The Seventh Magpie

by Nancy Chase

  “Where?” Baldwin came to her side.

  She started to point, but where the figure had been there was now nothing but a blackened stump clad in twining vines. “Never mind. It was nothing.” Still, she didn’t take her eyes off the spot until it passed into the distance behind them and a new sight captured her attention.

  The waterway opened up into a shallow, mud-choked estuary. Except for a few isolated hummocks of reeds and shrubs, the plant life dwindled, leaving nothing but an expanse of brown water and the smooth, weatherworn pillars of dead trees, standing numerous as columns in a ruined cathedral. As they drifted closer, something about the stark uniformity of the trunks didn’t seem right. Catrin pressed her hand to her throat. “Oh dear.”

  “What’s wrong?” Baldwin asked.

  “I don’t think those are trees.”

  Baldwin peered in the direction she indicated. “You’re right. They look like—”

  “Masts.” Catrin whispered. “A forest of masts, from a hundred sunken ships.” As the current carried the little boat out among the gray, algae-coated spires, the companions could look down and see the shattered, blackened hulls of frigates, galleons, and brigantines submerged beneath the murky water.

  A distant bugling sounded high above them, like a phantom hunt chasing across the sky. Catrin leapt up, but Hugh and Baldwin caught her arms before she capsized the boat. Heedless of their assistance, she strained her eyes toward the clouds, her lips parted in ardent longing.

  “What is it, Princess?” Baldwin asked.

  “Geese,” said George, placidly.

  Catrin went limp and buried her face in her hands. “The wild geese, every year that’s how I would know when Geoffrey would come. These could be the same geese, the very same....” She straightened up as the sound faded away, her face raised to the sky as if she would fly after them if she could.

  The others were silent for a long time. Too late, Hugh cried, “Watch out!” The boat gave a lurch that nearly sent Catrin over the side and shuddered to a stop, its prow jammed into a thicket of alders. Alarmed by the commotion, a slate-colored heron launched itself skyward, its wings laboring against the heavy air.

  “Great, now we’re stuck,” Hugh groaned. “What next?”

  As if in answer, Catrin saw something swim past below the boat. It rippled like the water plants, but before it disappeared she thought she glimpsed the shape of an arm, the half-concealed curve of a pale, bloated face. She jerked back to the center of the boat. “Get us out of here! Now!”

  George and Baldwin both shoved at the bank, trying to free the trapped vessel, but it was too tightly lodged. It wouldn’t budge.

  “We can’t stay here,” Catrin said. “If we can’t free the boat, we’ll have to go on without it.”

  “Across the bog?” Hugh demanded. “On foot? Are you sure?”

  Even Baldwin hesitated. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Princess.”

  She had to get away from the thing under the water, the thing that looked like a woman long since dead. “Do whatever you want.” She climbed over the gunwale and scrambled onto the muddy bank. “I’m going.” Ignoring their anxious pleas for her to wait, she squelched over the sodden ground, shoving twigs and brambles aside as she went.

  She had not gone far when her foot sank up to the knee in brown water. She fell full-length into the muck, wrenching her ankle. She lay for a moment catching her breath, then started to push herself upright.

  “The footing here, ’tis not so solid as it looks,” said a thin, reedy voice. “’Tis naught but a net of roots and rotted leaves stretched thin across the bottomless maw of the bog below. Take my hand, lass, or I fear you’ll come to grief.”

  Catrin froze, ready to flee if the owner of the voice turned out to be the thing she had seen in the water. A twig snapped, and a small, slight figure pushed forward into view, picking its way through the undergrowth. It was not the Drowned Woman, but a little old man in a tattered loincloth. His pale gray eyes peeped between the dirty tangle of his white hair and his long, scraggly beard. The web of wrinkles on his leathery face crinkled into a shy smile as he stretched out his hand to her.

  She hesitated. Could this be one of the Magpies’ tricks, sent to lure her into danger? She stood up, keeping well out of the old man’s reach. She could hear Baldwin and the others thrashing through the bushes behind her, calling out her name. She had just turned to warn them that the ground was not safe when the matted plants opened up beneath her feet and the bog swallowed her whole.

