5. Bea
BEA
Ido not go back to sleep, and I do not stop thinking of the goddess.
Not when the sun rises and Lolly leaps from the ridge to circle overhead, and not as I feel the first stab of pain and hear the first whispered name of the morning.
I stare at the spot in the water where the goddess had stood, searching for a ripple.
An overturned rock. Anything to indicate she’d actually been there.
I’m desperate for proof I’m not going mad again, but I’m equally afraid to be sane.
Because if the goddess wasn’t a product of my imagination, then neither was her warning.
He is coming.
I hear the words with every breath. Jump with every rustle in the trees.
And yet, no one appears.
I lie down on my bed, wincing as a rock digs into my ribs. With a heavy sigh, I stand back up. My body longs for rest, but the layer of flora that makes up my bedroll has become sparse, bare even, in spots, patches of grey rock showing through the plants.
If sleep is going to find me, it won’t be until I’m able to lie on something soft.
Folding my apron into the shape of a bowl, I pluck my way along the river’s edge, gathering every scrap I can find.
My chain catches about two dragon’s lengths away from where it’s embedded into a huge slab of stone, forcing me to stop, and I look longingly at the greenery growing just outside my reach, taunting me.
It’s lush and thick, and would be so much softer to lie my head on than the thin scraggly bits in my apron, gathered before they were able to mature.
I grab a long stick, leaning forward to scrape the sharp tip against a sheet of green and blue moss. The edge of it lifts, but when I try to pull it toward me, it flips further out of my reach.
“Agh!” I scream in frustration, throwing the stick as far as I can, but it barely makes it an eighth of a dragon’s length, my body too weak to even allow me to expend my rage.
The wind picks up, and with a curse, I hurry back toward my bed to put the bundles of moss and heather down before the magic that forces me to wash pulls me to my knees. I’ll be damned if I let the river take even a single piece of comfort from me.
The water turns muddy, bog-myrtle permeating the air.
My heart skips a beat, fear prickling along my skin when no name comes to me. No face in the water or cause of death.
“No,” I whisper, my voice shaking. “Not again.”
In moments, the river turns angry, the current swirling in circles and eddies rather than a straight line. Mud churns up from the riverbed, and the scent of peat makes me gag.
My dragon roars above me as my hands are pulled into the water, and I steel myself for the vision I hope isn't coming. One was disturbing enough, but another? Twice is no longer a mistake I can explain away, but a pattern.
I fight the feeling of my head spinning and the world tilting, but in the span of a breath, I’m standing inside a warm cottage.
My stomach growls as the smell of stew meets my nose.
A woman kneels by the fire, toasting crusty bread.
My mouth waters, and for a moment, all I can think about is the Fates’ cruelty.
Was it not enough to curse me to starve and freeze and live a life consumed by death, but never die? Must I now witness the lives I will end with the cleansing of their clothes?
The Cutter is tormenting me. I’m certain of it. But why?
The sound of whistling rises as the front door opens. The melody scratches at my memory, but I can’t quite place it.
A tall man enters the house, and the woman rises, beaming.
“Smells wonderful, mo chridhe,” he says, bending down and pressing a kiss to her crown. She stands, wrapping her arms around his waist, and the tenderness in their embrace makes my heart ache.
“Caught them all?” she asks, standing on her tiptoes to peer over his shoulder through the still-open door. I follow her gaze to the moor beyond, where dozens of sheep as fluffy as cotton dot the bright green landscape, the bleat of ewes sailing on the wind.
“Aye. Fence went down in last night's storm. Shep herded them back, though. Speaking of the dog. Where’s he gone?” He looks out the door.
“I haven’t seen him. Probably tormenting the chickens,” the woman says, returning to the hearth and adding another log. The fire flares, and I take a step closer on instinct, greedy for its warmth. I reach a hand out, desperate to feel the delicious heat.
A loud whistle makes me jump, the man calling for his pet. I stumble back as it enters, a black and white dog with blue eyes, running directly toward me. It barks at me, and I jump back, the side of my hip slamming into the table. A pair of wooden candlesticks falls to the floor with a clatter.
Two pairs of eyes snap up to meet mine, and the man steps forward, shielding the woman with his body.
