‘He,’ I say, ‘had O’Malley blood. I don’t know what you can or cannot understand of me, but I promise you this: I will set you free. But that was the last of us you will have and in return you will be held captive no more.’ I swallow. ‘I’m sorry for what was done to you. I can never make it up, but I can offer your freedom. I will never return to Hob’s Hallow. I will not return to the sea and nor will any child of mine. I will set you free, and you will leave the lake, and swim to your home, for all the waters in the world are joined.’ I say this last like a prayer.
I risk a glance, and see she is considering me.
‘Promise me you will go, and cause no harm to anyone here.’
A beat, a long pause, then she nods. A sharp simple motion.
‘I will need help to free you, but I will be back, I swear. It will take me some time.’ A feathery, finny eyebrow is lifted. A lack of belief, certainly. I touch the bell-shaped pendant at my throat; crafted, no doubt, from one of her scales. ‘I can only promise. I am… not like my kind.’
Not entirely… but there are three dead men who might say different.
I turn around and I can see the door, now, quite clearly, and open, open wide! How could I have missed it? Fear. Fear. Fear, renders everyone blind. I gather Ena up and she makes a kittenish noise but does not wake; I retrieve Aidan’s lantern. On uncertain legs, I cross the stone floor, and realise that the torches can be removed from their place in the walls, so I take one to light our way back up, up, up where the air does not smell so much like the dead things of the deep.
* * *
From the bottom of the blanket box I pull out my duffel bag, and from I take the tattered bridle with its silver fittings. I dragged Ena’s cradle from her room and put it in mine, for the moment at least, and she sleeps there, quiet as a mouse. I pull out the book of tales, too, the one that Isolde started and I look more closely at the coat-of-arms on the front. I trace the bas-relief of the embossing, of the silver foil, the cunning way the lines join and flow; seeing it in a way I never could the old version with all its detail rubbed away.
It takes a while but eventually I see them differently and I realise that I’ve never seen it properly: at last a new picture emerges as if there are two layers to the art.
The uppermost, the most obvious, is the Janus-head, double-tailed mermaid of my childhood. The other, however, is entirely different: two figures, back to back. The one on the left, a woman in profile, with flowing hair, draped over the shoulder of a harp, and the upward curve of the soundboard looking like a section of a split tail. On the right, the mer-queen, her head close to the woman’s, also in profile so they might be taken for two-faced, her tail arching up on the same angle as the soundboard, but both of them joined at their spines, never able to move away from each other.
I sit on the floor and stare. I stare for a long time – so long that perhaps I sleep – and when I finally rouse the sky outside is greying with light. I leave Ena sleeping and go outside, the bridle jingling in my fingers. I run to the edge of the lake, stop carefully, then with only the slightest hesitation, I kneel.
I hold the bridle over the surface, watch how its reflection becomes clearer and clearer as I lower it. My hand shakes – I will never lose my fear of this for as long as I live – then with a sharp intake of breath, plunge the bridle beneath the waters. It is so cold. I feel the tremor once more, the lightning hit of the liquid on my skin, think how salty it is, and wonder again how Isolde made this happen. I think there will always be some tiny mill grinding, grinding, grinding on the bottom of the lake. I focus, shake the bridle, and speak: ‘Kelpie, the salt daughter calls, and she claims her boon.’
I sit back, hope it is enough. I cannot know how long he will take. Or even if he will honour his word. He might think carrying me here was recompense enough.
Perhaps I should go inside and check on Ena, feed her; perhaps the kelpie will knock politely on the kitchen door and ask for tea. I laugh and the sound is high and silvery, a little mad; I’m exhausted.
I wait a little longer and just as I’m beginning to doubt, the lake starts to boil up, white angry froth, and the kelpie leaps out onto the grass beside me. I manage a smile and climb to my feet, offer a curtsey. He bows in return, then asks briskly what I want, just in case I should think this a social call. I explain what I need and he looks unhappy, but I insist, saying, ‘Just swim fast.’
I watch him jump back in with barely a splash, give me one last reproachful glance, then disappear beneath the surface until it appears as smooth as glass once more. I run inside and get Ena, who is well behaved and quiet in her crib. In the kitchen I fill a bottle from a crock of milk and take the child outside with me. I sit a wise distance from the lake and feed her with one hand, and myself with the other with the freshly discovered apple from my pocket.
