The Salt Bind

Prologue

‘What ’ave ’ee?’ came the cries from the men, new tongue and old tongue singing together. ‘Pandr’eus genes?’

Then the reply: ‘A neck, a neck, a neck!’ After its slitting, the severed neck would be kept, to be ploughed into the first furrow next year.

Not far from their parents’ activity were the youngest village children.

Sticky from the day’s warmth and overtired, the little ones crowded around Old Sal, who had been bid to mind the drink and her young charges.

Both had loosened her tongue to talking, for, it should be noted, Old Sal was a woman all stories.

‘Back when our Cornwall was young, there was a godly man called King Gerent, the last who would ever rule over the land,’ she told the children, whose dozing heads were gathered together as close as the wheat itself.

‘Handsome, brave and shining, none would stand against him as none would live who tried.’ Old Sal leaned forwards, holding up a finger chipped with a fish knife’s work.

‘Then came along a wise woman, a nasty witch,’ for there is always such a woman in these ancient tales, ‘who was as ugly as the king was beautiful. She threatened him and all the hills, unless he would marry her upon his return from war.’

A dozen eyes, tired as only babes can be tired, blinked up at Old Sal, who even in middle age was thought long past her prime. Her face was red with sun and lined with years well spent and oft idle.

‘Away he went on horseback to fight the Old North, whereupon he came home a victor. Then flew the witch to his castle, skirts high and a lewd command on her lips: take me as a bride and I will spare your life. King Gerent refused. In her fury, the witch seized the seas. An ever-crying storm took bricks from buildings, snatched children from their beds, broke every gull’s wing and savaged the land as mean as any raider.

King Gerent could not bear to see his people hurt and yet the wise woman was too much a trickster to be killed. ’

Old Sal’s hands wove through the air. Through a child’s imaginings, the sea was transformed into a terrible beast of talons and claws to steal their lives and Portscatho away.

‘King Gerent turned his righteous rage upon the wise woman, yet his sword could leave no mark. Alas, she knew the earth’s magic as well as he and for every blow, she blew the wind harder.

Still, he would not give himself over to the witch. ’

In the fields, the men were almost done their reaping.

‘It was here the Pact was formed between the Land and Sea. King Gerent turned from the shore and walked into the waves to place his heart into the ocean, where the witch could never find it. From then on, the storms died and the wise woman – and every one after – had no sway over them. King Gerent was celebrated upon his death and his body rowed across the waves in a golden boat with silver oars.’

‘I heard the king was evil and the wise woman banished him,’ said Hannah, a small and shrew-faced girl with limp pigtails. ‘Not the other way around.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Old Sal. ‘Depends on who’s telling the story.’ She squinted her eyes at her young charges and noticed one vacant spot at her feet. ‘Now where’s that Kensa got to?’

Gone was the unruly child, never one to sit still or do as she was told. Indeed, the warning Kensa could have heeded from Old Sal’s tale went unheard, for that wild girl had snuck to where the scythes were quickest to watch the wheat neck’s cutting.