So this was how it felt to say no to another person. What new man was he becoming? He had faced down his father. He had turned down Molly. All because a girl with wild hair and eyes like the sea had seen strength in him, made him believe in it too.

Even this unfamiliar, braver self had felt a spark of fear when she spoke of that Devil-incarnated-into-flesh brother of hers last time he saw her alone, when her mood clouded before she left. She was unknowable, a constant shifting of sweetness and shadow. Yet he was drawn to her.

They were a family unlike any other. Stories were told of the brother’s demon powers, of him running wild in different forms and spreading curses wherever he trod. The sister, sprung magically from the ground, and he could believe that such a sprite as she would begin in that way. A benign magic, though, if magic it was, and not just a pretty tale told to comfort a lostling.

And Sarah herself. There was a promise of unknowable power about her. He knew he should keep away.

He hung the stone in the tree, and left.

A Serpent, Black and Glistening

I know from the scent of henbane rolling down the path that Seth is in the house.

‘Wait here,’ I say to Annie. ‘I’ll bring some food for you to take to the woods.’

She crosses her arms over her chest. ‘I know Seth’s in there. I want him to swing me.’

‘Later.’ I will not have her breathing in the vapours he needs to sweeten his mood when melancholy comes upon him, that if I am near I feel lingering in my throat, worming into my being and coiling a trail of madness into me. Leaving her on the path, I walk into the smoky house.

Mam sits with Seth on the floor, pressed in between the table legs and the wall, the pan of hot embers and leaves between them. His bare head is bent over it and I hear his deep, slow breathing as he takes in his comfort. Mam talks in a soft voice, soothing and praising as she would a child. I will believe all is as it appears, the stories she has told us are truth and the memories I ignore are figments from my fickle mind.

On the table lie Seth’s offerings: a bowl of dried field beans and crammings. The blackened lumps scraped from the bottom of the bread oven are not the tastiest of the gifts he brings but Annie will chew on them happily enough. Would I could cover them in the butter Daniel gave me. I add the field beans to the bowl of pottage that steams in the hot ashes, so far containing only water and cabbage, and take the crammings. I pause in the doorway to look back at Mam.