In the cellar I could see no mechanism for releasing the seaqueen’s cage. I suspect Isolde had it built without such a thing: after all, she did not have to lure the creature into the trap, all she needed to do was drop it into the water then cast whatever spell was needed to make it large again; she had no intention of ever freeing the mer-queen. And once the silver scales had been removed, I thought I could see markings on the bars of the grille in the water below, could see them flash like flames because O’Malley blood – albeit it thinned – had been spilt from Aidan’s veins. The magic, if not undone, was considerably weakened. Not enough for the sea-queen to break free for the magic had been forged specifically to keep her in place, but another magical creature? Something not as terrible as her, but almost. Something strong and strange like the kelpie?
Either it will work or it won’t. If not, then I will need to find other means of keeping my word. What I would prefer is for both sea-queen and kelpie to be gone before anyone from the village should think to come and visit. I would prefer to keep to myself most of what has occurred here, for the daughter of a witch, even a beloved witch, will at some point make someone uncomfortable – and there’s a big difference between a girl who can bring fruit from the trees and one who can keep a sea-queen captive and command a water-horse.
I’m almost finished with my apple when the lake boils and froths once more, one spot close to the shore, the other further out. The kelpie’s handsome head emerges from the former: he glares at me, nods. The message is clear: his debt is paid. I nod in reply, then toss the bridle to him. He catches it and dives away. I doubt I’ll see him again.
In the other spot: the sea-queen. She’s staring and I can feel the pull of her will. She’d like to have me walk into the water, she’d like to tear me limb from limb, swallow me then shit me out, wipe the last O’Malley from the face of the earth. But I can also tell she’s not really trying. I suspect, if she were, I would walk into the lake. I might even bring Ena with me as a snack. But she’s a creature who understands a bargain; she will abide by it.
I nod to her. She nods back. And then she is gone, and I know, though I cannot, that I will never see her again. But then there is another disturbance in the water and something flies towards me. It flashes silver and iridescent white and lands on the ground in front of me. Ena laughs. I reach for it.
It’s Óisín’s pearl-handled pocketknife, last in Aidan’s possession when he cut my finger, when he tumbled into the well.
40
We found my mother, at last, buried in the kitchen garden. Why Edward and Nelly put her there and not down the mine with my father, I’ll never know – perhaps soon after true Ena’s death he took Liam walking on the pretence of a friendly chat to separate him from Isolde. Then Edward returned to the house and dealt with my mother. I hope she did not know anything about it; I tell myself she could not have or she’d have touched him and made him care enough to not hurt her – although Malachi said that she could charm almost everyone, perhaps Edward Elliott for whatever reason was one of the rare exceptions. I recalled how closest to the house had been the only place where the plants had kept blossoming when everywhere else wa
s stagnating. Isolde the witch, the magic in her kept everything growing in that tiny corner of Blackwater. I wonder too if, even in death, she kept a grip on the villagers even though it would have made sense for them to move on when the land stopped giving them a living. They’d talked about it, but hadn’t quite managed to actually do it.
In her arms was a blackened little figure, my sister, the true Ena, whose crime was no greater than to cry too much; placed there, I think, by Nelly. And I think of the storm the night my mother died, and think how perhaps it was even more violent because my sister died then too, in the burning cauldron of her cradle. All three rest now in the cemetery that serves the village. It took me a long while to realise that Blackwater is without a church, and the big house itself without a chapel. I can only assume that hidden out here Isolde saw no need to pay lip service to a god not her own, nor her people’s. The more I hear them speak of her, the more I think she was as close as they got to a deity. But there is so much I will never know.
There are only tales of things that might once have been, and I write them in the book of stories Isolde had begun. I write the old from memory and the new when I can bear the pain of them.
I’m considerably rounder and slower than I was five months ago, so it’s a relief there’s been no sign of anyone else coming to find me. I remind Lazarus every day to remain alert at the hedge gate, and another gatehouse is being built at the now carefully concealed other entrance. One of the Cornish brothers will take up residence there.
Bethany Lawrence has Aidan’s fortune, she has Hob’s Hallow, she has no need to seek me out. I doubt she’ll bother to hunt after Aidan. In a few more months, I’ll send someone to Breakwater to see how the land lies, to see how Brigid fares. I’ll dispatch a letter and suggest she come for a visit or to stay for good.
The Woodfox boys returned from Bellsholm just this morning. Jago and Treeve took goods to sell while they made discreet enquiries about Ellingham and his troupe. They brought news that they are well enough, although the manager Viviane has a scar on the right side of her face courtesy of Aidan Fitzpatrick; of the wolf-boy Ben there has been no sign, although Ellingham has said the boy is known to wander. I hope he was simply away, roaming the roads on four feet. But they now have a permanent spot in a small theatre for Ellingham has decided to give up travelling.
