And . . . she was so thirsty. But there was nothing to drink except for the sulfur-and-rust water that spilled through the moat. There was nothing to swim in except for water that was wholly unswimmable.
And for all Bernice knew, Arahab lurked outside in the swampy depression.
But up in the dry, hot, miserable tower with its awful bells that rang for an hour each day, Bernice was safe from her Mother. Or, at least, Mother had not yet come for her. Perhaps Arahab was biding her time; she’d said it a thousand times before, that she was patient, and that time meant little to her.
Bernice believed that the water witch was patient; but Bernice was stubborn, too. And not the bells, not the choking ash and earth that billowed through the bars—none of it could convince her to descend the tower stairs and take her chances in the garden.
So she stayed, and she withered.
She closed the windows in the library and she barricaded the door. Workmen assumed that something had fallen during the earthquake, but no one forced the issue and the door was never broken open. She suspected that Mossfeaster might have had something to do with that.
Mossfeaster never visited her, so she had no occasion to ask about it.
She remained alone behind her barricade, inside the musty library clogged from floor to ceiling with books. Before, she’d never cared for reading. But boredom drove her to strange new behaviors, or there would be lethargy like none she’d ever known before.
Her limbs grew stiff, and her skin dried until it was crumpled and thick like old leather left too long on the floor of a closet. Her skull did not regain its original shape.
Dented, shriveled, and dry, she became a living mummy.
She hollowed out a spot beneath one far-back shelf. She pushed the books aside and entombed herself there, where she could crush her head against the thick old volumes and, every day for an hour, pretend that the bells were not ringing.
Epilogue
I.
Twice a day, at one and three o’clock, the bells chimed out across the Iron Mountain. They could be heard for miles.
Arahab heard them, from her lurking spot in the swampy depression. The bells pushed her back; their timbre and their horrid percussive echoes drove her out and away, down into the ground where the water seeped slowly through the rocks, sand, and shells.
Back out to sea she went, where she stirred up a vortex that sank three ships and killed hundreds of people. Spitefully and hopefully, she sifted through them as they drowned, but she found no one she wanted to keep.
I have time. Time is cheap to me, for there is always more.
More of this place is ocean than dirt, and through every land run the rivers and lakes I may wander. Along these currents your civilizations began, after you realized that perfection was not enough. After you wasted the gifts they took from us.
But I have time.
And in time, my waters will erode mountains and grow pink corals across your black city streets. In less time even than that, the world will forget what little it knew about me and mine. Small pieces of lore will dangle, will remain in their children, and in their grandchildren.
For I have patience, and I remain.
I remain, although my old brother is angry with me, furious because of my daughter’s actions. He will not chase me here, though. I can bury myself deeper than he can. I can drench his fires, if his indignation calls for conflict. I can wait here below while my strength returns to me, absorbing the drips and steams that filter through the earth and into the great waters.
I will remain so long as the waters rise from the ground and fall with the moon’s pull. This is my world, too. He cannot estrange me from it.
I am not sure I understand what weird games have been set into motion, but I do not like them. They smell to me of mortal games, of insults and punishments undeserved and unfit. I will not answer any summons unless it pleases me to do so.
The Greek and his master be damned. I owe them nothing.
II.
The woman on the ladder was wearing men’s overalls just as she always did, much to the amusement of any new employees. Her long gray hair was twisted up in a tight bun with fringes that were peeling loose. One after another, oranges went into her sack and bounced against her hip as she climbed up and down, tree after tree.
Most of the employees had gone home to their families by this late in the day, but the woman was already home, so she took her time. Her two daughters were inside, cooking supper. Her trees were mostly picked clean.
Over at the market, the prices were dropping a few more pennies every week, and tomorrow on her front porch she’d find a few more men hoping for work. There were so many hopeful hands every day, these days, but she’d have to turn them away. She couldn’t pay any more men. She could barely pay the ones she kept.
And she was getting old.
She didn’t often miss her husband, the man who’d died and left her alone with a farm to keep. It had been a long time, and she’d beaten down her grief with backbreaking work. She’d exhausted her store of sorrow, and in its place was left a habit—worn deep—that kept her moving when younger people would’ve found a rocking chair and closed their eyes.
