Florence knelt at the edge of the swan pond with a name half-formed in her mouth and could not push it out. She had come to the bog to escape people who called her devil and wife of nothing, and the bog had opened for her like a hand. Two of them had chased her to the first crossing and run from something she never saw. She meant to call the old goddess back into the waking world tonight, to walk the peat beside her. She only needed the true name. She had been circling it for a week and it kept slipping. Hozier sat behind her on the low step of the star-tower, tuning a string that had swelled in the damp. He looked up. His skin still carried the dark of the peat and small green stars of moss. "You've said three names," he said. "None of them were it." "I know." "Say it plain, then. What you want her for." "To walk with me. So I stop being the only one who knows what's under this water." He nodded once. He set the instrument down and picked up the small cracked boat she had built for the drowned, the ferry offering, and turned it in his hands like a bowl. "You're my Isis," he said. "You pulled me up. You don't need her to be seen." She almost smiled. Then the reeds behind the drying shed bent the wrong way. The fae woman stepped through the wort garden without touching a flower. Wings folded tight. Florence had never seen her this close. She was the mistress from the old stories, the one the hags had been whispering about — the one who took musicians and used them up. She was here for Hozier. She was here for Florence too. "Little daffodil," the fae said. "You keep trying words that aren't hers." "Leave." "I can give you the name. I know it. Say yes and I say it." Florence felt the word she had been reaching for rise in her throat — and stop. Held. Something small and cold sat on her tongue where the name should go. The fae had put it there just by standing near. "Get out of my garden," Florence said. "Say yes." Hozier stood. He walked past Florence and pressed a bundle of yellow wort into her hand from the drying rack. The bundle was warm. The cold on her tongue thinned. Florence did not say the old name. She said Hozier's, out loud, into the pond. The swan lifted its head. The salt in her circle up the path hummed once, faint, a mile of thread pulled tight. The fae's smile did not move. "Then I keep the name," she said, and walked back into the reeds. Florence sat with the wort in her fist. She had not summoned the goddess. She had chosen the man. And the one who held the name now knew exactly what to trade for.

Morning came grey over the peat. Florence carried her salt jar to the ring around her hut and knelt to mend the line. The wort was still warm in her pocket from yesterday. She had not slept. The fae woman still held the goddess's true name, and every hour that passed was an hour that trade came closer. She walked her circle three times and stopped at the door. Inside the ring the air felt close, like a shut hand. She had known for a week that the salt held her call in with her. Whatever she sang inside it went no farther than her own roof. The goddess would not hear her from in here. She had been afraid to admit it. She scuffed a small gap in the salt with her boot and stepped out. The bog went quiet at once. Water beaded on the reeds. Florence walked to the flat stone past the drying garden and set her palms down on the wet moss. She tried the name she almost had. Her tongue went cold again. She tried a second. Her hands began to shake. "I don't know your name," she said out loud. "I only know you're there." The shaking got worse. She heard her own breath go thin. She almost turned back for the salt. A small hand touched her wrist. A child stood in the moss beside her. White hair to the waist. A crown of yellow flowers and river stones. Bare feet on the wet ground, not sinking. Her eyes were the green of old ponds. She was not a child. Florence knew it the way a daughter knows a mother's step in the dark. "You don't need the name," the child said. "You called. I came." Florence's throat closed. "They said I had to have it." "They wanted you to think so." "Who are you." "Older than the one you were calling." She looked at the broken salt line up the path. "You did the right thing. Salt is for hiding. You are done hiding." Florence sat down in the moss. The goddess sat with her, small and plain, and put one hand on the peat between them. The ground under Florence's knees warmed. "Will you walk with me," Florence said. "A while. Not yet always. Something is pulling at the deep water. I came to find it. You are on its road." Up the slope, past the wort garden, the star-tower stood dark against the sky. Hozier was up there. Florence had left him tuning strings by the great lens an hour ago. She looked toward it now and felt the cold on her tongue return, faint, from that direction. Not from her. The goddess followed her look. Her small mouth went flat. "Your man," she said. "Someone is at him already." Florence stood. The salt jar rolled from her lap into the moss and stayed there.

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.

