Page 2 of The Washwoman at the River’s End

I glance toward the trees. At least no one has come to find me today. That part of my curse might be worse, actually, than the premonitions of death. The Fates’ way to ensure I’m always balancing on the edge of worry, never able to feel wholly at ease.

Find me, catch me, and I must answer your question. Anything at all, except how to stop death. It’s the question they almost always ask. The reason most brave seeking out the monster at the river, and when I cannot help them, they do not leave me unscathed.

A shadow passes over me, and I shiver from the chill as I look up to where an enormous dragon, longer than a fir tree is tall, swoops across the sun. She’s stunning, a blue so deep she’s almost violet, with a long neck and spines from horns to tail. Here most days at sunrise and sunset, her wings are so thin and iridescent, it looks as if they’re embedded with millions of tiny diamonds.

Sometimes, she stays above the valley for hours, and I imagine she’s mine. In reality, I think she’s here to ensure I don’t escape again, merely following the orders of the Cutter’s dragon, Athair, but I like to pretend otherwise.

Pretending is one of the few freedoms I have left.

I rise to my feet, holding out my arms and tipping my face toward the misty, cloud-filled sky. My heart surges, as if it’s forgotten I’m chained to these rocks. As if it thinks that if I could only harness the wind, I could fly alongside my dragon, so far and high that even the Fates themselves wouldn’t be able to find us.

As if reading my thoughts, the shadows of the After reach toward me in long, wandering ribbons. Stretching and twisting like they yearn to pull me down below. For the thousandth time, I close my eyes and listen to the water as it disappears down the drop off. It trickles rather than crashes, and even though there’s not enough length on my chain to peer through the black, I feel like I can imagine it clearly—a series of steps climbing down until they reach the end of this realm and the beginning of the next.

The darkness is my friend, and these shadows my only company.

Come to me, they taunt, and your pain will end. Come to me, and finally rest.

And oh, how I long to. It is my perpetual wish—to end this cursed, immortal life. I’ve imagined death so often, it feels like an old lover. Someone I cannot resist pining for. Someone I’m so intimately familiar with, and yet, somehow, they’re still a stranger to me, eternally out of my reach.

There was a time I thought I might be able to find my way into the After without the spell. Or at least, I hoped I would. Back when the agony of my imprisonment was stronger than my reason, and I hadn’t yet cared about penance or redemption. When I’d felt nothing but utter defeat.

“Take me!” I would scream, begging, fighting against my chain in my desperation to reach it. Straining toward the darkness like a rabid animal, singularly focused on ending their relentless torture.

I have tried to end my life a hundred ways. Starving myself. Drowning. Slitting my wrists with the sharp edge of a broken stone. Others have done even worse.

But I no longer try. It doesn’t matter what I do to myself—or what anyone else does to me. I always heal, no matter the severity of my injuries. I may waste away until I am too weak to stand, but even then, my body does not change. I never die, and I cannot stop washing. The curse will not allow it.

The wind picks up again, and my arms fall back to my sides, heavy with defeat.

“Not again,” I whisper. How can there be another death so soon, when my fingers are still cramping from washing the souls from the temple?

Magic pulls at my tired body as I wade back to shore, grabbing my stone and leaning forward to place my hands in the stream. I wait for the clothing to appear as I have thousands of times. It’s always the same. A name on the wind. A face in the water, their death playing out in my mind and the knowledge of when it will happen.

Except this time, it’s not.

My vision tilts, my head swimming as the river fades away, morphing into a sunny hillside. I scramble to stand, the feeling of soft grass beneath my feet so foreign, it itches. There’s a young woman in green down the hill, and she twirls in the sunlight, smiling as she reaches for a pale pink wildflower. Bagpipes soar into the valley surrounding her, a tune I’ve never heard before. A mother pats her young son's blonde head, and he laughs, just for a moment before the joyful sound cracks, and the vision shatters.

Once again, I am at my river.

I scramble back, unease churning in my stomach. That wasn’t death I saw.

That was life.

“No.” The word slips out. My first refusal in over a century.

The water stills—too smooth. Unnatural, as if a sudden spell has been cast upon it, and I hold my breath, hope blossoming somewhere deep in my chest.

Is the river listening to my plea?

She churns in answer, an abrupt shift that smothers any shred of hope in an instant as the water swirls in unnatural eddies, mud kicking up and turning the river a ruddy brown. The scent of bog-myrtle spreads until I’m choking on it, and a strange undertow pulls at my waterlogged hem. Something appears upstream, and I recoil as the garment finds my hands—a dress the softest shade of green.

The exact one the young woman picking wildflowers wore.

I try to stand, to get as far away from the river as I can. Dread works its way through my blood, my body knowing before my mind that I cannot cleanse this dress.

This girl is not meant to die. I don’t know how I know it, but I’m as certain of it as my own name. She's meant to live. To twirl to music and laugh with her family.

And yet, here are her clothes.