All the Murmuring Bones

by A.G. Slatter

Some said the O’Malleys had too much saltwater in their veins to be good and god-fearing, or good anything else for that matter. But nothing could be proven, not ever.

I imagine the sound of the waves because I can’t hear it in here over the murmur of voices, the clink of fine china tea cups, the chewing, the tap of boots across marble floors. But I know it thuds and retreats with the constancy of a heartbeat, the shush and crash as it hits the shingle down below. Just the thought of it helps to calm me, which is funny because when I was very small I was so terribly scared of the noise. All the waters in the world are joined, Miren, Aoife used to say – what use being afraid of them?

Just hang on to whatever’s solid, Óisín would say, but it took me a long time to realise he meant I had to rely on myself: I was the only solid thing in that angry sea.

I could read for myself, sing for myself, but there’s something magical about song and story when they’re given, something unique.

Someone has reinstated the maiden’s quilt on the bed and I stare at its patterns: bells and flowers, rabbits and doves, bows and horseshoes. I wonder what’s been sewn into it? Swans’ feathers for fidelity? Tiny silver charms in each corner for hope of a good match, a magnificent wedding?

The sea-folk hate the sound of holy bells above all things. The sea-folk love silver above all things. Some days, they say, you can hear the ringing from beneath the waves. I fall asleep thinking I hear a dim chime rung at the bottom of the ocean; wondering what it would be like to have sisters; pondering maidens changed by death, bitterness and bile.

He rises early and is asleep mostly before seven rings at night. He told me, once, that’s what happens when you’re old: your bones want to sleep but your mind won’t have any of it except at the most inconvenient times because it knows you’re just pacing out your days unto death.

Some folk make a point of not visiting pain on others when it’s been done to them; most people, though, think it’s their due to inflict a little of their own agony.

You don’t need much more than intent and ingredients to do small spells, but when a woman is born with magic in her veins? Then she can really make things happen.

Though magic’s being repressed in most places, it doesn’t stop things like mer, kelpies, rusalky, trolls and nixies, corpsewights and ghosts from existing. They just hide deeper in the forests and mountains, in lakes and tarns, cellars and mirrors. It’s harder for witches, though, to cover what they are as the Church gets more and more militant about things that don’t conform. Hard to know, too, how many burn who are genuinely those who can hex, and how many are merely inconvenient women.

Love is a barbed hook and family the line to which it is tied. It digs deep and sometimes trying to remove it entirely does more damage than simply leaving the obstruction beneath the skin for a scar to grow over.

I think of the times Aoife instructed me in how to lie, how to brazen things out. How to appear innocent when I’m guilty. How I got good enough to deceive even her. Keep your lies closest to the truth; do not shout your innocence, only look wounded that anyone should question it; throw suspicion on someone else in an offhanded manner so as not to appear too eager to turn eyes elsewhere.

‘No witches around here, surely?’ I say, and we exchange a glance. Witches everywhere, she answers without words, but let’s keep them secret and unburned.

He told her all these things in the sanctity of the lovers’ confessional; he told her for lovers think that in sharing what is secret they tie the beloved to them. Yet the untruth of this is only ever uncovered in the aftermath, and thus are covenants broken and hearts soon after.

‘I don’t need you,’ I say, ‘I want you. That should be enough. That should be better because it means I’ve made a choice.’