The Ferryman - Book 1

Chapter 67:

Circle of Helra

Moth didn’t get out of bed the next morning.

She lay face down and slept fitfully– she felt gray and hopeless, all of yesterday descending on her the moment she opened her eyes. The only relief was the weight of the blankets and pillows on her body, and the few minutes she could scrape together of unconsciousness.

    The sun crept up in inches. The intermittently overcast sky caused sunlight to ebb and flow from her room.

Floors below, Lt. Grotte left to work – the rumbling sound of her getting ready and leaving was audible through the thick floors. Nehem had come to knock on Moth’s door to ask if she wanted breakfast, but when she didn’t answer, he left her alone.

Moth was afraid if she opened her mouth and spoke, she would run.

She knew where she wanted to go – directly to her old room in Clement’s house. She wanted to be ten again. She wanted to return to a time when she knew what she was doing, and who to trust, with her family always there to rely on.

And then she’d remember she had no place in her home anymore, she didn’t even have her last name, so she placed her pillow over her head and slept.

*

“You’re still here.”

Moth started up from her bed.

She knew at once she was in a dream.

She was in her old cupboard bed, her bed in her grandfather’s house, with the thick green curtains pulled closed. But the yellow flowers called hartwort, so lovingly painted by her grandmother all over the walls and ceiling of the bed, were alive – they glowed with a small light.

Moth pulled the curtain back from her bed to look out into the room.

It was the room she was in at Poor Loom, but the reindeer skulls that decorated the corners were covered in flesh, and they blinked and breathed. The room was dusted with snow, a cold wind blowing in through the window.

Quin was there.

She sat on the windowsill, her beautiful white reindeer laying down at her feet. She was wearing Moth’s boots. And though she was resting, calm and emotionless, her eyes stared intently towards the middle of the room where a circle was drawn in bright blue helra.

Even looking at the circle, Moth grew sick with fear. She pressed herself deeper into her cupboard bed where she felt, instinctively, she was safe.

“Get out of my dream,” demanded Moth, shaking.

“It’s my house,” said Quin.

Moth’s heart rattled. She tried to wake herself up – she clawed at her arms but couldn’t feel anything. This was dreamwalker magic. She would be here for as long as Quin could keep her. “Why are you here?” Moth finally asked.

“The politicians were here yesterday,” said Quin. “They were trying to partner with you.”

“You mean the shamans?”

Quin tilted her head, disdainful. “Damp fire. Politicians.”

The room was slowly, steadily, turning a greasy red, but the blue helra circle remained violently bright. Quin would not look away from it. The floorboards in the circle were beginning to warp.

Moth wanted to answer as much as she could – maybe then she could wake up. She burst out hastily, “Yes, they were here yesterday.”

“How many?”

“Twelve – or, maybe eleven?” The room grew redder.

Quin nodded. With her small body, her feet did not touch the floor from the windowsill.

“I am here with an offer.”

Moth waited, fingers curling around her patchwork blanket.

“You are going to find something in this house that does not belong to you – it is mine. If you return it to me, I will leave you alone.” Quin leaned back and looked at Moth. “If you do not, I will punish you and the brother-killer, and I will take it anyway.”

Though Quin looked at her, Moth could not look away from the ring of helra. There was something below the floorboards, and she could glimpse it, large, bloody, and hairy, through the cracks. An eye looked up at her through a knothole, an eye the size of a fist.

“What will I find?” Moth pleaded, but Quin did not answer.

She wanted nothing more than to leave the dream that was turning into a nightmare. The redness of the room was beginning to bleed into her cupboard bed, her safe island was melting away and she pulled further inside – she snapped the curtain close but the red kept spreading.

“If you return it,” repeated Quin. “I will leave you alone.”

The red touched her. Her fogged hand burned with a lightning pain. Moth felt herself getting dragged into the nightmare. The floorboards trembled again, she could hear the creature beneath her, the room tilted and –

“Moth.”

Moth whipped around. Grandpa Clement was calling her.

And there was a door in the cupboard bed – small, but bright green, and she ripped it open and crawled through.

*

She was awake.

Moth fell out of bed, gasping for air, holding onto her side and trembling from her head to her toes. The reindeer skulls in the room were just bone again, the snow was gone, and Quin was not there.

Most importantly, the circle of helra was nowhere.

Moth knelt and touched the floorboards, terrified. There was the knothole – but no eye looked back up at her.

Waves of relief flowed through her.

Her mind spun with Quin’s words. She pulled out her journal and wrote down the dream – the visit – with as much detail as she could remember.

What will I find? Moth wondered helplessly. How will I recognize that I found what she’s looking for? Have I already found it?

Moth thought it over as she got dressed.

She felt, whatever she did find, she should not give it to Quin. The idea troubled her – she wanted to hand it over if it meant she never had to experience a nightmare like that again, but far worse was helping a shaman. That would have far worse consequences.

How does she even know I’ll find something? Moth wondered as she went downstairs. Certainly, even weak shamans had a small capacity to see into the future, but this was more detailed than usual foggy shaman prophecies.

“Mere?” said Nehem, seeing her on the steps. He stood up, saying, “I wasn’t sure if you were going to get up – well, I mean, uh, are you hungry?”

