Ghosts and Spirits

Sayblood's Children: Part Five

Sayblood’s Children is a folk horror/romance novella, serialized in twelve parts. This is Part Five.

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Previously, the island rebelled against Othniel’s decision and left him lost, wondering if he made the right choice.

In this chapter, Othniel learns what forces he is up against by keeping Sayblood on the island.

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Photo by Joshua Bartell on Unsplash

Above.

It was a word that took on an intoxicating quality, warm-blush-brown like Shrike’s skin, bright green like his eyes, and I drank it in. Whenever the poet came to visit that underground ballroom he would come to sit beside me, and I craved those hours. Hours of talk. Not about gossip and fashion or tinctures and drinkings but about things I had never heard of, before. Whenever he came to visit, I ignored all others.

Above. He lived above. Outside of Sumble’s body, in the place where I assumed that gods must walk and sleep and eat and lie together.

“Are you a god?” I asked him once, and he laughed.

“Ask not a poet if they are a god,” he replied. “They are as likely to weep as they are to lie.”

He would say things like this, speak words I had never heard before, telling me tales that could not possibly be true. His dialect was unfamiliar, singsong and light.

“There is something above your ceiling, Dread Lady,” he said, always polite. “Something immense. Something colorful. Millions upon millions of people of all types and shapes, places dripping with history and culture. Forests and animals and meadows and stars. The moon, the sun. And the sea. Have you ever heard of the sea, Dread Lady?”

He was mocking me. I knew, because it was too much. But I took his bait, though I pulled back, felt the hook tear at my lip. “What is the sea?”

“Water,” he said. “Water filled with salt. A vast expanse of it, so huge you cannot see the end, full of creatures. Some days it is flat and calm and some days it is angry and wild. It disappears into a misty horizon, and we sail upon it in vessels, called ships. We travel. We yearn.”

I felt the stirring of hate within me, confusion and enticement mingling in my young fluttering heart, menacing like a shadow. I let the spite rise up in me like power. Dread Lady, indeed. Left hand and right hand—Kysiel and Vaziel, twin thin-bladed children, and thirsty—longed to strike his throat. I could think of a few choice thornbushes where this liar’s magical mask would look most fetching, his blood dripping down to water the dust.

(I see now that my anger was a child’s anger, with years and experience and training to sharpen it into threat. That though I was a woman—years being immaterial in Sumble’s belly, perhaps twenty-five or twenty-six?—my mind was fixed only on appetite. Selfish, though I could not have known it then.)

I asked him, “Why? Why do you come down here into our dark and colorless depths if it is all so incredible and miraculous Above? Is it only to mock us? Is it only to mock me?”

The mask dipped. He had caught the hint of my anger and knew the dangers. Perhaps he saw the glint of the twins at my belt, hidden beneath my red robes. This pleased me, and softened my wrath. It is good to be feared. He knew—and I knew—that if it came to it, Sumble would favor me. That his flesh would feed the tunnels, a choice meal. That I would not even blink to make it so.

“I come here,” he replied, finally, “because it is best to work here when you do what I do.”

“And what work is that, oh Marvelous Shrike? What does a poet do?”

To this he smiled.

“Walk in hell,” he replied, “to carry souls to heaven.”

*******

As he led Othniel and Sayblood through the storm, the wild man—Bill—refused to slow or turn. He navigated deftly through the soaked underbrush, the lashing wind, the hiss and groan of the branches above as they fluttered and clapped. The sea was invisible somewhere behind them but the roar of it was a rumble under their feet. The very air was charged with wrath.

The only other sound was Bill, speaking aloud to someone Othniel could not see, a continuous conversation—an argument, even—tinged with sour disappointment.

Othniel held Sayblood’s arm as they stumbled along, helping her over roots and stones, calling out to Bill when he seemed to get too far ahead of them. But despite his impatience and his unwillingness to acknowledge them, the wild man was true to his word; it did not take as long as Othniel thought it would before they entered a patch of woods he recognized and the muddy trail he had worn down with his own boots and Peg’s hooves. Wearied but relieved they followed Bill into the cleared land where Othniel’s cabin sat, the smoke fluttering thinly from the stovepipe in the guttering wind.

