Silver

The sound of the water on her push pole was almost imperceptible as Edhen propelled her skiff through the reeds. Hair sticking to her damp neck, Edhen hoped the mud she had covered herself in to blend in with the night was thin enough to not fall off in chunks as she tried to keep her movements to a minimum. She saw a flurry of motion to her side and dropped into a crouch, the skiff pole blending into the reeds of the marsh as she stilled the craft’s progress. A stork took off into the air, and she watched in amazement as she saw it only had two legs—a rarity these days. She’d have to tell the Mamm when she returned home so the scouts could come back and check if there were eggs this season, and if the shells were holding. This could mean a good year. This could change things.

Squatting low on the boat, Edhen slowed as she approached the edge of the reeds. Crossing the open expanse of the delta was dangerous at the best of times, but this season the henwours had been active, and a little too close for comfort. Since The Great Rising many seasons ago, the floods had determined how close they could get, the water keeping them at a safe distance. But the drought over the past few seasons had been...hard. On everyone.

Edhen was steeling herself to push off into the open when something caught her eye again. But this time it was on the water, something floating just beneath the surface, glinting in the light of the half moon. A strange, unnatural shape, too stiff and irregular to be a piece of algae. Before she could stop herself, she found her fingers stretching out to reach a few inches below the surface of the water to grab—

Something shot out of the water from beneath the strange object that had caught her eye. She barely had time to register that it was a hand before it closed around her neck and squeezed, and everything went dark.

________________________________________________

Edhen could tell she wasn’t on the water anymore. She could feel the rough bark of a tree at her back and the cool damp of riverbank mud underneath her feet. She kept her eyes closed even as she tried to gauge more about her surroundings using her other senses. Through her eyelids she saw the warm flicker of firelight somewhere in front of her, and the rustling of bodies moving. At least three of them. Her hands were stretched out to her sides, each wrist bound by some kind of rough rope and keeping her arms out in a T. They must be attached on the other end to more trees. Her feet were bound together, but not to anything else. ‘At least there’s that.’

She must be on the other side of the delta. ‘Kyj,’ she swore to herself.

One of the bodies she could hear moving around the fire snapped a branch to break it into the flames, and she couldn’t help the small startle she gave at the sound. She kept still and quiet in the seconds that followed, praying that no one had noticed, until she heard a voice say, ‘Looks like someone has joined us.’

Edhen’s heart jumped into her throat. She knew that they were different, that they were nothing like the benyns, but it actually hearing them was a shock. They spoke with a different dialect, different stresses on the words, but it was the voice she wasn’t prepared for. She’d never heard a henwour speak, and their voices were so different. Deeper. The one who spoke first had a rough voice, like the rocks in the riverbed that separated benyns from henwours. She heard a strange clinking sound in front of her face, and a large shadow blocked the glow of the fire. A rough hand grasped her chin and forced her face up, and he spoke again.

“No use pretending you’re still out, vamm. We saw you jerk awake.”

Edhen slowly opened her eyes, taking in the henwour’s face. It was different too, but she was a little more prepared for this part, having seen it in benyn paintings. Broad features, rough like his voice, with thick, dark hair covering almost the whole lower half of his face. The half that wasn’t obscured by his beard was lined, like old worn leather.

But then she focused on the thing that had made the noise, the thing that had gotten her into this situation in the first place—the henwour had dropped a small object from his fist, suspended by a thin...rope? It didn’t look like any rope she was familiar with, and had made that strange sound. It was now glinting and swinging back and forth in front of her. A material she’d never seen before, bright like fire but different. Almost like the moon, but with a cooler glow than that. It was shaped like an arrowhead, or the leaf of the lime tree in the garden at home.

The henwour was speaking again, to the others behind him this time.

She could see his companions behind him now as her eyes adjusted to their shadowed faces. The one directly in front of her and one of the others were older than her, with the same number of years as the Mamm, or maybe more. The third one was younger, his face not quite as obscured by the hair that covered the faces of the other two. She could see his mouth, and his wide eyes.

“The Taa was right—they like shiny things. Like stupid birds. Great idea to use it as bait, Koll.” He threw this remark over his shoulder to the younger henwour.

