The Ferryman - Book 1

Chapter 77:

The Heir of Poor Loom

In the evening, Moth brought her newly offered sunstones into her room. She wanted to be alone, to think over the day, to reread her journal entries from the Aldur farmers.

She wasn’t used to being watched constantly, by hundreds of eyes – solitude felt like a privilege now, a sacred space she needed to have or else some part of her would wither away.

Moth sat by the fire, removing her shoes, and stretched her feet towards the heat to help the aches and blisters, letting the warmth wash over her in waves as she slowly relaxed.

A bell jangled in her room.

It was the bell over the cabinet that held the human-shaped skin.

Moth froze in her chair.

Her fingers gripped the arms – she was too afraid to turn around – her chest tightened as the floor creaked, the air grew heavy. Every tick of the clock shivered through her until she’d couldn’t stand it any longer and she leapt up, spinning wildly around, flailing to grab up the fire poker.

But the cabinet door was still closed – still tied shut, with the bell hanging innocently, brass and quiet.

Moth slumped against the wall, sweating.

She felt as high-strung as a barn cat, embarrassed by her own jittery hands – she crept over to the bell, and felt a small breeze from her window – she’d left it open a crack that morning, after letting the magpies out. A draft must’ve rustled the bell.

She opened the window and mimicked a magpie sound, and within minutes Nokk and a dozen other magpies were in the room with her, finding perches and places to get comfortable for the night.

Their presence soothed her.

She settled into her chair, sighing as Nokk curled up on her lap, and she leaned back to read another of Quin’s old books by the comforting light of the fire.

The book ‘Tools and Pacts of Shamanism’ was hefty, and she’d barely made progress in it, so she picked it up again and began reading.

She had to set her stomach like iron to endure the alarming illustrations, but she quickly got used to them again, absorbing as much information as she could from such a heavy text, occasionally writing down something of note in her own journal.

She stopped when she came across a passage.

Ownning – Exerting influence through nearness.

This particular practice and its effect I had trouble verifying.

Described to me as ‘ownning’ I asked what the word meant, assuming it was the same word as ‘owning’, but the shaman I was interviewing told me it was not. He said it was an old word, ‘ohin’, which meant ‘thinning.’

‘If I move towards you, I have closed the gap between us,’ the shaman explained. ‘But ah, if I become your friend, I have thinned the gap between us forever. No matter where I am, far away maybe, I am close to you. It is different.’

He explained common examples of this, people who felt – suddenly with no warning – of a tragedy befalling their sibling, which turned out to be a true premonition. The space was thin, so they knew each other’s pain.

Another example was of a wife dreaming about her husband – a sailor – was warning her of an oncoming storm. Living by the shore, she fled inland. She narrowly avoided terrible weather that destroyed her home, while she herself was safe. When later reunited with her husband, he told her he had seen the storm moving fast towards the shores and had been consumed with worry for her – so much so he had a dream warning her of it.

(Please remember I cannot verify these accounts – I am simply recounting what this Toverin shaman told me.)

‘Those with thin spaces between them can influence each other, speak, even at great distances. This skill is usually unconscious but can be trained and strengthened. It is common, each person has this within them, the more devoted their love the thinner the space.”

I asked him why it was considered a shaman practice.

“When you force thin space on someone who is your enemy, that is when it becomes a shaman art. Then it becomes ownning.”

He detailed the methods which I have listed below.

Terror: purposely terrorizing someone to the point of the victim having nightmares can cause ownning.

Romance: lying and romantically ensnaring is a common method of ownning. The victim, even if now repulsed by the shaman and wishing their death, is consumed with thoughts of them – they are weak to the shaman.

Possessions: This is small, but depending on the strength of the shaman can be very effective. If the shaman can convince their enemy to give them a personal object, a thinning has occurred. The more used the item, or the more sentimental,

the better. This is unique, as the item cannot be stolen, but consensually gifted or traded.

Moth looked up slowly from her book and then down at her feet.

She shakily closed her book, setting it aside, and stared into the fire. She wished she had not been so terribly hungry at that time to trade two doves for her boots – she wished she’d endured the hunger.

She felt herself getting into an anxious spiral of thoughts, and when Nokk raised his head and blinked at her, she said, “I suppose it’s time for bed.”

But even as she got ready, as she pulled back the sheets and lied down, closing the curtain to keep in the heat, and making room for Nokk – even as she blew out the candle watched the afterimage of it fade from her eyes, she knew she’d dream of Quin.

Moth fell asleep.

*

She knew she was dreaming as she sat up in her bed.

She felt fear, but it was quickly covered with anger – she wanted the dream to be over, she didn’t want Quin to have the satisfaction of seeing her afraid.

Moth pulled back the curtain of her bed, ready to confront Quin, when she saw she wasn’t in the room, wasn’t even in Poor Loom – she was in Picky Woods.

The trees were larger, the spikes longer and sharper, some cruelly curved like hooks, waiting to gouge.

Moth hesitated, the bravery of her anger ebbing away, and she turned back to hide in her bed only to find it was no longer there – just the cabinet, tied with a rope and hung with a bell.

“Lady Moth, you must wake up,” said a deep, rippling voice, and Moth whirled around.

