Mire

Chapter 1

I had been dead for less than an hour when my mother dumped me into the river.

The summer was so hot that sweat trickled down people's faces like rancid fat. Flies spewed from the sewers and squirmed into grey cuts of meat and jugs of sour milk. The pox closed every fifth person into its pustular embrace. A body would rot quickly in such heat, and the last thing my family needed was a rancid corpse putrefying in their kitchen. Perhaps that had been at the top of my mother's mind, or perhaps she had already done all of her grieving. I had spent weeks withering away.

I do not blame her for her mistake.

Still, she did not spare a moment to embrace her child, to whisper that she loved me or to bid me goodbye. I remember that there was only silence, and the heavy pain in my head, and then suffocating darkness as the lid of the coffin slid over me.

The river was full of grime and sewage close to the docks, but as my coffin floated downstream the water grew cool and sweet. The smell of good air and green plants revived me a little, and I felt a fine mist through the seal between the base and the lid. In her hurry, my mother had forgotten to seal the cheap coffin closed. I was lucky that the carpenter had made it well despite the rough edges; it floated as well as a boat, and carried its slight passenger in the current without a murmur.

I have no idea how long I slept for, lulled by the gentle swaying of my boat. Sometimes I was lucid, but when I forced my eyes open they stung with salt, and when I struggled to move my arms I could not reach to wipe it away.

I dread to think what would have happened if my dazed idiocy had faded away. The wooden lid was a bare inch from my nose. To this day I have nightmares about opening my eyes and seeing the close, rough grain. I never saw the inside of my coffin, and so I had no idea that I had been buried alive.

My world splintered around me.

The rocks felt too hard against my hot skin, and I feebly shoved them away until my arms broke free. The coffin cracked and shuddered, and another plank of wood groaned and drifted away. Dim sunlight burst through the gap. I recoiled from it and felt sand beneath my bare feet.

Panic gave me strength, and as more of the light spilled through the traitor coffin I dug my fingers and toes into the sand and struggled free. For a beautiful moment I was completely submerged. I felt delicious cool water sliding into my ears and my mouth. Then I opened my eyes, saw the surface shimmering above me, and choked. I pushed myself forwards and out of the wreckage onto the shore.

The sun was setting when a woman found me lying in the shallows. Her cry of disgust woke me, but I did not have the strength to look up. I felt a hand on my shoulder, and when she rolled me onto my back she grunted. My clothes were sodden and weighed my dry husk of a body down. Mother had wrapped me in my finest dress, and a thick woollen cloak, so that whatever river demon claimed me would be kind. He would know that I had been loved.

Such profound love! The stranger who pressed her hand to my nostrils cared more for me. When she felt my struggling breath against her fingertips she cursed. I heard every footstep as she stomped away. The mud made a sucking sound, and her breath rasped in her throat.

I was alone. I lay, and looked up at the stars, and my breath crackled and wheezed like the birds in the trees. It was peaceful, now that the woman was gone. I was not afraid.

The river I was lying in carried the waste from the city all the way down to the sea. The filth and rotting food bled away into the banks, and the water was clear by the time it reached the village

where I had landed. The glacial beauty was deceptive. The rapid current carried the dead. There were enough hidden pools and deserted stretches for the bodies to disappear even before they were shoved out into the ocean.