“Though I think I still have mud in my nose from waiting under the surface with a hollow reed in my mouth.” He spat on the ground, and turned to look at Edhen again.

“Took you long enough to get to the edge of the reeds, vamm. We had to wait almost until the tide changed.”

The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.

“Don’t call me that.”

They all looked startled by her outburst—whether because they were as unfamiliar with benyn voices as she was with henwour’s, or because the words came out strong and fierce and low, without the shake that she was afraid might creep in. She was scared, but didn’t want them to hear it.

“What did you say?”

She couldn’t tell if he was daring her to repeat herself or if he really didn’t understand what she had said. Maybe her accent was different enough that he couldn’t decipher what she had said. She raised her eyes to meet those of the henwour in front of her. He was taller, but not by much, and she forced herself not to blink or look away.

“I said. Don’t. Call. Me. That. I’m not a...I’m not that.”

He looked disbelieving, and slightly amused, although there was also a hard anger in his eyes. He dragged those eyes down her body, from her face down to between her legs, where he directed his next comment.

“You may not be a vamm, but you have one. And to us that’s the same thing.”

She glanced at his two companions. The older henwour had the same look, slightly amused but ultimately unforgiving. But the younger henwour looked...scared. She couldn’t tell if he was scared of her or scared of the other two henwours. Probably both.

Her attention was brought back the henwour in front of her as he once again wrapped his large and callused hand around her throat.

“Now, unless you want me to squeeze you out again, I suggest you shut your mouth for the night. We’re taking you back to the Taa as soon as it gets light.”

He put pressure on her neck with his hand as he leaned in, his hot, fen-like breath on her face.

“I suggest you rest as much as you can while hog-tied like this tonight. It’s a long journey tomorrow, and there’s not much rest to be had where you’re going.”

Panic shot through Edhen like a stinging nettle but she didn’t look away from the henwour as he walked back to the fire. The older henwour was laying out a bedroll, but the younger one was still staring at her with his mouth slightly agape. He had clearly had never seen a benyn in person before and was struggling to take in the ways in which you were different.

“Koll, stop staring and set up watch. And don’t touch her, the Taa wants her intact when she arrives.” The one who had manhandled you addressed the younger henwour with an indifference that indicated that this Koll was here to do the other henwour’s bidding without question.

“Ea, mester,” Koll acceded softly.

Edhen was surprised that he used the old language to address the older henwour. Back home, only the aged benyns still used old Cornish. They were the only ones who could recall a time before The Great Rising, when there were roads instead of marshes, and animals without mutations were more common than those with abnormalities.

Despite his ‘mester’s’ orders, Koll still looked at Edhen often as his older counterparts settled into their bedrolls. He let the fire get low, and it was down to just embers by the time the moon had moved to the other end of the sky. Edhen tried to let her body relax as much as possible in her bound position, the rope on her wrists cutting deep and the one around her ankles definitely too tight to wriggle out of.

Koll moved so quietly Edhen almost didn’t notice him until he was right next to her. She jerked into as much of a defensive position as she could while still restricted by her bonds, but he put both his hands up, palms facing her.

“I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not going to touch you, I promise.”

He kept his voice quiet, almost a whisper, but it was different from the other henwour’s. It was a little higher, softer, smoother. Gentler.

Edhen looked him in the eyes. They were still wide, taking in her beardless face, and in the dim glow of the remaining embers, his irises looked almost completely black.

Her voice came out less fiercely this time, betraying some of her fear.

“What do they want with me?”, she whispered, allowing her arms to show their shakiness. For some reason, she didn’t mind this one—Koll—seeing what this experience was doing to her. She hoped it made him feel guilty.

It took a moment for him to answer, as if the answer was hard to get out of his throat. Even in his different accent, she had understood him perfectly up until now. But the last word of his sentence was foreign to her.

“They want you...to make a mab.”

Her lack of recognition must have shown on her face because he frowned, a wrinkle appearing between his eyebrows.

"You don’t have this word across the river? Mab?”

“No,” she responded. “What does it mean? I’m a hunter and a fisher, not a maker. I don’t weave or sew, I don’t know how to make whatever this...mab is.”

