The Orchardist

Sayblood's Children: Part One

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

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In this first part, isolated farmer Othniel Brack makes a startling discovery on a lonely beach.

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Photo by Sabina Music Rich on Unsplash

By God—by the Starving Sumble-God!—had I but known the very air of this place had teeth. After many days and nights of the climb away from my home, through Sumble’s stone-walled gullet, I climbed out through one of His many mouths and I felt at once that I might be swept away by the wind. Wind!

Shrike had not warned me about the wind, curse him.

It was cold, and my skin shivered at once, raising gooseflesh, tingling under my scalp. I did not know where I was. I did not know how vast it was, this place I had emerged into. I knew only cold and desolation, the ground sharp under my bare feet. It was dark around me, not quite so dark as home and easy enough to see in, yet Shrike had told me that there would be something called a sunrise, and that my large Sumble-given eyes would be unprepared to handle the brightness. I did not know how long I would have to wait for that to happen. I thought, perhaps, I should find a place to shelter before such a thing occurred.

I was being watched. That much was clear, immediately. If the air had teeth, then the soil had eyes, and a nose to sniff me out.

I staggered away from the egress on shaking legs, like a newborn thing, and bumped immediately against a shape, firm and unyielding. I fell back and shrieked in spite of myself—Dread Lady, indeed!—but it did not seem to move, this thing. I stared at it. Straight as a column, rising from the earth wrinkled and rough and pocked like stone, until it splayed in a branching green tangle very, very high up. There were many all around me, I saw. Many of them, different widths and different types of tangles, different shapes. They smelled sharp.

Trees. Yes. Trees.

The new foreign vocabulary was sweet on my tongue, sweet with Shrike’s soft voice, and the squeeze of grief nearly doubled me, but I stood again and rested my cold hands on my belly. Dread Lady, they called me once. Blood Woman. Heiress to the Underside: City, Cavern, and Sovereign Nation. I remembered these names, recalled their power, yet felt their smallness in this new place. In this world above worlds. No wonder Shrike had pitied me.

My hands warmed as they rested on the child growing within.

“Your father’s people,” I whispered, “are here, somewhere. We shall find them. And when we do, you’ll need me no more.”

I carried on, avoiding the trees, giving them a wide berth, afraid they might come to life and grab me with their strange arms if I got too close. The cold was seeping deeper into me, making me feel heavy, turning limbs to stone. The light dress I wore was not enough. I did not know it was going to be so cold.

I reached the edge of the trees where they seemed to stop, as though they stood in awe, and as I stepped out of their covering branches I stood gaping, too.

Above me, a circle of cold, white light hung in the cavernous ceiling of the darkness, pinpricks echoing around it in singles and clusters, and the light from the circle fell and glittered on an expanse of rippling water, the edges of which were not visible, spreading out and away to eternity.

Moon, I heard Shrike say in my memory. Stars. Sea.

I fell to my knees. I fell to my knees in the cold rocks and wept there, by this thing called sea. Shrike had told the truth, as if I had ever doubted.

It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

*

This is the record of the days of Sayblood, Dread Lady of Underside. Sumble’s Choicest Meal, only daughter of One Prince.

Pah! Folly. Titles all, and fallen to dust. Utter folly, they seem to me now.

This is the tale as I remember it, though time laps at my memories as waves against sand. Erodes it all away in the end.

By Sumble’s Starving Maw, I will tell it to you as I remember it. And history will make up its own mind, as it always does.

*******

Othniel Brack balanced on the creaking ladder and turned, feeling watchful eyes on his back. He studied the treeline for several long moments, thinking—not for the first time—that he saw a great hulking shape, there. Something dark and tall. But the more he stared, the more the trees appeared to behave themselves, and so he broke his gaze and turned back to the gnarled apple tree before him. He was deep within its branches, picking the last of its overripe fruit before the rain and wind of winter swept the rest to the ground to rot.

