‘Why?’
She thought of Borys, flailing in the current. Alone.
‘Because who else is going to help you?’ she said.
Every night, as it rested, Katalina would darn and weave the fishing nets, practised fingers moving quickly over the twine. In the mornings, she would slip out and throw herself into the day’s work, flashing her blade on the skinning bench or racking up the catch for the market wagons, ignoring the suspicious glances from the other villagers, the whispered conversations. Back home she would feed it fish stew, her every muscle tense as she heard the clatter of the beach patrols passing by her house. And in her bed, over the days, the thing grew stronger.
‘This reminds me of evenings I spent with Borys. My husband,’ she said softly one night. ‘Just whiling away the hours, content in our company.’
The village was quiet. When she had checked the curtains earlier that evening she was sure she had seen a figure silhouetted on the headland, but when she looked again it had gone. There was no sound from Agata’s cottage next door, no sound of the beach patrols. Perhaps they had given up? Maybe it was safe to move it back to the sea, although when she thought of being on her own again Katalina felt the silence like a weight on her very soul.
The creature breathed raspingly through its mouth.
‘He died?’ it gurgled.
‘Yes. For a long while I didn’t believe it. I wouldn’t accept it, but these waters are dangerous. Our people don’t always come back.’
‘Where do they go…’ it said. ‘Your people… when they don’t come back?’
‘We go to the Placid Shore,’ she told it. ‘On the other side of Shyish, far, far across the ocean. When we die, we wake on those golden sands, where it’s always warm and bright and the sea is always bountiful. It’s a wonderful place.’ She smiled. ‘I will see him there, one day, but…’
‘What?’
She dropped the net in her lap. ‘Some say that… if there’s no body to bury, then the soul must wander above the waves forever…’
She wiped the tear from her eye. She smiled again, a brief, brave flash of certainty.
‘But who can really say they know anything about the soul.’
She took up the net again, her fingers flicking over the rends. The creature stared. Was it smiling at her?
‘When we were married,’ Katalina went on, nodding at the window, ‘we were handfasted on that beach. Our hands tied together by the weeds of the sea, and a prayer to the God-King to keep us safe. He was so handsome… I will see him again,’ she said, suddenly fierce. She felt it burning in her. Let all the gods and monsters of the realms try to stop her, but she would see her love again, on this shore or the next.
She looked at the bed but the creature was sleeping now. The fire was low, a scattering of embers. Katalina placed the nets aside, took up her blanket and closed her eyes.
You really want to know…
That strange, squelched voice. The hiss of strangled air.
She snapped awake at once.
It was cold. The fire was dead in the grate. Darkness, a thin spear of light falling from the curtains across the floor. She felt her heart shudder in her chest. A smell in the air of deep oceans, blackness. Death.
There was a crash against the door – harsh shouts, the sound of breaking glass. Katalina lurched from the chair. The creature was awake. Had it been watching her? It dropped now from the bed, and from the counter snatched up her skinning knife. It hissed, the blade held back.
‘What–’ The room swam into focus. Something groaned and settled in her chest. She had been crying.
Another crash at the door. Behind it there were voices she recognised. She could smell smoke.
‘Kat! Let us in, Kat, or we’ll burn you out – you and that monstrosity you’re hiding!’
Old Kenning, she thought? Oleg, and Rafal? These men knew her, why would they treat her like this?
‘I’ve done nothing,’ she screamed. She cast about the room, looking for a way out. As the first panel burst from her door, and as the blades and cudgels were thrust through, she screamed again. ‘Leave me be!’
‘You’ve been seen, Kat! Consorting with that thing!’
The creature stood there, drawing bright patterns in the air with the tip of the blade. There seemed such fury in it then, and even this wounded and weak she feared it could kill half the men out there in a heartbeat. Any cornered animal would do the same.
Flames licked up the window, staining the glass.
‘This way, please!’ She took its arm and its skin was like ice. ‘Please – don’t hurt them.’
The door burst from its frame. At the back of the house there was a cupboard where she kept her buckets and brooms, and she ran there through the cloying smoke. High in the wall was a single-paned window just wide enough to climb through, but as Katalina fumbled for the latch she felt rough hands against her shoulders, smelled the stink of rum. Oleg – she had heard him singing in the temple on Sigmar’s Day, watched him help the fishwives haul their baskets, always smiling and laughing. And now here he was with hate in his eyes, grabbing at her hair and trying to pull her back into the smoking hall.
‘Oleg! Please…’
‘Where is it?’ he barked at her. ‘Tell me!’
‘Why are you doing this?’
The point of a blade flashed then like a silver tongue from his open mouth. She watched the slow horror on his face as the life slipped from him in a gout of blood. The creature drew the knife from the back of Oleg’s head and threw his body down.
‘Where?’ it said.
Her fingers moved in a dream, reaching for the latch and popping the window open. Her face was wet with tears, and the sea air was a cold kiss against her skin. From somewhere in the blazing night she thought she could hear Agata’s delighted cackle.
Katalina dropped from the window and sprawled into the muck. The creature leapt and landed beside her. Smoke was rising now from the cottage behind them, smoke and flames. The whole building was ablaze.
