Black Water

The sunlight blazed. The forest hummed. Creatures thronged around the man until he walked into the clearing. He had helped the local godbotherer cut these trees, to burn the stumps and salt the roots. All the better to create a space to talk. No order for the man, no life for the god, just dead earth- an even field for all. His bare feet felt the moss of the forest floor give way to cinders and blades of wood. A charred shard of ironbark sliced his heel. Another wound. Penance. He had once shed blood and now bloody footprints followed him through life.

He stood in the clearing, bowed under the weight of what he had brought. Gifts, tools, and precautions. Little things to trade for safety, once owned by those lost to these woods. Maybe that alone would be enough to buy his wish. The godbotherer had told him how much gods loved to trade.

He placed a carved wooden footstool in the centre of the clearing. It had been made for him by a lover. The lover had had little skill for woodwork, but he was fond of it. Every time he ran his fingers over the flowers etched into it, he remembered the softness of that man’s skin, the roughness of his lips, the smell of roses and coarse moonshine steeped into his clothes.

He took a seat on the stool- after all, even taking a seat offered by a god could be dangerous- and he waited. At the highest point of the sun, a child walked into the clearcut. 

The man’s heart sank; he knew the form the god had stolen. Quin had gone missing several moons before. No body had ever been found. But this wasn’t the Quin who had blessed their village with cheer and mischief. This thing looked broken. Pale skin, fixed smile, eyes that wept black water. It bypassed the offerings and spoke.

“Ah, Anders, it’s been so long.” Alongside the dead voice was a trickling of ichor from its mouth.

“I come to you again, in a place of bargain. This is not your swamp, there are no waters here but what you bring. However, I come to ask for absolution. I have suffered for my sins. I wish them to be gone.”

“And what do you offer in return?”

“Entertainment? A game of skill, of wits? I’ve brought several.”

“An interesting idea, but what’s the fun in wits? How about-“ 

The broken child paused. Anders felt the drip of rain patter on his head and shoulders, slickly creeping down his spine. It was strange, almost oily. He kept the entity in his eyes as best he could, not blinking, barely breathing. 

“A test of courage? You do pride yourself on being a stoic. Just look at those feet of yours. Do you think that nothing can scare you anymore?” It chuckled, almost like a brook, black water pouring from its mouth. “Can you speak your sin? Feel its weight in my eyes, speak it in my tongue? Can you do it without one scream?”

Anders blanched. He felt his heartbeat quicken, his tongue thick and heavy in his mouth. His first effort to speak came out a hoarse squeak. And he felt something stir within him. He coughed, gagged, drops of black water sprayed from his lips. It was as though there was a storm swelling within him, being released with each effort at speech. 

“I… I killed my lover.” As he spoke, Anders sobbed and retched, tears flowing from his eyes, black water from his mouth in spurts and jets, mingling together on the ground. But he did not scream. “I killed Aeron. I heard the song in his heart. I saw the flowers in his hair. I knew that he could never be mine unless that song was quenched, and I killed him.” The rain was falling faster now, his back was soaked. 

“Oh, but that’s not all the truth, is it?” The broken child leaned closer, suddenly inches from his face. “You were afraid. You gave the body to me.” Its skin had paled, its teeth had shifted, sharp and straight like some strange fish. It stared into him, voided black eyes crawling across every wrinkle and blemish on his skin and soul. “You wanted to be sure no one found it, and you made Aeron mine, that man who loved freedom and joy. that man who loved you, you made him mine.”

“Yes! Yes. I gave his flesh to you. I beg to be absolved. Please!” 

The relentless flow came to an end. He could taste turpentine and tar, brackish water coating his tongue, sliding down his throat. He coughed, vomited, kneeling, hands on the footstool to steady himself. The rain had not yet stopped, but there was a new scent to it, floral, sickly, almost rotten.

The broken child was on the other side of the clearing, as if it had never moved. Face back to that of Siani and Tristan’s Quin. It smiled sweetly, and blinked. “Of course! You were very brave.” 

Anders heard the sarcasm dripping from the words but started to breathe more easily. The gods did like their games. 

Its head snapped towards him again. “Mind you, I can’t absolve you. You never sinned against me.” 

Anders realized that it was no longer looking at him. It was not smiling at him. It was smiling at something above him. Shit. When had the trees closed in like this? Where was the light? The bloody ashen mud beneath him was churning, stinging the cuts in his feet. He could hear the songs of insects, strange birds, stranger frogs. And there was still the rotten scent of flowers in the air. He looked up.

“Hello… love…” 

A familiar face, with the rents he had carved across it. Dead flowers, woven into a tangled mass of hair. A maw, split like an eel’s, steadily dripping black water. A smile with all its warmth now gone.

