The Boneless Mercies

by April Genevieve Tucholke

  Aarne stretched out and rested his head on Runa’s legs. Ovie and Trigve leaned against each other, sharing another cup of wine. Sasha whispered with Juniper and Sage, and then laughed.

  I thought of the dead girl at the crossroads and the dead girl in the Thiss Brambles. I thought of Gunhild. I wondered about their childhoods and their families. I wondered if they’d known love. Or joy. I wondered if they’d picked cloudberries on green-grassed hills, under the midnight sun. I wondered if they’d dreamed of great adventures, of crossing seas and mountains, in search of whatever lay on the other side.

  We all have dreams. All of us. Gunhild, those dead girls, me, the other Mercies … all of us.

  A raspy caw echoed somewhere above. Runa swore quietly. She shifted in my arms, and then fell back asleep. A raven flew down and landed on Mother Hush’s shoulder. She turned to it and whispered. It cawed again, and then flew off, up beyond the Scorch Trees, into the black night sky.

  ELEVEN

  Mother Hush found me at dawn.

  We’d moved back inside her hut sometime around midnight, after a cold sea-wind blew in. The other witches had retreated from the platform hours before, except Sage, who had fallen asleep with her arms wrapped around her sister.

  We slept near the large Scorch Tree branch, as if it were our usual fire. It gave off a steady, soft, sensuous heat.

  The bliss of bedding down next to such a tree every winter evening …

  I dreamed soft, warm dreams.

  Mother Hush put a finger on my cheek to wake me. When I opened my eyes, she motioned for me to follow her with a flick of her pointed chin.

  I stood and tried to shake off sleep. I hadn’t slept so deeply in months. Years.

  Ovie reached up and grabbed my hand as I stepped over her. “Careful, Frey. The sagas speak of the slyness of witches. Don’t let this witch-mother put a spell on you like she did that raven.”

  I glanced over at Mother Hush, standing near a doorway by the looms, and then back down at Ovie.

  “I trust her.”

  Ovie nodded and let me go.

  Mother Hush took me outside, her driftwood walking stick thumping with each step. We crossed several walkways and a long bridge, finally coming to a large, circular platform. This one had a series of ropes and pulleys that stretched out over the treetops. The ropes led to a thin, silvery waterfall, which slipped down the side of the great rock cliff that rose grandly to the south. I saw buckets fastened to the ropes, hanging solidly from great wooden hooks.

  So this was how the witches got fresh water. It was very clever.

  As I watched, Mother Hush tugged on the top rope, hand over hand, until a bucket came floating toward us, filled with cold, clear water.

  I reached up to unhook it, glancing quickly down to the shore below. I prepared myself for the fear to return, but there was no trace of it. Sage’s prayer held.

  I began to enjoy the view. Mother Hush and I weren’t the only women awake. I saw four witches on the shore digging for clams. Two more tended a garden around a Scorch Tree at the far end of the woods. I turned and saw the Thiss Brambles stretching east, on and on forever, and after them, the white-tipped Skal Mountains.

  I felt Mother Hush watching me and met her gaze.

  “So you are the girl who will try to defeat the Blue Vee Beast.” Her green eyes were sharp and shrewd. They reminded me of Siggy’s. “My witches dreamed it years ago. They had a vision of a girl who would try to slay a monster. Trust Juniper to track down a glory-seeker among the Boneless Mercies, of all people. She’s like her mother.”

  This is what Juniper had meant when she said the Sea Witches would want to meet me, too. She’d known about the vision. I wondered when she’d first connected it to me—when I mentioned fighting the Blue Vee Beast in the Hail Inn?

  Or had she known from the first moment we’d met?

  I ran a hand through my hair, which was still loose around my shoulders. “Well, did the dream say I would succeed?”

  “It did not.” Mother Hush spoke softly, so softly that I leaned in toward her without thinking.

  The Sea Witches loved to whisper, I’d noticed.

  “I wasn’t even certain it would come to pass,” she said. “Dreams show only one path. You might have made a different choice, gone down a different road. You still might.”

  “But I’m here now.”

  She smiled. “True. You’ve come this far. It bodes well.”

