Daughter of Black Lake

by Cathy Marie Buchanan

  In between the lies, she spent evenings in the firelight, needle in hand, glancing up to study Young Smith, to see that his thick-lashed eyes were not hazel but rather gray flecked with gold, to appreciate the way he scrutinized a blade and often returned to perfecting it against a strop, to feel a spreading warmth as he heaved a yelping, laughing nephew over his shoulder and spun him around.

  She had spent thirteen consecutive nightfalls away from the causeway before the first lie, eight before the next, after that six. Even so, on the causeway, as she recalled the minutia of Arc’s face and hands and held them in her mind, her teeth gritted with effort. She wept, her usual prelude to invoking him, but her grief was fraught as she mourned the passage of yet another fruitless nightfall. She wanted to club her fist against the timbers, but, no, clubbing was not part of the chain that drew him close those other times. She returned to the clearing dejected, probing the exact sequence of those other nightfalls, the duration of her tears, the position of her knees as she rolled onto her side. She would do better, would shorten the gap before the next lie. She would not rush on the causeway, would not grasp. She would let the feeling of Arc come to her. But the next time and the time after that her skin did not alter to gooseflesh. He was slipping away, nudged little by little as Young Smith drew close, took up residence in her heart. She held her face in her palms.

  The Night of the Departed approached, that threshold when Harvest gave way to cold, barren Fallow. On that night, the gates between this world and the next stood ajar, and the spirits of forefathers and lost children and mates lingered close. The bog dwellers congregated on the shore of Black Lake, reached for their departed loved ones, drew them near. That night, when it came, would be Devout’s best chance to hold tight to fading Arc. Her breath caught a moment, snagged by the realization that his presence on the Night of the Departed would imply that he dwelt in Otherworld rather than some corner of the Roman Empire.

  She touched her lips, the earth. At least she would know.

  33.

  DEVOUT

  Devout clutched the small hide pouch hidden between the folds of her dress, the seeds within. Had Crone foreseen this Night of the Departed? She had instructed the girl in black henbane’s collection and preservation, how to hang a lone plant, giving the leaves a chance to escape rot. She had held a pouch of the seeds tight in her fist that last night. It was as though, even after all the instruction, Crone would not chance Devout neglecting to maintain the stock, as though she knew the severity with which Devout would one day yearn. It was a gift—that pouch, a gift given as Crone took her last breath.

  Devout, Young Smith, and his kin joined the bog dwellers amassed on a high patch of Black Lake’s shore, each clan spreading woolen blankets, unpacking plates and mugs. They feasted on the sheep culled from the flock as unworthy of feed through Fallow, the honey-slathered bread provided by the Carpenters, a roe deer speared by Young Hunter, the wheaten beer acquired by the Smiths in exchange for a partition Devout had unbound from the rafters and beat clean with a stick. “Still plenty of alcoves for what will come,” Young Smith’s mother had said and gestured toward Devout’s belly, still awaiting the foretold child.

  The rushlights made a pretty sight, staked into the ground, their flames reflected on the pool’s flat water and then, when a fish came to the surface, shimmering on tiny rippling waves. There was a single rushlight different from the rest, as there always was, burning brightly inside the skull Old Hunter had removed from over his door and brought to the bog for the night. The effect was chilling—two bright recesses where once there were eyes, another shaped like a linden leaf where once there was a nose, a bright grinning mouth where once there were teeth, and at the temple a last bright void where Old Hunter’s spear had entered the skull. Setting eyes on that ghoulish, glowing face, the dark fairies flitted afar, clearing the way for tranquility as forefathers were named and praise given and blessings sought, as Old Man spilled tears, as Walker remembered Lark’s song, as the hand who was refused milk by Old Tanner’s mate pitched bits of roe deer into the bog for her starved child. Devout took in the sidelong glances, the whispered words of the gathered bog dwellers. How might a hand, newly joined in union to a tradesman, pay homage on this first Night of the Departed since her beloved disappeared?

