Lady Cordelia Whitmore's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Lady Cordelia Whitmore drowned in this swamp, and she had not left it since. She drifted above the reeds where her lover had pushed her under and run. Now she searched for the path he took that night. She circled the same flooded reeds again and again. The water hid every footprint. It hid every broken stalk. She had counted the circles until numbers meant nothing. Her velvet glove still clung to one hand, frayed and torn. She had worn a matching pair the night she died. The other glove was gone, lost in the mud somewhere below. She pressed the ruined glove to her chest. The locket hung there, cracked down its face. She opened it. Two small portraits stared back, warped and faded. One was hers. One was his. She could barely make out his eyes now. "Which way," she whispered to the reeds. They gave her nothing. A moth landed on the open locket. Its wings were ink-black, edged with a faint blue shine. It sat on the portrait of the man. Then it lifted and flew low across the water. Cordelia stopped drifting. The moth did not circle. It flew straight, away from the reeds she had haunted for so long. She followed. The moth led her past the reeds into deeper water. Bone-white pitcher plants rose from the shallows, pale as dead fingers. The moth crossed above them without pause. Cordelia trailed it, faster now, her torn glove trailing through the muck. The water opened onto a low mound thick with blooms and bones. Half-sunken relics broke the surface. Fossils and rusted fragments lay tangled in reeds and mud. The moth settled on the mound and folded its wings. Cordelia looked down where it rested. A single glove lay half-buried in the mud. Faded velvet. Torn at the fingers. The match to her own. She reached for it with her gloved hand. Her fingers passed through it, cold and useless. But she knew it. He had torn it from her wrist as she went under. He had carried it this far. The path did not end at the reeds. It ended here, at the bog, where he had come after. The moth had shown her the trail she could not find alone. She raised her head. Beyond the mound, the swamp stretched toward dry land she had never crossed. For years she had clung to the place she died. Now she saw where he had gone. The reeds no longer held her. She left the drowning-place behind and moved toward the far shore, the moth rising ahead of her like a guide.