“Who are y—”
But before his sentence ends, I’m back at the river, my back aching where it hit the table. The sound of the man’s whistle, his sweet words to his wife, circle through my mind.
They saw me.
I touched the table.
How is that possible?
My heart pounds as I try to understand what’s happening.
Is it really the Cutter torturing me, or is it something else?
Because once again, this death feels horribly wrong.
I’m so distracted, I almost miss the clothes as they drift past, but the magic of my curse bends me forward, forcing me to grasp them.
I do not look at the clothes as I wash them.
I cannot bear to know which of the lovers I saw will die.
The clothes float from my fingers, but even after they are long settled in the After, I am not able to make sense of the vision.
Those people saw me.
They spoke to me.
But how? Did I leave the river? I’d thought the first vision on the hill had been more like a dream. That I’d only gone somewhere else in my mind, but I felt the table behind me. Had knocked the candlesticks to the ground, and the dog had run straight toward me.
But if I’d been in that cottage, how was I now back in the river, chain as tight as ever?
My dragon roars, darting in tight loops.
Can she feel the change in the air, too?
The feeling of a storm approaching, the energy of lightning crackling in the sky?
She must. She’s becoming increasingly restless, her circles shrinking with each lap.
Tighter and tighter she arcs, breathing fire in savage blasts, her keen shaking the rowan trees.
“What do you think is happening, Lolly?” I ask.
She roars, and I force a laugh, trying to brush off my heavy unease, but it sounds brittle. “Unless you tell me your real name, that’s all I have to call you,” I say. She doesn’t answer, of course, but I watch her all the same.
I’m so focused on the shine of her iridescent scales glinting in the sun that I almost miss the snap of the branch. The rustle jolts me to my feet, my ankle crying out in protest as warm blood trickles from beneath the cuff.
“Who’s there?” I call, straightening my spine.
Another snap. The shifting of clothing. A sigh.
Human.
Someone is here—he is here.
I nearly vomit. “Show yourself,” I demand, unease pooling in my belly. I scan the pines, searching for any sign of movement. Is this it, then? The man the goddess warned me of? The one who will remember?
The one I destroyed?
A blonde head peeks out of the shadows, tentatively at first, and I hold my breath.
But it’s not a man who steps from the treeline. It’s a woman.
I suck in a sharp breath at the terror I see in her green eyes.
She’s far too young to know such fear.
“Are you the Washwoman?” she asks, her voice shaking. Every few seconds, she glances over her shoulder, her posture tense as if she’s preparing to run.
I exhale—not from relief that this isn’t the he the goddess warned is coming for me, though it does pulse faintly—but from sorrow.
Because the woman before me has been beaten so severely, I can barely see the bright green of her left eye beneath the swelling. Her lip is split and scabbed, and bruises bloom like flowers along her temple and arms. She doesn’t smile, but she doesn’t weep either.
She’s beautiful beneath the blood and bruises, with long butter blonde hair hanging in soft waves nearly down to her navel.
“I am,” I whisper.
She steps closer, her gaze flicking to my bloody ankle. For a moment, understanding passes between us—two women in pain.
Yet while I may deserve my suffering, she does not. A heavy sadness settles in my throat, squeezing my lungs until it's hard to breathe.
“You have a question,” I say softly, and she nods, her eyes never leaving mine. I hold my hand out, and she swallows, her brows drawing together as she takes a step back.
“You have to catch me to trigger the magic.” I soften my voice so as to not scare her. Most don’t know of this part of my curse. The only ones who seem to are those from the villages close by, as if they’ve chosen to keep it a secret from outsiders.
Her eyes go wary as she stares at my arm, but she steps forward anyway, gently wrapping her fingers around my wrist. Her dedication dàn to the Weaver stares at me, dark against her fair skin. “Tell me, Washwoman, the answer I seek.”
She swallows, her eyes filling with tears, and I nod in encouragement. “Tell me where I can go to be safe—from my husband.” Her voice breaks on the last word, a single tear sliding down her cheek. “Somewhere he will never find me.”
My heart shatters, but hope quickly seeps into the cracks.
