The Night Washerwoman By A.J. McClendon
Romantasy Short Story Challenge 2026
2nd Place
A.J. McClendon
The Night Washerwoman
Synopsis: When the love of her life is marked for death by an otherworldly being, Malina must leave him and the life she knows to save him. Years later, they meet again.
Trigger Warnings: Moderate Blood, Mild Violence
The first time Evander spoke to Malina, he was standing on a chair and trembling; a rather unexpected situation in which to catch a brave, young squire. A water snake had slithered its way out from the cold, brackish sea into the warmth of his chambers. Trapped between the serpent and the wall, Evander called out from his perch for rescue, and Malina, who was going about her daily chores, answered.
What surprised Malina more than the knight-in-training’s fear was his mercy for the invading reptile. Once Malina had the creature safely secured in a broadcloth sack, Evander gently laid his hand upon her shoulder and asked her not to kill it.
“But, it will come back into the castle if I set it free,” she said, puzzled and a little afraid of speaking so directly to this handsome son of a nobleman.
“Then I know who I shall call again to rescue me.” He gave her a smile that set her cheeks ablaze before she ran out of the room, sack in hand, to return the serpent to the sea.
From that day on, Evander would smile at her as they passed in the halls, drop flowers into the pockets of her apron, and even speak to her, although Malina rarely had the courage to respond. Pretty as she was, she was used to the attempted flirtations of other courtiers and noblemen, yet their interest always waned when they realized her wide eyes held more melancholy than mirth.
Evander’s attentions never faltered, and Malina grew to love his small gestures of affection as much as she grew to love the man himself. She knew there was no future for a maidservant and the third son of a duke, but, like sunlight through cracked masonry, Evander found his way into her pessimistic heart.
That is why, a few months after his knighting, Malina tossed and turned in her bed, unable to sleep. Come the dawn, the King’s army was to face a formidable foe on the battlefield, and Evander was on the frontlines.
As midnight approached, Malina heard a mournful dirge resounding from beyond the castle walls. The singing matched the despair she felt deep in her bones and pulled her from bed toward the tumultuous shore.
A castle cook, who was known more for her tales than her fare, once spoke of the Bean-nighe, a herald of death. “If you can sneak up on the fearsome hag, she’ll grant you the answers you seek.” So Malina, skilled in moving through spaces unnoticed, tiptoed toward the old washerwoman who sang as she beat a wet cloth against jagged rocks, turning the sea red with blood.
When Malina wrapped her fingers around the bony, stooped shoulder of the Bean-nighe, the woman stood, stiller than death. “What questions plague you, child of sorrow?” the washerwoman asked in a voice that creaked like rusted hinges.
“Laundress,” Malina whispered, fear strangling her words, “whose grave-clothes do you wash?”
The crone, with her face shrouded in silver hair, held out the wet, bloody cloth clutched in her gnarled hand. Malina took it quickly, her desperation for answers outweighing her dread.
Icy panic filled Malina’s chest as her fingers traced the embroidered edges of the Duke’s family crest. “No, please!” she begged, “How can his life be spared?”
Malina couldn’t see the eyes of the Bean-nighe in the dark and starless night, but she could feel the weight of their gaze. “You must leave. Go tonight and never come back.”
So she did. Because keeping Evander in this world was more important than keeping him in her life.
But Malina's encounter with the Bean-nighe did not leave her unchanged.
***
She was living in a small, rural village for only a month when she first saw the blood. It bloomed like a red poppy on the white linen of the stable master’s tunic, but no one could see it, save Malina. The following day, a bandit gutted him to steal a horse.
The next time, when the miller wore his own blood like a frilled collar, she tried to warn him of his fate, but he ignored her pleas. Later that week, his throat was slit in a business dispute, and the villagers called her a witch.
And so, Malina moved from village to village, trying to save every soul marked for death, but she didn’t have the magical foresight of the Bean-nighe to see how to change their grave destinies. If her prophecies somehow altered the future and death skipped its target, the villagers disregarded her words as crazed ramblings, but if doom befell them despite her warnings, then, in their eyes, she had cursed them herself.
***
Ten winters later, when she came to reside in a town at the fringes of the kingdom, she never revealed when she saw death coming.
It was in this border town that Evander came back into her life.
The townsfolk, unused to visitors, were abuzz with excitement. A convoy from the king was passing through on a mission to scout a trade route through the Coille Dubhra, an enchanted wood that loomed just beyond the town. Many had tried to tame the uncharted forest with deadly
consequences. Malina vowed to avoid the King’s convoy, so their ill fate could remain unknown to her, but as the barmaid in the town’s only inn and tavern, it was a vow quickly broken.
