Mama Grizelda's Arc

Chapter 6 of 11

The witch was gone, but Grizelda's shoulder still burned where the staff had struck. She waded back to the buried spot where Mira knelt over the black water. The old woman held the shell down with both hands. "She'll dig again," Grizelda said. "Somewhere I can't watch. I have to find where she sleeps and end her before she rebuilds." Mira did not lift her eye from the mud. "You always want to hunt in the dark." She reached into the folds of her purple dress and drew out a scrap of green thread, the same thread the witch had used for her charm. "I cut this from her pouch while you two played with salt. It smells of her nest. The marsh knows that smell now." Grizelda stared at the thread. Twenty years of silence, and Mira had thought further ahead than she had. "You could have told me sooner." "You didn't ask sooner." Mira almost smiled. "Take it to the water and ask. The marsh answers you, not me." Grizelda pressed the thread into the mud. She spoke low, the old words, and asked the black water where the purple woman denned. The reeds bent though there was no wind. A cold line of ripples ran east, away from the buried shell, toward the higher ground where the beanstalk twisted up to its crooked cabin. The marsh was pointing. The witch nested near the vine. Then the water went colder still. A voice bled up from the mud beneath Mira's hands. "You dig in my grave, old woman." The dark shape of Gregor pressed against the surface, faceless, its pale hands clawing at the shell that pinned it. The binding was answering Grizelda's asking, stirred by the spoken rite. "Let her free me. She only wants what you took." Mira drove her weight down. "Hold your rite," she hissed. "You're waking it." Grizelda swallowed the last of the words. The cold sank. Gregor's hands slid back under the mud, and the shell settled. She had her answer, but she had nearly loosed the ghost to get it. Grizelda stood. She knew now. The witch slept at the foot of the beanstalk, close enough to strike the marsh at will. "East," she said. "By the vine. I can reach her before she wakes." Mira's grip stayed firm on the shell. "Then go. But go quiet. Every word you say near the water feeds that thing." Her one eye finally rose. "And come back. I can hold the shell. I can't hold it and grieve you both." Grizelda gripped the old woman's shoulder once. Then she turned east, following the cold ripple toward the beanstalk, the witch's green thread wound tight in her fist. For the first time she was not searching blind. She knew where to end this. She only had to get there before the ghost tried again.