  Brown water closed over her head. She grabbed for anything solid, a root or a branch, to haul herself back to the surface, but everything she touched crumbled to slime and rot. Holding her breath, she tried not to panic. Above, dim green daylight glowed through the hole where she had fallen. If she just kicked her feet, she would shoot straight back to the surface. Then a hand grabbed her ankle.

  She thrashed, stirring up billows of mud and debris. She curled around and tried to pry the fingers away, but she saw nothing. A little sob of desperation escaped her and sent a spume of bubbles cascading to the surface. Panicked now, she flung herself after them, hands outstretched as if to catch back that one precious mouthful of air, but her ankle was caught fast, and she jerked to a halt.

  Her heart lurched like a netted salmon. Her eyes throbbed, and her lungs ached as if they would burst. Something she couldn’t see brushed past her arm and trailed along her cheek. A watery voice whispered a word she couldn’t quite hear. The water itself pulsed, numbing her senses, lulling her body into acquiescence. She was losing focus. Her outstretched arms drifted beside her, limp as sea grass.

  A sharp blow smacked her in the stomach, and she gulped in a mouthful of water. “I said, swallow!” the watery voice shouted in her ear. Before she could remember not to, she had obeyed.

  The pressure in her lungs subsided. Through the murky water, she saw a jungle of twisted roots and undulating weeds, heard voices uttering words she could almost understand. Everywhere, caught in the tangle of vegetation like fish in a net, the bodies of drowned sailors floated, pale and bloated, but still moving, still muttering, still watching her.

  As she opened her mouth to scream, the hand released her ankle and quickly fastened over her mouth. “Careful!” said the watery voice. “One swallow lets you see and hear us. Two, and you’ll be trapped here with us. Do you understand me? Do you promise not to scream?” She nodded, and the hand loosened. “I’m going to let you go. Turn around and look at me.”

  Whatever she had been expecting to see, this was not it. Though his features were blurred and the hulk of a sunken galleon was visible through his insubstantial form, Catrin recognized the tall sailor who had carried her to the abbey as a child, the one who still bore her teeth marks on his arm when she returned twelve years later.

  Glancing around, she found she recognized many of the others too. She was horrified with herself. She had been so distraught about Geoffrey, she had never once thought of all the other sailors on the Osprey who had also lost their lives in the storm.

  “I am so sorry.” She found she could speak without opening her mouth, and saw by his eyes that he understood her. “Please believe me. I never meant to hurt anybody.”

  “Listen,” he said, speaking to her in the same way. “There is not much time. You must go back to the surface soon or you will become one of us, trapped in this underwater nightmare. Already the willows are weaving their roots across the opening where you fell, hoping you will lose your way. You must help us. If you don’t, we will never see the sun again, never hear the wind’s song, never feel the rise and fall of a ship upon the billows.”

  “But what can I do?”

  “Find the weaver.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “Weave us back into the light.”

  “How? I don't understand.”

  “Hush, someone is coming. You must go now. Here, take this. It will help you.” He thrust something into her hand and propelled her up toward the dim, daylit hole
in the canopy of weeds. Before she could reach the surface, a familiar ragged black shape rippled toward her.

  Through the welter of lank, clinging hair, Catrin glimpsed a beautiful, sad, rotting face and a mouth full of sharp teeth. The sailor moved to shield the princess, but the Drowned Woman swam right through him. He vanished, and a clot of rotting twigs drifted out where he had been. The Drowned Woman reached for Catrin. “I've been waiting for you, child.”

  Catrin launched herself into motion, kicking as hard as she could toward the dim circle of light overhead. Her head broke the surface, and just as she gasped in that first sweet lungful of air, the woman’s blackened claws raked down her leg, slicing deep into her flesh. Catrin screamed and would have sunk again, but strong hands grabbed her and pulled her onto the soggy ground. Worried faces bent over her, and she tried to croak out a word of thanks, but the sky would not stop spinning: friends, trees, and air whirled into a blur of light that silenced all hope of speech.