***

Aeron looked down at Anders, watched his old eyes flicking back and forth, trapped in that drowned, wretched thing that had once been his. Long tangled hair, rotten flowers ready to dissolve at a touch. Cold, wet skin. Cold, dead eyes. He could see Anders’s fear in them. Wondered if the gaping wounds still hurt, wondered if the fire of breathless lungs still burnt in his chest. Wondered if Anders’s soul could feel the memories of that body drifting far beneath the surface.

“How long will he live?” He asked the god. “Will he ever pass over?”

The Black Water, form still overflowing from the body of Quin, perched on Aeron’s old chest, poking at Anders’s eyes. It dragged a finger down his cheek, splitting the weathered skin, showing waterlogged flesh and fat. Aeron felt his new body shiver, its gorge rise. He turned his head slightly and choked a cry back.

“Oh, I’ll let him have a long life. He did win his little test of courage. I’ll even help fulfill his deepest desire. He now owns you.  Or your flesh at the least. And what good would I be if he could not enjoy it for a very, very long time.” It prodded at the dead face again. “I left him his eyes, all the better to see the fruits of his passion.”

“And what would you do with him?”

It shrugged. Surprisingly human in its indifference. When Aeron couldn’t see its face, the back of the child looked just so, just a child playing.

“The pile of flesh? It belongs to him, not me. No longer forgotten, now back with those who knew it.” It clutched at Anders’s jaw, forcing the head this way and that, peering over the wounds. There was a ghastly cracking sound as the skull swivelled on the neck. “Take it, leave it, no different to me. Do you want to forget him? Do you want to forget that flesh and the past it holds?”

Aeron smiled; he knew that the god wanted to offer kindness. “Never. Those wounds will always be a part of me, though my flesh no longer has them. That flesh will always have been mine, even though it is now his. Thank you for your compassion, but my past is mine, and I would never have it any other way.” 

“Ah, I suppose that I have carried these bones to those who loved them, and with that my work is done.” The Black Water laughed, a chuckling brook, both aged and melancholy and fresh and joyful. “Fare well, Aeron. Visit me again. I do so love those who know me.” The child lay back on the earth, waters swelling around it. The ashen mud crept over its face, ichorous water dragging it beneath the surface.

A brief voice, echoing from the sounds of life around. “A gift for me, and a gift for you. I’ll be taking this. Such a beautiful memory.”

The footstool that he had once gifted to Anders had begun to sprout, fresh green vines and leaves surrounding what was now both a sapling and a stump. Something old and something new, very much its leitmotif. As Aeron watched, the sapling grew to a bud, a bulb. It quivered, bursting open to show purple and gold, a single flower. He sighed, reaching out and plucking it. The love of a god. Something to cherish.

The Black Water had left puddles in its passage, one was flat and wide enough to gaze into. Study his new reflection. Short hair, now sandy blond. His creased mouth, which he’d so often made laugh before. The rough lips that had he had heard speak such tender words. A handsome nose, broken in several places – Anders had often “defended Aeron’s honor”, whether he’d wanted him to or not. Burn scars, pockmarks from working hot metal. Several proud piercings, his brow, his lip, a bar across the shell of his ear. He stroked his face, coarse stubble pricking his coarser fingers, and twined the flower behind his ear. An old face, one that he had adored. It would take some effort to get accustomed to wearing it himself.

As he gathered up a set of vines, growing fresh at the forest edge, he couldn’t help but laugh. That old godbotherer knew more of the bottles of her sanctuary than the arts of the godlike. After all, how could you purge life from a place? Creating space, creating order, that was an eternal climb up a gravel slope. As his new feet stung, he also questioned how one thought that blood shed out of volition washed away that which was shed from violence. Anders’s penitence was so very like him, so very on his own terms.

Aeron tied the vines into a rough net. He put his hands under the armpits of his old body, saw Anders’s eyes staring up at him.

“Worry not, old love. I’ll find somewhere for you to rest. Somewhere with beauty, somewhere quiet. Maybe you’ll find peace in my old bones.” He smiled, he could feel the weight of his grief, but its burden was bearable. “I think I’ll find you some place amongst roses.”

Storyweaver, guide my steps and sing my path.

Wolves, run with me and my heart will burn with Joy.

And if I should be lost, Black Water, carry my bones to those who love me.

— The Petitions of the Wanderer

Aeron’s Prayer

About The Author

Zira MacFarlane placed 4th in the Summer Short Story Contest, August 2021, with their award winning story Black Water. Zira won the $50 cash prize and publication in Indie It Press’s forthcoming Anthology, 2022: COURAGEOUS CREATIVE.