  * * *

  —

  Devout stayed late, biding her time until the causeway was hers alone. Young Smith had not denied her. He had not put his hand on her shoulder and said, “It’s time,” but rather had reached toward her, seen her separateness from him, and taken his hand away. He withdrew a single step and cleared his throat. When she did not stir, he took another step and then another.

  She tipped the pouch over her open hand and licked a dozen black henbane seeds from her palm. She had never so much as tasted a single seed, and as she ground her molars—knowing that the grinding would hasten the magic—her face knotted with the bitter pungency. She lay back on the causeway’s rough timbers, her tongue drawing the acrid mash from her teeth, her gums, and pushing it to the back of her mouth. As she swallowed, she looked right and left. Six rushlights still burned on the shore.

  Her eyes closed, and when she opened them the rushlights were spent and the mist was thick. Her head rolled to one side. Her eyelids fluttered shut. The mist grew heavier, at first like a blanket and then like heaped furs. She felt warmth on her cheek, like breath. Her skin grew damp beneath the exhalations. She waited until the feeling of heaped furs grew uneven, until she felt the heaviness of hips, thighs over her own. Fingers traced the ridge of her collarbone. She turned her face ever so slightly toward them. Then a palm cupped her cheek, and she felt fingertips—familiar, dry, slightly ragged, like they rolled grains of sand over her skin.

  She opened her eyes and looked beyond the mist to the stars, to the pinpricks of light swirling, coalescing, drawing close. They became like two eyes, and then like Arc’s eyes—watchful, framed by pale lashes, pale eyebrows. She put two fingers just below one of the eyes, felt the resistance of flesh, the bone beneath. She traced the reddish-purple crescent on his cheek.

  She felt the sensation of soaring, her spirit leaving her body, watching from above as Arc unclasped her dress and slipped it from her shoulders, past her ribs, her waist, her hips, her knees, her ankles, and yet she could feel rough wool sliding over her skin, his strong hands, his wet mouth, his hard sex, her parted thighs and tilted hips, the moment he entered her, and they became one. He was slow and gentle, and she clung to him, her face buried in the crook of his neck. She pulled him closer, deeper, until it was not possible to be any closer than they were.

  * * *

  —

  She woke on the causeway to bottomless night and her dress clasped at her shoulders, her mouth dry, her tongue thick. She rolled onto her side, lay with her cheek resting against her outstretched arm before getting to her feet.

  She could detect no warmth, no dampness between her legs, no lingering sensation of friction, no tenderness. Still Arc’s watchful eyes, the ragged skin of his fingers had been so tangible, more than a recollection, more than a window briefly opened to an earlier time. She knew in that moment that Arc had succumbed to Roman brutality, that she had called him to her from Otherworld. She had lain with him on the causeway, rapturous, though Young Smith was now her mate.

  Young Smith slept alone on their pallet or, more likely, was just now blinking into the blackness of night, wondering how time could slow, how the sun had not risen, how the cock had not crowed. Why had she not returned? Would she forever pine for her lost mate? Had he been a fool to think a warm nest could mend an ailing bird?

  She thought of the amulet, her claim to have offered it to Mother Earth. She remembered an uncertain feeling, the idea that with that first lie she had thrown open the door to deceit. She wiped tears from her cheeks. She would push and shove and lean her full weight into that heavy door. By will, she would force it shut and become the mat
e so worthy a man deserved. Never again would she reach for Arc on the causeway, seek the weight of his hands on her skin. Never again would she spend a Night of the Departed apart from Young Smith. Rather she would sit with him in the evenings, her thigh against his, and touch his arm when she brushed past him in the doorway, at the firepit. She would mill his wheat and mend his breeches with care and linger at the low wall of his forge, showing an interest in glowing iron and bellows and she knew not what, but she would learn. She understood now that she had felt herself slipping toward love as she gazed across the distance to Young Smith in his forge. She would let herself fall. She would lie back and part her knees, let desire mount, peak, topple to a lingering glow.

  She would give him a child as the druid had divined.

  34.

