by Ana Mardoll
"Wren." He reached out to take Wren's hand; xie tried not to blanch, but the texture of his palm was as dry as sea salt. "I know you took your sister's death hard, child. And I am sorry to hear Eirlys is ailing."
"She'll be fine." Xie would make certain this was true.
The mayor ran his thumb over xer hand and Wren had to fight not to draw back. "Eirlys has lived a full life. You are young, with your own life ahead of you. Do you believe she wants to see you throw that away?"
Anger flared within xer like a stab of lightning striking the sea. Wren yanked xer hand away, unable to bear his touch a moment longer. "What life? Surviving under the shadow of that creature? Sorting the daily haul and worrying each time whether we'll have enough this year to pay for someone poorer than us to die? Selling my own mother like a fish at market and walking with her in procession while I tally the reward in my head?" Xie would spit if it were not for the floor. "No. I won't help send another person into the valley; not her or anyone else."
The elderly man frowned, his thick jowls set with anxious concern. "Wren, be reasonable! There's no shame in paying the tax! And no one is going to force Eirlys down to the valley! I was only saying that if the alternative is starvation, I'm certain she'd rather it were she than another of her children!"
"It's me. I volunteer. I want to be the sacrifice." The urge to leave was unbearable, and Wren longed to step back into clean open air. "I'd rather die than participate again. I won't be a part of what happened to... her." Dwynwen's name was on xer lips but xie couldn't speak it; she was too precious to share.
The mayor sighed, staring dejectedly at his papers as though they could answer him. "I can't deny your request. If you are determined to volunteer, the other families will see your will done no matter what I want. All I can promise you is timely payment, and my vow to care for Eirlys when you are gone. Won't you reconsider, child? At the very least, sleep on it before you decide. We have several days yet."
"My mind is made up." Xie whirled and stalked out of the hall, xer boots slapping the floor with every step.
Halwen was there when xie returned to the hut, though Wren hadn't sent for her. She stooped over the fire, her back hunched on the left side. Wren had never seen her stand perfectly straight though she must once have been able to do so, long ago when she was a girl and her scraggly hair was some color other than gray.
She had come to tend Eirlys, for Halwen was a witch who could set broken bones, treat illnesses, and deliver healthy babies when they turned in the womb and midwives said there was no hope. She read signs in the stars, predicted the ocean's moods, and sometimes told pregnant villagers whether they carried a boy or a girl before their belly even began to show. Her predictions were never wrong.
She didn't look round when Wren entered but her voice rasped at the touch of xer foot on the doorstep, the gravel in her throat making Wren's own itch in sympathy. "Brought honey-tea for her to drink. Soothes ache left by the cough. She's sleeping now. Stew's on the fire, with herbs that will help fight sickness."
"What do I owe you?" Wren's words were abrupt to the point of rudeness, xer tone strained from arguing with the mayor and now anxious at the prospect of indebtedness to the witch. Halwen had never directly harmed their family but the sight of the old crone stung, bringing painful history into the hut with her.
When Eirlys had been pregnant with Dwynwen, Halwen placed a hand on her stomach and declared the child "a girl, but an ill-fated one." Her prediction had hung like a cloud over the sunny child, whose ill fate seemed to be a lifetime tending her sickly mother while her father fought to keep the little family fed. When a scrawny newborn followed a few years on Dwynwen's heels, Halwen touched Eirlys for the second time, tilted her head, and said nothing at all. It was bad luck when a witch refrained from pronouncement, and some said the baby would come soon and die young. Wren tried xer best to do both, yet the midwives saved the tiny infant.
Dwynwen became a second mother to Wren, who didn't speak a word until five summers old and who preferred the silent ocean to the village square. No one else knew what to make of the reclusive child, but Dwynwen understood Wren perfectly. She played with xer by the seashore, pretending to be pirates or bandits or even the white dragon itself for Wren to slay. If her fate as the eldest child in a family of poor fisherfolk seemed ill to others, she didn't seem to mind. They were humble but happy until Father died, Mother worsened, and the dragon took Dwynwen away, sealing her ill-fated end and proving Halwen right after all.
