IGMS Issue 47 Read online

  "I want to watch," Asthore says, grabbing my hand. She knows my dread of the blood bog, yet pulls me after her, onto the trackway. I try to turn back, but others from our village press close behind us, as eager as Asthore to see the fate of our clan-chief. I am caught up in their tide. Our feet thud hollowly against the oaken planks. Beneath them, heaped brushwood is all that keeps us from sinking into the blood water.

  The procession comes to a halt at the trackway's end -- the heart of the bog, where the waters are deepest and solid land lies beyond easy reach. I look back toward shore, longing for its dense woodland canopy of birch and willow. Here in the middle of the bog, I feel hemmed in, suffocated by fog and blood water and the smoky scent of peat.

  "I want to go back," I tell Asthore. Even with so many of our clansmen surrounding us, I feel exposed, for beyond the trackway planks there is nothing but red marred with dark patches of sedge and moss, a wide and unknowable expanse where the gods dwell and judge our every step.

  "Aren't you curious?" Asthore asks.

  "No."

  "One day you'll be tasked to carry an offering, and you won't have a choice."

  I cannot argue her on that, and so I reluctantly stay, clutching her hand as if we are still children frightened by a storm in the night.

  Ciaran begins his invocations, and one by one the offerings are dropped into the bog: grains, jewels, an iron-bladed sword, the blood of a lamb and then the lamb itself. The water ripples, as if the bog breathes, but every offering floats on the surface, refused by the gods. The fear among our gathered assembly grows as heavy as the clouds, making itself known in whispers and shuffling feet and the exchange of nervous glances. Ciaran's invocations grow more fervent; Fallon grows more pale.

  Asthore squeezes my hand. "Do you think he'll have to kill him?" Her tone carries an apprehension that was absent the first time she inquired about Fallon's fate.

  I shake my head, too unsure of my voice to speak. I do not want to see a man killed. But the laws of sacrifice are clear: if the offerings are refused, it is because the gods are displeased, and the only way to appease them is with the clan-chief's blood so that another man might better serve.

  A flurry of murmurs and anxious glances draws my attention toward our father, who crouches at the trackway's edge. "If the gods will not have the finest I can craft," he says, reaching down to pluck a broach from the water, "then my daughters shall."

  I gasp as he presses the broach into Asthore's free hand; no one has ever dared to reclaim a sacrifice before. Those refused are supposed to be gathered in a net and buried deep in the forest.

  "Blasphemer!" Fallon cries, grasping our father by the collar. "You will bring the vengeance of the gods upon us, you drunken fool."

  Blood-thick water drips down the broach and onto Asthore's hand. She stares at the broach, her brow creased, as if curious how such a thing had come to be in her hand.

  "Throw it back," I tell her, worried by the wild look in Fallon's eyes, and by the fear in our father's. "Please, Asthore, throw it back."

  "But what if --"

  Asthore's words give way to a scream. I do not see what grabs her -- a hand, a claw, a tentacle-like twist of blood water, or some other horror I cannot imagine. All I know is that our hands are still clasped as she is pulled into the bog. I topple forward, dragged along the trackway planks, splinters catching on my dress and skin, but I do not let go of Asthore's hand.

  "Asthore!" My father tries to run to us, but Fallon shoves him down onto the trackway.

  "Do not interfere!" Fallon shouts to the crowd. "If the gods claim this girl, so it must be."

  I pull at Asthore, but the bog holds her tight. It is as if she is encased to her neck in rock instead of blood water. Panicked voices surround us: our father's pleas for help, Fallon's admonishments that the gods' will must be done, Ciaran's insistence that people let him pass.

  Tears stream down Asthore's cheeks, yet as she stares up at me, a strange calm falls over her. Her eyes darken, the green of them like a cloth soaked in the midnight sky.

  "Let me go," she says. "I'm not afraid anymore."

  I shudder to see such unnatural darkness in her eyes, yet still I clutch her. "No."

  The bog waters bubble. Asthore is yanked from my grasp with such force that I almost plunge in after her, but someone pulls me back onto the trackway. Ciaran. His hood has fallen back, and he looks from me to the bog to Fallon with wide-eyed confusion.