  When she awoke, Baldwin was kneeling beside her. He smiled when he saw her eyes open. “We feared you had left us.”

  “No. I am still here.” She sat up, coughing. They were on a little mound of dry land, surrounded by a brown expanse of bog. Nearby, her other companions were busy trying to wipe the mud from their hands and clothes. The day was fading to dusk, and the air was chill. She could not see their little boat anywhere. “But where is here?”

  The little old man straightened up. “Why, ’tis my home, of course. Your friends told me you were seeking it.”

  “Your home?” Although at first this seemed to be just another hillock of matted twigs, she saw now the ground was littered with pale, lumpy shapes that rolled and clanked underfoot.

  “The Isle of Bones.” Hugh’s velvet tunic dripped with swamp slime, and the plume in his hat drooped, but he seemed cheerful to have escaped worse injury. “There’s no earth under here.” He scraped at the littered ground with his heel to demonstrate. “This whole island is a gigantic heap of bones. Look, this one still has a ring on its finger.”

  “Hugh, stop. Don’t tell me any more.” Thinking of the forlorn spirits who probably belonged to the bones, Catrin wondered if she was going to be sick.

  “You live here?” she asked the old man. He picked his way toward her, stepping gingerly among the bleached skulls and scattered ribcages. “That seems a little—morbid.” There was no hut or shelter in sight, only an odd, frame-like contraption built of bones and driftwood. Despite its flimsy, haphazard construction, she had seen enough similar devices at the abbey to recognize its purpose. “It’s a loom,” she said, surprised. “You’re the weaver!”

  “I am,” he admitted. “Barnabas by name, at your service.”

  Hugh was still poking around amidst the grisly rubble. “Now if we could only find the Flute of Souls….”

  She looked down at her hand, which was still clenched around the object the sailor’s ghost had given her. As she uncurled her fingers, bits of mud crumbled away to reveal a polished human arm bone with a series of holes carved along its length. “I think we already have.”

  She wiped the flute clean on her sleeve, put it to her lips, and blew. A thin, clear thread of sound unfurled into the air and hung there, visible, like a wisp of mist. Her companions clustered around her, eager for a look. “Where did you find it?” Hugh asked.

  She lowered the flute again. The music made her feel very odd. “Barnabas, do you believe in spirits?”

  “Of course, lass. Anyone who lived in a place like this would have to. Why do you ask?”

  “When I was under the water, there were spirits trapped down there, caught in the bog. One of them spoke to me, asked me to find you.”

  “You spoke with one of the bog spirits?” The weaver grabbed her shoulders. “Princess, tell me, this is very important, did you swallow the water?”

  “Yes.” She nodded woozily. Even that small motion made her dizzy.

  “Is that bad?” Hugh demanded, but Barnabas hushed him to better listen to Catrin’s slurred words.

  “‘Weave us back into the light,’ he said, and he gave me the flute. Do you know what he means?” Catrin blinked, trying to force the world back into focus.

  “Aye, lass. That is the Flute of Souls. It once was mine, but one night a storm washed it into the bog, and I could never find it again.”

  “What is it for?” Baldwin asked.

  “Ah! Each soul has its own melody, you see.” Barnabas waggled his fingers, miming playing the flute. “When its melody is played upon the Flute of Souls, the spirit can ride the thread of song up out of the depths to appear once more on earth.”

  “Ghosts,” George said.

  The old man shrugged. “If you wish to call them that. They are souls who still cling to their former selves, who do not wish to leave their previous lives behind, who do not wish to be unmade and reborn into new lives. Of course, they can only appear for as long as the music plays, unless someone helps them take a more permanent form. That is my task.”

  “The loom!” Catrin guessed. The high-pitched humming in her ears made it hard to concentrate on what the others were saying.

  “That’s right. I was once a sailor too, so I know the reluctance to give up the sea. I have been here for three hundred years, weaving their spirits into a shape that could not be unmade.”

  “What shape?”

  “Play, my dear, and you will see. If you’ve seen and heard the spirits, then you can also hear their songs. Listen! And play whate’er you hear in your mind.”