Wren resented the witch's failure to prophesy a happier future for xer sister, but Halwen was untouched by xer animosity. She uttered a barking laugh at Wren's question of payment. "Gratitude would be nice, child," she observed, gripping her cane of knotted wood for support as she bent to stir the steaming pot.
Xie watched her with wary eyes, feeling like a bird tensed to fly. Halwen always called Wren 'child' but not in the same way the mayor did, as though xie were too young to matter. The word in the witch's mouth wasn't condescending; it simply filled a space nothing else could fill. If Wren hadn't been so predisposed to mistrust the meddling woman, xie might have taken pleasure in the neutral appellation.
"Gratitude doesn't warm old bones."
Halwen shook her head, amusement in her dry crackling voice. "You never were much for niceties, child. Have you considered becoming a witch? We can get away with such things. Well, since you're determined to be generous, that silver-scale you've left to dry on the line outside caught my eye. Third from the pole."
Of course she would demand the prize of Wren's daily catch. Yet despite xer annoyance, Wren felt a rush of palpable relief. Xie could pay this now and be done, without the threat of future payments to hang over xer head. The price was dear, but the witch could have asked for much more.
"It's yours." A long pause stretched as Halwen studied the fire, making no move to leave. "Thanks," Wren added, the word bubbling up with belated delay and an awkwardness no one could miss.
She chuckled and poked at the smoldering logs in the fireplace with the tip of her cane. "You always were an odd one, Wren. Even before you were born." She paused to peer at the embers. "No, that's not quite right; not odd, but different."
"I'm me." This time xie didn't care if the words came out surly.
"You are. We are all ourselves." The crone lifted her chin to fix Wren with a piercing gaze and xie flinched as xie always did. Halwen had witch's eyes above her broad flat nose: one a rich nutty brown and the other clear as water. "Why, look at me," she said, her lips curling into a toothy smile. "I am a witch."
With effort Wren forced xer gaze back up to Halwen's, staring with unblinking eyes at the witch like a dying fish caught in xer own nets. Xer voice dropped to a whisper, giving voice to a question xie would never have dared to ask had not xie just arranged xer own death. "What's it like, being born a witch?"
Her laugh was silent this time, a snort of air that stirred the white tendrils of hair framing her wrinkled face. "I see the world through different eyes, child, as do we all." She tilted her head, studying Wren as if xie were a tangled net and she were looking for the best place to begin. "I will tell you what few are old enough to recall: I was not born a witch. I was made a witch."
A frown knit xer brow; xie had never heard this before. "How do you make a witch?"
Halwen smirked, her unmatched eyes glittering with the unholy mischief Wren had held as lifelong belief must have been ingrained at birth. "Cook my payment for our dinner, child, and I will tell you a tale."
"The white dragon went bad more than a century before I was born." Halwen sat outside with Wren, her voice quiet so as not to disturb the sleeping woman within the hut. She gnawed the last bits of flesh from a fish bone as she spoke, plainly satisfied with her payment for the evening's work.
Wren sat beside her with xer nets in xer lap, freshly fed and returning instinctively to the daily chore which had guided xer mornings and nights for as long as xie could remember. Though xie had accepted xer own death,
the ritual of untangling and repairing these nets had kept xer alive for too long to be set aside now. Xie worked in gathering darkness as the setting sun dipped her toes into her nightly ocean bath and shed her clothes to spread vermilion across the tree-studded sky; Wren needed no light for xer familiar task.
"When ships still launched from the harbor?" Already Wren could feel xerself being caught up in the story despite xer mistrust; ancient ships and their wind-fattened sails were a favorite of xers. As a child, xie begged Dwynwen to tell tales about the wrecks which lay at the bottom of the ocean outside the bay. Wren liked to fancy that any driftwood they found was the hull of a long-forgotten vessel, and xie would come running to watch whenever the dragon hauled up golden chains or ropes of pearls from the deep. These were lost treasures of an older time, scavenged a century after sinking to line a cold wyrm's nest.
"And our kingdom had a king, yes," Halwen answered, the wisp of a smile on her face. "They say the dragon guarded the northern borders of our kingdom as part of an agreement with the king and his kin. But which king had brokered the deal and which king had broken it, and whether those two men were the same man, was fiercely argued among the old-timers in the village square. No one knew, you see; they'd all been children when the dragon first attacked, and no one remembered the initial grievance."