Bill sat on the porch in his preferred spot under the cover of the roof while Othniel ushered Sayblood inside. The two of them were soaked clear through to the skin and she was shaking under the thick, heavy coat.

He pulled one of the chairs beside his kitchen table over to the fire and settled her in it. He knelt beside the stove, feeding it well-seasoned kindling to stoke it higher, lift the heat in the little cabin, then went quickly into the back storage room to gather some dry clothing for her, a new oversized shirt and a woman’s winter petticoat, and thick wool stockings. Another mismatched mess, but they would have to do.

He brought these to her and she took them gratefully.

“I’ll turn my back,” he said, and went to the corner where his own dry clothes were folded in a short chest of drawers. There followed the short, frustrated shuffling of two people changing as quickly as they were able with numb fingers, and Othniel did not turn back around until the sounds of struggling with fabric and her sighs of exasperation were finished.

“What shall I do with these?” she asked, pointing to the wet clothes on the floor.

“I’ll hang them to dry,” he said, “but in a moment. My hands are numb.”

She looked at her own slim fingers. “Mine are, as well. Why?”

“It’s the cold,” he said, beckoning her to the stove. “Come and stand here.”

She did, and the two of them stood beside the fire for a while, holding out their hands until the blood returned to them in sharp, painful rivulets. Sayblood had tied her sodden white hair up and away from her face with a short stretch of twine she had found on Othniel’s table, and though she squinted in the light of the flames she did not turn away, clearly valuing the warmth more than she cursed the glow.

“You’ll not have felt rain before, I imagine,” Othniel said with a shiver of surprise, realizing it for the first time. “If you really do come from below the ground.”

She shook her head. “No rain. No sun. No wind.”

“Do you know of these things, where you come from?”

“We are not told about them. But yes, I know of them.”

“How?”

She paused. “I was taught. One of your…well, someone taught me.”

The flicker of longing in her voice gave him pause, and he recognized grief when he heard it, so he did not press.

“I fear that you chose the wrong season to visit this place,” he said, softly. “Winter has teeth that are sharper even than yours.”

“Season?” she said.

Othniel considered. How to explain seasons to someone to whom the sun itself is a stranger? Does she understand the globe, and space, and the passage of time? Does she understand seed, soil, and harvest?

“As days come and go,” he said, thinking as he spoke, taking care, “the sun’s movement in the sky will change. Sometimes we draw closer to it, sometimes further away. This changes everything around us. The weather—rain, sun, wind—the temperature, the behavior of the plants and the animals. Right now the season is winter, and everything is cold and wet and many of the plants have ceased to grow and the animals are resting.”

She listened intently, an eager student. He admired this about her; the unknown seemed to inspire only curiosity in her. “What happens after that?” she asked.

“Spring. Spring, the season of miracles. The earth will warm little by little, plants and trees will bud and grow, babies will be born…”

Here he paused, the words dying on his lips. “Your child,” he said, “how long have you…how long…?”

“I scarcely know,” she said. “I know nothing about what is happening to me. Only that there is a child inside. Where I come from, such things are not discussed, and I had no mother to ask.”

She said it matter-of-factly, even coldly, but Othniel swallowed hard. He was no expert in such things either, but she certainly looked far along to him. Weeks away, perhaps?

The very idea of her giving birth here, isolated, in the winter…

There was a sharp tap on the cabin door and Othniel turned, forgetting entirely that Bill had been waiting on the porch. The wild man was peering through the slightly-ajar door; beyond him the skies were still stormy and dark, low and sulking.

“Must a body wrack and rend the very heavens for a simple cup of tea?” Bill asked, still in an uncharacteristically foul humor.

Othniel tried to chuckle, to soften it, but Bill did not smile.

“Yes, yes. Tea.” Othniel set the kettle on the hob to boil, but by the time he turned back around Bill had closed the door and went out again.

Sayblood settled herself back on the chair, wringing her hands in her lap.