  “Will your sea goddess help us defeat this beast?” I asked. “Will you pray for us?”

  Hush shook her head. “Jute won’t help you.”

  I laughed. “Then tell her to stay out of my way.”

  Mother Hush smiled again. “There’s an old Sea Witch saying that goes: If we kill all the monsters, mankind will take their place. Do you think that’s true, Frey?”

  “It has the ring of truth,” I said. “But it won’t stop me from trying.”

  Mother Hush reached forward and took the bucket of water from my hand. She began to pour the contents into a large wooden bowl on a table off to her right. When she finished, she gestured to the bowl with one long, slender finger.

  “Gaze into the water. Tell me what you see.”

  I bent over the bowl. The water was sleek and black, like the Iber woman’s silk. I could see nothing, not even my reflection, as if I were staring up at the sky on a starless night.

  “Keep looking,” Mother Hush whispered when I started to fidget.

  I stared …

  Stared …

  Nothing.

  Mother Hush took the rope again and pulled in a fresh bucket. She fetched a scallop shell from another small table, slipped it into the water, and offered me a cool sip. It spilled down my throat, clean and pure.

  “Now look into the water again.”

  I looked and saw nothing.

  “You have no natural magic in you,” she said finally. Mother Hush waved her hand toward the sea. “I see we must do this the hard way. Let’s go down to the shore.”

  Mother Hush walked to the far end of the platform, reached out, and grabbed a black rope ladder that swung from the nearby tree. She began to climb down, gracefully, easily. I followed.

  Hush and I walked side by side through the witch woods in the early-morning light. She was barefoot and strode as lightly and quietly as a deer. I trailed my fingers across the Scorch Trees’ bark as we passed and sighed at the warmth.

  When we reached the shore, we both paused on the white sand for a moment, letting the sea mist settle on our skin, the wind rush through our hair, the taste of salt tickle our tongues.

  Finally, Mother Hush turned to me and gestured with a flick of her hand. “Undress. Down to the skin.”

  The morning air was cold and full of teeth, and I had little desire to let it whip across my bare body. Yet I did as she asked. I was curious to see where this would go.

  I dropped my Mercy-cloak on the sand, then my tunic, then boots, wool leggings, shift. I stood at the foot of the waves, naked, my silver hair loose and wild, the cuts from the Thiss thorns marking red lines across my skin. I pushed my shoulders back and stood straight. Being naked like this, as cold as I was …

  I didn’t feel vulnerable.

  I felt free.

  Mother Hush pushed me forward, one hard hand on my back. “Walk into the waves until the water reaches your thighs. Then kneel.”

  I didn’t move. I eyed her over my shoulder and fought the urge to push her back. I’d never enjoyed taking orders. She stared me down. I let my curiosity quash my pride and put one foot into the sea. The cold seared my skin like fire, but I kept walking, feet, ankles, calves. When the waves hit my thighs, I sank down, my knees melting into the shifting sand.

  The sea lapped at my shoulders, lifting me softly a few inches, and then dropping me back down again. I kept my breathing even and my eyes on the horizon.

  Was this the Sea Witch’s plan? To drown me at sunrise?

  Hush waded in, coming to stand besi
de me. Her green tunic turned black where it soaked up the sea.

  There was an edge to her now, a sharpness. A steel. Her expression was still serene, but underneath it, I sensed something simmering … something raw and wild, like desire.

  Or fury.

  Or vengeance.

  Mother Hush held up her driftwood staff in one hand. She gripped the back of my neck with the other and shoved me underwater.

  I flailed, limbs slicing through frigid sea. I jerked, kicked, fought the water, arms out, muscles tight, lungs seizing up. The witch’s grasp didn’t lessen.

  So this is how I will die. It was all for nothing. I’m just like the girl at the crossroads and the girl in the brambles. A sad end to a short, meaningless life.

  No.

  No.

  If death was coming for me, then I wouldn’t meet it like a coward.

  I would die with dignity.

  I gave in to the drowning. I relaxed, arms out, my hair floating around me like wisps of seaweed.

  The moment my muscles softened, I felt the cold recede. I was warm suddenly, as if I were touching a Scorch Tree.