Wren knew dragons lived longer than human memory, unweathered by time's passage. An angry dragon couldn't be outlasted like a storm; it would do no good to huddle together in the common building until the lashing winds quieted. Nor was there safety in retreat, for they dwelt everywhere. Red dragons filled the eastern skies at night, hunting both sheep and shepherd as their giant membranous dragonfly wings beat the air in a rhythm so fast the eye caught only a blur. Black dragons infested the southern forests, their sleek wingless bodies wrapped around tall redwoods. Thrice the length of a human, they hunted large game: deer, boar, and bears which ambled along the shore dipping paws into the water for fish.
The white dragon was the largest of its kind, with thick leathery bat wings and sly intelligence gleaming in its ancient eyes. It was too proud to circle hills at night in search of fat sheep, and too broad to slink between trees. Instead, its hunting grounds were the western waters and their endless depths. The dragon attacked the waves, soaring high enough to pierce the clouds and flinging itself into the sea. When it surfaced after a span of time longer than any human could hold their breath, its claws clutched fish no net could contain: big meat-eaters that never ventured into upper waters. These leviathans were carried back to its lair as food, and the humans who dwelt below considered themselves lucky to be too insignificant to hunt. All the dragon required of them was a yearly token sacrifice for the privilege of living in its shadow: one human life, delivered to the valley.
"By the time I was born, things had settled into a routine." Halwen's voice was soft on the evening breeze. "The lottery was held after autumn harvest, which was always in need of as many helping hands as possible. We drew lots and the unlucky one was taken to the valley. There was no resistance. Every family had been touched by that first attack, and we children and grandchildren were taught from infancy what the dragon was capable of: humans hoisted into the sky and dropped into the village square like sacks of fish."
"But you must have thought about it." Wren leaned forward to peer at the witch, xer netting momentarily forgotten. When xie had been little, Dwynwen played the dragon and Wren would slay her time and again, always trying out some new tactic. As xie grew the fantasy deepened, the filleting of each day's catch taking on new meaning as xer knife sliced through flesh and bone. "No one tried to kill it, even once?"
"No one in the village." Those unmatched eyes glittered with dry amusement. "We had our share of adventurers even then, of course."
Wren sat back in disappointment, xer hands returning to xer work. Adventurers were not xer favorite subject. They came to brave the northern cliffs, drawn by tales of the dragon's gold. They claimed a desire to free the village from its terrible tribute, but Wren saw the greed in their eyes. Xie would watch them climb the dizzying mass of jagged rock while xie mended nets or drew in the day's catch, waiting for their broken bodies to be hurled into the sea below. The dragon rarely bothered to eat such nuisances.
Once one of their number tangled in xer nets and Wren suffered a shock when pulling in the catch. The corpse surged up from the water in front of xer face, its dead eyes accusatory in the morning light. In xer dreams, that body became Dwynwen. Her hair was short after they'd cut away her braid to bury, and wet strands stuck to her face. For weeks after the dream Wren suffered panic when hauling in the nets, expecting to see xer sister's face even though the fear was irrational. Dwynwen wasn't in the bay; Wren had been in the valley with the other witnesses when xer sister disappeared down the dragon's gullet.
"Then the soldiers came." Reminiscence flickered in Halwen's eyes as Wren snapped back into alert interest. "The last king was long dead, and his generals had fractured the country into tribes and factions while my father was still a young man. But the queen's youngest daughter tried to hold the line. Keep peace, mend factions, stop the warlords. She sent soldiers north with orders to kill the dragon."
"To protect us?" Wren leaned forward, scarcely daring to breathe.
Halwen chuckled. "So they claimed, though my father said they came to take its hide and claws and teeth as trophies to rally the troops, thinking the battle would be good training for new recruits. Their general thought the battle would be easy; he was accustomed to the little green dragons that dwell south of the forest. 'Big as a bride and half as dangerous,' my father used to say. Not like our white monster."
"But they tried?" Feral eagerness clawed xer stomach, hungry for any scrap of detail. "What happened?"
