Chapter Twenty-one The Maiden and her Monster #2
With a jerky, inhuman quality, Isolde twisted her head to face the newcomer.
Slowly, she opened her mouth. Not to smile, no, her lips stretched beyond such an expression, jaw clicking and straining as its twin sockets popped and her chin dropped.
A humming came deep within the wise woman’s gangrenous throat, growing louder and louder as a single bee rose up.
It was heavy, flying in a zigzag, to fall at Elowen’s feet.
A further two flew out, stronger, then five, then eight, buzzing forth in quick succession.
Isolde spread her arms and laughed through the hive, tendons in her neck vibrating with force.
Elowen started backwards, stumbling into Kensa.
The wise woman’s ripped gown fell to the side, revealing one filthy breast and a tattered hole in the flesh.
Where her ribs should be was honeycomb, as dull in colour as Isolde’s eyes, dripping with a tar-like substance, down her hip, leg, knee, foot.
From her mouth spewed a growing swarm, encircling the ceiling, bashing against plasterwork, angry and violent.
Until one single bee arrowed towards the two sisters.
The rest of the hive, with a sudden precision, began to follow.
Kensa yanked Elowen out of the room by her collar.
A pretty pearl button pinged to the floor, the door was slammed and then drummed a dozen times as the bees pummelled it from the other side.
Safe, the sisters collapsed into one another, panting hard.
‘I, ah, think you’re right,’ said Elowen tactfully. ‘She isn’t quite herself, is she?’ The smashing and ripping and pounding began anew from the creature. ‘Whoever that is in there, it isn’t Isolde. I’m not even sure it’s alive, Kensa.’
For all her youth, the fair-haired girl had a level head. Kensa was glad for it. Despite her talk about needing no one, she needed Elowen now. Both knew it, yet the younger girl never remarked upon it.
‘You must speak to the Bucka again,’ she said, as the pair righted themselves. ‘If he was involved in its doing, he can undo it.’
‘Yes.’ Kensa nodded, trusting their bind – the Pact – would align their cause.
Elowen paused, troubled. ‘Did this happen because of me? After what Isolde did for me when I was dying?’
Here was an opportunity, sword-like and glinting.
Kensa could say, ‘Yes,’ or even, ‘No,’ haltingly enough, and Elowen would blame herself.
If she let Elowen take the fall, no one would doubt her.
It would be easy. And then she looked to Elowen, truly looked at her, and the choice was no choice she’d ever make.
‘It’s nothing to do with you,’ said Kensa resolutely. ‘At least, nothing you did.’
Because it had been Kensa who wished for Elowen’s life back and it had been Kensa who refused to let Isolde go when asked. Whatever mistakes had been made were Kensa’s own and she’d claim them, finally. It was freeing, in a surprising way.
Elowen asked quietly, ‘Why did Isolde help me? She didn’t have to.’
Kensa clicked her tongue. ‘I – I asked her to.’
‘Oh.’
‘That’s the Bucka’s chair,’ said Kensa, pointing to the vacant high-backed seat beside the fireplace, quick to change the subject.
‘When it is empty, he fills it. Only, it’s been empty all this time and he’s not come.
’ She pushed her untamed hair from her forehead and began to collect odd ends and discarded objects.
One by one, she placed them on the chair, then took them off once more.
Kensa even balanced a Bad Book on top, its cover fizzing when she touched it.
Elowen refused to go near, her expression one of distaste at the tome and its brethren.
‘It might take a while,’ Kensa explained, as though she knew what she was doing.
A nagging wrongness told her it would not work, confirmed by a crowing laugh from the bee-infested bedroom.
No imposing presence arrived at the cottage entrance, no shape against the window outside, no Bucka-Boo to frighten them, though the pair waited long enough, hoping – and fearing – to see the Father of Storms himself.
‘We’ll ask Merrin how to find him,’ said Elowen. ‘Do you have anything we could give her? She will want a present.’
Kensa did not understand right away. ‘You want to consult the asrai?’
‘Why not?’
‘She’s killed people, she tried to kill me.’
‘Do you have a better idea?’
Kensa shook her head.
Elowen straightened. ‘Get your boots on and let’s go.’ She brushed two firm hands down her front. ‘Do I look all right?’
‘You’re coming with me?’
‘You don’t have to do everything alone, Kensa,’ came the exasperated reply. ‘Besides, you’ve no clue where she lives and I do and, well, she likes me.’
‘That’s all right then, isn’t it? So long as she won’t kill you.’