  Lukewarm.

  Blood-warm.

  Tree-warm.

  My mind began to drift.

  I began to imagine I was an Arctic Syren, swimming in the sea, on and on, endless darkness and smooth, briny swells. I could still feel my body yearning for air, my lungs struggling, heaving, shaking … But my mind was at peace.

  I opened my eyes.

  Through the icy haze of the sea, I saw a black spot emerge in front of me. It was darker than the water, drippy and heavy, like ink dropped in oil. I reached out to touch it, and the black spot began to spread, coiling out, tendrils reaching toward me.

  “Look.”

  I heard Mother Hush shouting above me, over the sound of the waves.

  “Look, and learn.”

  I stared at the spot.

  I expected it to turn into the Blue Vee Beast.

  Instead, I saw a girl.

  She was young. Younger than Juniper … eleven, twelve at most. She knelt on a red rug beside a straw bed, her back to me. Her long, honey-gold hair was gathered together and hung over her thin shoulder.

  The nearby candle flickered. I heard the distant sound of drums. I smelled stagnant water and mud.

  A breeze blew in through a square window, the canvas flap whipping to the side. The candle flame swelled, and its light fell across the girl’s back, which was now bare. Her skin was a mass of long red welts.

  The girl picked up a slender willow branch from the bed and began to strike herself with it. Again. And again, and again. The branch hissed as it sliced the air. The girl flinched as an older welt reopened and began to leak blood.

  She hit herself again. Harder.

  She began to scream.

  It wasn’t a scream of pain.

  It was scream of …

  Victory.

  The girl lowered her arm …

  One quick turn of her head …

  She looked at me, right at me, green eyes bright as stars.

  My body began to shake from lack of air. My lungs stretched, strained …

  The vision went dark. Everything went dark.

  I was drowning. The sea was stealing my life.

  Everything …

  Dark.

  * * *

  Strong fingers gripped my shoulders and pulled me out of the water.

  Mother Hush dragged me back to the sand. I heaved up water as she rubbed life back into my body, heat back into my skin. She chanted a prayer under her breath, one of water, steam, boil, singe, sear.

  Blood returned to my limbs slowly, the sting of it making me gasp. Hush pulled my Mercy-cloak over my shoulders, and I huddled under it, breathing in the familiar smells of wool, and Mercy, and me.

  The girl’s eyes had been bright green, like Trigve’s, but cold. Dead cold.

  Mother Hush knelt beside me and took my arm, fingertips pressing into my flesh. “Frey, what did you see under the water? Tell me.”

  “I saw a girl in the marsh. A girl with green eyes and a willow branch in her hand. She whipped her back until it ran red.”

  “Yes. It is as I thought. You are the one.” Mother Hush pulled me to her. She smelled of salt and sand and frankincense. She smelled like Juniper. “Frey, I need you to enter the Red Willow Marsh, find the village in the reeds, and kill the Cut-Queen.”

  “What?”

  “I need you to do this for the Sea Witches. I need you to do this for Vorseland.”

  I moved backward a few inches, my hands sinking into cold sand. “So you’re telling me the Cut-Queen is nothing but a child … and you want me to kill her.”

  “Yes.”

  I tugged my cloak tighter around my naked body. “Dying at the hands of the Blue Vee Beast … It is a worthy death. It is Vorse. But the Cut-Queen? There is no honor in killing a child. And I would know.”

  “Do you still plan to cross the Red Willow Marsh?”

  I nodded. “We are headed to Blue Vee, and we have no ship. It’s the only way, unless we want to take the mountains, and then we face the Jade Fells along the Ribbon Pass.”

  “If you go through the marsh, then you might be captured anyway. If you are captured, you will be tortured or forced to convert.”

  “True,” I said.

  I’d heard the rumors. We’d be cut and beaten, and then drowned in the bog mud like a Skyye criminal. Our souls wouldn’t drift up to Holhalla; we wouldn’t even be buried in the earth like the Elsh. We would become ghosts, forced to haunt the Red Willow Marsh for all eternity.

  It was a horrible fate. Unthinkable.