It was a bright day in late November, and the vast evergreen trees that surrounded Othniel’s small orchard were bathed in a sunshine that illuminated the glittering dew. The crisp blue of the sky above the spear-like treetops was clear with nary a cloud, and frost glimmered on the meadow grass and turned the fallen leaves to delicate shreds of thin paper.

The steam of Othniel’s breath curled from his dark-bearded lips and stirred the last leaves left on the old apple tree. As he picked, snapping the fragrant fruit from each stem and placing them into the basket slung on a strap over his shoulder, he counted the tasks still left to do. Firewood to split and stack. Roof shingles on the cabin to replace. Fences to mend. Livestock to count. This pearl-perfect weather was welcome, but wouldn’t last. He had lived in this wilderness long enough to understand that winters around here—this tiny, sea-swept island in a backward corner of an unknown land—were unrelentingly wet, often stormy, and chill to the bone. The clouds were already gathering over the ocean to the west, building a gray, heavy siege that would settle over the island until well into springtime.

It’s a bit like England, he often thought, and with no pleasure in the memory. But then again, not like England at all.

The last of the fruit within arm’s reach had been gathered, and Othniel peered up into the higher crown of the old tree. He didn’t have a ladder tall enough for such a climb, and did not relish his chances attempting to pull himself up into the branches. When you live alone, you learn to take less foolish risks.

“An offering then,” he grumbled aloud, thinking of the superstitions back in England, of the oldest apple tree in the orchard, of spirits stalking the rows, of hanging toast from the boughs and pouring cider over the roots, singing hymns. It all seemed quaint to him now, out here.

He dropped down off the ladder and readjusted the basket on his shoulder, then started down the row toward where his pony, Peg, was grazing. Othniel slung the strap of the basket over the horn of the saddle and took up the pony’s reins, leading her back down the meadow to the cabin.

Othniel’s property was large and boundaryless. This, because Ferris Island—and this smaller island beside it, where Othniel lived—were just a very tiny corner of an as-yet-unsettled backwater. Men in dingy offices back east were still arguing by candlelight over the ownership of the huge swath of mountainous, tree-glutted region along the country’s western edge, drawing lines on maps and erasing them. The first furtive trading camps were forming on the southern edge of Ferris Island, and even more so on the mainland. The Americans, the English, and the French passed through up and down the coast to Canada trapping beavers and otters for fur, and the cedar canoes of Native families slid through the channels on their traditional paths, foraging and fishing in their seasonal rhythms.

And through it all, Othniel Brack quietly built his home. No one had told him yet to leave, and so he remained there in blissful solitude.

In the five years he had lived on the southern end of the small island, he had managed to build a handsome hand-hewn cabin and a few simple outbuildings. He had built paddocks and traded for livestock: chickens, geese, turkeys, two goats, two pigs, and the bay roan pony he called Peg. He grew a simple kitchen garden and a modest orchard, and anything he didn’t have he traded for with those who passed through, which happened often enough throughout the year.

Except winter. In winter, no one came. In winter, he was on his own.

The first few years, this sense of being utterly alone and without help in the gray and rain had been nearly maddening. But Othniel had grown used to it. Even craved it.

As he led Peg down to the cabin, the feeling of being watched continued to nag at his back, but he did not turn around. And when he neared the cabin, he saw a figure moving out of the woods toward the house. He startled briefly, causing Peg to knicker, then recognized the man’s limping gait. It was only Bill.

Othniel sighed. He waved a hand in the air to show Bill that he had seen him, but Bill did not acknowledge it. The man just limped across the yard to Othniel’s front porch and settled himself there on the step, waiting.

Bill was never in any rush, so Othniel decided not to hurry, either. He led Peg down and around to the stable and unsaddled her, removing the basket and giving her one of the apples as a reward. He left her there with fresh hay and carried the basket out into the sunshine to the cabin, where Bill was waiting on the steps.

Bill was what some may uncouthly call a “wild man”. He lived in the woods of the island, wandering here and there. Not a trapper or a hunter, and Othniel had never worked out where exactly the man sheltered himself. He wore old clothes that stank of soil and seawater and the odor of unwashed skin, and his golden beard was always wild and unkempt under big, blue, rheumy eyes. That said, Othniel had never really minded him much. Bill was pleasant enough in small doses and mostly kept to himself.

