Mildred Bogwater's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The torches came closer. Mildred watched from her window and counted them. Twenty, maybe more. Each villager carried fire and a blade. She could not fight them all. Her new skin was tight and young, but it would not stop an axe. She turned from the window and pushed open the boards of the little outhouse behind her hut. Beneath it lay her hidden lair, damp and cold. Here she kept the things she never used unless she was desperate. She was desperate now. Mildred dug through the mud shelf until her fingers found the charm. It hung from a chain, a small silver moon with a glowing center. A soft mist curled inside the glass like a trapped storm. She had stolen it from a drowned witch years ago. Fire meant nothing in thick fog. She climbed back up and stood on her rotting porch. She held the charm high and whispered the old word. The mist poured out. It spilled across the water and swallowed the reeds. Within moments the whole marsh drowned in white. The torches became dim orange smears. Mildred heard the villagers shout. They had lost the path. They stumbled and cursed in the fog. But fog alone would not turn them back. She needed the marsh to bite. Mildred knelt at the water's edge and slapped the mud three times. She called the old thing that slept in the deep channel. The water bulged. A long shape rose, slick and dark, thick as a fallen log. The bog leech lifted its blind head and tasted the air. Mildred pointed toward the shouting. "Feed," she said. The leech slid into the fog. Screams followed. A man's voice broke into a wet gurgle. Torches hissed as they dropped into the water. The villagers ran blind, straight into deeper mud, and the marsh held their feet. Mildred laughed for the first time in days. The trap had worked. The mob was breaking. Then a figure stepped from the white. Red gown, painted mouth, unafraid. Scarlet Devereaux had not run with the others. She walked straight to the porch, her shoes sucking in the mud. "You think this saves you," Scarlet said. She was calm. That frightened Mildred more than any torch. "The fog lifts. The leech tires. And they will come back angrier." "They'll come back drowned," Mildred said. Scarlet smiled. She held up a small carved token, marsh wood, the kind the villagers wore. "Not all of them fear you now. Some fear me more." She turned and walked back into the fog, unhurried, untouched. Mildred stood alone on the porch. The screams faded. The mist began to thin. She had turned the marsh against the mob and won the night. But Scarlet had walked through her worst trap without a scratch. The madame was building something among the marshfolk. And she was not finished.