One Loose Thread

Day One

“Come back,” she whispered.

I opened my eyes to the taste of river silt and candle smoke.

Cold stone kissed the back of my skull, and a breath I didn’t remember taking burned up my throat as if I’d swallowed an ember. For a long moment I only listened—to the wind fingering the gaps in the walls, to the river murmuring along the outer wall.

“I remember the spear,” I said at last. “The mud.” My tongue felt thick, my throat raw with river. “Dying.”

The sound of it startled her; the tremor of her hands betrayed what the voice tried to hide.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“What was needed.”

“Needed?”

She flinched—barely. “You were not meant to be taken.”

“By whom?” I tried to smile. It felt like a tear in the fabric of my face. Wryness was a habit my bones hadn’t forgotten. “Bandits? The river? God?”

I rolled my head. The chapel had once been a place where light came like a promise, but the windows were long since boarded, the saints scoured faceless by rain. Candle stubs guttered in iron cups along the floor. Chalk lines ringed the crude altar—sigils and knots strung with flax thread between iron spikes driven deep into the stone. The smell of wax and rot hung thick as breath. “Why here?” I asked.

“Because the grave didn’t take you the way it takes other men.”

Her eyes slid toward the door, as though someone might be standing there, counting the cost of what she’d done. “When they put you on the cart, the water in the trough turned to ink. My hands went cold to the wrist. The hedge-priest said your soul was snagged in the reeds, and if I had the right words—and the right knots—I could haul you back.” She looked at me again; “Because I don’t intend to be a widow at twenty-five.”

She held a cup to my lips. It had a sweetness dead things had—apples left too long, wine turned. I drank anyway.

Day Two

The river was swollen and black, its surface slick as oil. A man floated near the reeds, face half turned, hair drifting like weed. When I waded closer, the current slowed—as though waiting. I reached for him. His eyes opened under the water, white as river stones. He smiled without a mouth, and the river moved through his teeth.

I woke with the sound of water still running in my ears.

The hedge-priest came at dawn, smelling of cold ashes and cheap wine. He said the rite had been clean, and asked me how I felt.

I almost laughed. How do the dead feel, dragged back across the river on a string of borrowed prayers? A little water-logged, perhaps. A little less themselves.

I told him I was grateful. I did not tell him of the dream..

Day Three

We are home.

A grand word for four walls that wheeze in the wind. The hearth smokes though the wood is dry, and the air tastes of damp stone and old incense. Elswyth moves through the rooms, humming under her breath, pretending the light through the shutters was the same as it ever was. I let her.

He loved that once. I find it grating.

The cross above the mantle leans to the left. A poor thing of iron and habit, blackened by smoke, watching over nothing. I wonder what god listens to such crooked symbols, what faith bends so easily and still dares to call itself whole.

A cat came to the threshold and would not cross. It sat on its own paws and began to moan, low and dreadful. Cats are vain and superstitious by nature all fur and judgement. They think themselves sentinels of the unseen—yet even they only ever notice danger when it’s already seated at their table.

***

I woke in the chair by the hearth.

Elswyth pressed a cup into my hands—broth, or thin wine—I couldn’t taste the difference. “You should sleep in a bed,” she said.

“How did we get here?” I asked.

Her brow creased. “The hedge-priest brought us in his cart. You don’t remember?”

I remembered the circle—the smoke, the wax, the cords drawn tight around the altar. Thirty-seven, she’d said. I’d counted thirty-six.

She watched me too closely. “The crossing muddles things,” she said at last. “The priest said it can happen—"

I tried to smile. “Then I’ll be myself by morning.”

Day Ten

A girl is missing—Abby, the tanner’s daughter. Men took poles and torches. They found one shoe at the reeds, no girl.

I went to the river at dusk, crouched by the shore and looked into the water.

Another man’s face stared back.

Day 13

Henbane is the wiser root; mandrake talks too much. I shaved a grain into her night-wine and cooled it with well water, so taste and sleep would both lie.

She never stirs once it takes her.

The village quiets quickly after the bells. Doors bar, shutters close. From the street it looks almost peaceful—every window a small candle pretending at safety. I keep to the edges where the torchlight doesn’t reach. Mud softens my steps; the fog does the rest.

I like the silence. It listens.

A girl came from the inn, shawl pulled high, carrying scraps for the pigs. The lantern she held shook when the wind changed, and for a moment I saw her face in its glow—young, tired, certain the night belonged to her.

She passed within an arm’s length and never saw me.

People think evil shouts. It doesn’t. It waits.

And when the waiting is done, it steps out of the dark as though it has every right to be there.