As for what could be given: Kensa took her father’s rum off the mantel, the one Farmer Hayle had given her. Its weight was heavier than anticipated, as were all things tied to old memories.
The sisters piled furniture against Isolde’s door as a makeshift barricade and headed down the old farmers’ paths to the shoreline.
The sandy tracks they followed were used by labourers who fetched seaweed as fertiliser for the crop fields.
Loose strands of dried sea-oak and dulse crunched underfoot, sounding their strides back to them in delicate pops.
A strong wind brought frequent clouds overhead, blotting out the blue and the sun’s steady warmth, tugging at their clothes and hair.
It was not an easy path, yet Elowen walked it with confidence.
She explained that the asrai lived in a crevice in the cliff face on a slope where a mill had once been, prior to the tide taking it.
Portscatho was far behind them, over the hill, while St Mawes and Falmouth lay ahead, jutting forward on slips of land like fingers into the ocean.
Kensa could make out St Mawes’s castle over the water, a low-squatting heap built by a long-dead king, now used by naval men who rarely ventured over the tidal river to pester their small community.
The coastal route curved round to clasp a cove, where the fresh-water Fal River pushed back against the sea’s salt.
Next was a steep drop, which Kensa struggled with and Elowen managed deftly enough.
The latter slid her blonde hair into a braid as she went, tying it with a ribbon she kept in her pocket.
‘You’ve been coming here a while,’ said Kensa.
A non-committal hum came in reply.
‘Why have you been coming here a while?’
‘Watch your step,’ said Elowen lightly, at the same moment Kensa slipped. The younger girl looked back, once, with an I-know-something-you-don’t-know grin. And, despite herself, Kensa laughed. It was good to have a sister.
‘I’m glad you’re not dead,’ said Kensa.
‘Me too,’ said Elowen drily.
‘No, really.’
The weather was breezy, with cloud over sun like a fist over stone. It whipped Kensa’s hair around her face, in contrast to Elowen’s neatness.
‘Thanks,’ said the youngest, after a beat.
Against the pair’s heels came persistent, low waves, cold and strong.
Silverfish skittered away at their progress, while anemones, lying in the watery gaps between boulders, watched each movement the pair made, their tentacles waving in greeting or warning.
Overhead, gorse crowded the hills, stacked where landslides had left them.
Their yellow flowers were bright and sweetly scented, shielding them from any who could have seen them.
It left Kensa uneasy. No one knew where the young women were and Isolde had been left, as securely as possible, alone in the cottage.
Kensa could only hope that the books she’d shoved under the door would keep the old woman occupied, whether she read them or ate them.
‘Not far now,’ said Elowen, leaping over the pointed terrain.
Kensa’s neck burned where Merrin had pressed against it during the fight in Mr Aldridge’s day room. ‘If she attacks us—’
‘She won’t, I promise.’
Carefully, the two negotiated each slippery spike, arms out for balance and skirts tucked into their undergarments.
They neared a small worn-away section in the rock, smoothed into a narrow tunnel.
Here, the shadows grew denser. By turning sideways and breathing in, Kensa and Elowen could nudge their bodies through the slim crack.
Sand sucked at their boots, while limpet shells dragged painfully at their chests and backs.
The wet stone reflected the dull, infrequent sunlight back to them, growing duller still, until the sisters found themselves crouched below a small wooden roof, bowled the wrong way.
There was another next to it, and another.
Kensa’s brows pinched together in confusion.
‘Boats,’ said Elowen.
A dozen fishing vessels were wedged into the stonework above them, creating small platforms: floating wooden islands.
Ahead was a ladder which Elowen ascended, simultaneously fixing her skirts and gesturing for Kensa to follow.
They climbed until Kensa’s thighs screamed in protest and a larger platform was revealed, marked with tidelines and decorated with a thousand shiny objects.
Heaped coins, spiralled shells, broken chests glittering with jewels and, alarmingly, bones.
Femurs, skulls, picked-dry ribs placed with precision on shelves carved into rock or positioned on driftwood planks secured with rope.
Their size varied: rat, cow, horse and many which were undeniably human.
Elowen cleared her throat and trilled, ‘Merrin?’
Kensa’s nose wrinkled and she yelled, as though in correction, ‘Merrin!’
The asrai took her time. Scuffles could be heard from above, until, when called again, she appeared, peeling herself onto the deck behind Kensa and Elowen. Merrin wore nothing, as was her habit, and moved with a sloping gracelessness.