by Grace Draven
Zigana watched them leave, sorry to see them go. She had a niece, one who might never know her aunt as more than the horse shrimper who resembled her mother. Andras said they were family. He was wrong. The aristocratic Frantiseks would never be family with the peasant Imres. The class divide was too wide and too deep to cross, an ocean itself with no floor. And while she refused to dwell on it, she both feared and craved the sound of her birth name spilling from the lips of a man more dangerous to her than the obluda.
She draped the reins over Gitta’s neck and clicked to her. “Come on, sweet lass. Let’s hitch you to the cart. It’s time to go home.”
The council meeting that evening was a contentious one, with a great deal of shouting and outlandish suggestions for how to capture and kill the obluda. No one questioned Zigana’s water-sight and the images it gave her of Solyom’s death, or her accounting of seeing the obluda itself. When one of the council members asked if anyone had suffered nightmares of drowning or watching a loved one drown, every person in the council hall raised their hand. The silence afterwards was deafening.
“Why aren’t the horses affected?” one villager asked. “You said Gitta challenged it, but it was you who was lured until you touched Gitta.”
Trapped beneath the crowd’s scrutiny, Zigana chose her words carefully. “I can only guess, and I may be wrong, but I think the dirge the obluda sings is pitched specifically to lure in certain prey. It may not just be humans. It could be other creatures as well, just not horses. The sadness is how it affects people.”
Another villager spoke up. “It might not be able to lure a horse in, but if Ziga’s description is true, then it could still tear one apart with those teeth and claws. Something like that will be hard to kill in the water.”
“Then we bring it ashore,” another person said.
“With what bait? One of us? Good luck with getting a volunteer.”
The arguing started up again before a woman shouted above the noise. “What if we just covered our ears to block out the song? Hats, candle wax. Those would work.”
Zigana stood this time. “I don’t think it’s that easy,” she said. “The song isn’t just heard; it’s felt. Down to your soul. You could stuff your ears with an entire blanket, and you will still hear the song.”
The prime councilman rang the hand bell next to him. “Council will meet with Lord Frantisek this evening, before sundown, to discuss how to rid ourselves of this obluda. Until then, no one should be out after dark. Bar your doors, and if you live close to the beach, ask a neighbor farther away if they’ll take you in for the night. We don’t want another death like Solyom’s, and we need time to figure out how to kill the creature.” He closed the meeting and the crowd dispersed outside, clustering into small groups to discuss what to do.
Odon and Frishi made their escape with Zigana, taking a circuitous route through a narrow alley instead of the main path to reach their cottage and avoid being mobbed with more questions about Zigana’s experience. Frishi set water to boiling for tea while Odon left to check on the horses. When he returned, the three gathered around the table with their cups.
“Who in the village has had a recent tragedy besides Solyom?” he asked.
Frishi’s answer came swiftly. “Aliz’s husband Tabor lost his foot when he was chopping wood. He won’t be walking without help.”
“Folkus and Onri.” Zigana stared into her cup. “Their baby died three months ago. Onri is coping as best she can. Folkus though is leaning hard on the spirit barrel.”
“That’s three people we can think of in less time than it takes for me to put on my breeches,” Odon said. “Ancilar is fertile hunting ground for the obluda.”
“And that isn’t counting the effect of the obluda’s dirge. Even if you aren’t sorrowing over something, it makes you feel that way.” Zigana shivered at the memory of her own dark thoughts, brought on by the dirge. “It isn’t just sadness,” she said. “It’s shame. It also uses shame.”
Odon grunted. “Then we’re worse off than we thought.”
Frishi rose to refill their cups, and her hand shook as she poured. “Are we far enough away from the beach?”
Hoping to soothe her mother without lying to her, Zigana patted her hand. “I think so. You can still feel it a little, and don’t be surprised if a nightmare plagues you, but I don’t believe its power extends this far from the water.” She prayed she was right.
