I tried to hail them, but they gave me no acknowledgment, simply continued with their singing, which I realized was in a tongue I did not understand. It sounded slippery, susurrant, from some other unknown world.
They moved like a gaggle of geese, their dresses rustling, their song not quite in tune. The tallest two women were gathered at the center of the group, carrying between them a small box shaped like a coffin. I positioned myself to better see it: an open casket, lined in leaves. Resting inside was the branch of what I thought to be a beech tree, with an ill-fitting green apple tied carefully with twigs onto one end.
At the back of the procession was the smallest of the gathering, a little girl who skipped along, struggling to match pace. A large port-wine stain marred her cheek, and her eyes were thin and narrow. As she reached the far side of the road, she, alone, looked back.
After a moment to process my surprise I hurried after the women, paying no mind to Rafe and Matthew calling after me, then hustling to follow behind. I caught up with the youngest of the mourners just as the group was slowing to a stop beside a half-hidden stream. It was small but not stagnant, shimmering deliciously, nestled between two walls of tall grass the way a bonnet’s ribbon might hide in the folds of a fat woman’s chin.
The women seemed reverent of the water. None of them were touching it, their chanting continuing and rippling across it like skipped stones. Though tranquil when they reached it, the wind, their words, the ceremonials, were stirring, somehow stretching the stream, helping it awaken. Like a wound renting, small and pinkish at first and then pooling with blood, it seemed to widen. The tall grasses around it seemed to wane.
Matthew appeared next to me, clutching my sleeve.
The pallbearers lowered their child-sized coffin, and the other women moved to make way. One, tall and narrow, with a long solemn face that seemed to have paused mid-melting—the hollows under her eyes sinking low past her cheekbones, her skin inordinately pale and veined, her lips a shade of blue—knelt next to the box as if in prayer. The other six bowed their heads beside her. Their chanting stopped.
The pale woman lifted the branch from the box and took it slowly to the water, where she plunged it, apple downward, into the stream as a sword might plunge into flesh. The moor was silent as I watched her, the wind suddenly calm. She held her effigy submerged with such force one might have thought it was a man that she was drowning. The other women gave a cheer and resumed chanting, this time louder, almost raucous. The pale one hurled the stick into the stream, which had continued to stretch and expand. Its water moved faster now, its width five times the size it had been, its movement forming rapids that frothed and spat white foam. And then there came several incomprehensible moments that even now I’d claim to be the most intriguing of my life.
I could not say where I was or what was happening around me. I felt but could not quite perceive a strange green sky and rumbling thunder, snow and rain and sunshine all at once, bells playing distant music, bone-deep vigor, cool crisp air. I could hear, but not feel, myself laughing. And then all at once it seemed that I’d forgotten how to breathe, that my lungs had paused mid-motion, were being squeezed by some great fist. I found myself coughing, unable to reject the sudden liquid that was pooling in my chest, creeping up behind my nose, pouring out of me as though I was a conduit, a fountain. I retched, and felt a strong hand slap my back. My body was burning, my skin prickling for lack of air.
The violent retching ceased. Matthew thumped me on the back, and I came to myself. I blinked to see the women, and found they’d transformed with the water: they were girls now. Simple girls wearing swimming costumes, playing in the river, splashing one another and giggling. I saw no sign of the child with her port-wine stain, the woman with the sickly blue lips. Rafe was kneeling at the bank of the newly formed river, cupping his hands to take a drink. I stood back with Matthew.
“What do you make of it?” I asked him, struggling to catch my breath.
“Of this?” His voice was low. “We can assume the water’s safe, if they’re here swimming, though I’d recommend against jumping in to join them. It’s amazing that you heard them from the road. We would have gone right past the river if you hadn’t followed their noise.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I mean the . . . changing . . . the colors . . . the way the water . . . When those women . . .” I stopped. He was looking at me curiously.
“Your fit of coughing just now?”
“Yes. No. I don’t . . .” The front of my shirt, my shoes, were all dry, as was the grass before me. There was no visible sign of my struggle, no way to explain my experience without heightening the differences between me and these girls by the river, no way to describe my body without showing him how little I truly understood it. I shook my head and moved to join Rafe at the water.
Your Mother, Waiting
Lucy returns to the clearing to find the black-eyed girl upright, seated with her legs hanging over her stone bed frame. All the feathers have been plucked from the crushed wren—It loves me, loves me not—and lie around her, scattered in a downy fairy ring. The bird’s scabby carcass has been thrown to lie beside the dead roebuck, which has already melted fully into undergrowth, the only signs of its history its yellowing ribs, its still symmetrical antlers.
Lucy brushes away a clump of feathers and kneels before the black-eyed girl, reaching up for her hands: “For everything, I thank you.”
The black-eyed girl is stronger, but not yet strong enough to laugh at Lucy, the pomposity of her rituals, the solemnity with which she speaks. She presses her jagged fingernails, too short to cause pain, into Lucy’s palm, and hears a quick intake of breath. She cocks her head and smiles.
Lucy straightens her shoulders. Points to herself and says slowly, loudly, “Lucy.”
Tedious. The black-eyed girl clears her throat and tries to speak, but is capable only of the sort of animal grunting that confirms Lucy’s surmise.
“So much to teach you”—Lucy’s eyes gleam—“so much that we two can create.”
16
To no surprise of mine, Rafe made quick work of gathering information from the girls. He befriended the littlest one, eight years old at most, who wore a neon-pink two-piece bathing suit and an elaborate braid in her hair.
“Colette says that the water’s rarely warm enough to swim in. That’s why all these ladies are out in full force today. Colette says it’s only this one spot, really, the exact center of our second spiral, that has some sort of current that keeps it from being too cold.” Rafe flicked a finger at me, sending several water droplets in a mist across my cheek. It felt wonderful, and I gave only a brief thought to the countless invisible organisms I’d no doubt disrupted.
“Does she now?” said Matthew, coming toward us and stooping to fill a canteen. He produced a previously unseen canister of orange liquid, and squeezed in two large drops before handing it to me. “Wait sixty seconds before you take a drink.”
Once I’d sated myself, I examined the girls who’d so mysteriously shifted shape. So much bare skin—some brown, some milky white, some sunburned red and peeling. One floated on her back, her stomach spilling from her soaking string bikini, her hair spread like seaweed behind her. Another spit water through her teeth. Several older ones, particularly pretty, flocked to young Colette when she splashed back into the river, fluttering their lashes and twirling their hair, making bovine eyes in our direction.
“For you, I’m sure,” I said, frowning, pointing them out to Rafe. He shrugged and smiled, more pleased with himself than apologetic.