  “Then isn’t it better to go in with a fighting chance?” Hush turned away from me, eyes on the sea. “The Cut-Queen is taking in former Boneless Mercies. Declare your intention to join her. Convert, if she demands it. Get close to her, and then kill her.”

  “No. It’s too risky. I won’t ask this of the Mercies. At least if we stay hidden, we have a chance of sneaking by her. To march right in … That is certain death.”

  Mother Hush picked up her driftwood staff and set it across her knees. “The Cut-Queen is spreading evil with her marsh magic. All magic costs something—happiness, love, land, blood. A change is coming, and this Cut-Queen will be at the heart of it if she can. Her path is darkness. The Sea Witches seek light. She must die, Frey.”

  “Not by my hands, or the hands of my companions.”

  Mother Hush made a witch sign with her right hand, one I didn’t recognize. “You were born during the Lion Star, no? I can see it all over you. The Blue Vee Beast—that is one quest. I ask you to take on another. Kill the Cut-Queen for us. Do this, and we will consider you a friend. You will be welcome here always.”

  “Why don’t you task your own witches with this?”

  “Because they are harmony. They are serenity. It’s all they’ve known. They say prayers to the sea when they catch fish, and prayers to the earth when they dig up onions. It’s their way. It’s my way.”

  “And I suppose I’m nothing but a butcher.”

  “You are not a butcher. You are a warrior.”

  My blood buzzed when she said this.

  “Do this,” she said, “and I will tell you how to defeat the Blue Vee Beast.”

  I narrowed my eyes, then laughed. “Don’t tell me you’re going to offer me a prayer.”

  “No. I’m going to give you something more practical.” The witch gave me a cunning look. “Information.”

  “Ah.” I held her gaze. “If you want me to ask this of the Mercies, then I have two requests.”

  Mother Hush nodded. “Of course. Tell me.”

  “I want you to let Sasha and Aarne stay here for as long as they wish. I brought danger on them, and it ended with the death of their friend. They can’t go back to Mercy-killing in their old territory, and they can’t go with us to Blue Vee.”

  Hush nodded. “Fair enough. We will take them in. What is your second req
uest?”

  “I want you to allow other girls to become Sea Witches, not just the ones born on the banks of the Merrows. I want you to cut a path through the Thiss Brambles and let the girls in need come to you. Will you do this?”

  The wind whipped Mother Hush’s pearl-green hair around her beautiful face. She pushed it back behind her shoulders with her palms, impatiently, like a child. “No, Frey. We’ve never taken in outsiders. Not since the very first High Sea Witch brought a hundred witches north to escape persecution in Frem a thousand winters past. She established a settlement here among the Scorch Trees, and we’ve kept to ourselves ever since.” Hush spread her arms wide, palms up. “Those girls bring demons with them, Frey.”

  “Yes, that’s what Juniper said. But you are the famous Sea Witches of the Vorse Merrows by the Quell Sea. How much harm could they do you? Help them. Don’t leave them to the thorns. These are my terms.”

  She was silent for a while. We sat side by side, watching the waves crest on the sea, white tips rolling across the horizon. The clam-digging witches walked by behind us as we sat, chatting cheerfully, wooden buckets thumping against their sides. They nodded at Mother Hush and ignored me, still naked and dripping under my Mercy-cloak.

  “Done.” Hush held out her hand, and I gave her mine. “Kill the Cut-Queen, and we will open a way through the Ticklish Trail.”

  Hush released my palm. I reached for my clothes and began to dress. “Tell me how to defeat this beast, then.”

  “We believe this creature is a remnant of the giants who used to live in the far north on the Wild Ice Plains.”

  “Do you mean a Jotun? I’ve heard of them, from the Blood Frost Saga.”

  “Then you know that they can’t be slain by ax or sword, for their skin is like hardened leather. But my witches dreamed of this Blue Vee creature—they dreamed of a small weak spot on the back of its head. It is only through this spot that the creature can be killed. Have you heard the saga of Ergill?”

  “Of course. The young boy Ergill spies a chink in the dragon’s armor and pierces it with his arrow. The dragon dies.”

  “Yes. Exactly.”