“It’s the Brack himself, so it is,” Bill said with a smile, as Othniel approached.

“Hallo, Bill,” Othniel replied, climbing the porch steps past the wild man and setting the basket of apples near the front door, so he wouldn’t forget it. “Tea?”

Bill did so dearly love tea. He nodded up at Othniel. “Tea for a body is well enough.”

His Lancaster brogue was stronger than Othniel’s, broad and buzzing, and it reminded Othniel of voices from his childhood. Ghosts, now. Apt, since Bill—though very much alive—always seemed to be looking at something that no one else could see.

Othniel went inside and settled the kettle on the woodstove to boil the water, put another log into the iron beast’s jaws, then pulled the tea caddy down from a kitchen shelf. As he waited for the water to heat, he stood in the open doorway and lit his pipe, staring out across the porch steps, the yard, the distant woods.

“Going to be a cold stretch, I reckon,” he said, absently.

Bill nodded. “Gathering already.” He paused, then, and considered. “Did I already speak with you today? Earlier?”

Othniel shook his head. “Not today, Bill. First time, today.”

“Ah. One never knows.”

“Something on your mind?”

Bill cocked his head, gave Othniel a cheeky glance, tapped the side of his nose with a soiled finger. “Always something on Old Bill’s mind. But today, yes. Something. She’s been gossiping about you, you know.”

Othniel had long since learned that when Bill said “she” he meant the island itself. This had taken quite a lot of early misunderstanding to figure out.

“Oh? And what is she saying?”

“She’s saying a storm is coming.”

Othniel squinted at the sky, puffed at his pipe. “I don’t think so, old chap,” he said. “I think she might be wrong about that one. Wouldn’t be the first time, would it?”

Bill shook his head. “It’s not an exact art, you know. This seeing it all at once. Backward and forward, living in circles.”

“I know.” Othniel didn’t really know, but he liked to make Bill feel as though he did. He had upset the wild man more than once by asking too many questions without easy answers.

“You’re going to let it in, Brack,” Bill said, quietly. “Whatever it is, you’re going to let it in. For good or ill. Winter is long, and blood shows easy enough on snow.”

Despite the chill down his back at the words, Othniel tried to smile down at Bill like one might placate a child. “Doesn’t often snow around here. I think I’ve only seen snow twice since I’ve lived here, and it never seems to lay.”

Bill turned and looked up at Othniel for a long, long moment. Othniel’s casual resolve dimmed, but only slightly. Bill wasn’t dangerous. He was daft, certainly, but not dangerous. Othniel met the wild man’s eyes with stubborn insistence.

“It’s just winter that you’re feeling, Bill,” he said. “And if it’s that you’re worried about, you should go back to the big island, or down to the mainland. Find a barn to settle into, wait it out. Nothing says you have to hide in the trees and starve all winter. You’re a wanderer. You’re every bit as free to wander to safety as away from it.”

Othniel was careful not to give Bill the notion that he should wait out the winter in his own barn. Not that he begrudged Bill the shelter. He just preferred the solitude.

Bill’s gaze softened, blue eyes filling briefly with tears, and he said, fragile as egg shell, “Sometimes I wonder about it all, Brack.”

Othniel nodded, blew out a cloud of fragrant smoke. “I think that’s the fate of all men, Billy.”

An expression of disappointment fluttered across Bill’s face, as though Othniel had utterly misunderstood him. He turned back to gaze at the view of the yard, the chickens and geese scratching in the wagon ruts, the songbirds leaping from tree to tree eating the last of the blazing red mountain ash berries.

“It’s already here,” Bill said at last, with something like grief in his voice. “She’s told me. She’s whispering. It’s already here, and it came in from the sea.”

*******

When it was ready, Othniel and Bill had drank their tea largely in silence. Othniel had made small talk, but Bill would say nothing more of any importance. Eventually, tea cup drained, Bill had stood without fanfare and wandered across the yard and back into the shadowy line of the trees where he vanished like a deer, as was his way.