The boys took a letter from me, saying I was well and handed over a purse of the silver scales, which Ellingham accepted with no complaints; yet he wrote no reply. One day, perhaps, I will visit. Perhaps Brigid will too. Or they will come here. One day, when the baby is born and she can travel, for I will not leave my own behind, not for any reason at all.
One day I will have the blacksmith here make delicate things: ship’s bells from the scales I have kept, bells for all my children to protect them should they ever take to the sea – though I promised the sea-queen they would not, what mother can guarantee her children’s actions? For Ena, too – I believed she was my little sister for too long to cast her aside. She cannot bear the burden of her parents’ sins, and I will never tell her or anyone else that she is not an Elliott. But I will never tell her she’s an O’Malley, either, for I think that has done generations more harm than good. Best to let the old name die, living nowhere but between the pages of dusty books, whispered in legend and rumour. I’m Miren Elliott now for it’s what I can bear – you claim what you can endure from your once-life and burn the rest.
I miss Maura and Malachi and think of them often. I miss Óisín and I even miss Aoife some of the time. I cannot say I truly miss my parents for I never knew them, but I miss the opportunity to have found out who they were; I think some days that I would not have liked them very much. But I can never really know. The one I think of most, however, is the sea-queen. Daily, I wonder how she fares and touch the ship’s bell necklace, made from her scales – this was why the mer could not hurt me. Some nights I dream I am beneath the sea, that I swim beside her, that she is hale and hearty once again, that she’s found her people and reclaimed her place. She’ll never leave me, shadowing my life forever it seems.
I do not think of the men I have killed.
We don’t live in the big house. It’s falling into disrepair, some of the fine furniture taken by the people of the estate, some used for Jedadiah’s cottage which I now share, and Lazarus’s gatehouse, too. I don’t miss the mansion: it was only ever a way-station for me, and Ena and I would rattle around inside it on our own to what end? We’re happy enough here and she treats Jed as if he is her father, and he behaves that way. I imagine he will be the same with the new one.
He says he loves me.
But I am wary of love.
Says he needs me.
And I am weary of need.
He is hurt when I don’t reply in kind; I’ve been finding he’s easily hurt. But he is gentle so I say to him something I hope he will one day understand.
‘I don’t need you,’ I say, ‘I want you. That should be enough. That should be better because it means I’ve made a choice.’
Perhaps one day he will understand.
AUTHOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
You might recognise some of the tales Miren tells herself in this novel. That’s because some of them are versions of stories from my Tartarus Press collections/mosaic novels Sourdough and Other Stories and The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings. I wanted to have a world where the tales I’ve told readers in the past are ones that these characters also grew up with.
Thanks to Mike Mignola for letting me tweak his version of the Brothers Grimm’s “Three Wishes” from the Hellboy graphic novel Strange Places.
My deepest gratitude to the Australia Council for the Arts as their support made the writing of All the Murmuring Bones possible.
Thanks to Meg Davis, agent extraordinare, Queen of the Silver Ideas.
Thanks to Cath Trechman for her wonderful and intuitive editing.
Thanks to Ron and Stephen for the sanctuary.
Thanks to J.S. Breukelaar, Angie Rega and Suzanne Willis, Neil Snowdon, Maria Haskins and Lisa L. Hannett for comments and support.
To note: Delphine the automaton is a nod to both Nike Sulway’s Rupetta and to the dolls made with slivers of souls that appear in “A Porcelain Soul”, one of the tales in Sourdough and Other Stories.
The title All the Murmuring Bones, is adapted from a line in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Angela Slatter is the author of the supernatural crime novels Vigil, Corpselight and Restoration (Jo Fletcher Books), the novellas Of Sorrow and Such and Ripper, as well as ten short story collections, including The Girl with No Hands and Other Tales, Sourdough and Other Stories, The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings, and A Feast of Sorrows: Stories. Vigil was nominated for the Dublin Literary Award in 2018. She has won a World Fantasy Award, a British Fantasy Award, a Ditmar, an Australian Shadows Award and six Aurealis Awards. Her short stories have appeared regularly in Australian, UK and US Best Of anthologies.
Her work has been translated into Bulgarian, Chinese, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Polish, French and Romanian. She has an MA and a PhD in Creative Writing, is a graduate of Clarion South 2009 and the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop 2006, and in 2013 she was awarded one of the inaugural Queensland Writers Fellowships.
All The Murmuring Bones is her first book for Titan and will be followed in 2022 by Morwood. Both are gothic fantasies set in the world of the Sourdough and Bitterwood collections. Follow her on Twitter @AngelaSlatter.
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