  HOBBLE

  No bog dweller looks at my father alongside the stone altar, alongside Fox. No one dares. Almost certainly, same as me, same as him, they stand in the ancient oak’s shadow counting the moons between Arc’s disappearance, a dark evening early in Fallow, and my birth, a warm afternoon with the sun crowning high in the sky. The season was Growth, but not the one that followed Arc’s disappearance. Rather, the one after that. Close to twenty moons. How very strange. How very difficult to swallow. But still, there is the telltale mark on the small of my back, and I have proven myself uncanny, a prophetess. And everyone knows the rumors about the extended period when my mother disappeared almost nightly, when she keened on the causeway reaching out over the bog’s pool, that place where Otherworld breathes close. I think of black henbane’s usefulness in releasing a spirit from a body, and how she had said, “I wanted to be lifted to Otherworld.” I think of her saying “I’ve deceived you,” and “Hobble’s imperfection is my punishment.” I bend toward belief.

  I count back from my birth. The Night of the Departed, that one night when the gates opening onto Otherworld stand ajar, falls nine moons earlier. I put a hand over my heart and count again. I swallow truth.

  Fox claps, a hard clap, and for a moment, faces jerk in his direction. A dozen women touch their lips, then the earth.

  My mother gets up from her knees, puts her palms on my father’s cheeks, holds his face toward hers—her pale skin and rosy mouth, her straight nose and dainty chin. “Smith,” she says, like a plea. “I was wretched. I don’t seek him anymore. It was a long time ago.”

  He averts his gaze, and she firms her grip.

  “You’re her father in every important way,” she says, shifting so that she returns to his view, as if with her lovely, sorrowful eyes she might always hold him under her spell.

  He turns his face, looks at Reddish, who now takes up the central frame. She watches him, skepticism apparent in her cocked head, as though she is all too familiar with him and the way he surrenders to the woman he has trailed since boyhood, a tiresome, never-ending chase.

  He puts his gaze back on my mother. “I banish you,” he says, in a strong clear voice, as is the right of a man with an adulterous mate.

  The bog dwellers gasp. It takes me a moment to catch up, to realize that today my mother has pummeled my father’s already battered heart a final time.

  Fox claps a hand against the stone altar, and when the bog dwellers continue to mutter the names of the gods, familiar words of homage, he strikes it again.

  “You can love her still,” my mother says, hands fallen from his face. “You will love her still?”

  He remains silent, withholding comfort, as she deserves for all she has withheld from him.

  He will love me still. I know this. His love will persist undeterred by lineage. He cannot help himself any more than can I.

  Arc fathered me, but my true father feeds me and clothes me and shelters me. He repairs the thatch, the wattle and daub. Bitter nights, he rises to stoke the fire and draws the furs tight under my chin. He takes my hand, strokes my hair, kisses my brow with a tenderness foreign to most men. He wields a dagger as he nears a druid, undaunted by the repercussions promised by such an act.

  My mother grasps, pulls me close, plasters my face to the crook of her neck. She weeps, shoulders heaving, breaks her sobbing only to kiss my hair, my dry cheeks. Sullen and Old Man put their hands on me, on her, as though she is not banished, as though she remains one of our own. Her embrace, her weeping persist. I keep my arms pressed to my sides.

  Suddenly I taste metal, await the flash of white light that comes in an instant. Then I see my mother skirting a wheat field. Her hand moves to her neck, to the amulet resting at her throat: A silver Mother Earth’s cross. Finely detailed and magnificent. Handiwork meant to capture an indifferent heart.

  Then, I am again prisoner in her embrace. As I breathe in her familiar scent, my rigid arms soften. But that vision—that glimpse of the past rather than of days to come—appeared so that I would be reminded of her first lie, told at a long-ago Feast of Purification, a claim to have offered the amulet to Mother Earth at the bog. Or perhaps, it was not at all the first.

  “Be gone, adulteress,” Fox bellows. “Be gone from this place where our sacred traditions are upheld. Be gone from Black Lake.”