Day 20

I’m afraid to sleep.

This morning I woke by the hearth, not knowing how I got there. The fire was out. My boots were still on, and there was dirt under my nails. Elswyth slept in the other room, her breathing slow, steady. An open flask sat by my chair. The smell was sharp—mead, or something stronger. I never drink. I don’t remember pouring it, but my throat burned like I had. I tipped the rest into the ashes and watched it hiss. The sound was too loud in the quiet.

There’s a taste that lingers when I wake now—sweet, metallic, like fruit left too long on the branch. It fades by morning, but not before I start to wonder where it came from.

Day 21

The water runs pink before it clears.

I wash slow, careful, watching the way it beads and slides from my fingers. It always takes longer than I think it should. Blood clings.

Elswyth stirs in the bed behind me but does not wake. Her breath catches once—then steadies. The sleeping are such fragile things, warm and thoughtless, trusting the dark to leave them be.

I lean closer to the mirror. The glass is warped, old, but the man looking back knows me well enough. His eyes catch the firelight and hold it, bright and fevered. I raise my hand; he follows, a half-second late.

My grin comes easier now. There’s a rhythm to it, this life beneath another’s. The daylight charade, the quiet nights, the way fear sweetens the air. Every day the body remembers a little more of what it was meant for.

And she sleeps so soundly.

It would be a pity to wake her—tonight.

There will be time enough for that later. When I choose, she will know the shape of my hand and the exact hour I take my appetite. Until then, patience is a finer cruelty.

Day 22

“Corren.”

The mirror blurred. My breath fogged the glass. I blinked, and the world came back in pieces—the walls, the hearth gone to ash, the candlelight trembling behind me.

I turned.

Elswyth stood in the doorway, hair unbound, the candle shaking in her hand. “What are you doing?” she asked. How long have you been standing there like that?”

I looked back to the mirror—my naked form, pale and still, as if I’d been carved there hours ago.

“I don’t know,” I said.

Day 24.

The knock came at dusk.

Elswyth wiped her hands on her apron before opening the door. The man who stood there wore a reeve’s badge and the kind of expression that made no apology for coming late.

“They found the miller’s girl,” he said, voice flat as cold iron. “Down by the culvert. The throat—” He paused, glancing toward me. “—open, like something tried to drink her and thought better of it.”

Elswyth’s hand went to her mouth. “Saints preserve—”

He didn’t wait for her to finish. His eyes had settled on me, steady, calculating. “Folk say you were seen near the tavern two nights past, Corren. Loitering by the stables.”

“Do they?” I asked. The words came smooth, but the air in the room felt tight.

“Aye. A witness said you were speaking with her—the girl. That you walked her part of the way home.”

Elswyth turned to look at me. I could feel the weight of both their stares, heavy as the hearthstones.

I forced a faint smile. “If I’d known kindness was a crime, I’d have stayed in my bed.”

The reeve didn’t smile back. He only studied me, eyes like dull glass, then nodded once. “Kindness is rare these days,” he said. “Keep to your home for a while, Corren. Folk scare easy when the blood’s still wet.”

When the door closed behind him, the smell of his torch lingered—pitch, smoke, and suspicion.

Elswyth didn’t speak.

I went back to the chair by the hearth and found the fire dead again. The coals had gone out without my noticing.

Day 25

This morning, I woke with a name on my tongue.

Darric Hales

I went to the chapel just before dusk. The priest keeps a ledger there—births, marriages, deaths. I told him I was looking for kin. He didn’t ask whose.

He turned the pages until the dust began to rise and the candles burned low. “Hales,” he said at last. “Executed?”

“No,” I said. “Drowned.”

He frowned, then found the line. Darric Hales—hanged man escaped sentence, taken by the river near the bridge at Rivelin.

He looked up sharply, as though realizing he’d said too much. “A murderer,” he added. “Of women. Four, maybe five.”

I thanked him and left before he could ask my name.

The night smelled of frost and rot.

I am not a thing that writes poems in the margins of its life. But I wrote a line today: I am Darric Hales.

I went home and asked Elswyth to bar the door. “I might walk,” I said. “Tie me.”

She didn’t argue. Just fetched a length of cord from the chest and fastened it round my ankle, looping it twice before knotting it to the bedpost. Her hands were steady. Too steady.

She didn’t ask why.

That troubled me more than the tying itself.

Day 26

Knots amuse the hopeful. They are tidy little proofs that someone thinks a thing can be kept.

Binds hold a body; they do not bind a habit, a hunger, a name that walks at night. I thought of all the clever ways one might answer a rope—of slipping, of cutting, of turning a noose into a question. I thought, too, of other knots: the ones you tie around a mouth, a wrist, a life. The thought was pleasant; it tasted like iron and old bread.

