You wade thigh-deep through blood, searching for the shore. Warm silt below sucks your bare feet down with every step, and the fog shrouds even the sun above. All that remains is a slanted red glare. You’re shaking. You haven’t stopped shaking since your first glimpse of the beast. It did not approach; you stilled your breath, nearly stilled your heart to silence it. Blood pounded in your ears, rushing like the terminus of a river, a waterfall roaring, and the creature must have heard.
It may have been a warning. Many creatures of the world are fair. You cannot afford to heed it. You cannot survive on fairness alone.
The swamp bubbles, rippling as you part it. Nothing living has passed through the narrow gate since you were a little girl, and the blood is in some places congealed, so long undisturbed by men. After hours of slogging, upon the hours it took to find the gate, to crawl through the crack in the mountain, your whole body is a raw muscle. Your head spins with exhaustion. But rest is impossible here, in this featureless red expanse which grasps up to drown you. No hound nor horse will follow you into this place of death, and that is your one comfort.
How many great men have passed this way before you, and vanished forever in the mist? (Great men like your husband–) How many of their bodies rot around you? (– as great as his hands are broad, as his hands are liberal, as his hands are absolute–)
All this, you chance on a rumor of a far shore. Naked but for your thin chemise, at one time white, bunched in your hands so at least it doesn’t drag. Whether or not you live, they will never find you.
Nothing grows here, not even the slimy algae and weed which grow in your husband’s pond. All that moves are yourself and the mists you disturb. When old mother witch gave you her map to the narrow gate- lost now somewhere in the swamp- she said death would walk with you, and you took your chances. You think she must have been mistaken. Death does not walk. It snatches at your hem and tempts you to fall.
Your breath catches as your eyes do. Something dark. Large. Choking on your fear, you cast your eyes down.
It strides atop the pool, its cloven feet making no impression on the surface. Ragged skin hangs off its legs. You have walked so long that to be still is agony. You let it come to you only because you cannot turn back. It stands before you and lowers its blackened head.
Forgetting your dress, you hold your arms to your belly. (You would beg for it not to hurt her, if that had ever helped before–) The beast snorts. It sniffs you between bursts of cold, putrid breath, and you thought you had lost all sense of disgust after hours in this bloody mire, but it comes back to you again in a wave of nausea. Your chemise soaks blood until it is stained past your waist, clinging sticky to your skin. You are too numb to feel your shuddering heart, but you know it is bursting to escape, because so are you.
It snorts once again. Slowly, it rounds back the way it came, and you are left holding yourself to keep from crumbling. Your breaths come shallow. The brightness parts for the beast, and when you build the courage to lift your head, you know its name.
Death looks at you over its shoulder, bony fingers at its crown tearing the sky. It beckons. Tears wet your cheeks. And you follow.
It walks at a pace that won’t kill you. Again it remains a shadow in the white mist, its rottenness fading as carcass becomes bone. In a silent swirl, it springs away and vanishes. You stumble forward, crying out for it to come back, when your hands strike bare earth, cool and black.
Your strength fails all at once. It is all you can do to pull yourself onto solid ground, elbows trembling. Here the fog still shelters you, hides this new world from your weary eyes. The setting sun shines violet and gold through strange air as you drag yourself up a low, muddy bank. It is warm and damp, and the freshness of soil finally overpowers the reek of copper.
Collapsing, you manage to roll onto your side. Between yourself and the dying sunlight extends the low branch of an unfamiliar tree. Its leaves like little red hands hover and tremble, knobbly midwife crones giving you their blessings. (Old mother witch would not give you a pill, for your husband nor the baby nor for yourself, but said–) The faint light shines through them, glowing bloody around thin black veins. They have bathed in mercy, just like you. Though spent, you raise one arm.
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