The Almadraba

The story played in bits and pieces in my head, never quite one continuous tale. Try as I might, I could never remember just how it all went from start to finish, and could never piece together why it sometimes seemed so urgent at the back of my mind. Neris did not like when Merrows thought for themselves, and so I never let on when flashes of the story ran away with me. 
Once upon a time, there was a village nestled in the embrace of a great loch. The village was a prosperous one, with many prominent families and very little poverty.  Most of the villagers made their living on fishing, as the great loch had plenty of fish to spare. The village had been a peaceful one for many centuries, with no problems to speak of, and everyone was quite content. 
            A small family lived on the outskirts of the village, close to the woods. There was a loving mother, a sturdy father, a sweet little girl named Ivy, and a darling baby boy named Shepherd. The baby boy Shepherd was everything that the parents had hoped for, with golden curls and angelic sapphire eyes. He hardly ever cried, and was generally a happy child. His sister Ivy, on the other hand, was a bit different; Ivy, though meaning well, had a knack for getting into trouble. She never intended to muck things up, of course, but she was quite clumsy and far too curious for her own good. Her parents loved her very much, but they were quite strict with her in the hopes that she could improve her behavior. 
            One crisp autumn day, Ivy asked her mother if she could take little Shepherd with her to play by the loch. Her mother agreed hesitantly, but warned her not to go near the water’s edge. 
            “Do be careful, dear, and promise me that you won’t venture near the water, no matter what. That water is very dangerous for children; you must not even touch it. Be especially careful with little Shepherd, he is only two years old and cannot swim or look out for himself!” 
            Ivy promised her mother that she would not go near the water for anything, then gathered up Shepherd and headed outdoors and into the woods with him. 
            Shepherd and Ivy were very close, for brother and sister. Whenever Ivy found herself in trouble, she knew she could always trust that she could find comfort in cuddling him close to her. Shepherd particularly loved when his sister sang to him; though she was only seven, Ivy’s voice was as pure and sweet as an angel’s. She would often sing to him when he would get distressed, as two year olds often do. 
            Carefully, Ivy set Shepherd down amongst a tree with large roots protruding from the ground, making a kind of chair for the toddler to sit in. They played and tickled for a while, until Shepherd grew a bit restless and began to fuss. He curled his small hands into tiny fists and flailed them around as his mouth turned down at the corners, and he began to whine at his sister. 
            “Ivy sing for meeeeee.” he whimpered, his blue eyes pleading. “Pweeeeeease!”
            Ivy shushed him and smiled, then opened her mouth to sing. From out her lips poured a sweet melody that quickly calmed her brother. She sang to him a lullaby that had been sung by her mother, and her mother’s mother, and so on. 
“Lavender's blue, little darling,
lavender's green,
When I am queen, little darling,
you shall be king.
Who told you so, little darling,
who told you so?
'Twas my own heart, little darling,
that told me so.”
            Shepherd broke into a winning smile, flashing his pearly little baby’s teeth. 
            “Again!” He shouted, and Ivy complied. 
            Out in the water, however, something had begun to stir. A water witch had heard the girl’s lovely voice, and had been summoned from way down in the wet depths, to just below the water’s surface. She was a fearsome creature, this sea witch; her skin was a clammy alabaster, with a glaucous patina highlighting the landscapes of her face and body. Her features were quite sharp and severe, yet incredibly beautiful… for the most part. Her lips, in contrast, made up the wide mouth of a fish stretching across her face, with jagged and insidiously pointed teeth inside. Her eyes were not eyes at all, but two pearls in their place, causing her to be quite blind, and therefore increasing her aural abilities. Her hair, a long silver braid, was coiled in loops about her head, adorned with fish bones and river stones. The robe she wore was made of fishing nets, glittering with the iridescent scales of their prey. Her own scales and gills gleamed silvery green, with a tinge of a delicate salmon pink about the edges. She blinked her sightless pearls and cocked her head to the left as she listened to the girl sing. She had been looking for a new child to snatch, and this one had precisely the kind of voice she was looking for. 
            The water witch had long ago gotten into the habit of stealing away children with beautiful voices, to turn them into her own servants, the Merrow maidens. She would use them for whatever tasks she pleased, and train them to use their voices with a magical ability. She decided that Ivy was her next new target, and that she would lure her in. The water witch clicked her long fingernails together and transformed herself into a little girl. 
            As a little girl, the witch was quite small and looked as though she hadn’t eaten in days. Her rail thin body was shrouded in a waterfall of dull brown hair, and she was dressed in beggar’s rags. Her eyes remained the same blind pearls that would no doubt illicit sympathy from Ivy. She rose from the water with a great splash and a child’s whimper, calling out for help. 