She recognized Evander as soon as he opened the heavy oak door to the tavern, leading a small party of travel-worn individuals. Even though his once smooth face now carried a thick beard and the lean body of his youth was now broad with well-used muscle, she knew it could be no one else but the man she still loved.
She searched for recognition in his eyes when he ordered a round and asked to speak to the tavernkeeper, but she saw only a look she could not name. Malina was not the same girl who blushed when the knight’s calloused fingers would brush her hand. She was an unmarried woman of over thirty winters, and, although she was still lovely enough to draw tips from her patrons, bands of silver ran through her dark hair, and her big, brown eyes appeared more haunted than sad.
That he was a knight, and she but a servant, remained the same. Of course he wouldn’t remember the maid who disappeared all those years ago. She tried to resign herself to knowing that Evander’s fancy had been a passing one after all.
But with an aching heart, she still watched as he spoke with the tavernkeeper, flashing that bright smile that once shattered her defenses like cavalry through a line of footsoldiers.
After Evander excused himself back to his table, the tavernkeeper pulled Malina aside.
“Their cook has fallen ill on the road. They’ve hired your services to replace him for the remainder of their journey,” the tavernkeeper told her. When Malina tried to protest, he simply reminded her it was her duty to serve her King and, by extension, his emissaries.
It had been a long time since Malina had felt ruled by a King. Despite her years scrubbing his floors and sweeping his halls, the only sovereign she had now was Death. It was more of a constant in her life than any distant monarch could be.
When they departed the village at dawn a few days later, the shadows of the Coille Dubhra spread across the land like a bruise. The air was thick with fog and a strange emanation that could be felt even by those untouched by the otherworldly. For Malina, there was an odd pull toward the gloom of the moss-strangled trees, like the forest recognized her for who she had yet to become.
Progress through the uncharted forest was difficult; the passage was treacherous, forcing the travellers to move slowly or risk angering the guardians of the woods. By the end of the first day, Malina's backside was sore from sitting in her wooden cart as it bounced along the rough terrain. By the third day, they abandoned the cart as the trees had grown too thick to allow its passage. Evander insisted that she share his mount, and Malina, without the will or a reason to protest, agreed.
They travelled during the day, although very little sunlight breached the canopy above. Evander, his low voice rumbling against her back as they rode, talked with Malina as easily as if no time had passed. And Malina, who was no longer a shy castle maid, was brave enough to reply and meet his smile with a rare one of her own. At night, Evander would position his bedroll between her and the dark maw of the forest, keeping her safe by the campfire and his sword.
On the tenth day, the convoy was forced to turn around, having reached a tract so thick with trees and so toothed with rocks as to be impassable on foot or by horse. That evening, after her cooking duties were through, Malina and Evander sat together beside the fire.
“I looked for you,” he whispered, eyes warm as he stared into the light of the flames. “Why did you leave?”
“I had to,” was all she could reply.
His hands found hers. “I loved you.”
I still do, she thought.
That is why, when blood appeared on Evander's shoulders like drops of falling rain, she waited until he fell asleep before taking his stained clothing to the edge of a nearby stream.
On her knees in the rocky creekbed, she called out to the Bean-nighe. “Spectre! Demon! Why curse me with this sight, when I cannot change his fate? Why bring him to me again only to steal him away?”
But the forest stayed silent, with no washerwoman to answer her desperate pleas.
Frustrated, scared, and heartbroken, Malina stared at the blood-stained cloth in her hand. If she could wipe it clean, remove the blood that foretold of a violent end, maybe she could save Evander’s life once more.
So she plunged the garment into the icy water and scrubbed until the stream ran red. But no matter how hard she beat the fabric against the river rocks, the stain stayed just as vivid. Her long hair, the dark and silver alike, fell before her face, and her cries turned into a song of mourning that echoed through the night air.
And when Malina felt like her body had become nothing but the ache of sorrow and her voice nothing but wails, a gentle hand touched her trembling shoulder.
“Laundress,” Evander said, “whose grave-clothes do you wash?”
Malina pinned him with the weight of her sad, haunted eyes. “They are yours, my love.”
“And why do you mourn me as if I’m already buried?” His voice pushed through her darkness, like dappled light through the shade of a tree.
“Because I don’t know where or when you will be taken from me.” For she always knew he would be taken from her, whether through death or some other misfortune.
Evander pulled her to him, wrapping her in his strong arms, whispering in her hair, “Then let us hold each other for the time we have left.”
So Malina held him close and allowed herself to be loved by him for the first time in her life. ***
And of course, Evander did die, although it was many years later, when both he and Malina were stooped and grey. It happened just as her vision portended, and though Malina mourned him, she did not weep, for they had loved each other fully and without fear. While she never had visions of blood again, Death always walked beside her. And through death, she knew she would be with Evander once more.