X - The Bargain

”Count yourself fortunate I lost my sword…,” Raymund snarled, locking one arm around the bleating animal’s neck while using the other to fend off its flailing hooves. “…else I’d have slit your throat long ago, you witless beast.”

Renaud lay a few paces away, wriggling in the grass, watching his father’s struggle with wide, curious eyes.

The rest of the herd had already scattered, retreating among the rocky outcrops of the coastal plain, where they watched the scene from a safe distance.

At length, Raymund managed to get the animal firmly under control, forcing it into a semblance of stillness.

With a grunt, he dragged it closer to the child, until the swollen teats of its udder hung directly above him.

“Come on… drink…,” he panted.

At first, Renaud merely blinked in confusion at what was happening.

But when the damp flesh brushed against his lips, he finally opened his mouth and began, instinctively, to suck.

“There…,” Raymund muttered in relief.

When the child eventually let go and the goat fled back toward its herd, Raymund sank down onto a lichen-covered stone with a weary sigh.

A faint burp escaped Renaud before he fell asleep upon the damp grass.

“The moisture calms him,” Raymund observed quietly. “He seems to take after her…”

He rose and cast his gaze across the jagged landscape, toward the sea, now already fading into the horizon.

It has been two days since we were cast ashore… and still I have no notion where we are…

Slowly, he crossed to his son, lifted him, more roughly than he intended, and placed him into the makeshift sling he had fashioned from his torn shirt.

The child did not wake, only gave a faint, protesting sound.

“So far… it has not come to claim him…,” Raymund whispered. “Perhaps… we are beyond its reach after all…”

And as he turned inland once more, he found his thoughts drifting back to that fateful bargain.

“That foul creature deceived me…” he muttered.

***

The sound of the waterfall echoed softly across the clearing, mingling with the steady dripping of Melusine’s form, which rose halfway from the pond as she regarded Raymund with quiet suspicion.

“And... if I were to agree… glug… what happens then?” she asked, her head tilted slightly.

“Then we sleep in soft beds, dine as the nobility do, on the finest and rarest delicacies in the realm!”

Raymund spoke with unusual fervor, standing near the water’s edge, a faint smile tugging at his lips.

Melusine considered for a moment.

“But... I care not for beds… glug… nor for food…”

His arms fell to his sides.

“You do not?“

She nodded.

That will not win her over…

“Is there nothing you desire, then?” he pressed. “This place...” he gestured about them, “...can that truly be all you want?”

She sank deeper into the water until only her head remained above the surface.

Her expression shifted, troubled now, almost uneasy that he had raised the question.

“This is my home. My dwelling. And even if I wished otherwise… glug… I cannot leave it.”

She turned her head away from him.

“…so it matters little what I desire.”

Raymund frowned.

“What do you mean you cannot?”

She turned back to him, her tone sharper now.

“I cannot! I am not permitted. That is simply how it is.”

So she is bound? A pity. Her abilities would have been of great use to me…

He took a few steps toward the edge of the clearing, where his sword rested against a broad maple.

I could remain here… restrict myself to the nearby settlements… and whenever I am exposed to the plague, return to her…

He folded his arms, recalling his narrow escape from the city.

No. Too many have seen me already. I must move on…

A bubbling sound drew him from his thoughts.

“But…” she began.

He turned at once.

Melusine stood now near the bank, upright, her form visible down to her calves.

“...If I were not bound,” she said softly, “then I would follow you wherever you would go…”

Her hand drifted slowly across her body, over the place where a red, shimmering core pulsed beneath her watery surface.

“If only you would grant me this one wish…”

Her eyes met his.

“...And give me a child.”

The words rang clear across the pond, as though the water itself lent them weight.

Raymund blinked, staring at her in silence.

A... child? Is that even possible? 

”You wish to bear a child? My child, no less? Why?”

Melusine’s voice dropped.

“It is lonely here,” she murmured. “The waters flow, but they do not remain. They do not speak… not as you do. I would have something that stays with me… something that is mine... even when our paths part one day.”

The thought unsettled him as he considered her wish.

It is a strange wish for a creature like her. Still, so long as she remains useful to me... it troubles me little.

He nodded.

“Very well,” he said. “I shall grant you your wish.”

Her eyes widened, shining with sudden joy. But the expression faltered at once as he continued:

“How, then, do I break the bond that binds you to this place?”

Melusine sank again, her shoulders drooping.

“I… glug... do not know…” she murmured.

“You do not know?” Raymund repeated. “How am I to free you, if you do not even know what binds you?”

A faint ripple passed across the water.

She sank a little deeper, her gaze drifting toward the darker reaches of the forest beyond the clearing, where the trees stood close together, and no light touched the ground.

“There…” she said quietly.

He followed her gaze.

“There is something… that does not belong here...” she went on, more slowly now. “I do not know what it is. But I know it is the reason I cannot leave...”

Something that does not belong?

For a moment, neither spoke.

At last, Raymund nodded.