They might have been spared, but others were not. Zigana listened to Gitta and Voreg whinny in the barn and accompanied Odon twice to their stalls in a futile attempt to calm them down. On the second visit, when Gitta slammed her back hooves into her newly repaired stall door, Odon decided to sleep in the barn loft. “Maybe that will ease them,” he said. “Stay with your mother and keep watch.”
Neither woman suffered nightmares but only because neither one slept. They drank pots of tea and made several trips to the barn, much to Odon’s disapproval. When morning came, they were exhausted and the horses short-tempered.
The last thing Zigana wanted was to trawl, but the shrimping season would soon be over, and a day wasted meant less food and less money to buy food. She ate the breakfast Frishi prepared while staring out the front window. A cold fog hung over the village, and the sun was nothing more than a weak glow peeking through a low ceiling of heavy clouds.
“A right miserable day for shrimping on all counts,” Odon grumbled.
Indeed it was. And it only grew worse. One of the trawlers found a baby’s blanket on the sand, another, a crimson hair ribbon. Zigana and Odon plunged their hands in the water, and this time Odon also saw the images Zigana did. She sobbed quietly as scenes rolled before her mind’s eye.
The obluda had managed to lure not only Folkus and Onri but a girl named Csilla, not yet fifteen.
“Why Csilla?” she asked Odon.
Pale and shaken, he wiped at his wet eyes. His shoulders lifted and fell in a despairing shrug. “Why any of them?”
The entire village mourned the remainder of the day, and somewhere in the Gray’s hidden depths, the obluda gorged on its prey and inhaled the scent of misery with relish.
Lord Frantisek visited—without Jolen—and offered sanctuary at the castle to every family. “We have spare store rooms to use as shelters and part of the bailey. None of us there have been lured by the obluda.”
“Why not?” one villager called out. “You’re perched on the bluff, rising up right from the Gray.”
Andras’s gaze touched on Zigana for a moment before he answered. “It’s found a hunting ground and staked territory. It won’t leave if it knows there’s an easy meal at hand. Pack your things; come to the castle. If not there, then move farther inland for now.”
“I don’t want to run!” another man said. “I want to kill the thing!”
A chorus of “ayes” accompanied his statement.
“We all do,” Andras replied, “but you can’t plan if you can’t sleep.”
He stayed long enough to answer more questions before returning to the castle. Zigana caught him just as he led his horse past the last house on the main road.
“My lord, wait.”
He halted. “Mistress Imre.” His voice wasn’t as toneless now as when he and Tunde left her on the beach, and his eyes were warm.
“How is Jolen? And Tunde?”
“They’re well. Safe.” He gave a regretful sigh. “I almost forgot. Jolen has ordered you to come to the castle immediately.”
Zigana dredged up a chuckle. “She hasn’t changed in that respect. Always ordering me about.”
“And you not listening to a word of it, I’m guessing?” His stern face relaxed a little, the ghost of a smile hovering around his mouth.
“Not a single word.”
“I told her I’d deliver the message; I couldn’t guarantee your obedience.”
Zigana glanced back at Odon where he stood with a few of the other men, discussing what was to be done. “Please tell my sister I thank her, I miss her, and tha
t I appreciate her thoughts of me, but I won’t be coming to the castle.”
Andras’s eyebrows lowered, and his lips thinned. The look harshened his angular features, accentuating the beak of his nose and cut of his cheekbones. “I don’t think you need me to tell you just how unsafe it is in Ancilar right now, mistress.”
“No, my lord, but my father won’t leave the horses. My mother won’t leave him, and I won’t leave any of them.” She looked down at her shoes before raising her eyes to meet his. “We are family,” she said.
He was silent so long, she didn’t think he’d say anything else before continuing his journey back to the castle. She was wrong. “I will be a fortunate father should Tunde grow to be such a devoted daughter.” He tipped his chin in wordless farewell and set off.
Odon joined her as soon as Andras departed. “What did his lordship want?”
“He delivered a message from Jolen who has summoned me to her side. I declined and thanked him.”
“You should have accepted, Ziga.”
“Would you leave us here if you received such an invitation?”
“No.”
“Then why would I?”