“Who is he?” she asked, eyeing the door.

Othniel sighed and pulled another chair over beside the fire, putting polite distance between them. “A neighbor,” he said, with gentle humor. “Bill. No idea what his surname is, and he probably doesn’t remember, anyway. He lives on the island, wanders here and there. He’s been here as long as I have and probably much longer.”

Sayblood murmured, “He hates me, but he is not afraid of me.”

The idea of this seemed to disturb her, which in turn disturbed him.

Othniel had glimpsed this propensity in her already, even though they had only known each other for a short time. A flicker of bloodthirst in her eyes, or a morbid turn of phrase. Even earlier that day, the look on her face in the woods, the efficient way she slipped the blade from his belt and threw it into the trees. He had no doubt that if she had meant to strike Bill, she would have. There was a practiced ease in her handling of the knife; the only equivalent he had ever seen had been soldiers and sailors trained for combat of one kind or another.

He decided to keep that in mind.

“Bill is…a bit odd,” Othniel said, finally, “but he’s no danger.”

She nodded reluctantly, and then—in a move that was all too human—she yawned, sharp teeth bared to the fire.

He realized then that they were facing down the prospect of another night together, and nights untold after. Whatever else he would have to prepare for, she could not sleep again on the floor.

“I only have one bed,” he said, “but you are welcome to it.”

She considered. The bed was in the corner, a wood-and-rope frame he had made himself and a feather mattress and bedding he had bartered for two years earlier. He did not know why she hesitated to accept the gesture until her big, pale eyes flicked to the doorway into the back, where he kept his storage.

“What is back there?” she asked.

“It’s only a place to store things,” he said. “Not a pleasant place to sleep.”

She lifted her arm slightly to inhale the smell of the sleeve she wore. “Is it not where you keep these clothes?”

He nodded in undisguised confusion.

“It smells like home,” she said faintly. “Like dirt and stone.”

From the root vegetables, the alliums, the grains he kept back there. It did smell earthy in the little room, something he never would have considered a benefit. Still he said, “It is dark in there, without windows—”

But as he said the words he chuckled and stopped himself. “No windows. No sunshine to wake you. Now that suits you fine, doesn’t it?”

She returned his smile with a warmth he was not expecting.

Othniel said, “There’s no bed. I’ll have to make one.”

The kettle steamed the boil and he stood to make the tea for himself, for Sayblood, and for Bill.

“I have a bargain for you,” he said. “Tonight, sleep on the bed in here, and I’ll sleep in the barn. Tomorrow I’ll set to work building you your own bed in the little room.”

She agreed, and he handed her the steaming teacup. She cradled it in her strange hands without confusion, inhaling the smell with relish, greeting an old friend.

“You know of tea?” he said. He felt that nothing would surprise him about her, but this certainly did.

She nodded. “Oh yes,” she said. “Tea I recognize. Even in Sumble’s lowest depths, even in the darkest caverns, there was always the comfort of tea.”

*******

Leaving Sayblood to continue to warm and dry herself before the fire, Othniel brought the cup of tea for himself and Bill out to the porch and sat down beside the wild man. Despite his ill mood, Bill took the cup with his usual gratitude.

“So,” Othniel said. “Sayblood is your prophesied trouble, is she?”

Bill peered hard at Othniel through the gathering late afternoon dark. “Jest at your peril, Brack. That woman is a danger, and everyone knows it but you.”

“What would you have me do?” Othniel asked, ignoring the portent of the word everyone. “Cast her into the sea? Let her wander lost in the woods all winter until she dies of cold? What would you have me do, Bill?”

“It’s not what I would have you do.” Bill paused, looked out at the rain beyond the porch roof. “You’ve seen them watching, haven’t you?”

The dark, hulking shapes. Keeping just out of sight.

Othniel sipped his tea, tried to hide the shake in his hands. “Who are they?”

“The island. They are the island. They are the island’s fingers and toes, eyes and ears. Spirits, all, and good neighbors when they’re respected. But you have offended them, Brack.”