"They came the day of the lottery. I had drawn the white stone from the bag. Yes, I was the sacrifice. I was only thirteen summers, but I was big-hipped and big-breasted and the elders said I must draw with everyone else. My father was furious. He threatened to take us south but my mother's wiser head prevailed; if we weren't eaten by dragons, we'd be captured by slavers. I had readied myself for death when the soldiers marched in, swords at their waists and helmets gleaming like the ocean. I thought they were my saviors."
Wren could barely breathe, straining to see Halwen in the dark. "They had a seer with them. An elderly woman with sad blue eyes speckled with brown moss. She placed her hand on my head and told me I had a gift. My eye changed when she touched me, though only I knew it then; the color didn't drain until the next full moon, long after she was gone. My father said she had an evil gaze, and locked me in my room."
Halwen shook her head, her breath forming white puffs as she spoke. "But I saw. Alone in my room, I watched that army scale the cliffs, their bright swords flashing in the sun. We still have one of those swords. My brother fished it out of the bay afterwards. Father hung it on the wall and polished it every night until he died. I didn't touch it after that. It's rusted over now, as red as the blood that coated it that day."
"They died." Wren needed to hear her say it, xer fingers clutching the nets like a lifeline.
"Every last one of them." Halwen tilted her head back to find the moon, his cold light filtering through the trees. "The dragon laughed as it snapped their bones, and in my mind's eye I couldn't turn away. We could hear its boasts all the way down to the village, crowing that no man nor woman would ever kill it, nor beast nor fish nor fellow dragon. My mother said I screamed the words in unison with the creature, but I wasn't aware of doing so. If I did, that must have been my first prophecy; it has never proven false."
Xer breath stuck in xer throat as xie leaned forward in xer seat. "But that doesn't mean it can't be killed, does it?" In xer voice was all the anger xie couldn't display before the mayor. "Even if its boast were true, even if your words were a prophecy! There are people— there must be people who aren't—"
Wren's voice trailed away as piercing eyes turned to study xer. "Who are
n't what, child?"
Soldiers and seers had been helpless before the dragon, but they had been men and women. Wren was neither, yet the knowledge did not make xer feel special. Xie simply was xerself, in the same way Halwen was a witch. Xie had resolved to face death so Eirlys might live, but now xie could not help but wonder if there might be another way. Xer fingers flexed in the nets, tightening and relaxing in an anxious rhythm.
A thought nibbled at the corner of xer mind, like a fish at xer toes. "You didn't die. You weren't sacrificed."
"Lucky me." Halwen's lips turned up in a humorless smile. "The dragon demanded the mayor as penance for allowing the army to come. My father's brother took over the post and my father suggested the tax as a replacement for the lottery. Poor families always died over winter, and everyone agreed that was a tragic waste of human life. So the village instituted a levy on all harvests and hauls, the proceeds to be given every year to one willing sacrifice; someone whose family wouldn't survive the winter without it. Death by dragon was faster than starvation, and the rest of the family would live. One death to save many."
Wren winced and looked away, unable to meet the witch's eyes. "Families feed off the corpses of their loved ones." Xer voice was bitter as smoke. "The dragon ate Dwynwen, and we snatched up the scraps."
Not a lick of pity crossed the witch's face, only that faint ever-present amusement. "Death is inevitable, child. Nothing escapes it forever; not you, not me, not even a dragon."
Xie snorted and stood, brushing xer hands on xer knees. Inside the hut, xer mother shivered under a pile of thin blankets; she needed Wren's clothes laid over her for warmth. Wren was wasting time and heat out here, listening like a fool to an old woman spinning tales. "If I'm going to die, I'd rather die trying," xie told Halwen, dismissal lacing xer hard voice. "Better to die doing something worthwhile than live off the dead."
The stew seemed to help Eirlys. She slept more peacefully and coughed less often in the days that followed, though she wasn't fully mended by hallowed day. Wren walked to the village on the morning of sacrifice with a guilty tread. Xie knew it was cowardly not to say farewell, but the alternative of sending her into a feverish faint was worse. Better to let Halwen tell her after the deed was done. She would eat the grain Wren's sacrifice had bought and she would survive. Wren could give her that much.