  "This shouldn't be," he whispers.

  My father lets out an unbearable wail. I stare at the water, willing Asthore to rise, but all is stillness. Our sacrificial treasures float while my sister does not. Her outstretched hand slipping beneath the surface will be the last I ever see of her. With that thought, I sag into Ciaran's arms, my breath choked with the onset of tears.

  "It is the will of the gods," Fallon says, a quaver of uncertainty in his voice.

  I glare at him, my grief tinged with a sharp, sudden anger. I had no desire for Fallon's sacrifice before, but now that Asthore has been taken in his stead, I wish it had been so.

  I have invited Fallon to join me beside the fire, yet he looms just inside the hut's doorway, watching as I polish the bracelet he requested from my father: a delicate emerald set between two twisting bands of gold. My father has grown too weak to rise from bed, let alone finish his work, but I have learned his craft well enough to see our debts paid.

  "I am sorry for his ill health," Fallon says, looking to where my father lies twitching in yet another fitful sleep, so sweat-soaked that he has tossed aside the animal skins I earlier laid over him. "I suppose it is not surprising given circumstances."

  "You mean his drink?" The words come out more sharply than intended. For all of my usual timidity, in moments like this, bitterness finds a way of loosening my tongue. But if Fallon is taken aback by my tone, it does not show in his stiff, impassive demeanor.

  "I meant the loss of your sister," he says.

  I have trouble believing his sympathy. Though it has been nearly a year, I remember the last Day of Sacrifice clearer than any other in my life. Fallon was not wrong to have called my father a blasphemer and a drunkard that day. And perhaps I offended the gods myself by trying to pull Asthore from their grasp. But Fallon's cold insistence that no one else help her -- right or wrong, he has never shown regret, and for that I cannot forgive him.

  Fallon nods toward the bracelet in my hand. "Has your father spoken to you of its purpose?"

  "His words are unintelligible of late," I say, though that is only half true. My father awoke screaming the night before, and when I tried to calm him, he told me Asthore had been standing in the doorway, dripping red with blood water, her hand stretched toward him. But I refuse to further reduce my father's dignity by telling Fallon of his ravings.

  "The bracelet is a gift," Fallon says. "For you."

  I nearly drop the bracelet in surprise. "Me?"

  "We will have a good harvest this year. The crops look strong. The gods must be pleased with us once more." Fallon gestures toward the pile of half-finished metal workings at my feet. "After your sister's sacrifice, you should not have to toil on such things. And your father wishes for you to be taken care of."

  I do not mind such toil, as Fallon calls it, but I am too troubled by his speech to say as much. Until the gods took Asthore, I was barely worth Fallon's notice. The reasons for his attention to me since then always seemed clear enough: I am someone who can be pitied, a timid, grieving girl with a drunken father, a mother long dead, and a sister claimed by the bog. Show one such as me kindness, and how magnanimous he looks to the clan. But now, with a gift of jewelry and talk of my future comfort -- would he truly go so far as to seek my hand?

  Fallon sits beside me. He looks at me without meeting my eyes and shifts uncomfortably on the pile of ragged sheep skins. "I would have you for my wife."

  And just like that I am trapped. I had thought to have a choice in my husband. I had thought it would be Ciaran. But Fa
llon is the clan-chief; I cannot refuse him. All I can do is silently curse the gods for taking my sister and leaving in her place this man -- one who thinks me so weak that I need to be taken care of, as if it were my father sustaining me all this time instead of the other way around.

  "I am not worthy of such an honor," I say, and try not to choke on my words.

  "If your sister was a worthy sacrifice to the gods, then you are worthy of me."

  Fallon takes the bracelet from my hand and places it on my wrist. His fingers are rough, like bristle against my skin. The bracelet's emerald glints in the firelight. The finest of stones, and yet I cannot help but think that it adorns a shackle.