Instead, I sat by the hearth with a knife across my knees until dawn argued the dark into a corner. The blade was small, obedient, a thing that knew its place. I watched the coals like a man who reads omens in embers, letting the hours make their slow, honest moves. Outside, the village breathed and turned, ignorant and warm in its sleep. Inside, the room kept its small, private watch.

She had tied me for love or fear—I like to leave her that kindness. It makes the waiting more delicious. When the first pale scraped the shutters, the knife didn’t need me to tell it what it was. I did not need to move. The hunger can be patient; patience is practice, and practice perfects the hand.

Day 27

Elswyth stood with the knife in her hand and looked at me like a woman waking to find the person beside her is not the same one who lay down. She opened her mouth. “I can’t undo it,” she said, “But there has to be a way to drive him out.”

The word him hung between us like smoke.

I pushed myself upright. “What happened?” I asked. “I was bound—”

“I found you asleep here,” she said. “The knife lay in your lap.”

“Elswyth.” I reached for her. “I could never hurt you.”

“No,” she whispered, eyes glistening. “But he could.”

The village walks with torches along the river path at pre-dawn. Their light looks like a string of coins in a beggar’s hand.

I sidle a glance toward Elswyth. “Did you know? About the risk of calling a man back from the grave?”

“I knew,” she says. “But I hoped the river would give him back clean.”

Day 28

The chapel smells of tallow and wet stone. Holy places always do—like rot dressed in linen. The hedge-priest mutters to his saints and keeps his eyes on the floor. Wise of him.

Elswyth walks ahead. The priest takes her aside at the chancel, voice low and urgent. I catch his name once, then the binding.

They never did count well.

There were meant to be thirty-seven knots around the circle. I remember her fingers shaking when she tied them, wax dripping onto the floor. Thirty-six. One shy of faith.

It doesn’t sound like much until you realize that’s all eternity needs—one loose thread, one open door.

The priest lifts his hands to begin the prayers, and I have to bite down a laugh. I’ve always thought holy places looked better when the light’s failing—when even the saints start to wonder if they backed the wrong side.

The circle awaited with its wax and iron and chalk.

He believes his words will drive me out. I almost want to let him try.

She crosses the chalk and whispers, kneeling close. “Corren,” she whispered, “the priest will call its name to cast it out. When he does, it will pull at you—it will make you see things, hear things. You mustn’t answer. You mustn’t look toward it. Hold to me instead. Remember my voice, not his.”

I look at her.

“Stay,” she said. I wanted to tell her I always do.

The priest gave her the pins. “Three,” he said, “for binding, severing, keeping. Do not look at what stands up when it leaves him. It will make you forget your words.”

Elswyth’s mouth trembled and went flat. She is never more dangerous than when she chooses flat.

“Tell me I’m still me,” I said, because there are courtesies even at the end.

“You are mine,” she said, and put the first pin into the seam where stone kisses stone. The air bent. The second sang. The third cut the room into before and after.

She asked me for my throat. I gave it. She kissed my temple. The blade’s work was neat. The warmth poured out. The shadow rose in the corner where the light had been flimsiest and leaned against the door as if trying it for fit.

Elswyth spoke the priest’s prayer through her teeth, every angle of it. She did not look at the dark. Good girl. The pins thrummed in the floor. The priest’s lips moved as if he were adding up a sum too large for his slate.

I let my knees go loose. I let my breath go light. I let my eyes cloud and my mouth part. I am good at pretending to be a man.

When Elswyth reached to close my eyes, I opened them and smiled.

Day 28—Later

I cannot tell you what the shadow looked like when I asked it to wait. You would call me a liar if I wrote the truth, and if I wrote what you can bear, the story would be worse for the false comfort.

The priest backed away, hands lifted. “It is done,” he said, with the certainty of a man who has survived a storm under a table and believes he tamed the wind.

“Done,” I agreed, and reached for him like a prayer finding its ending. The knife was in his belt. I took it as he turned the page, and before his mouth could shape the next prayer, I opened his throat.

He fell back into my arms, eyes wide and wet, watching his faith leave him in ribbons. I laid him down neat. The blood went where blood goes.

Elswyth looked at me—half prayer, half disbelief. I almost admired it. She snatched for the knife. I let her take it, because love deserves an attempt. She cut my forearm. It stung, and the sting delighted that other, fuller part of me the way cold wine delights on the hottest day of a bad harvest.

“Corren,” she said, and the river in my mouth said, Not anymore.