Slaughtaverty, 1745
Tearing the frayed material of her skirt loose from the clutches of a thorny bush, Mairead Doyle forces her tired body forward through the thickening forest. She wants nothing more than to go home, wash up, have her small share of bread and gruel, and curl up on the straw pallet in front of the fire, but she dares not return without the rogue sheep.
Personally, Merry is starting to develop a craving for mutton. She is sick of having to hunt the ram down night after night when she brings the sheep home from the meadow where they graze, and he makes a break for it. She has no idea why he is always trying to escape; she only knows that she bears the scars of each time she was forced to come home without him.
He always shows up again in the morning, but the danger of predators getting to him when he's out alone is too big just to let him be, and he is needed to ensure the next generation of wool sheep.
Merry's body still aches from her last beating; she has no desire to brave her father's wrath tonight, so deeper into the forest she goes. The footpath she started on is a vague memory by now. She jumps at the eerie cry of a fox somewhere in the dark, the chilling echo chasing shivers down her spine.
It is cold—too cold. She can see her breath leave her trembling lips in white puffs and the wild grass crunch like ice beneath the thin soles of her worn shoes. It is not winter; there shouldn't be any frost.
There shouldn't be any mist either, and yet it is progressively becoming more and more dense, hanging like white moss from the black tree branches sticking out around her like bony fingers, snagging in the material of her clothing and tangling in her unruly hair.
There is still no sign of the ram, yet she'd heard him bleating not far ahead only a few minutes ago. The moon is all but gone, swallowed by the mist and the shadows snaking around her, shifting restlessly in the breeze.
A branch cracks near her, and her heart leaps as she turns towards the sound, almost blindly thrashing through bracken and undergrowth now, hoping to find the bothersome animal and start her journey home. Seeing snatches of dirty white among the dense foliage only a few steps away, her determination rises, and she heads towards it.
"Roger, will ye come to me, ye wily ram?" she hisses, irritated that she'd lost sight of the animal again. It was just there a second ago. For a few moments, she flounders, uncertainly shuffling along, wrestling a path through the overgrown vegetation, and then her route is re-directed towards the rustling of leaves to her right.
He is very close!
Merry wraps her arms around herself, regretting she didn't bring a shawl, but it wasn't cold when she started this mission. She is trembling quite a bit now, no longer sure if she is tired, cold, or afraid. The forest is darker here; what's left of the moonlight is blocked by the canopy of trees towering unyielding above her, disorienting her. Cold fingers of dread claw at her heart when she realises she has no idea where she is; no discernible landmarks are pointing the way anymore. If it snowed, she would die out here.
It doesn't snow in summer, yet she can taste the threat of it in the air...
Looking down, trying to see where to place her feet, she realises with surprise that she can no longer see them; they are lost in the thick blanket of white wrapping itself around her skirt. She could so easily imagine that her feet were not there anymore, that the mist swallowed them, never to return them.
Three boys disappeared from Slaughtaverty, one after the other, just in the last two weeks, and four more before that. Did the mist swallow them too, not leaving behind even so much as a limb or a shred of clothing? The thought makes Merry's empty stomach clench in fear. She is not a nine-year-old boy like Timmy Collins or a boy of eight like Sam O'Neill. Her little brother, Uilliam Doyle, was only six...
Merry and her siblings are the only ones still looking for him.
Parents are locking their young in their homes after dark, and some won't even let their children out alone during the day either. Her father is the only parent relieved to have one less mouth to feed. Merry is surprised that he hasn't sent them all out to be disappeared...
She takes some comfort in the fact that she's a girl. At 13, she's past the marrying age, according to her father. He says it's because no man would have the useless, ugly likes of her, and now she's too old. She doesn't understand what he means. She's as pretty as Madrigal Byrne, if not more so... At least, that is what Maddy used to say... and Maddy is already 16 and was just about to be married.
She said the only difference between them is that Madrigal has a big, fat dowry. Merry never agreed that it was the only difference between them. Maddy has hair like spun gold, eyes as bright as a morning sky, and her skin is unscarred.
Her father is the local apothecary, looked up to by one and all, while Merry's father is a drunkard with four sheep and no land of his own. The wool he sheers from the sheep saves his six motherless urchins from starving to death. It does not save them from suffering under his fists, though. Merry's eldest brother, Séamus' apprenticeship at the blacksmith and her sister, Taillte, scrubbing floors for others are what really keep them all alive.
Merry has wild hair the colour of a sunrise and eyes a mesmerising bright blue (Madrigal's generous description). The jagged scar stretching from her temple to her jaw, from when her father drunkenly shoved her to fall, hitting her face on the ragged edge of the hearth when she was five, could've been overlooked by suitors if it came with at least some dowry or inheritance.
About a month ago, Madrigal was about to marry Donald Murphy, the richest man in their community, with his small patch of land (payment for services rendered to the lord of the manor) and his two horses.
Merry helped her dearest friend prepare for the wedding, dressing her in white lace as delicate as a spider's web. Maddy let her try the dress on first; it was too big, as malnourished Merry hadn't developed any womanly curves yet, but it felt like a whisper against her skin, and for the first time in her life, she'd believed that she, too, might be a little bit beautiful.
Once Madrigal was ready, her hair all set with flowers like a princess from the fairy tales the old folks tell at festivals, Merry ran the short distance from the Byrne's cottage to the chapel to await the bride's arrival with all the other excited guests. Weddings are a significant event in Slaughtaverty.