  Among the many trackways that cross the bog, I stop short of the one that leads to the Druid's Isle, a thick mass of tree and rock surrounded by muddy shore. I need to see Ciaran, but my dread keeps me bound in place. This trackway lies a good distance from the one where the sacrifices are made, yet still I imagine blood-soaked hands rising to grab me and pull me beneath the waters. I imagine my mouth filling with metallic-tasting blood as I am held there forever, never drowning, always screaming. To the rest of my clan, my cries will be unheard, no more than bubbles rising to the bog's surface.

  "Seara."

  The whisper passes me like a breeze. I whirl, yet see no one. In the copse of trees behind me, all is silent -- no rustling branches to suggest anyone's presence, not even a bird's song. Before me, the bog waters are still.

  "Join me, Seara."

  The voice's direction is clear this time -- it comes from the Druid's Isle. No human figure reveals itself, but I spy movement through the brush on the isle shore. A mischievous laugh floats across the bog, one I used to hear so often.

  "Asthore?"

  I take a tentative step onto the trackway. The first plank groans and flexes under my weight. I freeze. Imagination, I tell myself. The oak is solid, yet I cannot shake the feeling that just one more step and the wood will crack and splinter and I will sink through the underlying brushwood as if it were quicksand.

  "You don't have to fear this, Seara."

  There is no mistaking my sister's voice. Another rustle in the brush, another laugh, and I am running across the trackway, toward the Druid's Isle, all my fear of the bog banished by the feverish certainty that my sister is not drowned, that she never was. She swam to the Druid's Isle and there she has lived all these months, waiting for me to find her.

  "Asthore!"

  Beneath my feet, oak gives way to the mud and bog grass of the isle's shore. Where? I think, circling till I'm dizzy. Where are you? A branch cracks, and I follow the sound, pushing through a thicket. The scent of hazel fills my nose, leaves brush my skin, and I burst into a clearing.

  "Seara?"

  Not my sister's voice this time, but Ciaran's. I lurch to a stop, my cheeks flushing. I spent all morning preparing how I would tell him about my betrothal to Fallon, but with Asthore's voice now echoing in my mind, all my words have left me.

  "Are you all right?" Ciaran asks.

  "I thought I heard . . ." My words trail off, crushed under the weight of my foolishness. Had I gone as mad as my father, imagining Asthore to be alive? "I'm sorry," I say, turning to leave. "I can't --"

  "Wait, please."

  I turn back, but stare at the ground, unable to meet Ciaran's gaze.

  "Something's wrong," he says. "Whatever it is, you can tell me."

  "I heard a voice, and it sounded like . . ." I shake my head. I was mad. I had to be.

  "Asthore?" Ciaran suggests.

  I look up in surprise. There is a wariness about Ciaran's bearing, as if my reply might confirm some great fear he harbors, and so I answer him truly: "Yes."

  "I want to show you something," he says, taking my hand.

  Ciaran leads me through the isle's dense brush, then up a slope, sure of the path though I can see none. Did he hear Asthore's voice too? I wonder. But I keep silent, distracted by the feel of his hand on my own. His skin is not so rough and creviced as Fallon's, more accustomed to rites and divinations than hunting and war.

  "There," Ciaran says, pointing toward a large, moss-coated rock. He clambers to the top, almost slipping on the slick moss, then helps me up after him. We are not very high, but enough that we look down upon a large swath of the bog. A thin mist hangs over the blood water, yet in the near distance I can make out the trackway from which the sacrifices are offered.

  "There," Ciaran says again, pointing toward the shoreline from which the trackway extends. "Do you see it?"

  I do, and the sight fills me with dread. I remember how as children, Asthore and I would climb to a hillside overlooking the bog and tell each other what shapes we saw in the thick patches of moss and sedge. What I see now, though, takes no child's imagination. Where Ciaran points, the patches outline the water so that it looks as if a bloody hand is reaching toward shore. Toward our village.

  "It's not uncommon for the patterns to shift over time," Ciaran says. "The bog waters rise and fall, the ground wears away. But this, the hand -- I've never seen anything appear so suddenly, so distinctly."

  My father's nightmarish vision of Asthore suddenly seems more prophetic than mad. "My father said he saw her," I tell Ciaran. "My sister. He said she was dripping red with bog water and reaching toward him."