There was something behind the trees. It was tall, twelve feet, with a long neck and body resembling a moose, and four horns. Moth could only see glimpses of its, but it was covered in dark brown fur with a white pattern, a spiraling pattern like an ammonite.

“What…who are you? Moth whispered.

“You’ve met me in most of your dreams,” he answered. “But you don’t remember.”

He was on the other side of the trees – Moth could see through gaps, but it was if he were behind an unending wall of briars.

“There’s a door out of this dream, the longer you stay the worse it will be for you. This is no common nightmare. I cannot reach you, but I will try to guide you to the door.” So saying, the strange beast ran along the outside of the woods, and Moth followed as fast as she could – the thorns felt real as they scraped at her skin and tore her nightgown. Moth looked down, worried to step on thorns since she wore no shoes, and realized the ground was floorboards. She looked up – intersected irregularly, with no regard to scale or logic, were red rafters, painted over and over with star-headed children.

“Lady Moth.”

Moth jerked to a stop, peering through the gaps at the beast, who’s eye was about the size of her hand

“Lady Moth, you must go through there and I cannot follow. Be brave, don’t stop, don’t look back.”

Moth jerkily turned.

There was some corrupted version of Quin’s tree stand. The aspens grew insensibly, rolled together, with the tree stand broken and made up of the red rafters – the whole thing was a clumsy, jagged mess, like something made by a bagworm, with a great hollow center to pass through.

Moth hesitated, and the beast urged her, “Hurry.”

Not allowing herself time to think, Moth rushed into the tunnel of the tree stand.

It was dark, nothing could be seen, Moth kept one hand out in front of her and one on the wall, feeling the garbled branch walls until the texture changed to rough clay walls.

The light grew brighter, and she was somewhere that looked real – looked solid.

She was in a small clay hut with a thatch roof, deep in Picky Woods, with straw beds on rough-cut wooden cots.

The walls were hung with crudely made shaman tools, the ceiling hung dense with magpie skulls, with the feathers everywhere. The room was fully quiet, fully silent, so mute it took the noise from Moth.

Laying on the cots were two figures.

An old woman and an old man.

They were naked and soaked in helra, some of the tools still clamped onto or inserted in their bodies.

They weren’t dead yet, they somehow were still alive – but Moth didn’t dare to look at them, she couldn’t bear to understand what she was seeing, how destroyed and twisted their bodies were.

She quaked and trembled, covering her mouth with both her hands to stifle the sobs – her legs threatened to give out in fear – how could she? how could she? Moth thought, feeling her own soul begin to recoil at the sight. They were all she had.

She closed her eyes, breathing quick, short, desperate breaths. She knew she had to continue through the hut, she had to pass between them. She couldn’t turn back.

Covering her face, her heart thick and beating in her mouth, she took a step forward.

Another step.

Another step.

She felt the straw beneath her feet. She peered under her hands, seeing the legs of the wooden cot, knowing she was between them now, they surrounded her.

They were breathing – not like a human. Like air passing through an empty house.

Moth inched forward.

Something grazed her hip, like a finger reaching out.

Moth stiffened, her marrow cold, the hair on her neck standing up like hackles. The sensation passed.

Another step, another step, the hay shuffling underfoot felt loud enough to wake the dead, yet neither twitched or moved, they breathed on.

Moth moved forward, bit by bit, not daring to rush, reaching the end of the hut, the door within reach if she would only be patient, only take it slow, and she did, by increments, by strands, closer, closer to the door.

“Meremoth?”

Grandpa Clement.

Was that who lay on the cot?

Moth looked around.

The two bodies grabbed Moth with burning cold hands, and dragged her through a ring of helra on the floor, down below.

*

Moth woke up from her dream into a nightmare, deep in some hidden corner of Picky Woods, but now she hung by her neck in a hoop trap meant for magpies.

The silver threads around her were cutting, threatening to tighten at any instant and decapitate her, her neck was wet with blood.

And Quin was there, sitting on her white reindeer, wearing Moth’s boots.

Moth’s feet dangled in midair. She couldn’t speak, she gargled for breath, her hands clumsily, uselessly, trying to tug at the silver wire.

Quin watched her struggle.

Somewhere, far above in the previous dream, they could hear a bell ring.

Then, Quin turned away from Moth, looking deep into her Picky Woods, at the densely grown trees serrated with thorns, trunks that looked like saws.

The woods were Quin’s. She had claimed them. The whole place was full of her breath.

And, there was a noise. Moth struggled to hear over her own heart, but she soon saw people moving through the trees. Somewhere far away, somewhere not in a dream, in the real Picky Woods.

Ama, Nehem, and Ira.

Quin watched them with her hollow eyes. Then, she looked at Moth.

“Will you give me the skin?” she asked.

Moth sobbed. She felt the threads tighten, she watched her siblings – oblivious and unaware – making their way through. Tears streamed down her eyes and to her bloodied throat.

She sobbed because she knew what her answer had to be. What it would always have to be – what choice she’d always have to make.

“No.”

Quin nodded.

“I will not ask again for a long while. When I do, I will take it whatever your answer.”

And the threads snapped shut over Moth’s neck, and the world was red.