Page 22 of Dark Water Daughter

“I cannot speak with absolute certainty,” I cautioned, “but there is nothing else like him in this region of the sea.”

“Good enough,” the older man said with a nod, and I could tell that he waspleased—notnecessarily with me, but with this change in fortune. “See the ship readied for departure, then get some rest, Mr. Rosser.”

The Girl from the Wold

The Girl from the Wold is drowning. She flails and panics, naked beneath her shift in the black water of the midnight millpond.

Her mother’s arms come around her, lifting her above the surface. The girl struggles for breath and hangs at her mother’s neck. Her small arms shake.

“You’re fine, Mary,” the mother says, prying her daughter’s hands away and letting her bob back into the water.

The girl flounders. Her toes barely touch the muddy bottom of the pond and she battles to keep her mouth above water, head tilted back. “Mama! Ican’t—”

“You can. Hush.” Her mother steps back, increasing the space between them. “Don’t want to wake the miller now, do we? What would he say, finding us half naked in his pond?”

The girl starts to laugh, but she’s still afraid. Rallying, she grabs hold of her fear and lifts her toes from the mud, beginning to pump her legs and move her arms in the rhythm her mother taught her.

Her chin leaves the water. She breathes easier, her muscles warm, and her mother smiles.

The girl begins to smile back, but her eyes catch on the collar of her mother’s shirt. It has come unlaced in the water, showing a slice of ribs and breast and belly. But the girl doesn’t notice those things. Instead, she looks at the deep, knotted scar over her mother’s heart. It’s the size of a coin, a swirl of tight, opalescent skin in the moonlight.

“It looks like the moon,” the girl says, legs and arms still churning.

Her mother smiles and adjusts her wet clothing, covering the scar again. “That it does, little one. Now, race me to the shore.”

The Girl from the Wold is drowning again, many years and miles distant. Frigid water punches the air from her lungs and her lungs demand it back in the same, screaming instant. Her world is one of shadows, lit only by the distant light of a burning ship atop the waves. Her world is solitary, save the figure of a woman with drifts of spectral hair, a childlike face and sea-glass eyes filled with bereaved compassion. Her skin is ghostly, and her skirts are a ripple of tentacles.

A ghisting. The girl has glimpsed these beings before, in the shadows of the Wold, and in the little cupboard where she sleeps. She has even seen this one herself, perhaps.

The creature reaches out in the deeps, places her hands on the girl’s cheeks, and speaks.

Sister. Breathe.

***

EIGHT

Pirates

MARY

Something bumped my head. I flailed, grasping it and hauling until I broke the surface of the water. I raked in air and coughed, clutching my salvation for a trembling moment before I squinted at it.

A rope? Why was I holding a rope? Why was I in the water?

Because I’d jumped off a pirate's ship.

I cried out in shock, whatever insanity that had led me to jump shattered by the cold water.

A salty wave broke over me. I clawed back up into the free air, spluttering and panicking. I couldswim—mymother had ensuredthat—butmy skirts were so heavy, the water so cold. My lungs burned between fits of coughingand—

I reclaimed the end of the rope and clutched it fiercely.

“Ahoy there,” called a voice I didn’t know, female and quizzical. Squinting up through wet eyelashes, I could just make out her form at the rail of a ship, lantern light spilling down one side of a hard, olive-skinned face. “Hold fast and we’ll lower a ladder.”

“No!” I shouted, despite myself, the need to live and the need to stay away from Lirr colliding like waves against the hull beside me. “I’mnot—Youwill not have me!”

“I’m trying to save you,” the woman chided. She had a light accent, something warm and lilting. “Would you prefer to drown?”

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