The Merrow

A boy stood thoughtfully on the shores of a smooth, grey lake, skipping stones and contemplating the early morning mist. His sister sat some yards off, cutting and weaving reeds into a flute. Their house still further off, just barely winking in their sight, where their mother and father tended the garden.

Plop! A disruption of the surface interrupted his reverie. The boy knelt, he knees just touching the grey water, eyes straining to discover what it might be. Their father had warned them never to stray into the waters, not to let a drop of it stick to them; but, the boy thought, what harm could there be in letting the water lap against his knees? He wasn’t dunking his head in.

He stretched out his hand, and touched with the very tips of his fingers, the glassy surface. Tiny ripples, silent as a star, radiated from his touch. He grinned, and, exhilarated, dared to dip his fingers still further.

Splash! A deafening roar of water caused his sister to drop her reeds. Half-drowned were the helpless screams of her brother. She ran till her breath twisted to spasms of pain in her chest, calling his name frantically. As her toes dug into the soggy bank, a pair of white arms grabbed her brother about the ears and dragged him under the surface.

The girl stood, senses so deadened that the cold breeze on her bare arms never made her so much as shiver, staring in despair at the smooth surface. It looked as if nothing had happened, as if the lake were a huge round of polished glass, reflecting the sky above and hiding everything beneath.

A choked sob startled her from behind. Her father stood there, white as chalk, trembling like a newborn bird. She caught something strange in his eyes, as if the horrible event were not wholly unexpected: more than that, an odd sort of guilt stood out in his eyes, as if—no, she chastised herself. That was silly. Her own father?

The mist over the lake, which she always had thought eerie and beautiful, now took on a forbidding aspect. But her brother lay there, somewhere in the depths, in the thrall of who could tell what wicked creature.

She stepped into the water. Her father’s hand—how clammy it was!—gripped her forearm. Perplexed, she turned around to see fear now in his eyes, abject dread. Why? Don’t go, his eyes pleaded with her. Please don’t go.

I have to. She shook off his grasp, and screamed. A wet hand wrapped itself around her ankle. Now she clung to her father, but he held her with all the strength of wet paper, whist the creature possessed a grip of steel. It now seized her other ankle, casting her on her back. The girl pulled and pushed handfuls of useless mud in her panic, all while her father watched, with an impotent sorrow. Daddy? As it tugged her under the water, she saw the figure of her father, shoulders drooped, plodding a slow path back to the house.

“Daddy!”

The familiar world gave way to a strange one of silver and blue. A white arm entwined her waist in a steadfast grip. Shadows and light (though not much since it was a cloudy day) played on her skin, the submerged stones, and the black hair floating like cream in the sullen water. The girl said nothing, anxious not to drown and anxious to find her brother.

The creature’s swift pace finally slackened as it reached a nook nestled deep in the lake bed. The creature touched the lakebed with graceful feet, and the girl saw what, to her, seemed a curtain of rain hanging before the entrance of small cove. The creature covered the girl’s eyes and drew them both over the threshold.

Eyes first dazzled by the shimmering silver light, her eyes were dazzled still more by what she saw sitting beneath the low willow branches. Her brother! As the creature threw her onto the rocky ground, the girl scrambled to her feet and threw her arms around his neck. Surprised, he returned the embrace, but not with the same abandon: more cautious than she, he kept one eye upon the merrow.

For such was their captor, one of the Sea Folk who made her home inland. Threads of hair like black silk hung before her eyes, making her face stubbornly inscrutable. Her white skin, instead of bearing a rosy hue, bore tinges of blue, giving her an air of cold concealment, as if she hoarded secrets and shared them with no one. And her eyes, black as soles, glittered with so much hidden anger and hatred, the children found it impossible to hold her gaze.

The boy remembered many stories of all sorts of creatures, good and evil, but never such a tangible monument of undiluted hatred from one of the Sea Folk. From the top of her silken head to the ends of her long white fingers, she trembled with an unsatiated thirst for revenge upon—well for what, the boy couldn’t learn, but the girl decided she didn’t want to know

A soft grey-blue penetrated through the water above, and the evergreen plants whispered in a limp breeze. As soon as the black hair disappeared through the wall of water, on an errand of they shuddered to think what, the children grabbed the hanging plants and began clambering up the coven’s wall. Though both of them disliked heights, leaving her wicked grasp and finding their parents, safe and whole, mattered more to them then a little climb. For, unlike many of her previous conquests, they had not given into despair: for they were determined they would escape.

Besides, if the boy was right in his reckoning, the wall soon smoothed out into cave, which gave them a safe passage through to the surface.

As the wall ended, the two of them rose to unsteady feet, and picked their way through the maze of stone and wilting plants, close air and damp breezes, holding their breath lest the slightest whisper echo off the rocks and warn the merrow of their escape.