In the quiet that followed, Othniel had continued with his chores. Packing the apples into the coldest corner of the cabin along with the onions and potatoes in their burlap bags and baskets, then proceeding with the livestock count. He cleaned up the cabin a bit, washed the teacups, swept the floor. But all the while, he struggled to get Bill’s words out of his head.

The truth was, this winter did feel different. The feeling of being watched, the creeping sense of dread. Othniel was not especially superstitious, but his time working on ships as a younger man still left traces of mysticism in his memory. He had survived four winters on his own and was about to embark on his fifth. By this time, he felt like he had built a healthy routine, had everything carefully planned and designed to ensure his own survival. There were few things he felt he could not face.

But something nagged at him. There are always storms you can’t plan for. He wished Bill was better able to speak without riddles, without gaps.

Gathering already.

It’s already here.

Blood shows easy enough on snow.

The words were heavy, like spells, like witchcraft. Othniel shuddered in the midst of his tasks. He could not push the words away. They stuck and stayed.

At just past midday, Othniel could ignore his instinct no longer. He saddled Peg back up and turned the pony away from the cabin and the property, through the woods to the place where the sea met the island’s shore.

The east coast of the little island was nearly always bitter cold. Here, the wind whipped against the unsheltered stone, bending the trees into twisted shapes and turning the waves choppy. The only place worse was the northern point, as far as Othniel could remember, which is why he had chosen to make his homestead so far south.

He rode along the coastline for a while, Peg’s withers twitching in the bite of the cold wind off the sea, and realized that he didn’t really know what he was looking for. Mostly he was trying to convince himself that Bill was simply addled, confused. That there was nothing to be afraid of, and no storm on the way aside from the ones winter was already crafting for them. These would be harsh enough without adding spirits and portents to the mess.

The shore along this stretch rose steadily, the coast heightening into a bluff, and you could peer down a gradual fall of slippery rock to a cove-like beach down below. Othniel sat in the saddle and looked out from here, across the water. There was a long, distant smudge of land to the east. On the maps he had seen, this appeared to be another large island. Othniel looked past it, then over his shoulder north. The sky was all unbroken blue, not a cloud in sight except the usual haze over the far-off water. If a storm was coming, it would not be today.

Convincing himself that this was satisfaction enough, he lowered his gaze and prepared to click Peg back along the beach.

As he looked into the cove, however, he noticed something on the beach down there. A snip of paleness, like a crumpled bedsheet across the rocks.

Puzzled, Othniel dismounted from Peg and let her wander to nibble the hardy herbs that grew along the bluff. He picked his way carefully down, the stones slippery with mist and spray, until he dropped onto the pebbly beach.

He approached the shape, rocks and barnacles and bits of crab shell and old mussels crunching under his boots, but even from this distance he could see that it was not a bedsheet at all.

It was a body.

Othniel turned, on instinct, to look out at the water, shielding his eyes from the sun. It would be unusual for a corpse to wash into this cove, thanks to the currents. He saw no ships out on the water, no wreckage, no sign of a beached boat.

He moved faster now and approached the body, which was curled shell-like in a protective posture. It was a woman, wearing a simple shift dress, a pale faded green color. Her skin was corpse-white, sickly gray, and her hair—lying around her head like a halo—was also the white of bleached bone. There were raised marks on her flesh that Othniel initially took for scars, but realized with a start were designs: swirls and characters, tiny pictograms. And, just visible through her thin, slightly parted lips, Othniel could see that her teeth were sharpened, like an animal’s.

Witch. Selkie. Shapeshifter.

Othniel’s heart pounded and he backed up, tripped on a piece of driftwood, and landed on his tailbone with a strangled cry.

This cry woke the dead.

The woman’s eyes opened—big, strange, pale eyes—and she immediately shut them again, covering her odd face with her white arm, groaning, weeping.

“It’s too bright,” she sobbed, softly. “By Sumble, it’s too damned bright.”

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