Of the Water By H L Maas
Romantasy Short Story Challenge
6th place
H L Maas
Of the Water
Synopsis: A deeply wronged woman gives herself over to destructive rage. She meets someone who needs her as much as she needs him.
Trigger Warnings: Kidnapping (severe), blood/blood drinking (severe), implied torture (mild), body horror (mild)
I wonder what my mother thought when the young man returned to our village without me. I wonder what story he’d spread to continue to walk the world while I sank far below it, deeper than I had ever known the cold forest pool to go.
The old women in the village had always agreed with each other over the carding and spinning that love is a pretty word for the heaviest weight. That weight carried me deeper and deeper into the water, to a place beyond the edges of the known world.
The light was swallowed by the frigid black nothingness of the pool. It swallowed every part of me too; everything but my rage. I stayed beneath the water, tied to my love, sustained by my fury until looking up, I saw a faint glimmer far above. Alone in the dark, even that pinprick of light blazed, burning itself into my eyes. I let go of the love that kept me tethered to the bottom of the pool and drifted upward for what seemed like eternity before my head broke the surface of the water. And there she was, the moon. She was still so far away, yet in the lightness of air at the surface of the water, she loomed terrifyingly huge and painfully bright. I needed to be closer. I hauled myself from the cold of water to the cold of air. It exhausted me, and I lay a time beneath her smooth, round face, gathering strength to stand. The water had taken my love and my self and my words, but I could still sing so I did.
The forest was a lonely place, but it had its hunters and its wanderers.
The sudden heat that entered into the clearing where I lay was blistering. I did not need to turn my eyes to know a man disturbed the first peace I had had in a century. A hot hand stroked my skin. He mistook my silence for consent; my skin crawled beneath his touch. I may have been
too weak to stand, but the unyielding rage I had become understood the soft places between ribs. I ripped his heart from his chest while he stared, open mouthed, and ate it as he watched. The blood and muscle burned and I nearly gagged as I swallowed, but my rage understood this was good, and right. Strength flooded my limbs. I did not bother to clean the blood from my chin, my breasts, my belly. I stood, and I climbed the tallest tree ‘round the clearing and continued singing to the moon.
Soon, more men entered the clearing and a cry of alarm went up as they discovered their fallen comrade. They looked for a wild beast, a brigand, a monster. Yet even though I sat above their heads, they never looked up. After all, I was not the monster.
The men carried the fallen brute from the clearing. The moon turned her face away and it was time to return to the water. I sank back to the place I left my love, but found only stones and a frayed rope. My rage seethed at the sight.
The next night, I drifted to the surface and the light of the moon. I could distantly hear men hunting in the forest and my anger was a hollow hunger in my belly. I sang louder.
It was thus: Men came to the water, thinking to drown me in their lusts, but I drowned them in their blood, I ate their hearts, and my rage’s appetite grew..
I was just below the mirrorblack surface of the water, looking up at the moon, when I first heard the voice. I rose up just a bit to see if the moon truly sang back to me. I almost did not see him, seated as he was in the shadow of a tree, but I felt the unmistakable warmth of my prey. Perpetual night had drained all color from my world, but moonlight and shadow clung to him fondly and his eyes were the liquid dark of my little pool.
He sat and he sang to the moon. I rose a little more from the water, still wary. Here perhaps was some trick as men are wont to play. I lifted my voice to join him in song and floated closer to the edge of the pool. Our eyes met, but he remained seated beneath his tree, and I remained in the water, more than an arm’s length from the shore. We studied each other as we sang. His mouth held the curve of a natural smile. I dived deep into the icy black of the pool, my rage unsatisfied. I could not bring myself to eat his heart.
He returned the next night, and the next, and the next, without number. Unable to tell him my name, he gave me one. His voice was sometimes sad, sometimes hopeful when he sang. Moonlight made him such a pretty thing. He never touched, never approached, but the fear that he might never went away. In the space between our songs, my rage was slowly starving. Would it one day compel me to feed upon him?
He must have known I was not a normal thing. Still he came, and sat by my side.