Odon squeezed her shoulder with a comforting hand. “Come on then. We won’t be trawling today. The weather’s unfriendly and the water even more so. I don’t care if the obluda isn’t there now. I won’t be risking either of us or the horses.”
They returned home to discover the house filled with women and Frishi in their midst, passing out orders of things to make or bring to the families of the dead. Zigana was made errand girl for her mother and several neighbors, and spent the next hours delivering messages and baskets to various houses. Some of the families had chosen to accept his lordship’s offer of sanctuary at the castle and loaded their carts with some of their possessions. Others planned to move further inland as he suggested while the rest, like Zigana and her parents, chose to stay.
As the sun fell and night encroached, they lit lamps of precious oil in the house. Supper was a quiet affair, and only Odon did more than push his food from one side of his plate to the other. When he finished, he stood and announced “I’m for the barn. I’ll sleep in the loft again. Keep Gitta calm if I can.”
“I’ll check on you through the night,” Zigana promised. “You might need help if both she and Voreg act up.”
The house offered no more protection from the obluda’s song than the barn did, yet it felt to Zigana as if she watched her father plunge into danger the moment he crossed the threshold and closed the door behind him.
“He’ll be fine, Ziga,” Frishi said, her voice calm as she stood looking out the window and wringing her apron with white-knuckled hands.
“I know, Mama.” She lied. She didn’t know.
She traipsed to the barn several times over the next few hours, sometimes alone, sometimes with Frishi to check on Odon and the horses. Gitta nickered each time she saw her. Beyond a restless pawing at the floor, she stood in her stall and welcomed the hugs and caresses Zigana bestowed on her. Not to be left out, Voreg nudged her for the same, and Odon rolled his eyes from his straw bed in the corner of the tack stall.
“They’ll get too used to all that spoiling and start to expect it,” he groused. “Go back to the house and go to bed, Ziga. You’re keeping me and the mares up with all this visiting.”
She returned from her latest trip to find Frishi asleep, head resting on her folded arms as she slumped over the table. Zigana retrieved a blanket from their bedroom and draped it over her mother’s shoulders. She was heavy-eyed herself but unable to sleep, even after the previous night of almost no slumber. Dread churned her gut. Who this time would obey the obluda’s song and its compulsion, wade into the surf and be devoured?
She sat down on the bench next to Frishi and watched the yellow flame in the lamp flicker and stretch in its glass cage. Its glow blurred before her eyes, and her eyelids slid lower with each pulse of the flame.
A loud squeal snapped her awake, and she nearly fell off the bench. Beside her, Frishi slept on, snoring lightly. Her blanket had slid off her shoulders to pool on the floor. Zigana stumbled to her feet, bleary and disoriented. Another angry whinny carried from the barn almost drowning out the rise and fall of the dreaded dirge rolling toward the village from the shore.
Fear chased away drowsiness, and Zigana bolted from the house for the barn. Gitta thrashed in her stall once more, tossing her head to breathe in the smell of threat and to challenge it with a hard kick to her stall door. Beside her, Voreg snorted and snaked her head from side to side, ears pinned flat to her head at her dam’s agitation.
“Papa,” Zigana called, searching him out in the shadows of the tack stall.
Odon was gone.
The giant mare hurtled onto the beach and into the water without pause, her panicked rider shouting until her throat was scraped raw.
“Papa! Odon!” Zigana whistled a command to Gitta, sending her to the right, toward the castle bluff. The light from the lamp she held high illuminated a shimmering path over the tops of white-capped waves. In the other hand, she gripped her father’s harpoon, the only weapon at hand when she tore back into the house and beseeched her terrified mother to stay put.
“Papa! Answer me!”
The mad gallop to the beach yielded nothing. No Odon stumbling down the village road toward the sand dunes. The dunes themselves were empty and so far, so was the Gray.
“Papa!” she screamed until she was hoarse.
The swing of her lamp cast passing light over a shape moving slowly through the water. Odon.
Zigana shouted his name, demanding he stop, commanding he turn back to the shore. She slammed her heels into Gitta’s sides, and the mare heaved toward Odon.