  But still, her grip does not loosen, not until I squirm and duck from her arms. She stands dismayed a moment, then extends a hand toward me. I think of my curse. I think of afternoons pondering its source. With our many likenesses and her easy acceptance of mystery, I had wondered if she knew firsthand something of prophecy. I had thought of my father, his ironwork, how certain pieces appeared guided by the divine. How grossly naïve. My curse is born of neither but of darkness, infidelity, my mother clutching tight to what we are not meant to find in this world. I step away from her extended hand.

  My mother stumbles in the direction of the path, and stumbles three times more before I can no longer glimpse swatches of her blue dress between the trees. My heart beats steadily, calmly, for I am outside the scene, detached, as though all that might come is as impossible as what has already taken place.

  Next I know, Shepherd is snatching up his two youngest children and Second Hand Widow one of hers, as if they are making ready to flee the grove. But then I spy a strange sight, a staggering red fox—its twitching ears and white throat; its trailing, bushy tail—and I understand they are clearing their children from its path. Its yellow eyes shine, the pupils round and full, grossly dilated.

  I find myself seeking my mother, her opinion of the diseased creature. But, of course, she is not here, and I glimpse years of looking over my shoulder to catch sight of her attentive face, her absent face. I sway on my feet.

  The fox lumbers in loopy circles, falls onto its side. Four paws stretch open; each digit splays wide. The limbs tremble and jerk. A hind leg repeatedly grazes the sharp edge of a rock until the fox grows still, lifeless. In that instant, I know. The creature had feasted at the pit where I emptied the tribute vessel holding the black henbane and mead poured from the silver goblet last night.

  Then the bog dwellers appear to remember why we are gathered, and the fear they brought to the grove—fear magnified by the edict of human sacrifice and then briefly interrupted by a reddish-purple crescent and a fox—comes back full force. If not me, then who?

  My father stoops, picks up the red fox by the tail. “First we learn that Hobble isn’t—” His voice breaks, and he swallows. He flings the creature onto the altar. “Then a fox comes into the grove and takes its last breath.”

  He looks at the druid, and I understand the portent he is assigning to a fox collapsing in Sacred Grove just now.

  His gaze holds steady on Fox as the druid works out for himself the conclusion my father has already reached. And then, like kindling taking up flame, one bog dweller and then the next catches his meaning and stands with chest flared.

  Carpenter pulls a dagger—another forbidden dagger—from his breeches. “Divine for us,” he says, pointing the blade toward the druid. “Tell us the meaning of the departed f
ox.”

  “Tell us how you were prepared to slay Hobble,” says Hunter, who also brandishes a dagger, “when it’s you the gods demand.”

  “None of us would let you slay Hobble,” Seconds says, his gentle face as fearsome now as his raised dagger.

  “Or any one of us,” Reddish says.

  “Fox or no fox,” Sullen says, holding a dagger at the ready.

  “Never again,” Walker cries out.

  A chorus of “Yes, never again” echoes through Sacred Grove.

  More daggers are slid from beneath breeches, from between folds of wool. I feel the warmth of sunshine raining down, though there is no chance of rays penetrating the grove’s murk. My father feels it, too. I can tell by the slight lift of his chest. I again seek my mother, confirmation that she, too, perceives the bog dwellers’ embrace. But she is not here and does not know the bog dwellers are moving toward Fox. This, when even Chieftain would drop to bended knee in a druid’s presence. This, when a poisoned fox lurked at the grove’s fringes, awaiting the precise moment to show itself.

  Fox holds his hands out in front, palms up, gently pumping the air.

  There had been no collective sigh of relief among the bog dwellers after he said, “The gods demand the firstborn of your First Man.” They had not said, “Let Hobble be slain. We are spared, and she is lame.” No, they parted, making way for my father, his drawn dagger, and then they drew theirs.

  Fox bends onto one knee, then the other, his face weary, beaten.

  “I don’t deny the meaning of the fox,” he says after a silent moment, head bowed. “I don’t deny that the gods show us the price of their favor. I’m glad to know of my usefulness in securing the Romans’ defeat.” Fox lifts his chin and looks out at us. “You, too, should be glad and rejoice with me.”