Black Feathers

52

Megan’s hearing reaches out for clues. The sounds of shouting and bustle from the market have diminished almost to nothing. By now the stallholders and hawkers and all their customers will have gone home or back to their camps. The clunk and splash of waterwheels seems louder now and comes from all around her.

She feels the sandy bank soften beneath her feet. They are at the water’s edge. From all sides, hands lift her and for a moment her feet touch something that feels like a solid wooden floor. Then she is forced to her knees and from there onto her belly. The knife remains pressed against her neck. She hears the sound of oars gently cutting water and feels the rocking of the river beneath her.

Only a few moments later she feels the bottom of the boat hiss to a stop on the sand. This bank of the river is very different. It’s quieter than the market side and smells of sewage and rot. The air is cold and still, somehow stagnant. It feels like a different world.

She is lifted from the boat and marched up the bank. Near the top she is manhandled from the sand onto an outcropping of grass. She is propelled by hands from all sides. Megan considers screaming now that the blade has been withdrawn, but what good will it do? Even if Mr Keeper hears her, they could slit her throat long before he can cross the river and intervene.

They come to a halt. Megan hears the sound of a canvas flap being pulled open. Hands force her to bend and she is pushed through a low opening. Close, dirty heat replaces the cool air of nightfall. Her captors withdraw and the flap falls shut behind her. She tries to stand upright and her head comes into contact with a low roof made of what feels and sounds like woven reed or rush. Unsure what to do, she stays bent at the waist and half crouched, waiting.

Although the others have certainly gone, Megan senses she’s not alone. The air in the space around her is too charged. Somebody observes her in silence, of that she is certain.

“I’d like to sit down, please,” she says, her words weak and unconvincing.

Silence swallows them. Perhaps she is alone, after all. Alone but for her imagination, which has always been a little too active to be useful. And if she is alone, then there’s no reason why she can’t–

“Now that you’re here, you can be at your ease. Remove the covering from your head.”

It’s a female voice. A commanding tone with an edge of impatience and weariness. That it is a woman she shares this new space with brings Megan a wash of relief. She removes her hood to find herself in the warm glow of tallow candles, the greasy scent taking her all the way to Amu’s kitchen in an instant. As she lowers herself to the filthy reed matting, she sees whose dwelling it is.

The woman sits cross-legged, everything below her waist wrapped in torn, grimy blankets. Above her waist, she is naked. The folds of her belly suggest she has born many children, and her breasts, hanging drained and limp, are testament to this. Now, though, her nipples have been pierced and short wooden dowels the colour of peat poke horizontally from each teat. They look to Megan like dams, either symbolic or actual, to prevent any more of the woman’s milk from flowing.

Her skin is the kind of brown that only comes from spending every day outside for the whole arc of the sun to touch. It has the look of hide about it, and the wrinkles and cracks it bears are deep. Dirt fills each fold of skin, especially at her armpits, where dense hair bushes. Her neck is a mess of fold and wattles, each crease gritty with filth. When she speaks these loose rolls of skin shake and wobble, making Megan think of turkeys. Her face, too, is a sagging succession of dewlaps, the weight of her skin pulling her lower lids away from her eyes, exposing jaundiced sclera and capillaries that look like rusty fractures in polished ivory. Her septum is pierced with the same dark dowelling as her nipples, and her ears, twice the length they ought to be, hold polished wooden discs the size of Megan’s palm. Much of her torso is tattooed with curling symbols and ancient glyphs, now faded to a filthy blue. Like Mr Keeper, her hair is long and matted.

What has she done, Megan wonders, to put her on this side of the river?

“It’s some lofty company you keep, girlie.” The voice is wheezy and laboured. Somewhere deep in the woman’s chest, something vibrates. “Not that most hereabouts would notice. What brings you to Shep Afon?”

Megan’s jaw clenches.

Girlie?

“My name is Megan Maurice. I walk the Black Feathered Path and that is our business here.”

The woman makes a long reedy noise, catching something thick and wet in her lungs and bringing it north. She grumbles a gobbet of phlegm into her mouth, reaches for a wooden bowl and spits a deep green lump into it as if that’s what she thinks of Megan’s introduction.

“So you say. So you say.”

The woman reaches around beside the blankets that cover her legs until she retrieves a baccy pouch and some papers. She rolls a fat, loose cone, crumbling dark aromatic herbs into it as she works. When she lights up from a nearby tallow candle the smell is unfamiliar to Megan.

“It’s my medicine, Megan. Keeps me right.”

She inhales deeply from the cone, holding the smoke inside. When she finally lets the breath go, she appears to relax and shrink. The wheeze sounds just as bad.

“When Mr Keeper wakes up, he’s going to come looking for me.”

The woman regards her through baggy-skinned eyes.

“Perhaps he will. But not on this side of the river. He has no business here. Neither of them does, and well they know it.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You will when they don’t turn up, Megan. Believe me, they’re not coming for you. Not here.”

Is she telling the truth, wonders Megan, or just trying to frighten me?

The fear she has held down, ever since the hand slid over her mouth and the knife dug into her neck, now surfaces out of control. She begins to back towards the door flap.

“Don’t bother. They’re waiting for you right outside. All they’re going to do is bring you back – tied up. Is that what you want?”

Megan shakes her head.

“Sit back down and be still, then.”

Megan returns to her place on the reed matting. So that the woman won’t see her crying, she bows her head and lets her hair fall in front of her face. Smoke fills the small space entirely and she feels light-headed.

After a few moments she peeks out between locks of hair but nothing much has changed; the woman still sits there smoking her cone down to a nub, holding each breath before letting the smoke go. Megan relaxes a little. The lightness in her head is quite pleasant and some of the knots of tension go from her shoulders.

“Who are you?” she asks after a while.

“My name is Bodbran. Folk call me Bran.”

Bran places the last piece of her smoking cone, too short to suck on without burning her lips, into the bowl where she spits her phlegm. It sizzles out. For the first time she smiles, and Megan sees a deep kindness written in all the winkles and bags of her face, as though it is smiling and laughter that has put them there.

“Has the moon touched you yet, Megan?”

At first Megan doesn’t understand. A moment later her face flares and reddens. As though in response to the old woman’s question, she senses a familiar dragging deep in her belly. She will bleed soon.

Bodbran nods and says:

“Time is short.”

“I don’t understand,” says Megan.

“There’s something you must do, Megan. Something very important. I can’t let you return to the other side of the river until it is done.”