Chapter Two The Morgawr’s Gift
Chapter Two
The Morgawr’s Gift
I solde – wise woman, healer, witch and harlot – was said to be more than two hundred years old.
Kensa could believe it. What’s more, she could believe the other rumours about her.
That she nursed slow-worms from her bosom, was mistress to the Devil and had birthed each pine tree on the headland’s furthest point.
And now she had come from her cottage in Bohortha to the Towan, as though drawn to its terrors.
Kensa dug her heels into the sand. ‘Don’t touch her.’
‘She needs seeing to.’ Isolde’s voice was a hoarse whisper, soft-seeming, belying the hardness beneath it. ‘I can only save her if you let me, Kensa.’
It was unsettling to hear her name spoken by a woman she – by her own recollection – had never met. Save? That word was slower to register. As was the notion that Elowen would need saving and not suddenly come to, pretending to be shy with too many eyes upon her. And yet Elowen did not stir.
After a lengthy pause, the tide hushing in and out to match her breaths, Kensa nodded. ‘All right, but if you hurt her—’
‘Has she spoken on any ailments?’
Kensa shook her head. How was she to know? It was not as though Elowen ever confided in her. The few words exchanged between the sisters were usually, ‘Wait for me,’ from the youngest and, ‘No,’ from the eldest.
Isolde’s knees groaned audibly when she crouched over Elowen. Other than that, the wise woman remained silent.
Impatience – at the quiet, at her ignorance – bid Kensa to ask, ‘Will she be—’
‘Yes.’ Isolde pressed her fingers to Elowen’s neck, then across her forehead. ‘Young girls are prone to sudden turns.’
Kensa frowned. Being a young girl herself, she was certain she would never succumb to a fainting fit; that was typical Elowen behaviour.
‘I didn’t do it,’ said Kensa defensively.
How strange it was to see a woman as aged as this witch, yet sprightly and mirthful, unencumbered by the years gathered across her skin and hair and clothes.
Her dress was over-darned wool, the same shade as a hare’s pelt.
Atop it was a midnight bodice, furred with loose threads where beads had once been sewn.
Although its fashion had long since fallen from favour, trends were not followed in the coastal village, where function, warmth and practicality took priority.
Layered over Isolde’s slim shoulders were shawls, while her skirts were creased with pockets, bags and poultices.
At her belt were knives and, bent into one arm, was a willow-woven basket.
Long grey hair, longer than it should be, hung in strangled knots about her waist. Feathers, threads, ribbons and vines had been plaited into it.
Painted across her lids was kohl in a thick band.
And her eyes, milky brown, were the same colour the earth’s yolk would run if it were cracked atwain.
Unkind talk was that Isolde practised the Old Ways: the forbidden rites which tied land and sea together, spat on the Church and, on occasion, spared a child God had seen fit to take.
The wise woman turned to the sea monster, rising to press her palms to its side. ‘Truly, you choose now to die, old friend? You could reconsider.’
For a moment, Kensa thought it would reply.
Perhaps it did, only not in a way the girl could hear.
From the hill came a man’s enquiry. Kensa went to shout back, until Isolde silenced her with a hand on her shoulder.
‘Soon the village will come. There is little time.’ Isolde’s dry lips began an untamed song known to those born on Cornish soil – on ship bones and their anchors, seal skins and scallop ears.
It was one Kensa had heard her father sing on the nights he went a-wrecking, asking the waves to offer their bounty, however cruel.
Mist from the hill, mist from the sea.
Tide in turn has song for thee.
Three to spin a wakening, one to take the crown,
and in there waits a heart-thorn, leading dead-wave down.
Without being told, Kensa understood that what passed here on the Towan – between herself, Elowen, the witch and the sea beast – could never be told to another.
The secret burrowed under her fingernails, gathering an itchy tightness that made her want to put them to her mouth until she could taste it.
Isolde’s voice was cracked and brittle as she sang, pausing only to ask, ‘Are you the one who found the Morgawr?’
Kensa opened her mouth, closed it again. She had not been the first to meet the creature. That had been her sister. Isolde did not know that. As though summoned, the wind took Kensa’s ruddy hair and pulled it from her braid, falling free as easy as her lie.
‘Yes.’
The wise woman’s eyes turned, at once, to her. ‘Humph.’
