Page 32 of The Washwoman at the River’s End

“Do you ever dream of them?” he asks, and I stiffen in shock, my eyes popping back open at his unexpected question.

He doesn't have to say who. I know instantly who he's speaking of, and I wonder, why is he so focused on the ones I killed? Is that why he was sent here by the Fates? To learn the reason behind my crimes? If so, both he, and they, will be sorely disappointed.

I pretend I’m him, and remain silent. If he doesn’t have to answer my questions, I don’t have to answer his. I owe this man nothing. Certainly not explanations. But he doesn't move, waiting for my answer, and the prickles of his eyes on my back make me restless.

I sigh. “I picture their faces every day," I admit, closing my eyes against the wave of sorrow suddenly threatening to swallow me whole.

He takes a few moments before responding, as if considering my words. “Do you know their names?” he asks, and once again, I’m thrown off guard. It feels personal to him.

“Where are you from?” I ask him.

The night goes still.

“If you tell me where you’re from, I will answer your question,” I say, keeping my voice measured.

He pauses for a beat, but he finally answers. “Fiodhchaol. The very edge of the village near the big hill,” he says, and I relax. It’s on the other end of the kingdom, firmly in the Weaver’s domain.

I steel myself to keep my end of the bargain. “Helen, Hannah, Katie, Amanda.” A lump works its way up my throat, but I push past it. “Patrick, and Marsaili.” My voice cracks on the final name, the last of my victims, and I sense him stiffen, but I can’t tell if it’s from the pain of hearing me speak each of their names out loud or surprise that I remember them.

Hatred emanates off him, pulsing waves that dig into my skin, needling beneath it, but I find it does not make my shame worse. He can't possibly hate me for what I've done more than I hate myself.

When he finally speaks again, his voice is rougher than before. “Go to sleep,” he orders, the scrape of his knife on wood the only sound for several long moments before the crunch of rocks beneath his retreating boots tells me I am finally alone. But even with the distance between us, his hatred doesn't dim. If anything, it's thicker than before. Heavier and so potent, I wonder if he's only a hair away from coming back and breaking his promise.

If he will slice my throat to test if I really can’t be killed.

I hope he isn't.

It would take quite a long time to recover from such a thing.

I have not dreamt since I was a child. Not once since the day I was sentenced here at twenty-three. Since the day I was cursed to this riverbed. It’s as if everything froze. My body. Time. My memories. I assume it’s all part of my punishment—an inability to escape, even in rest. A reminder that I will never see anything other than the trees that surround me and the sky that makes up my prison.

But tonight as I fall asleep, something’s different.

Faded, muted colors dance in my periphery, the beginnings of a painting. I reach to grasp them, but they're like fraying strings, and the harder I pull, the faster they unravel.

A noise swims through the thick, hazy fog in my brain.

A memory?

No. It doesn't tug at my heart the way something from my past might. I can’t make out the sound, but it’s soft and rhythmic. And there’s a voice. A woman, I think, based on the pitch. I reach toward it, tentatively this time, trying not to scare it away, but even with the gentlest prod, it shatters.

12

BRENNEN

I'm grateful for the rugged terrain as Sable maneuvers between the trees. It's a needed distraction after hearing Marsaili’s name come so casually from the monster's mouth last night. I’d tossed and turned for hours, unable to get the sound out of my head. Even today, as I’d observed the dragon as well as the Washwoman, it stayed with me.

Her voice had cracked as she’d said it. A false display of regret, but why had it been her name that she had chosen to show emotion on? Is it possible she knows more than she’s letting on? Could she somehow know who, and what, Marsaili was to me?

Sable leaps over a fallen branch, and I kick her sides, urging her faster.

I duck as a craggly stick appears in front of my face, but I'm too slow, distracted, and it scrapes across my forehead. I feel the heat of blood before the pain, and I wipe it from my vision with my forearm.

Do not let her pull your focus from what matters. Cailleach warned that she would trick you, did she not? my subconscious reminds me.

“She did,” I say, though I'm not sure if it's out loud or in my own mind.

I dinnae allow myself to think of the grey blue of her eyes or the soft cupid's bow of her upper lip. That I even noticed anything other than her blood-stained hands is a betrayal, and I force myself to picture the way the blood drips up her forearms as if she’d relished ending their lives. To commit the image to memory.