Far Away and Along the Sea

by A.M. Guay

They are a Latinx writer of speculative fiction and poetry, with previous stories published in Apparition Lit, khōréō, and Corvid Queen. Born in Paraguay and raised in Brooklyn, they currently live and work in Chicago. Find them on Twitter @anamguay or at amguay.com.

Far away and along by the ravening sea, where the coastline runs crooked as justice and sharp as mercy, lives a witch whose specialty is truth.

Witches do have specialties, you know. Witches know “Women can have it all” is a glittering lure, not meant for warp and weft and cauldron, nor for the burying of small bones in the moonless dark.

Maura’s store—an elaborate hut of driftwood and flotsam, scavenged tenderly from the waves—stocks all manner of truth. There are color-changing gemstones and tinctures of verity. There’s a tank of oracular cuttlefish and a cabinet of divining bones, large and animal, bleached in the flame of a dragon’s killing field.

There are several cats, which are not for sale, but are a truth unto themselves.

Today, there’s a girl come winding through the dunes, brown and bedraggled as a newborn gull. The witch sighs, exchanging a look with the calico. It’s late. The girl’s head of dark curls is bent, the silver surcoat crusted with brine, feet dragging in the sand. She’s sure to ask for a truth she doesn’t want to know, to offer something Maura neither wants nor needs (firstborns, of all things).

“We’re closed,” Maura yells hopefully, hearing the whalebones jangle over the door, but the girl knight is already inside.

“Don’t tell me.” The witch raises a weathered hand. “You’ve traversed the Inchoate Desert, crossed the Dubious Precipice, and forded the Chasm of Qualming Sharks just to ask where your lover goes at night. Or how to trick a god out of their true name. Or how to clip a rogue sphinx’s toenails.”

In response there’s too much silence, too much stillness. When the salt wind tumbles roaring through the doorway, the girl knight doesn’t stir an inch. She looks like the remnants of a forgotten cup of tea, muddled and dredged out.

“I don’t want to make someone tell the truth,” she says, in a hoarse, empty voice. “I want to make people believe it.”

“Hmph! Even worse!”

“My parents are dead—”

“I don’t do resurrections neither! It’s on the sign!”

“I don’t want them brought back.” The girl knight finally moves: a desperate, unbidden lurch like a lightning-struck tree. “I am bloodbound to speak at their funeral. And I want everyone to believe what I say, but without a spell, they won’t.”

The witch takes a good hard look. The girl knight is the kind of silent you don’t get in children by nature—the kind that must be grown there, deep and squirming, like worms beneath dirt. In her eyes there is only misery, lightless and unending as the gullet of the sea.

Maura has a witch’s curiosity. She looks.

For a long minute, the only sound is the low moaning of the waves. Then Maura comes back to herself. For the first time in two years, she blinks. For the first time in five, she shudders. She knows what the girl knight needs her listeners to believe.

“I know that coat-of-arms,” Maura says quietly. “You’ve traveled far from your parents’ keep.” It is a country in lavish mourning, the gulls have told her, though the girl knight wears not a single shred of black.

“You’ve heard of them?” The girl knight wilts.

“Yes, yes. A famously charming pair. Perfect teeth.” Memory stirs: a lissome lordling with smiling eyes, bending to kiss hands. A lady fair as the newborn sunrise, with eyebrows like two plucked-off spiders’ legs, bestowing coins. “Forgive me, but you don’t take after them.”

“Foundling.” The girl knight looks down. “Taking me in looked good. All my life I longed for their death. Now, even after it, they enthrall me.” She goes down hard on one knee, more of a collapse than a bow. “Witch, do not toy with me. Can you give me what I seek?”

Real magic starts small, Maura thinks, watching twilight play over the hollow young face. Truth as a misspelled letter, an indrawn breath before a kiss. What small things does it take to make a ruin of a whole life? To wreck a child like a skiff upon the rocks?

Only, perhaps, a closed door and a golden name.

“Get up, child,” says Maura. “I will.”

“For free?” Her tone is wary. Good girl, thinks the witch.

“Of course not. Before the month is up, you will bring me…let’s see…a pebble from your parents’ grave, golden flour from the mills of constancy, and a wheel of porcelain cheese.” The calico bats at her ankle. “And a fresh-caught salmon.”

Maura plasters an innocent expression on her face. Witches must have bargains; they don’t have to be fair. Besides, the girl looks like she could use a hot meal.

“Thank you,” is all the girl knight says.

The spell is a gossamer thing, in the end. When the girl knight catches it, she gasps.

“Oh.” Her whole face changes—a lantern scrubbed of dust. “I didn’t expect it to be so light.” She cups it close. She’s sitting in Maura’s second-best armchair, with a mug of spiced milk in front of her. She makes to stand, looking a little lost. “I will be on my way—”

“In the morning,” Maura says, crisp but not unkind. “You can sleep in the side room. There’s blankets in the cupboard. Don’t poke things with the sword. Don’t kick the cats.”

The girl knight wavers.

“What does it cost?”

For a moment Maura wavers, too. Perhaps a handkerchief dipped in salt, or a strand of silver thread—witches have to have bargains, don’t they? And yet…

“Go,” says the witch. “This is nothing you need to repay.”

The girl knight is asleep by the time her head hits the pillow.

The witch smiles to herself. She gives the cats stern instructions on the subject of claws and upholstery. Then she picks up her basket and goes whistling out into the gloaming, her tread as sure and satisfied as the waves, which strip away all falsehoods in time.