One such night, he startled at some sound and stood suddenly, towering over me, his finger pressed to his lips. He reached for me. I had become so brave as to sit upon the pool’s mossy, muddy rim, but now I hurled myself back into the safety of the water, hovering just below the surface, watching and listening as he first peered into the water, some sort of realization dawning on his face, then hurried away. He did not return for several nights.
Those long nights, I swam to and fro, waiting for interminable stretches just below the surface, fearing he would return and terrified he might not, yet return he did.
I swam up to the surface, looking for the moon, and was surprised instead to see his face, distorted by the water, peering into its depths. I held myself in the water directly below him, wondering if he could see me. Our faces were so close, I could feel his warmth in the water. I blew bubbles against his cheek, and he pulled back with a small smile. He would not touch me; he understood the fear I could not speak.
In that moment, hands reached out from behind him. I shrank back and the hands forced his head into the water, holding him there. I could hear the muted sounds of angry words spat into the night, but only one made sense: traitor.
The young man and I stared at each other, and his eyelids began to slide closed. He mouthed voiceless words as if trying to comfort me, even as he struggled to free himself. I scrambled from
the water, much to the shock of the brute trying to drown him. He was not alone in the clearing and my rage rejoiced that here, after so much starvation, was a feast.
I tore the brute’s hands from the young man’s neck. He backed away, startled. So I pulled the young man away from the water by tugging on his shirt, mindful to never, never touch his skin. I laid him on his side on the pool’s muddy shore. The shock of the assembled men, three of them, wore off, and they descended upon me with curses and laughter. I let my rage unfurl. I felt nothing as I moved among them. I was only dully aware of the hot iron taste running down my throat and in the end, three men lay dead, torn limb from limb. I sat atop them, awash in blood and finally sated. The blood matted my hair and was sticky as it cooled on my skin.
I clambered and slid from their scattered remains to the young man, who lay barely breathing where I had left him. I slid into the water to wash their blood from my skin, afraid for him to see me thus. He lay facing the water, so I drifted near to him. I could hear his ragged breaths, but he was still unconscious. So close, without the water between us, he was unbearably beautiful. I wanted to touch him; I was nearly desperate to do so, but my fear of the warmth of his skin held me back. Would he live? I tentatively brushed his damp hair back from his brow with a reed. His eyelids fluttered open and his eyes grew wide with recognition. He rolled to face away from me as coughs wracked his body. I could hear the heavy splat of the water as it exited his lungs.
I knew the moment he saw the bodies, for his entire back and shoulders went rigid and he pushed himself up to his hands and knees. He looked from me to the pile of the slain and must have seen the answer to his unasked question in my face as he rocked back onto his heels and let out a
slow, heavy breath. I sank lower in the water. I wanted to disappear from the weight of his gaze, but he held out a hand as if to stop me.
I do not know why I left the water then. I crept closer and closer. He noticed, and I watched his shoulders droop. Perhaps he thought he would be the next to die by my hands and accepted it.
My flesh recoiled at his warmth as I wrapped my arms around him and lay my head on his shoulder. He was so warm and I was gripped with horror at what might happen if my rage awoke while we were so close. He grew still in my arms, then began to sob. Our closeness and the heat of his body had become painful and dizzying. Despite the pain, I held him until his breathing grew slow and steady again.
I held him until he was a sleepy weight against me and the earliest light of predawn filtered through the trees. I needed to return to the water. I pressed a cold kiss into the palm of his hand and sank to the bottom of the pool with a sense of foreboding.
By nighttime, the forest was on fire. Its eerie light scattered and reformed on the surface of my pool and I could not find the moon. I told myself that forest fires had happened before and did not concern me, but my disquiet grew. The coincidence was too great. I shrank from the fire’s
heat until I heard pounding footsteps and the raw voice of the young man raised not in song, but screaming the name he had given me. I rose above the water to see him stumbling towards my pool, his face panicked until he spied me. I saw then how grievously he had been injured since I left his side. Blood and fire clouded my senses.
I sought his eyes. We could not save each other and he knew it. I opened my arms wide, hoping he would understand, offering him the only choice I could.
He dropped heavily to his knees, and dragged himself into the water, into my arms. His body was hopelessly broken. It had cost him everything to come to me.
We held each other tightly and I let myself be the heaviest weight that pulled him into the cold depths.