Florence stayed on the flat stone until her knees hurt. The pool had gone still. The hags were gone, but the water remembered her now. She could feel it listening at her ankles. She needed the goddess called up soon, before the deep decided what to do with the voice it had learned. She could not do it alone. She had tried once and her throat had split around a name she could not carry. She walked back to the hut and found Isa already there. Her partner sat on the step with her boots off, wringing bog water from her socks. Ink stains on her fingers. Copper hair pinned up in a knot that was losing itself. She did not look surprised to see Florence wet to the thigh. "Your circle is broken," Isa said. "I stepped over where it used to be." "I know." "Then I'm staying." She pulled her sock back on. "The cart is behind the reeds. I brought the pipes. What are we doing?" "Calling the mother down. I can't hold the chant by myself." Isa nodded once. "Then don't." They pulled the ritual vehicle up onto the dry ground beside the drying garden. Brass pipes, rune panels, two horns like open mouths. Isa cracked her knuckles and set her hands on the keys. Florence had forgotten what it felt like to have someone stand at the other end of a working with her. The child goddess stepped out from behind the shed. She held a wooden bowl. In it was salt scraped from the broken circle and small yellow flowers pulled from the drying garden, crushed together into a pale grit. "For your eyes," Danu said. She offered the bowl up. "There are veils on this bog that are not mine. Salt lifts what is laid. The yellow flower breaks what clings. Wear it before you sing." Florence pressed her wet thumb into the mix and marked her own forehead, then Isa's. Isa did not flinch. The bowl went warm and then cool. The air over the peat thinned. Florence saw the reeds without their soft edge. She saw a second shape crouched at the far pool that had not been there a moment ago, a woman-shape with wings folded tight. It had been watching all along. The wort had pulled the film off it. "Start," Danu said. Isa struck the first low chord. The horns took it and pushed it out across the water. Florence opened her mouth and the old word came without splitting her. Isa's harmony caught under it and held. The chant did not collapse. It stood. The peat under them warmed. Something answered from very far down, slow and enormous, still turning toward the surface. Not arrived. Coming. The winged shape at the far pool stood up. It had heard the call too. It began to walk toward them across the water.

The chant held. Florence kept her mouth open around the old word and Isa's chords kept it standing. The winged woman walked closer across the water, wings folded tight, feet not breaking the surface. Florence knew her. The fae who had once offered a stolen name and now wanted Hozier and wanted Florence gone. To stop singing was to lose everything already rising under the peat. To keep singing was to let the fae reach the step. Isa saw her too. Isa's left hand did not leave the low keys. Her right hand slid up the panel and struck a harder chord, sharp as a warning. The horns threw it. The winged woman flinched but did not stop. Something moved at the tree line. A great elk stepped out of the reeds. Antlers like a bare crown. He set one hoof, then another, and lowered his head toward the pipes. He gave a sound from deep in his chest, older than speech. It threaded under Isa's chord and thickened it. The peat took the sound and passed it down. Florence felt the thing under the bog turn faster toward the surface. A green light rose in the water at her feet, shaped like a wide stone bowl she had never dug. A cradle. The bog was making a cradle. The winged woman reached the edge of the salt line and stopped. Her wings opened halfway. Florence braced to lose the chant and lift her hands. She did not. "Keep singing," the fae said. Her voice was flat. "She told me where I came from. I am hers too." Florence did not trust it. Isa did not slow. The elk did not lift his head. The fae stepped over the broken salt and knelt at the pipes. She set one pale hand on the brass. A third voice joined the chant, thin and clean, a harmony above Isa's line. It fit. Florence's throat did not split. The cradle in the water brightened. The peat cracked around it in a slow ring. Florence understood then what they were calling. Not a child goddess sent as messenger. The mother herself, coming back through her own daughter's shape, using every mouth that would open for her. The elk struck the ground once. The horns took the last note out across the whole bog. The cradle filled with clear water. Something small and bright moved inside it, not yet born, not yet named. The chant closed. Silence came down clean. Florence's knees gave. Isa caught her elbow. The fae stood up from the pipes and did not look at either of them. She looked at the cradle. "She is not finished," the fae said. "The last calling is yours alone. And they heard us. All of them." Far off, a horse screamed across the water.