Six

The twins stared at each other and at Laura.

“Do you mean, Erik drowned himself?”

Laura nodded, slowly, and the twins’ eyes widened.

*   *   *

Erik knew their love could never be, and more than that, Merle’s father had threatened to put Erik’s whole family out of business. He was so powerful, he could have done it, just like that.

Merle was inconsolable.

Erik was buried in the tiny graveyard at the north of the island, and Merle went to the funeral.

Now there was nothing Merle’s father could do to stop her, nothing with which he could threaten her. He had done the worst thing ever, and so Merle went to the funeral, unashamed of her forbidden love.

The other mourners gossiped and whispered, and as the funeral finished and everyone left, one of them spat at the ground in front of Merle’s feet.

That night, it was a bright full moon, a hunter’s moon, and Merle sat on Erik’s grave, sobbing.

“I said I would never leave you,” she said, “and I won’t. I won’t break my promise.” She made a vow to herself, to Erik, there and then. “If I have to wait for a year and a day, if I have to move the mountains, if I have to cross the rivers of the underworld, I will find a way for us to be together again.”

*   *   *

Every night, at dusk, Merle would wander from her house, like a ghost, a mere shadow of her former beauty, and drift to the graveyard.

Every night, she would sit at Erik’s grave, waiting, waiting for him to return. Eventually, she would fall asleep, her tears lost among the steady autumn rains that pattered onto the freshly turned grave soil.

Every morning, she would stagger home to bed, a cold and fevered wretch.

Her father tried to stop her, but no matter what he did or said, Merle took no notice of him.

The days turned into weeks.

The weeks turned into months.

The months turned into a year.

And still Merle spent every night weeping at her lover’s grave.

As the year had passed however, something had happened to Merle, to her mind. It had grown tired, and been stretched beyond endurance, so that it tore, and so it was, a year and a day after Erik had been laid in the earth, that she went mad.

*   *   *

That night, as she slept on the grave, now well covered with grass, the gravestone softening gently with the turn of the days, she woke.

The moon was bright, almost as bright as day.

It was a clear, calm night, as still, indeed, as the grave, and she looked up to see a hare sitting on the grass, an arm’s length away.

She knew immediately who it was, or rather, who she thought it was. In her delusion, she thought the creature was her lover.

“Erik!” she cried, and when the hare did not run away in fright, the belief that she was right grew in her. “Erik!” she declared again, laughing, the tears streaming down her face.

She put out her hand, and the hare hopped closer, and sniffed her fingers. She leaned closer, and the hare came right up to her face, to her lips. They kissed, lightly.

“Erik!” she said. “How clever!”

Then suddenly she realized something, and she sat up quickly. Now the hare bolted into the trees.

“But how,” she cried. “How can I follow you? I must be with you, my love! How can I be with you?”

Though even as she said the words, she knew what she had to do. The idea formed in her head, like an apple ripening, and she knew what she had to do, and who she needed to help her.

On the hill, on the road out to the western isle, was an old woman, who knew the old ways.

They said she was a witch, and they were right.