A shaft of yellow light shone on their path in the distance. The boy pulled on her wrist and broke into a run, ignoring the stones brushing against their heads. The boy jumped up first, clinging to the sides and wriggling through the crevice. He pulled himself into the open air, and without a moment’s reflection, took his sister’s arms and pulled her through after him.

The girl lay on her back, breathing in draughts of fair, clear air, grateful to be alive. Her brother raised his eyes into the treetops, and the clouds beyond, keeping his cautious eye on the surrounding woodlands.

Crack!

The boy pulled his sister up by her wrists onto her feet. The two of them ran, running as they never had, hellions at their heels and salvation to their faces, not daring to see what gave them such mad chase. Whatever it was seemed unused to land, crashing and stumbling through the brush after them. They cleared the creek closest to home; the girl risked a turn of her head. Her blood chilled till she thought herself blue as the merrow’s skin. For there was no mistake, between the black hair, wand-limbs and white skin: it was her.

The girls’ cold hands gripped her brother’s shoulders. He held her close and guided them with skill, leaping over the next stream. A subtle splashing rang in ears like the shot of a gun. But still they ran, and never slackened.

The boy espied a wisp of smoke and clean logs between the branches. Their house! He spurred them on. If only they could reach home—

His sister shrieked. Her hand slipped off his shoulder. The merrow yanked his sister’s shoulder and arm, till he feared it might break. He struck her blindly on the back, once, twice, thrice, till the merrow loosed her grip and screeched in rage.

He swept up his sister in his arms and dashed across the boundary between the woods and their father’s property. “Dad!” he called. “Dad!”

Their father came out of the cabin and dropped his axe upon seeing his children. But he didn’t move. Why did he just stay there?

They had almost reached the wood pile. Still father stood there, like a somber ancient tree, while his children outdistanced eagles.

“Dad!”

An unholy shriek stopped them all dead. The merrow leapt out of the woods and knocking them to the ground and casting her arms about their unwilling shoulders, claiming them as her prey, her spoils, her own.

The black eyes challenged the father’s regretful ones. While the children hadn’t the faintest guess of what happened between them, the merrow’s deathlike hatred compelled him to relieve the terms of the bargain, in every hateful detail.

I will make you richer and happier than you have ever been before. You must only promise to give me that which has just been born in your house.

What else can that be but a young dog or a young cat?

He never forgot the dismay in his wife’s eyes, the kind that can only be augmented by the rigors of labor.

Why are you not happy with the beautiful boy?

What good to me are good fortune and prosperity, if I am to lose my child? But what can I do?

What could he do, indeed? His children pleaded him helplessly; the merrow guarded them jealously, but triumphantly. She knew she had won. For the first time, in anyone’s lifetime, he saw her smile. And her smile was worse than her hatred.

The smile irked him, repulsed him. Something more than fear stirred in the deepest trenches of his heart, something fierce and loyal and burning with love.

The merrow tightened her hold around his children’s throats. She rose, and began dragging them off to her secret abode, smiling that disgusting smile. He took up his forgotten axe.

As soon as she turned her eyes, he grabbed the silken hair, and yanked her to the ground. He didn’t notice how dry it was. She lay dazzled on the ground, and he took his children and placed himself before their danger. The merrow whirled around and struggled to her knees; the girl wondered why she failed to stand.

The merrow at last stumbled to her feet, and, blind to her own weakness for her lust for revenge, lunged once more for his children. The axe sang through the air. The merrow fell, clutching her bleeding arm. Crawling on her hands and knees, she feebly reached again for the children. Biting her lips till they bled, she rose on her knees, and hate giving her the ferocity her feeble frame could not afford to give, sprang on the children and the man, as if to take them all in one blow. The father swung the axe, coming down square on the merrow’s shoulder. She gasped and tumbled onto her face, blood pouring from her filmy garments.

Eyes filled with sullen hate, she ground her teeth, a horrible, grating sound. she rose up on her knees, shaking like anything, shaking like she would blow away in the slightest breath of the wind. Her arm hung limp at her side, her side stained with black blood. She outstretched her arm, pitching forward lifelessly—but at the last she clutched the boy’s trouser. The smile twitched at her lips. The boy pulled and tugged and shook, but she tightened her grip till the leg tore and the skin bled. The man held his son to his side. He face paled, but not with fear—no, his rage was such that he couldn’t speak. Calm as full, billowing clouds about to burst, he tensed his grip around his axe. She bared her teeth now; his daughter blanched in terror; his son seemed about to give way; his rose his silent axe high above his head and brought it down—

For the last time. The merrow fell—thud—onto the cold ground. She never moved henceforth.

The father threw his axe on the ground. Tears dripping down his face, he gathered his children up into his arms and held them close, till they were all one conglomeration of entangled arms, tear-stained faces, and joyous laughter. The children never knew, and never cared, what drove their father to such a horrid bargain with such a wretched creature. Their father had, at the last, preserved their lives before the deceitful bargain. For them. And for them, that was all that mattered.