He shook his head, looking down at his feet, but he didn’t look like he was laughing at her. He looked...pained.

“No,” he whispered. “Not that kind of making. A mab is a child. A henwour, like me. The Taa wants a son.”

Edhen felt her heart stop at this last word. This word they did have at home. The stuff of nightmares. No. No, this couldn’t be happening. The henwours hadn’t captured a benyn for this in living memory, this couldn’t be happening to her.

“But...sons are a myth. Henwours haven’t been able to make children since The Great Rising brought mutations in the water. What makes your Taa think he can do it now?”

Her eyes searched Koll’s face for some kind of sign that he was lying to her. To scare into submission? Why would he say this, it was unthinkable.

"I don’t know what makes him think it’s possible,” he answered, “all I know is...” He took a deep breath, as if steeling himself to plunge into very cold water. “I know I can’t let him do it.”

He raised his eyes to Edhen’s again.

“He’s a cruel man. A mad man. We’ve almost starved many seasons because of his lack of foresight. If he has a mab and raises him to lead us...we’ll never be free of his rule, not really.”

Edhen gazed back at Koll as if seeing him for the first time. There was no shake in her voice this time as she asked, “What are you going to do?”

He looked back steadily as he said, “I’m going to set you free.”

___________________________________________________

Her raw and red wrists stung, then were soothed by the brackish water of the river. She and Koll slipped silently into the water after having made their way slowly and quietly through the trees, down the bank, away from the other two henwours.

Feeling like it was safer to speak, she said quietly to him, “Where are you going to go?”

“I don’t know.” Koll seemed lighter now that they had put distance between him and the other henwours, but also a little lost, like he hadn’t quite thought this far.

“I can’t go back, they’ll kill me. I was thinking of making my way down the coast. I think if I can get as far Gilraith, they may not hear about what I’ve done. Maybe I’ll be able to stay there.”

Edhen looked at him like she was trying to see inside of him, and then said,

“Come back with me.”

He looked like she had slapped him.

“The Mamm will be grateful you let me go. We could find a job for you. It would be strange, but it’s happened a handful of times since the Great Rising. The other benyns will have to agree, which I don’t guarantee, but...we would be able to keep you safe. You could teach us about the henwours, keep others from being taken.”

Edhen couldn’t read his face, couldn’t tell what he was thinking. But suddenly he surged toward her in the water they were treading, so fast she was startled. She thought maybe she had misjudged, that he was going to attack her. But instead he stopped short right in front of her, and held something out in his hand. It was the object, the one they had used to trap her.

“This was with me when my mamm left me at the henwour’s camp as an infant. It’s all I have left of her and they made me use it to do this to you.” He looked pained, as if he was wrestling with himself.

“I’m sorry. I don’t deserve your mercy, but I’d like to come with you, if you’ll let me.”

“Yes.”, said Edhen simply. She turned in the water, preparing to swim across to where the henwours had hidden her skiff.

“Wait!”

She turned again and he was still holding out the strange object to her. He held his hands up again like he had when she had been tied up, to indicate that he wasn’t threatening her. She stilled her movements but still eyed him warily as he reached his hands slowly over her head and placed the rope that was not a rope around her neck. It was cool, like she had guessed, the sharpness of it brushing against her sore skin where the other henwour had put his hands.

“I want you to have it,” said Koll.

Edhen said nothing, and considered it. The thing they had used to trap her, and he was giving it to her. At first she recoiled from it, but this gesture seemed like way of showing her she had the control now.

She took the pendant in her hands and looked down at it where it was resting on her chest.

“What is it made of?”, she asked. “I’ve never seen this material before.”

Koll’s dark eyes roamed her face, and then relief spread across his features as he seemed to understand that this was her acceptance of his peace offering, his apology.

“Silver”, he said quietly. “It’s made out of silver.”

“Silver”, she repeated, rolling the unfamiliar word around in her mouth. Tucking the silver pendant into her breastband, she nodded at him with finality and turned once more in the water.

“Let’s go”, he heard her send over her shoulder. “We have a ways to go and I want to be in the reeds on the other side of the river before sunrise.

Koll allowed himself to smile before following her into the dark.

“I’m right behind you.”