“What have I done—”

“She should not be here.” Bill’s blue eyes were full of anguish, his voice raspy with frustration. “Hell and all perdition take me, I should not be here. You should not be here, for all that. This island was happy enough without us, and we…we offend her, with our footsteps, our fields, our cabins and cows and chimneys and...and we’ll pay our own price for that. We each will pay our own price.”

He paused, swallowing as if he was about to weep, before he said, “But that woman in there…she is something else. She is not like us. And she will draw doom of a different sort to us and to this island. Why should the island not hate her, and you?”

Othniel shuddered in spite of himself. He did not like to believe Bill’s words, but the wild man had never said anything like this, before. He had been ever-faithful to give Othniel the island’s news, always prophesying the practicalities: approaching bad weather, crop failures, the arrival of supply ships, that sort of thing. But never this. Never anything so morbid, never anything so frightening or mysterious.

Othniel set his cup down on the porch beside him and said, “She’s with child, Bill. Lost and alone, and she has no one else. No one wishes more than I that this lot had not fallen to me. All I wanted was a quiet winter to myself. And perhaps I shall still have it, if a plan presents itself to bear Sayblood safely away from this place. But until that happens, it is not in me to forsake a lost woman and her child. I cannot. I…I could not bear the shame.”

Like the rising of a phantom in the gloaming he could see his mother’s face again, lined with exhaustion and the folly of hope and love, and this vision closed his throat against another word.

“Speeches, speeches.” Bill dismissed the force of Othniel’s feeling by draining his cup—tea gone quickly cold in the storm—and standing. “Listen to Bill or not. I have done what you asked and brought you safely home.”

“Where will you go in this weather?”

Bill laughed, a bitter sound. “Where does Bill ever go? Away. Away. But I’ll always come back around. It is my call to come back around, always and ever.”

And with that, the wild man left the porch, buffeted by the grasping wind as he crossed the yard until he disappeared into the black trees.

Othniel watched him go. The night slid down with the rain.

He took the teacups inside.

*******

The barn was not the worst place to sleep. Othniel had slept there many times in the five years he had lived on the island, mostly on nights when the goats were preparing to give birth and he wanted to be nearby. The walls and roof were well sealed and there was straw aplenty, thick blankets folded neatly, and a good lantern with a heavy reservoir filled with oil and a new-trimmed wick. He had brought his rifle out with him, just in case, and set it within reach. He would be happy enough for one night, or however long it took to build Sayblood a bed.

The sound of the animals settling was comforting, too. Peg the pony’s soft breathing, the chickens fluffing their feathers as they crooned themselves to sleep, the near-purr of the pigs in their corner. Outside the storm had not abated, as if the island’s grief at Othniel’s infraction had turned from anger to wailing.

“Rage if you must,” he muttered as he settled himself into the straw. “She stays, unless you have another idea.”

He smiled wryly. Here he was, turning into Bill. Soon enough he would talking aloud to the trees and stones, to the very spirits of the earth.

Othniel had pulled the blanket over himself in his thick bed of straw and was just beginning to fall into sleep, a backward-slipping into the dark of his weariness, when a quiet voice beside his left ear spoke.

“Othniel.”

His eyes opened and he peered around him. Except for the low guttering of the lantern the barn was utterly dark.

He picked up the light and cast its glow around but saw nothing except the glimmering eyes of his own animals in their enclosures and stalls, briefly awakened by his movement.

It happened sometimes, in the place between sleep and waking, he reasoned. The mind plays tricks; one hears a voice or a sound, and it isn’t real.

Othniel set the lantern back down and slipped under the blankets. But before he closed his eyes, he thought he saw movement on the far side of the lantern’s glow, just a shiver, like someone running past the light.

He sat up again.

“Sayblood? Bill?”

No reply.

His hand reached for the rifle.

“Whoever is there,” he said, “declare yourself. I’ll not be guilty for injuring you, if you do not speak.”

The shuddering in the air on the opposite side of the circle of lantern light began to coalesce, to turn to shape. Soft-edged.