Madrigal never arrived.
Donald was heartbroken for two weeks, and then he married Sinead Dunne, the blacksmith's feisty daughter. Merry never believed the stories that Madrigal ran off with a group of Pavees because she was sweet on a young Traveller who fought for money in the town square... or was taken by them by force. Neither do Madrigal's parents. They are still looking for their daughter, even though she's been gone for weeks now, and the Pavees took off around the time of her disappearance.
A branch cracks near Merry, stopping her feet, and she turns to her left to find the source of the sound, scolding herself for getting lost in thought when she should be trying to figure out where she is in relation to the town. The snapping of twigs sounded too harsh to be caused by the ram, and the sound did not come from the ground; it came from about her shoulder's height.
Thinking it wise to give up on Roger completely and hurry back to town, perhaps sneak into the small shelter and sleep with the sheep, Merry turns away from the sound and carelessly crashes through the shrubbery, ignoring the sharp branches scratching where they find exposed skin. The going is not easy, with the mist wrapping dirty fingers over her face and the thickness of the air suffocating her. She stumbles, righting herself, just to stumble again after another step or two.
She hisses sharply when she slams her knee into a hard surface. A boulder? If her skirt weren't as threadbare as it is, it might've softened the impact, but it offered scant protection. Merry bends down, lifting her skirt to look at her knee, but the moon, so big and bright earlier, can now only wash her surroundings in a watery, jaundiced glow, making the cut barely visible. Touching the tender spot, she can feel moisture on her fingertips, and lifting her hand, the blood on her fingers is almost black in the dark.
Wonderful, yet another scar!
Feeling around her, careful of crashing into something again, Merry runs her fingers over the cause of her latest injury. The stone is smooth and angular, too filled with purpose simply to be a boulder. Looking up, she swallows apprehensively, seeing the vague outlines of angel wings floating in and out of the mist above her.
The graveyard! She has somehow wandered far away from town and into the graveyard!
At least she now knows where she is and where the town might be. Sucking deep breaths into her tightening lungs, she calls on her grandmother's theory that ghosts would never haunt graveyards.
"They be having no business der," she used to croon. "Why would they be hanging about in a place where they hardly ever set their feet while they was still alive? It's their homes they'll haunt... or in yer da's case, Three Barrel and One Ale House, where he spends most of his life."
It made sense to Merry at the time, but now, standing alone and vulnerable in the cold with the darkness weaving shadows, shimmering in the mist, she is not so sure about the soundness of her grandmother's opinion anymore.
The air around her is alive and not with warmth, joy, or hope; there is despair in it, the kind of gut-wrenching misery that could choke the life out of a person's throat and turn their hearts into lumps of death. Fear is tangling in her hair, plucking at the roots, making her skin pucker in goosebumps.
Through the gaps between the hunching tree trunks, Merry can see the turrets of Slaughtaverty Manor. Some say the lord is in residence now, but that is doubtful; nobody has seen even a glimpse of him yet. She would really like to lay her eyes on him. She heard that his beauty is a thing of legends, and Merry has long ago stopped believing in legends; she trusts only what she can see.
Somewhere behind her, she can hear soft, hiccuping cries.
Another fox?
No, this cry is different; it suddenly rings out sharply once, curdling sourly in the pit of her stomach, and then there's only silence. A baby?! She spins around towards where it came from. It did not belong in the night, in the cold. It did not sound right.
Five babies have been stolen from their cribs in the last few weeks. The town is cloaked in a shroud of grief. Nearly every family is mourning the loss of a young boy or a baby. Many families have left the area, and only those with nowhere else to go are still hanging onto the threads of their miserable lives. Neighbours have become suspicious of neighbours, and violence is simmering, ready to boil over.
Another flash of white among the shivering black leaves catches her eye. It is too high to be the ram, and is that... lace?
"Maddy?" Merry whispers, her voice hoarse with fear and worn-out hope tearing into her throat. "Is that you?"
Spurred on by the longing to see her friend again overriding her common sense, Merry stumbles towards the lacy patches. She can also see pale gold hair falling in tangles over the shoulders and back of the girl she glimpses among the branches of a gnarly old tree. Merry's feet falter, her pace slowing down.
It cannot be Maddy; Madrigal was always filled with colour and life.
This girl's skin is too pale, her eyes are sunken and dead, and her lips are too red. They are wet, and a bundle in her arms is clutched tightly to her breast. Sticking out of the blood-spattered swaddling, Merry can see a tiny, lifeless hand.
"Maddy?!" she sobs in a broken voice, terror confusing her thoughts and distorting her ability to understand what she's seeing.
Movement near her causes her to jerk her head in that direction momentarily, and when she returns her gaze to where she'd seen her friend, there is nothing but quivering branches and broiling shadows and the sound of her own terrified breathing loud in her ears.
Is fear and loneliness causing her to conjure the one person who had ever shown her kindness in the years since she'd lost her grandmother, the woman who raised them after her mother's death?
The girl in the mist did not seem real... and the baby...
A cold hand settles on Merry's shoulder, fingers biting into her flesh and digging their tips into her collarbone. Before she can so much as wince at the touch, she is jerked around and locked into a strong embrace that smells of blood and musk and moonlight.
Merry would've screamed if she still had a voice to scream with.
***
Read more in my novel, The Knight of Slaughtaverty