Lorelei

They called her Lorelei, but dead girls have no names. For her crime they stripped her, whipped her about the town with willow switches. Hurled earth and slick river stones. Whore. They drove her out and barred the gate.

Rain washes away the blood. Mud grows thick, holds cart-wheels in black, clutching fists. Grey days run together, dilute laughter, drain sunlight into the river so it never touches the village–but no one notices. Fetch wood. Haul water. Tinder smokes wet in the hearth.

On Nocturne night, she returned.

When the dark creeps in and swallows lantern light, they tell me how they found her in the square, naked as the day they drove her from their walls. These men who were boys that day, they tell me and leer. The storm whipped her body as they had, her skin blue as poppy smoke. Damp hair writhed like a dying thing in the wind but she stood fixed, staring.

These men who face wolves and brigands, and make women split their firewood, these brave men shiver as they tell me, shoot a glance at latched shutters, and I swear I see a shape beyond. Someone peering through the slats? I force myself not to look.

The boldest went out, they say, though the names change with the telling. The rest remains the same. The sheeting torrent, eyes rinsed of all colour, staring. She asked but once.

Spare a light to guide the way,
To bring the wand’rers home.
Spare a candle ‘gainst the grey,
Or ever they shall roam.

She asked but once, and they, of course, refused. They are canny folk, in the south. You do not give host to the dead.

The first disappeared that morning.

Tracks in the mud, bare feet through the forest, wandering off the edge into open air. Did he regret that final step, before the gut-wrenching plunge and the rock rushed up to break his body? The river cuts deep, carves tracks in the skin of the earth, and in the centre juts a great mound of jagged stone from the gushing depth. They found his body on that rock, feast for the ravens, and beneath dead flesh, narrow bleached bones.

The water echoes off those rocky walls, rebounds laughter, sobs of autumn breeze. The mind can play tricks, but they swear to me they heard it. To a man they heard her hollow voice.

Spare a light to guide the way,
To bring the wand’rers home…

They set a taper in the window that night. Too little, too late. The second, they found face-down in the shallows. Slick river stones caressed his face, bloated and twisted with fear–so they say. A drunken stumble would not make so fine a fire tale. A rushlight in every home to appease her.

After the third, neck broken when his horse fell in the mud, they set the village alight, tapers flaring, oil smoking in the lanterns, every window open to shine the Dark Lady’s beacon. It was an errant gust, some tell me, while others say t’was an autumn gale threw the tapers to the floor. They set the village alight to appease her. She set it ablaze.

Rain washes away the ash. They live in Darrow now, tell fire tales to travelers and children. Now and then the daring ride upriver. Now and then they do not come back.

When her lover exposed her, she threw herself upon the rocks. Should have thrown him and been done with it. Ride down if you dare, to the rock in the river bend. When the wind is right you can hear her song, but to hear it is to seek it.

…Spare a candle ‘gainst the grey,
Or ever we shall roam.

They call it the Lorelei, for dead girls have no names.