  Ciaran nods, offering no surprise, no judgment. "I heard her voice. It led me here -- yesterday when there was nothing of note to see, again this morning when there was."

  Could this hand in the bog be a mimicry of Asthore's, reaching out for help? I want to believe that, but the fingers bend at a claw-like angle that suggests a more sinister purpose. Join me. I shudder at the implication of those disembodied words that beckoned me across the trackway. You don't have to fear this, Seara.

  But I do fear, for I remember the darkness in Asthore's eyes just before the gods ripped her from my grasp. My next breath catches in my chest, and all I can think about is getting away to a place where I cannot see the bloody waters and the terrors they hide. I scramble down the rock only for my foot to skid on the moss until I am falling face-first onto the ground below. Moist soil presses cold against my skin; something scratches my cheek, and the scent of decaying leaves fills my nose.

  "Are you hurt?" Ciaran asks, helping me to my feet.

  I answer him with a shake of my head. My aches from the fall are slight, not nearly so sharp as my embarrassment. One moment I feel dread, the next a pained awareness of what a bedraggled, foolish mess I must look in my fear. I try to brush the dirt from my woolen dress, but all I manage to do is smear it deeper into the damp fabric.

  "You're bleeding." Ciaran takes my hand again and leads me to his hut, a round wattle-and-daub structure where we sit on a thick fur rug.

  "What does it mean?" I ask, wiping blood and dirt from my skin with the cloth he has given me. "The hand in the bog?"

  "I don't know yet." Ciaran laughs nervously. "That's a terrible answer for one whose duty it is to divine the will of the gods. But something changed when they took Asthore. Before her, the gods never claimed a living sacrifice. Only the inanimate, the dead. Now all the usual rites tell me nothing. Instead we are haunted by voices and bog hands -- signs I have never seen before."

  It should trouble me that even a druid has no idea what these things mean, yet I find some small comfort in Ciaran himself, if not in his words. He reacts to the unknown with contemplation, not with my paralyzing fear or the false, blustering courage I have seen in men like Fallon.

  "The day your sister was taken," Ciaran says, "the gods no doubt chose to punish your father for his transgression. But before that moment -- why do you think the gods refused every offering we made?"

  I finger the bracelet on my wrist. "Because they were displeased with the clan-chief."

  "And therefore by right that day Fallon should have been the sacrifice. But I . . ." Ciaran stares at the ground for a long moment, face pressed into his hands. Finally he lets out a sharp exhale and meets my gaze. "I w
aited too long, and for that I owe you a greater penance than I can give. I insisted on one too many offerings being thrown into the bog, foolishly hoping the gods would finally accept one because I was loath to perform my duty. Because I was weak. And now it is my fault that an unworthy clan-chief still lives while your sister is gone in his stead."

  "No," I say, though doubt taints my voice. Ciaran is right: he could have acted sooner. I could be sharing stories by the fire with Asthore or teasing her about how often she pricks her finger when sewing. I would be giving no thought to Fallon, for his body would be in the depths of the bog, limbs bound and throat slit.

  With that image, guilt washes over me. For all of his faults, Fallon is not an evil man. To wish him dead is a shame I can bear, something to fill the empty space left by Asthore's absence. But to wish the weight of that death upon Ciaran makes me sick at my own selfishness.

  "You couldn't have known," I say, imagining all the possibilities of that day: if the harvest had been good, if Ciaran hadn't hesitated, if my father hadn't taken the broach, if Asthore hadn't insisted that we follow the procession in the first place. "None of us could have known. The gods have never taken anyone the way they did Asthore."

  "Ignorance does not excuse my inaction."

  "It does for me." I brush a stray lock of hair from his face. "If not for you, I would have fallen in after her. The gods might have taken me then too."

  Ciaran cups my face in his hands. "I'd never let that happen. Even if it meant forswearing the gods, I would never let that happen."

  For a long moment we are silent, sitting so close that my heart beats faster. I want nothing more than to pull him closer and feel his lips brush mine as I've imagined so many times, but the weighty bracelet Fallon gave me serves as a bitter reminder that Ciaran has hesitated too long again.