Moth was ravenous and went to the table. It was only as she sat there and Nehem brought her potato stew and coffee did Moth realize she was up and out of her room.

The anxious self-condemnation was a far-off feeling now. The mistakes of yesterday felt miniscule and manageable compared to her encounter with Quin. ‘Nothing cures a cut like a burn’ as Mrs. Tunhofe used to say.

It was strange for her to think the terrible dream, and Quin’s threat, helped encourage her – it reminded her that there was more than political mistakes and social foibles happening. The marches and its inhabitants were also interested in her actions, and Correb and the magpies were on her side.

Moth ate her lunch, and Nehem went outside to chop wood. Feldar and Lt. Grotte were gone.

She had a quiet house to herself. She glanced down at her hip pouch – which she was now in the habit of wearing every minute of the day – and decided to reread her mother’s letter.

Moth noticed that her fogged hand – always frozen in a half curl – still throbbed dully in pain from the dream. She held it awkwardly to her side and rummaged through her bag to find the letter.

There was her map, and her bag of sunstones, and Lander’s letter to her mother and –

Moth paused. Correb’s feather.

The enormous magpie feather had almost entirely become mapmoss, and only its stem was the same. Moth hovered over it, hesitating.

She pulled it out of the pouch.

Tripping into the kitchen, she clattered around for a pot and a mortar and pestle – which was being used to keep a door propped open – and set the pot with water onto the stove to boil. She shoved a bucket and torn up boots off the kitchen

table and set the feather down on a clean rag, then, carefully removed the mapmoss from the rachis of the feather, gathering it into a clump.

While her pot of water simmered and steamed, she burrowed into Lt. Grotte’s cabinets and found a jar of honey.

She poured the mapmoss into the mortar and crushed it with the pestle. It smelled faintly of pinewood. She mashed it until it was a lumpy mess, and then put it in her small pan of hot water and let it simmer until most of the water was evaporated.

While it was still hot, she mixed it with honey, spread it on a length of clean white rag, and wrapped her fogged hand in it.

The relief was immediate.

Moth wriggled her fingers in the poultice. Testing her new flexibility, she wrapped her hand around a mug and held it, then – as best she could through the thick bandage – picked up and put down a pebble no larger than a pea.

It felt like when her hand was underwater.

Breathless, she wondered what she could do if she had cotton gloves and stuffed it full of the mapmoss.

Why did I ever wait to do this? She admitted, mortified, she hadn’t believed the ferryman when he said the mapmoss could help – or, more that she couldn’t imagine it would help to this extent.

Her heart turned to Mr. Larris’ fogged son. Tall socks stuffed with this poultice could help him.

If he’s right about the mapmoss, he’ll be right about the sunstones. Moth felt a rush of excitement. She realized at once how little she believed him.

Moth vibrated with excitement. The farmers – everyone – they needed this, they needed the poultice. The pain, the numbness, would be overcome with a few easy ingredients.

Moth ran outside, still barefoot, into the remaining snow to find her brother.

Nehem was outside chopping wood, and Feldar was helping him gather it up.

“Feldar!” Moth shouted.

Feldar looked over at her, narrowing his eyes at her altered behavior.

“You still wish to ally with me?”

“As I said.”

“Take Aggo and go to town,” commanded Moth eagerly. “Go and tell the farmers to bring anyone touched by the fog here in two days – I have poultices from Lord Correb that will ease the discomfort. And while you’re in town, buy as much honey as you can, whatever amount this will buy.” She tossed him some gold coins, that clinked impressively in his hand. “Oh, and tell them when they come to bring about two ounces of mapmoss each.”

A smile flickered on Feldar’s mouth, and though he didn’t look at her with respect, he didn’t look at her in despair. “Lady Korraban,” he said, and gave a slight bow. He pocketed the coins and left on Aggo.

When he was gone, Moth whirled towards Nehem, who was gawking at her.

“I need you to do something for me as well. But I need your advice on how to do it. There is a massive number of sunstones at the foot of Mount Hathhart and I need them before two weeks are up.”

After a long pause as Nehem processed her words, he nodded. They headed inside the house. She started to make them lunch as he wiped sweat from his face. He shook wood chips from his clothes and drank water.

Moth explained how she had left the marches into Lad, finding herself in an old springhouse, and had buried the sunstones behind it, under rubble. Nehem nodded the entire time in silence.

After Moth had explained it all, he finally leaned back in his chair and said, “I should go with Ira and Ama - we’ll fetch it. Japh wouldn’t leave Patri, and I don’t know Patri well enough to think she’d keep this a secret, since Feldar is her brother.”

“You don’t think Feldar should know?” asked Moth.

Nehem gave a guilty shrug. “I think we only tell who needs to know. Altogether it’s…well, a fortune. That can change people.”

Moth agreed. “I would like to go with you, but I don’t think I can leave.”

“Hiren has its eyes on you.” Nehem rested his chin on his fist and stared out the window. “I don’t want you alone, though, and Lt. Grotte works most days. How long was the journey from Lad to here?”

“Almost three days.”

“We’d be gone six days…I’ll talk to Lt. Grotte and ask her about her schedule and if she can take extra days off. I won’t mention the sunstones or why we’re leaving,” he added, half to himself.

Moth felt a fiery hope in her chest for Hiren. She just had to trust that the sunstones were still safely where she’d left them.