch and scrambling backward until I’m pressed into the legs of one of the carved statues.
“Me!” Her cackle rings through the eventide.
I stare at her, the old woman before me, stooped with age, her hair gray and matted, her nose large and crooked.
That wart is bulbous on her chin, maybe more so than I remember and she teeters toward me, hunched and reaching with bony, gnarled fingers.
Morgana. “Get up, get up,” she urges, lifting me with more strength than any old woman should possess.
I rub my eyes and blink feverishly against the night. “This isn’t real. It’s a trick or I’m drunk.”
“Well, you did knocka few back, dearie, but not enough to imagine this.”
“How is this possible?” I move away from her, putting as much space as I can between us without falling off of the hill. “How are you here…and there…and her, but not?”
“I love a good riddle as much as the next witch, but what it really boils down to is magick. My power source is this isle, of course, thanks to Ireus who bound me to it after—” She swallows and shakes her head in what looks like a painful movement.
“Nevermind that now. I can project myself out—Sora too. A solid illusion of sorts. Very exhausting. I sleep for days after. Tsh, the important part is that I’m the one who sent you out there for the crown piece. A piece I placed there, ages ago.”
My throat constricts and I almost lose the food I so unceremoniously devoured at her table. “I-I don’t understand. Why? Why would you do that?”
The wry smile I remember paints her ancient face and she pulls in a rattling breath.
“I’m the goddess of magick and prophecy, remember, dearie?
I may not be as worn out as I let on. What I knew is that you needed to be out there that day.
You’re a piece in all of this, just as surely as that crown is. ”
The word piece sounds an awful lot like pawn and I feel myself ruffle at the thought. “So you’ve told Rhyland you sent me out there for it. He knows everything?” A tightness grips hold of my chest. I can’t breathe. He’ll kill me. There’s no getting away with any of it now.
Slowly, she seems to melt back into the strange goddess.
The Sea Witch of Elaris. “I’ve told my brother nothing.
He searches for Njól, your proclaimed Midnight Crown, for reasons I don’t agree with.
Reasons that will only hurt him.” She studies me wearily, suddenly sharper and more clear than she’s been all night.
“Not that your reasons are any better. But I can’t see my brother hurt again.
I’d watch the whole of Hlódyn burn first.”
I picture our realm burning and know that with the gods' wrath, it’s a very possible ending.
But that’s never been at the forefront of my concerns.
Getting my màma back, returning to Aurorae greeted by welcoming arms…
that has always been the plan. I never stopped to think about what might happen after that.
Once my life debt was paid. The thought leaves me feeling incredibly selfish.
Mòr’s face softens. “Hearing this, you should understand that I know the lengths we go for family. You would do anything to get her back. I would do anything to keep the last decent member of my family safe and well. The last time he broke….” She shudders.
Images flash through my head. Cities burning.
Hundreds slaughtered beneath his blade. If Rhyland Crow, Talon—whatever—is what she considers decent, I shiver to think of the cruelty that dwells within the rest of godly kind.
Though she did say member of her family.
Perhaps the other lines aren’t as bad. Maybe Ireus and Trine only rule through blood and fear, holding the other gods in Skoyr as captive as we are down here in Hlódyn.
Stop. Stop. Stop. I’m spiraling down a trail of thought that doesn’t even matter.
I’ve never known what to believe. If anything, the gods have always felt, at best, a distant cause.
The war over Centurism and the Old Faith nothing but an inconvenience and burden.
An excuse for men to hack and stab at each other over land and resources in the name of one deity or another, as they’ve done since the dawn of time.
“So what does this mean?” I ask slowly into the obscurity around us.
“The cave was a test. One that you passed. I wanted to see if you were brave, clever. And fate did the rest. Now I’d like to strike a deal with you.”
My arm aches at the memory of the siren’s fangs ripping through my shoulder. Gods and their deals. Did they never tire of this? This constant scheming. I open my mouth, ready to spit this, but she lifts a finger.
“All I ask is that you continue to keep quiet about the other piece you have, help my brother in Staygia, and come to me first if you happen to get your hands on the whole of Njól. I won’t force you to give it to me, on this I swear.
I’m not interested in its power, but I am interested in you. Your fate.”
My shoulders stiffen and I sniff, dusting clumps of sand from my pants. “You seem to already know my fate. You said you’ve seen it.”
“Mortal fates are forever arriving and departing in an endless cycle. None of it stays still; very rarely does it remain the same throughout a lifetime. You have the power to choose your path. What I see are the outcomes of your decisions. But nothing is written in stone.”
The cool eve folds over me, bringing with it the salty smell of the sea.
A race of fear. It’s a reminder of that night—another deal I made with another god, yet that one was life or death, frigid water pounding over my head.
Heavy chains binding my wrists. It’s the one deal I can’t break, that was seen to and sealed with an oath that went deeper than skin.
Branded on my body—inscribed on my very bones.
Subconsciously, I pat the hair down over my right ear, hiding the rune burned into my skin behind it.
His rune. “Sure, if you agree not to tell Rhyland that you know I have a piece of the…whatever you gods call it. I’ll stop by your yarn stall if I make it back to Ethirya alive, but I’m telling you there will be nothing you can say now or then that will keep me from getting my màma back. ”
“I’ll accept those terms." Mòr smiles and her eyes reflect the starlight from above. Her hand reaches out and I take it, getting a feel for the warm rough palm before we shake.