The answer floods my mind with complete certainty, the magic of the curse vibrating through my bones, humming inside my skull and threading through my bloodstream.
A vision flashes, golden sunlight and glittering water. Rowan trees and sphagnum moss.
“The Faerie Pools,” I say. “Do not return. There’s a hut hidden atop the cliffs—shaded by pines. A kind woman lives there. She will help you.”
The young woman finally breaks, a sob bursting from her bruised throat.
“You’re sure?” she asks.
“Yes,” I breathe, grateful for my curse for the first time in a century.
I usher her forward, pointing her in the right direction, but my chain stops me short. Pain sears through my ankle, and I suck in a sharp breath. A buzz spreads through my mind, and a sudden terror grips my heart.
“Now. You have to go now,” I say. I don’t know how I’m so sure, only that I am. Whoever did this to her is coming.
He is coming.
She hesitates, her eyes flicking to my chain once more. She gestures toward it. “Is there anything I can—”
The buzzing in my mind grows louder, painful, vibrating against the inside of my skull.
“You have to go,” I repeat. “Now.”
Her eyes glisten, but she nods. “Thank you.”
The buzz becomes a roar, and black spots dot my vision as I shove her forward.
“Run!” I shout, an urgency building within me like I’ve never felt before. I can’t explain it, but terror surges through my veins, chased by the impossible feeling that I’ve lived this moment before and already know how it will end.
Her eyes widen, but she doesn’t waste a second. The woman vanishes into the trees as if she were never here.
I rush back to the river’s edge, splashing cold water on my face in an attempt to calm my heaving breaths.
If whatever is about to happen was bad enough that the muse of love and madness came to warn me about it, it surely is going to be painful. I try to fold inside myself. To force my mind to go somewhere I can endure the agony I'm certain is coming.
And then, I hear it.
The birds singing the morning’s song go quiet.
The sound of someone moving through the forest makes my hair stand on end, and dread wraps around my heart as I rise to my feet.
My eyes flick to my chain, my tether to this Fates-forsaken place. I cannot run. I cannot hide.
A man staggers into the glen, a vein in his forehead bulging, and his face red with fury. I take a step back, my blood running cold at the undiluted rage in his eyes. I whisper a prayer under my breath.
It is not often I speak to the goddesses. They turned their back on me long ago, but this intercession is not for me.
It is for the woman, for Dìonadair to keep her safe. That this man does not ask me where she is going. That he does not say the words that will make me tell him the truth.
“Where is she?” he says, stalking closer, his head swiveling side to side.
“Who?” I ask, feigning innocence, but I have to squeeze my hands together to stop them from trembling.
“I know she came here,” he spits, jabbing a stubby finger in my direction. “My wife, Kenna. She was coming to find you. The butcher in Dalbàsail said she left in this direction. And the only thing out here is you,” he spits. “Tell me where she is.”
I shake my head, backing away. “No one has come to see me in weeks. I don't know what you're—”
“Tell me, Washwoman, the answer I seek!” he roars.
Dread, hot and oily, spills into my blood as he staggers forward, and I fumble away from him, desperate to put distance between us. I will not tell this man where Kenna went. I will fight the magic that would force me to do so.
“I asked you a question! You have to tell me!” he screams, slapping me across the face hard enough to make my ears ring. Blood coats my tongue, so much of it, I gag, but he doesn’t reach for me. Doesn’t wrap his sweaty fingers around my arm.
The man doesn’t move again, his chest heaving and his nostrils flaring as he breathes in and out, waiting for my reply.
I don’t dare speak, pressing my lips together to hide my smile. Utter relief and joy dampen the pain in my jaw.
I do not have to give him an answer.
Not unless he catches me.
“I don't know what you're talking about,” I finally say, blood dribbling down my chin.
“Liar!” he hisses, but I see the doubt in his eyes. I cannot lie, it is said. That is part of the tale of the Washwoman, even if it isn't true.
“I'm sorry, I—”
He rears back, and this time it is not a slap. He punches me, a hook to my temple, and as I crumble to the ground, I set my smile free.
I have finally done something good. And as everything fades to black, I sink into the comfort of knowing Kenna is safe.
The darkness is my friend. And I cannot be forced to answer if I am lost to it.