A skeletal shape lurched out of the depths to balance atop the rolling waves on bony hands and knees. The vile dirge spilled from the obluda’s mouth as it crawled toward Odon. Gitta plunged deeper into the water, trumpeting her fury. A wave ripped the lamp out of Zigana’s hand, leaving only thin threads of moonlight to light her way to Odon.
Another equine neigh joined Gitta’s calls. Andras, on his lighter, fast-moving bay, plowed into the water on the other side of Odon.
“Get your father, Ziga!” Andras roared, brandishing a club. “I’ll fend off the obluda.”
The obluda, seeing it had landed more than one potential victim, trilled its triumph.
Zigana shouted at her father to no avail. Like a sleepwalker, he struggled in the waves, entranced by the monster scuttling faster towards him. Gitta reached him before the obluda did. Zigana clutched his shirt and yanked him against the horse’s side.
Odon shuddered as if someone punched him awake and accidently swallowed a mouthful of seawater. A choking fit followed, and a wave almost battered him out of Zigana’s grip. She held on, fingers in agony.
“Papa!” she shouted right into his dazed face. “Climb on Gitta!”
“Ziga?” he said in a whisper ripped away by the surf’s roar.
“Get on the horse!”
The obluda, as if sensing its enchantment was broken and its victim threatening to slip away, shrieked its fury and leaped toward them like an angry spider.
Andras’s horse reared out of the water, coming down fast as Andras slammed the club he gripped onto the obluda’s bony shoulder. A brittle crack sounded, followed by a hissing cry as the obluda caved in on itself before sinking beneath the waves.
Zigana clawed at her father until he managed to heave himself behind her onto Gitta. “Papa, are you all right?”
“I think so,” he said in a dazed, reedy voice. “What are you doing with my spear?”
She didn’t answer, watching Andras as he peered into the surf beating against his mount’s belly, club raised in preparation to bludgeon his foe a second time. “Is it dead?” she called to him.
“I don’t know. I can’t see it.”
The bay hauled back with a panicked whinny when a skeletal arm snaked out of the water and sna
tched Andras off its back. The lord hit the water and went under, only to break the surface, still holding the club.
Zigana screamed and so did Gitta as the obluda raked a clawed hand across Andras’s torso, taking strips of clothing and skin with it. Andras bellowed in pain and smashed the club into the side of the creature’s bulbous head. The obluda wailed and threw Andras to the side. It clutched the wound on its head, thick yellow blood pouring between the monster’s fingers. The obluda howled and lunged for Andras who tread water, pale with pain and weakened from blood loss.
“Here, you nasty piece of fish shite!” Zigana called out. “There’s a lot more here to eat than that puny man!”
Dead black eyes swiveled in their sockets as they turned to her, Andras forgotten. It hissed, flaccid lips peeled back to expose jaws that unhinged and teeth long and sharp as spearheads. It clawed the water toward her, webbed fingers tipped in blood-stained shears that sliced the waves.
“Ziga!” Andras’s voice. Zigana almost sobbed her relief. He still lived. He called her name, and the sound seemed to come from far away as she rose first to her knees and then to her feet on Gitta’s broad back. Her balance wobbled, and she clicked a command she hoped the mare could hear. Steady, my girl. Be still; be steady.
The mare didn’t budge, even when the obluda climbed atop the waves again, not so steady itself this time, one bony shoulder shattered so that its skeletal arm dragged through the water. It lurched toward them.
All of Ziga’s senses narrowed on the monster as it closed in. She no longer heard Andras’s voice though she knew he still called to her. She hefted the harpoon, time slowing to a crawl as the obluda ate the distance.
Odon had taught her to spear-fish at a young age. She’d always been fascinated by the harpoon that hung above their hearth, a souvenir from his days as a deep ocean sailor, when he was a young man and before he married Frishi.
His long-ago instructions cascaded through her memory, every word as clear and sharp as a glass splinter. The obluda shrieked, lunging at her, and Zigana hurled the harpoon with all her strength.