            Ivy turned with a start when she heard a noise coming from the water, behind the great mossy boulders that hugged the shore of the loch. She remembered that she had promised her mother that she would not go near the water, but her curiosity got the better of her, as it always did. She carefully scooped her brother up, so as not to leave him alone, and wandered over to where she could see behind the boulders. There she saw a poor little girl in rags, thrashing about in the water. 
            “Are you okay??” Ivy called out to her, concerned. 
            “Please help me!” sobbed the little girl, from behind her tangled hair. “I am blind, I cannot see and I cannot swim! Help me, please! Please!” 
            Ivy gasped, set Shepherd down next to a large and mossy rock, and scuttled over to where the girl was flailing about. She extended her hand to the girl, and called out to her. 
            “Here, grab my hand! I’m right near you, walk to my voice!” 
            The little girl only sobbed harder, and slipped on the pebbles of the wet loch floor. 
            “Are you taunting me?? Please just come out and get me! I am hurt and will probably drown! Come into the water and help me!” 
Ivy paused for a moment, remembering her mother’s words to her: “Promise me that you won’t venture near the water, no matter what. That water is very dangerous for children; you must not even touch it!” 
She shook her head and told herself that surely her mother would be fine with this, her helping out a poor girl in need. She then waded into the water until it was up to her waist, and touched the girl’s shoulder to steady her. 
The moment her hand made contact with the girl, the child’s hand shot out and grabbed her wrist with incredible force. Ivy was confused as the little girl with the blind eyes began to grow and develop scales and gills. She meant to scream, but her voice was caught in her throat with terror. The water witch tangled her nets around Ivy, who found that she couldn’t move or make any noise at all. Only her eyes could swivel back and forth in fear. 
The witch moved forward toward the shore, and Shepherd began to cry, a high pitched squealing that resonated over the quiet loch waters. He made his little plump cherub hands grab towards his sister, who watched him mournfully and longed to pick him up and run away back home. The witch scraped a clump of moss from the nearest boulder and moved it around in her hands until it began to grow into a little girl. Ivy felt an ice cold sickness in the pit of her stomach as she realized it was a version of her, with the same arms, same legs, same strawberry blonde curls. The witch set down the copy of Ivy, and it walked over to where Shepherd was howling uncontrollably. The copy picked up the little boy, and he stopped crying, looking quite confused instead. It cradled him close, and then without turning around to look at Ivy or the witch, it traipsed back up to the house. Tears began to leak from Ivy’s eyes as she watched her brother stare at the strange copy with concern in his little blue eyes. Once the pair had disappeared from sight, the witch turned and began dragging Ivy out into deeper water. She sighed as she got so far out that the water was up to Ivy’s shoulders. 
“You’ll be needing gills, I suppose.” She spoke with a voice that was not unlike glass scraping against metal. Her consonants clicked and whirred with a sharp tongue. Carefully, she spread her fingers so that her nails looked like claws, and she made two quick, clean incisions on either side of Ivy’s neck. The searing pain hit her with incredible force, but her temporary paralysis meant that she couldn’t scream with the agony that she was feeling. The witch stuck her fingers in the holes and dug around in the flesh, past the throat, down past her collar, deeper further past her shoulders, until she reached her lungs. When her nails made contact with Ivy’s lungs, they turned icy cold and flooded with frigid water. The witch nodded in approval. 
“There. Now I have carved you a fine set of gills.” 
Satisfied with her work, she turned and walked further into the water, until it closed over the top of both their heads. Under the water, Ivy saw the world was different, so murky and dark with water weeds closing in on her face. Deeper still they went, until they reached the center of the loch. The witch used her claws to create a great circle in the soggy floor. 
Immediately water began to pour into it, as it opened up a sort of hole in the ground. There was a soft green light coming from it, and Ivy felt it pulling them in as the suction of the flowing water created a sort of vacuum in the loch. They began swirling round and round, getting closer and closer to the opening, and Ivy could hear voices coming from it. They were beautiful women’s voices, singing and giggling with each other, almost hypnotically. Suddenly, the hole swallowed them up, and she found herself in another world… 
The entire loch was drained that day. Three fishing boats were destroyed, and the village’s prosperity was all but demolished. In all the commotion, no one noticed the subtle changes of one little girl named Ivy. And how could they? Who would notice the slight differences in the shade of a little girl’s eyes, once a honey brown, and now a mossy green? Or how she once smirked mischievously, but now grinned from ear to ear? Or even how she had once loved to sing for her little brother, but now couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket? 
Who could blame anyone for not noticing these little things? 
Category:Fiction