“Very well. Then I shall see for myself.”

She rose higher at once.

“That place… is wrong” she said, her voice firm now. “The waters do not flow there as they should…”

Raymund paused, glancing back at her over his shoulder.

“Wrong or not, if there is a way to free you, I will find it.”

She drifted closer, concern plain upon her face, as though she would hold him back.

But he had already turned.

“Good fortune…” she called softly after him.

But he did not hear.

***

The forest swallowed him within a few steps.

The light dimmed. The air grew heavy.

Soon even the sound of the pond faded behind him.

Raymund pressed on, though no path remained.

He hacked his way forward with his blade, forcing aside branches and thorns.

Roots twisted up from the earth like grasping fingers. The undergrowth thickened, clutching at his legs.

A sharp scent filled the air.

Not rot, not the plague.

Something else.

But no less cloying.

No wind stirred. No birds called.

Only a faint, distant crack.

And then...

A laugh.

Soft. Barely a whisper.

“Hee… hee…”

Raymund froze.

“What was that?”

He turned slowly.

Nothing.

Only shadows.

But when he turned back, rows of sharp teeth grinned at him from a heavy branch jutting from a dead, gnarled yew.

“And what have we here? A plague-dead stray! But where are your boils, eh? Your pretty black, stinking lumps? Death likes it not when one does cheat it, nay, nay, nay!”

The grotesque creature’s long legs dangled almost childishly from the branch, its bony claws tapping merrily upon the withered wood.

Raymund drew his sword at once, his heart racing.

“What in God’s name...” he gasped.

The creature recoiled with exaggerated disgust.

“Ugh...fie! How foul! Soil not this fair place with that loathsome name, good sir! He is no more welcome here than I am in his domain…”

It leapt from the tree with strange grace, straightened its hood, and set its hands upon its hips.

Yellowish eyes gleamed in the dim forest.

“But you... with your blood-stained hands and fondness for slaughter... are most welcome indeed… hee hee hee!”

Raymund’s hands trembled, yet he held fast to his sword.

“W-welcome, am I?”

“Aye, my dear fellow! Aye, aye, aye! Heeheehee! For we may well help one another!”

“I… I need no help,” Raymund panted, as the creature halted its half-begun dance.

“What? No help? Come now, are you certain? I thought you would claim your very own water-nymph! Feast upon her foul, slippery waters, hmm? Or no? Hm??”

Suddenly, Raymund recalled why he had come.

Melusine.

His gaze fixed upon the creature.

Then this… thing… is what holds her?

“You bind her to the pool, then? If I slay you, she shall be free?”

The creature’s yellow eyes widened, and a long, shrill laugh burst from its throat, raising the hairs upon Raymund’s neck.

“Heeheehee! I like you! Blood and gore and slicing and spilling, your thoughts are full of it, are they not? Yet…” Its voice lowered. “Slaying me would not free her…”

It vanished, only to reappear behind him, sending Raymund flinching, nearly dropping his blade.

“But free her… that I could do… if we strike a bargain…”

“A bargain?” he repeated. “What bargain?”

The creature shrugged.

“Oh, nothing grand, nothing special... just a trifling matter…”

Its voice dropped, deep and monstrous.

“Thy firstborn.”

The word hung in the air like the stench that filled it.

Raymund stepped back, his thoughts racing.

It wants her child? Yet the child is the very condition that binds her to me. If I promise it to this devil… she will surely kill me when this comes to pass...

“Be not troubled…” the creature went on, as though it had read his thoughts. “The chance, aye, aye aye, that she should conceive at all, and of a stinking human such as you, is most exceedingly small, my dear fellow… One in ten thousand! Aye! At the least! Heehee!”

Raymund frowned.

“Then why make such a pact, if you are likely to gain nothing from it?”

The creature lifted its hands in feigned innocence.

“Why, I gain nothing if she remains here either, leaking her foul… damp… seepage all through my wood! Thus she is gone, and I perhaps gain something besides! Heehee…”

Raymund considered for a moment.

If she cannot conceive… I lose nothing.

And if she does… I shall be gone ere it comes to pass… and thus escape her wrath…

His thoughts drifted, unbidden, to her words by the pond.

It is lonely here… I would have something that stays…

His jaw tightened.

What she desires… does not concern me.

“Very well,” he said at last.

But when he looked to the creature, it had already stretched out its long, bony arm toward him, grinning devilishly.

Raymund hesitated.

When his hand met the creature’s, feeling the dry, leathery skin, an odd nausea seized him, a deep shudder.

He snatched his hand away as soon as the pact was sealed.

“Juchhee! Juchaa! The pact is struck! Heeheehee!”

Raymund swallowed, and in the next instant, the creature crouched once more upon the branch above.

“Up, up, up, little human! Back to thy water-maid! She can scarce wait to yield herself to your foul, stinking seed heeheehee…”

It raised one hand.

“For now… she is…”

Its bony fingers snapped.

“...Free!”