It was slow, like high clouds shifting in the sky, but soon the vague shape clarified: it formed the lower body of a man crouching, immaterial and wavering. His elbows rested on his knees, his hands loose. His face was just outside of the clarity of the light, but Othniel could see a dim reflection of empty eyes, the dark void of hair, the firm line of a solemn mouth.

Something was dripping from the ghostly form’s clothes and hands onto the floor of the barn. Something dark and glinting.

“You see me,” came the voice, again.

Othniel seized the rifle and pointed it at the shape of the man. He was so taut with fear that he could not speak, could only make a grunting sound, his heart drumming madly against his ribcage as if attempting to flee.

“You see now. Ask your question,” the form of the man said. “Speak it now, for these opportunities seem brief and ephemeral.”

Suddenly, Othniel recognized the voice. It was the same one that had spoken beside his ear, convincing him to bring Sayblood back home, not to let her board The Tern. Giving it body, now, he was surprised to realize that the accent was familiar to him. The ghost’s voice had the singsong lilt of an Irishman, clear as a bell.

This human detail, this truth in the midst of the otherworldly, was deeply disturbing.

“Who are you?” Othniel whispered.

The ghostly man’s empty eyes did not blink.

“Call me Shrike,” he said.

Shrike. Sayblood had said that name on the first night, when she rose from the floor as if in a dream. She had spoken this name as she stared over Othniel’s left shoulder.

Shrike, you bleed! God! The thorns!

He could still see the expression on her face, the wide eyes.

You bleed!

It was blood, dripping from the ghost’s body, running in tiny streams from wounds that Othniel could not see.

He swallowed hard, feeling as if a stone was lodged there. What does one ask a ghost?

“Why do you visit me?”

Shrike tilted his head, a slight movement. “The woman in your house is carrying my child. And child or no, the woman in your house…means everything to me.”

The voice sighed and shuddered, and a high-pitched shriek cut through the night, startling the animals, raising a frightened cry from them. Altogether it was the sound of unearthly longing and pain. An otherworld dirge.

Othniel felt the goosepimples flutter along his skin. He lowered the rifle.

“What is it that you want from me?”

“They are coming.” The ghost did not blink. “They are coming to find her. Her father and all the forces of his hell; they cannot let her live. Her survival—our child’s survival—is an insult to them. She is stronger than you know, but she cannot survive alone. She will need help. She will need…”

Shrike voiced a sigh, discordant harmony with the howling wind. “She will need family.”

The word was pain, to Othniel. The word was anathema. But he was not about to explain this to a ghost. Solitude was his only comfort, out here. Solitude was his best defense.

“I am only one man,” he said. “And any family she might have here is far away from this place. What can I do?”

“Do what you must. Do what you can. Only do not fail.”

Shrike’s empty eyes were fixed on Othniel, and the storm raged outside as if to drown out his words, but the island’s wrath could not defeat the ghost’s grief, could not shout it down. Even so, he was beginning to disappear.

“Wait—” Othniel said, panic rising in his breast. He had more questions. He needed to know what he was supposed to do.

“Do not fail,” the ghost repeated as the tattered edges of its form faded into the dark corners of the barn, his voice slipping away. “Do not fail. Do not fail…”

And soon the ghost was gone, the lantern revealing nothing but the bales of hay and horsetack and buckets of grain. The animals shuffled in their pens. Rain pelted the roof and the wind sought entrance, found none.

Othniel sat for a long time in the glow of the flickering lantern, hearing the echo of the ghost’s desperate plea in his mind, a distant whisper beside his left ear, where it seemed the ghost would remain. At least for now.

Do not fail. An impossible goal, when he did not know for certain what he was up against. Only one man, alone against demons and spirits, aggrieved ghosts and supernatural visions. This was not the world he knew. Othniel had known much in his lifetime, but never anything like this.

Perhaps I am truly going mad, he thought. There was a sinister kernel of possibility in it.

However, when Othniel finally rose to blow out the lantern utterly, he paused.

In the place where the ghost had crouched he found crimson droplets of fresh blood, already seeping and staining into the scarred floorboards.

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