Mama Grizelda's Arc

Chapter 4 of 11

Grizelda came to guard the turtle at dawn and found footprints in the mud. Not Jack's. These were bootprints, deep and wide, circling the buried spot. Someone had knelt where the pale shell sat. She pressed her hand to the water. The turtle still breathed below, but the mud around it was disturbed, poked at, tested. Jack splashed up behind her. He crouched and read the prints the way he read everything. "A traveler," he said. "Came in the night. Wanted to know what you were hiding." He looked at the drag marks near the shell. "Almost had it out." Grizelda followed the trail through the reeds. She found the traveler at the water's edge, and her heart went cold. Purple skin. A wide black hat. A staff hung with charms that hummed against her ears. This was no lost wanderer. This was a witch, and she had come for the marsh. The witch smiled. She held a strand of green cloth in one hand, damp from the water. "There's a soul chained under here," she said. Her voice was low and sure. "I can feel it fighting. I mean to take it for my own." She nodded at the buried spot. "Your little turtle sits on the lock. Lure it up, and the door opens." "That turtle guards the whole marsh," Grizelda said. "You break it loose, you free something that eats the living." "Then it eats," the witch said. She lifted the strand of cloth and blew across it. The turtle's shell stirred beneath the water. Its legs loosened from the clay. It began to rise toward the charmed smell. Grizelda dropped to her knees in the flood. She plunged both bark-rough hands down and gripped the shell. "No," she said to it. "Stay." She spoke the girl's name. She spoke the mother's name. The tears came fast and real. The turtle stopped, torn between her grief and the witch's lure. Jack moved. He darted low through the reeds, quick as a cat, and snatched the wet cloth from the witch's fingers. She turned on him, staff raised. He was already gone, splashing into the deep water with the lure held high. "Come get it!" he shouted. The witch cursed and waded after him. Her charm was in his hand now, and the turtle no longer smelled it. The shell settled back into the clay. Grizelda pressed it down and felt the cold below go still again. The witch reached the deep and stopped. She would not follow the boy into black water she did not know. She glared at Grizelda across the reeds. "I'll come back," she said. Then she turned and vanished into the mist. Jack waded back, soaked and grinning. He handed Grizelda the green cloth. "She knows what's down there now," he said. His grin faded. "And she'll bring more than a strand of cloth next time."