Ironminder

The Maiden. The Matron. The Crone.

The Darkmarsh hung mossy and wicked in the world around me. It was silent save the sound of my breathing. Nothing moved in the darkness, which set the lizard part of my brain to worrying, screaming about a predator in the woods here with me. 

I shoved them --along with the knot in my throat-- back down into my stomach where they coiled like a snake. 

Vines and roots wound along the ground, still and silent whenever I glanced at them, but occasionally, I would catch a glimpse of something slithering along. None of them bothered me, though. I was never tripped or grappled. They seemed merely curious...or hesitant after what they'd done. 

I pushed a blanket of Spanish moss, draping from the crooked branches of a tree likely older than my hometown. 

"You didn't do much talking," a hissing at my shoulder caused me to nearly jump out of my skin. The moss swung back, smacking into me. I could feel that tickle of phantom bugs on my skin.

When I turned, I found a crone, dressed in the same dark kelp brown dress. Her hair was grey and a wild tangle of twigs and leaves. The crone's gangly arms looking startling long compared to her hunched form. The woman. The girl. The creature. I'd seen bits of the girl in the woman and I could see bits of the woman in the crone. When I looked in the crone's dark eyes and ungainly form, I could see bits of the creature hidden away beneath the softened human features that it could still possess in this realm. 

"What?" I managed to whisper, but it was chillingly loud. I snuck glances through the trees but saw no one. 

"We will walk and talk." The crone spoke with a voice at odds with her age. It was the voice of the girl, bright and musical like bells. I'd almost believed it an order before I realized she was quoting me. "We walked but only one of us talked."

I canted my head, considering what I might say. Her dark eyes studied me, mouses eyes fathomless and pointed. "I said we would talk, not that we'd have a conversation." A gamble. Always a gamble. Sometimes arguing semantics worked out and sometimes it didn't --or so the stories let me believe. Most of my jobs I'd been left well enough alone, this one was something different entirely. 

The crone pointed a crooked finger at me, "A sharp stinger for a small bug." I felt the chastisement like a slap, but there was an odd look of mischief in her eyes that soothed the bite of her words. 

Within a moment, I felt the slick wrap of her fingers around my face again, the stench of the bog flooding my senses. I could feel them all the way around my skill, ticking the fine hair at the base of my neck, "You're lucky the best bits of us are sharp: tongues, wits, and teeth," the crone smiled at that, showing off teeth that looked like they'd been filed into points. 

My heart took the compliment as a threat, thundering away in my chest, reminding me of everything I could still lose. Then, only a moment later, the crone twisted my face around by her grip along my jaw, looking for answers to questions I wasn't privy to. Then after gleaning some unknown answer, she swatted my cheek three times and bustled past me into the hanging moss I'd been inspecting lifetimes ago. 

I stood there, dumbfounded, waiting for my heart to stop its incessant rhythm. It had barely started to slow when the crone cawed from the other side of the swinging moss, "Ironminder," she lilted.

I was left only to follow behind..and to observe. We walked in silence for a time, just enough to catch my breath and to finally steady my speeding heart. While she hobbled along over gnarled roots, I noted that the strips of her bedraggled dress were caked in mud and waterweeds. "Were all these bits and pieces you? Once upon a time ago?"

I didn't know where the question came from.

The crone cackled, sharp and quick in the silence. It sounded like some kind of bird, maybe. Nothing human. "Willing to have that conversation now then, minder?" Her eyes pinned me to the spot. "All these bits and pieces are me, Minder."