Chicken was frying up in the house. A curling current of wind brought the sizzling crackle to her nose, over the green aroma of the waving trees and their late-season fruit.
One booted foot at a time she descended the ladder, but the third step stopped her short.
Her foot settled on the rung, and she felt a jabbing pain, like a charley horse in her shoulder. It shot down her arm and up again, high on the left side of her chest. It startled her, and it stopped her.
She breathed slowly, coaxing down the sting.
With the toe of her right boot, she reached backwards for the next rung.
She leaned forward. She rested her forehead against the back of her hand. Another slicing, stabbing bolt tore through her arm; it camped in her chest. Her left lung went tight, and when she inhaled, she felt like it wasn’t filling right, because there came another pain.
Her booted toe found the next rung down, but couldn’t hold it.
The woman fell, and on the way down, her face clapped against the ladder, bloodying her nose. She didn’t feel the landing, only that she was suddenly staring up at the sky, and the pain was gone, replaced with a light-headed, stuffy feeling that wasn’t altogether unpleasant.
And then she knew. She understood when she saw that face looming over hers. One of the missing grandgirls, long-lost and transformed very slightly, but very surely, was cradling her head and speaking, saying something over and over again.
The woman couldn’t hear it. And her vision was fading, one bright sparkle at a time, so she couldn’t read the rapidly moving lips as they flashed their message. But it didn’t matter, and she wasn’t afraid.
Look, there’s Apollonia.
She understood. She had died. And that was all right.
III.
Nia hid at the edge of the orchard and watched as two men carried her grandmother away.
She nursed grandiose yet halfhearted ideas of running up the porch steps and crying with the rest of them, but every time she’d gone to climb the stairs, she failed. She couldn’t do it.
But she didn’t want to leave, either, so she stayed and watched her relatives come and go.
Despite the return to manual labor and a lesser lifestyle, her aunt Marjorie looked younger. Her hair had grown out from the fashionable style in which she’d once kept it, and she left it loose down around her shoulders or braided back.
Nia’s mother looked older. Her hair was catching up to Grandmother’s, sneaking streaks of white through the ash blond it once had been. She’d lost some weight.
“You’re easy to find,” Mossfeaster said.
Nia had heard it forming behind her, gathering its shape from the ground. She hadn’t turned around to watch, and she didn’t turn around to greet the creature when it announced itself.
“
Took you long enough,” she said. “It’s been weeks.”
“Time is different for me. Eventually, you’ll find it’s different for you, too.”
“If you say so.”
It came to stand beside her, and it stared straight ahead, following her gaze and seeing the old orchard with its sturdy old farmhouse. It asked, “Why are you still here, if you aren’t going to stay?”
She shrugged. She’d been working on an answer, and as he asked, she found it. She said, “I don’t have anywhere to go, and I don’t have anywhere to be.” Nia squeezed a small leather satchel she kept slung across her chest, and she clicked it open to show Mossfeaster that it was full of money. “I sold the jewelry you gave me from Gaspar’s chest. Money’s always been tight, and now it’s worse than ever. I thought I’d leave this for them, and it would help.”
The jewelry had been worth twice what she was offered. Half as much would have been plenty.
“But I can’t go home, can I? Not any more than Sam could, if he’d made it out with us.” She looked up at Mossfeaster. “I buried him out there, at night. I put him beside the tower. Edward said he didn’t mind.”
“Edward rarely objected to anything. I always liked that about him,” Mossfeaster said. Then it added, “But if you did go home, would it be for them—or for you?”
In a few minutes, the front door closed and everyone was inside or gone.
Nia shut the bag and removed it from around her shoulders. She sprinted up to the porch, left the bag hanging on the front door’s knob, knocked loudly, and ran back into the grove—where Mossfeaster hadn’t budged.
The creature didn’t shift or shuffle as it looked down at her; and Nia didn’t flinch or frown when she gazed up at the thing that had made her. She didn’t look up with love, or with confusion. She didn’t look up in search of answers to any question but one: “So it’s just me and you, then, huh?”
Cherie Priest, Fathom
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