Next came a knife pressed into Kensa’s palm: the witch’s knife. Its bone handle was shined from a thousand holdings and inlaid with flint pieces. It bore the same symbols from the ancient stone markers which farmers tilled around, the ones not even the wildest ponies would graze beside.
Isolde squeezed Kensa’s shoulder and steered her towards the sea monster. ‘You will remove the Morgawr’s tongue for me.’ Its bulbous lower lip folded forwards, as though in invitation. ‘It’s a prize seldom found in these parts.’
Kensa’s grip slackened on the bone-handled knife.
‘Would you rather I find another to do the task?’
‘No,’ said Kensa quickly.
The witch prised the Morgawr’s jaws open with bars of driftwood.
A hot smell, seaweed gone to ruin. Kensa placed a knee on the creature’s sagging maw and waited for movement.
None came. It was really dead, then. Braver now, she hooked a hand around a tooth and pulled herself inside the fleshy cavern.
Its fumes were thick as sealing wax, running up the beast’s throat and down her own.
The carcass began to shake. Kensa would have screamed, until she realised why the monster shuddered: Isolde was hacking pieces from its flesh.
Crouching, Kensa leaned across a tongue as coarse as grit and worked by touch alone, for it was too dark to see.
She was not shy when it came to cutting and thought herself much like the older women who gutted fish in the salting house – only hers was a much bigger fish.
The knife was clumsy in her grip and the tongue was tougher than she expected.
Kensa angled her weight behind the knife, took a deep breath.
Her first mistake. The sour air was dizzying and the harder she gasped, the worse it got.
Her grip loosened on the blade. It tumbled, falling into the nothingness.
She lurched after it – bile rising – and bashed her head on the sea monster’s gums. Another inhale and spots flashed around her vision.
She could not think, could not see. Behind her, the driftwood bars creaked precariously.
If they snapped, Kensa would be shut inside the terrible mouth.
Would anyone even miss her?
She did not like that question because she did not like its answer.
Kensa scampered back onto the beach. It was wet, the tide coming in. Already, the sea monster’s long tail began to drift in the water. Her own hands were empty. No tongue. No knife. She had failed. Her skin prickled with dread.
There were voices now. Portscatho’s women had paused from their salting, despite their hampered progress, while the fishermen had roused from sleep or drunken reverie, eager to see the famed Morgawr.
Kensa was surrounded and had yet to be noticed.
Prayers were muttered by the more faithful in the village – or, at least, those who wished to appear as such.
Others, heathen in nature, touched a hand to the pagan tokens they carried.
Knowing looks and uncertain whispers were exchanged.
Had the Father of Storms sent it as a warning?
If not, then it had escaped his watch. No one knew which was worse.
The creatures – once land-based beings – had been cast into the ocean and not troubled them for hundreds of years.
Not since the Pact. How could that change in a night?
‘This is no good omen to us,’ said Branok, the mine overseer, whose authority extended well beyond the tunnels he worked in. He wore a sleep-creased mouth and a long coat thrown over his undershirt.
In his shadow, and with a matching glower, was Jack, who was three years Kensa’s senior.
Just as his father managed the adults, he managed the children, exerting his will over those who lived in Portscatho.
Aside from Kensa, who was far too stubborn to listen to anyone.
Even at his young age, Jack had a solidness to him, could withstand anything.
Or, at least, Kensa thought so, because he shrugged off any words she threw at him; both criticism and compliment slid from his wide shoulders, and then he’d frown, again.
Nothing could impress him, as though he was above it all – above her, what with his father’s role in the village – and he’d have her know it.
Briefly, his eyes slid to hers, scanned her up and down, then flicked away, purposefully.
It shouldn’t have stung, his easy disregard, yet it did.
Hovering nearby was the stuffy clergyman, Mr Aldridge, wheezing and palming at his bowed legs. Fine dining and a sedate lifestyle had greatly affected his physique. Breathless as he was, he had air enough to chide Kensa. At last, someone had acknowledged her.
‘Oh, in Heaven’s name! Get yourself away from it, child,’ he said, pulling his flopping nightcap from his pasty head and using it to mop his brow. ‘Dredged up from Hell itself, I assure you.’
Branok rubbed a hand over his face. He hadn’t shaved and there was a thick shadow over his brown chin. It was strange to see a man so trim, tidy and timely be unkempt in these early hours. ‘Should we tell Sir Trevanion? It’s his land we’re on, after all.’