  She shut her eyes to listen. He was right. A melody, strange and haunting, drifted through her mind. She raised the flute again. Slowly at first, then more surely, her fingers found the notes while her breath whistled through the length of hollow bone. The sound poured forth in a ribbon of mist that coiled and undulated in the evening air. Warmed by her touch, the instrument took on a life of its own, guiding her through the melody until the notes swooped and shivered over the shipyard like a flock of swallows. Shadows flickered in the crowded notes, shapes of a babe that grew to a child and then a man, moving through scenes of playing, growing, working, sailing.

  As she played, the spirits of the dead poured through her into the music. Somehow, the old man caught the notes from the air like gossamer threads and with his boat-shaped shuttle he wove a shimmering fabric on his loom. It shone through the twilight, white as milk, and Catrin realized what he was weaving. A sail. It was a magic sail, like the one on Geoffrey’s ship.

  The music roused more than the spirits, though. All across the bog, vines and brambles swayed though there was no breeze, and wiry green tendrils slithered toward the sound of her songs. Ripples lapped the island’s shore, sucking stray bones down into the murky water. Somewhere above her, Catrin heard the wild geese cry, and some of the strength drained out of her arms.

  The longer she played, the weaker she got until finally, as the last notes trickled into silence, the flute dropped from her numb fingers and splashed into the water. The hungry vines surged closer while the weaver’s shuttle darted to and fro like a demented dragonfly. When he finished the last row, he released the shimmering fabric from the frame and bundled it under his arm. “Come,” he said. “Bring the princess. We must get back to your boat, now!” The vegetation now swarmed over most of the water, and much of the island had eroded, little landslides of bones slipping into the greedy, lapping water.

  The old man scrambled nimbly across the treacherous bog, leaping from hummock to hummock and always managing to land on solid ground. The others followed as best they could, with George last in line, carrying Catrin.

  By the time they clambered aboard the boat, Catrin’s vision was blurred; all sounds seemed muted as if under water. She felt the pulse of the bog, sensed the inexorable growth of root and vine as they engulfed the land, choked the open channels of water, swarmed up the gunwales of the skiff, and climbed the mast. There was no use fighting it; soon the vegetation would be everywhere. She was too tire
d to move. When George set her down, her knees buckled, so she sat where she landed and waited for the weeds to cover her.

  The others hacked at the vines that enveloped the boat. Once they got the mast clear and Barnabas began rigging up the sail, the white fabric billowed like fog, and its song pierced Catrin’s skull with all the melodies twisted into every thread. A wave of nausea seized her. She bent double; her stomach clenched, and she vomited up a jet of brown water: the bog water she had swallowed earlier. When it touched the deck, the water solidified into a snake that grew and swayed as if gathering power from her weakness. Each of its scales was big as her thumbnail, and every one of them was a dull, muddy black.

  “What’s your hurry, Princess?” it hissed. “Won’t you stay with us a while? Can’t you see she is waiting for you?”

  Catrin lifted her head. Just off the skiff’s bow the Drowned Woman stretched out her hands and keened a high, wordless wail. Catrin shuddered. “Let her wait. And let her keep away from me.”

  The others gave a shout of disappointment, and Hugh scrambled over to Catrin. “The sail isn’t big enough. It doesn’t quite reach. Your pouch is made of the same material. Give us that. We need it to mend the edge.”

  Catrin shook her head, though it made her nausea flare again. “You can’t have it.”

  Baldwin appeared by her side. “Catrin, we must. We need just a little bit more fabric, or we’ll never get out of here.”

  “No.”

  “Wise decision, Princess,” the snake said. “We’ll so enjoy your company down below.”

  George kept fighting the vines that tried to recapture the ship, but Catrin could see he was tiring. Baldwin had a cut over one eye, and Hugh’s tunic was torn. Scrawny Barnabas wrestled with the sail that wouldn’t quite reach where it had to go.

  She thrust her hand into her pocket and pulled out the little cloth-wrapped bundle Kae had given her. It now held only the tinder and flint, which she shoved back into her pocket. She smoothed out the tattered cloth and handed it to Barnabas. “Will this do?”