Florence Welch's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

The goddess kept her small hand on the peat. Florence felt the ground under her knees hum. It was not warmth now. It was a low pull, like a hand closing around her ankle from below. The deep water had noticed the child standing on it. It wanted its share. "Something is answering," Florence said. "Not for me," the goddess said. "For you. You called at the surface. They heard you underneath." Florence lifted her palms. Wet peat clung to them in dark strings. Under the moss, something was turning over in its sleep. She had felt the bog watch her before. She had never felt it reach. "They want a name spoken," the goddess said. "Yours or theirs. If you give neither, the call bends back on you." Florence's tongue went cold again. She thought of Hozier up in the tower and how the water still pulled at him when the rain came hard. This was the same pull. It had been patient. It was not patient now. She stood. Past the drying garden the reeds parted without wind. A great deer stepped out of the mist, antlers wide as a roof beam. It stopped at the edge of the flat stone and lowered its head to her. She had seen it once before, from far off. She had not dared to speak to it. "Old one," she said. Her voice shook. "Tune me to them. I can't hear what they want." The deer breathed out. The sound went through her chest and down into the peat. Her ears popped. She heard, suddenly, three voices laughing low in the water. Three women rose from the pool past the reeds. Grey skin. Moss in their hair. Teeth too many and too white. They were up to their waists in black water and did not seem cold. The middle one tilted her head at Florence, then past her, toward the tower. "The old man is out walking again," she said. "We buried him ourselves. Who let him up?" "I did," Florence said. All three laughed. It was not kind. It was interested. "Then you owe," the middle one said. "Twice now. Speak a name to the deep, witch, or we speak yours." Florence's mouth opened. Nothing came. The goddess stepped between Florence and the pool. She held out one small hand, closed. She opened it. White grains sat on her palm. "From your ring," the goddess said to Florence. "I brought a handful." "Salt is for hiding," Florence said. "Today it is for calling. Minerals remember longer than water. We use it the other way." Florence took the salt. She knelt at the pool's edge and pressed the grains into the wet peat in a line pointing down, not around. She spoke the oldest word for the one she wanted, the mother's word, and let it fall through the salt into the deep. The pull under her knees eased. The hags went quiet. The water accepted the offering and held. The middle hag smiled without teeth this time. "Heard," she said. "But she is not here yet. And now the deep knows your voice." They sank. The deer turned and walked back into the mist. Florence stayed kneeling. The bog had not turned on her. It had listened. It also, now, knew her name.