She played and sang and the sounds rang out in the great space, echoed from the walls and the vaulted ceiling, hit the water in the well and travelled through it because the words her lover had given to her had the power to do so. And after a time, at last, there was a splashing and a muttering more liquid than the woman was used to.
And she set aside her harp and walked slowly to the edge of the well and held her candle high. And below, in the well, was a sea-queen. The woman nodded in satisfaction and pulled a lever. The cage beneath the creature closed, with its strong metal net and all its spells carved and sung into its very substance, and the sea-queen, realising herself captured, began to shriek.
The woman picked up her harp and began to play once more, until the sea-queen had calmed. And the woman told the creature how her life would be lived: her scales would be harvested, the children of the woman would be safe on the seas, and in return the sea-queen would be fed. And she made the queen agree to a bargain: that the merfolk would never harm a firstborn of the O’Malleys.
The mer said, ‘Yet one of your children in each generation’ – for this is how such things are done – ‘will be my meat.’
And the woman, after only the slightest hesitation, agreed, a tithe for the prosperity she had brought with her double dealing.
And she would walk the promontory each and every evening as gravity took a greater hold on her. She felt bound to the earth, with this child inside her, even though it was the offspring of a creature from the waters of salt and sand. She would look out to the horizon, she would look for him, even though she knew he would not return – she had seen his corpse herself, seen what the others of his kind had done to him for his betrayal. Still she would look.
But who can keep secrets from the waters when they are all joined?
And the place came to be called Hob’s Hallow for those who believed in such things were certain she’d dealt with creatures of darkness, that she’d made her bargains holy by paying her tithes in small lives. And those who believed knew that holiness is neither black nor white, but the red of blood.
34
I walk out into the deepening afternoon, soon the sky will bruise into darkness, but I cannot bear to have the walls of the house around me. I traipse through the flowering gardens, then past the new-harvested fields, and the orchards and notice that the trees are heavy again with fruit. I pick an apple but cannot bring myself to eat it; it goes in my pocket.
I think of Aoife, reading me the tale of Aislin and Connor, of the boy being sacrificed to the sea-queen in the dimly lit cave. I think of asking my grandmother whether it was true or not, of her shrugging in that way she had when she wasn’t quite lying, but wasn’t being entirely honest. I think of her telling me not to be such a child. I hear her saying, ‘Stories are history, whether they’re true or not.’ I think about that book of lies and truths and tales all mixed together so no one could tell them apart.
I think how it was never a secret, what we did to our own. Or at least, never a secret amongst us, the O’Malleys. I think of all those children, sent to the sea to pay a debt incurred long ago, one to which they’d not had the chance to either agree or otherwise. I think of how no names were kept, of how they were deprived even of that; I think how only Connor was known, recorded, written, because of a misfiring of a mother’s heart, a preference for one child over another, making a choice bold and shameless and defiant. I think they couldn’t have gone to the sea cave because the sea-queen was kept in the cellar, so the poor boy was taken there by his sister to meet his fate. And the maid, the scullion who followed the children? What had happened to her? I can never know, only suspect: found out and fed to the thing in the well so she could not speak of what she’d seen.
I think of Isolde leaving me behind, the branded firstborn, knowing I was the only child that might be safe at Hob’s Hallow because I was the last. That all hope for a future rested within me; that I was the sole thing to keep Aoife from hunting her down. Did Isolde flee so she might save any other children who came after? She sacrificed me as surely as those who’d gone before her had sacrificed their own children. And I cannot say that I don’t understand, but also I cannot say that there isn’t an agonising pain in the pit of me – gut, heart, soul? – that feels like the sum total of the agony of every one of those discarded children.
I think of the mer singing When you are gone then we will be free – waiting for the death of the last true O’Malley to release them from an ancient bargain. For as long as one remains, there is the possibility of more to fulfil that agreement and keep them bound.
And at last I’m running, trees flashing past me in the lowering afternoon light.
I’m running to try and escape that agony.
I’m running because maybe I’ll outdistance it all if I’m fast enough.
I run until I come
