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Sometimes the waves only wash everything away— old landforms and new monasteries and all — and then retreat with their hoard to deep water. At the bottom of the top lake on a clear, bright night, you can see the steeple of a drowned church. Those who have the ears to hear, Ma Slevin whispered to us, can still hear the bells toll of a Sunday morning. God Be Praised for His Good Bells, she added, crossing herself. It's a beautiful thing, and lucky they are who hear it.
During that long, wet winter, they told me, too, of our last brownie. He still lives down at the barrows, where the Old ones used to store grain and weapons, but being the only one of his kind left has shaped him into a secretive, bile-ridden creature. He no longer helps with household work or dances outside at wed-dings but just squats in his barrow, now sleeping, now grumbling, and always stinking like a pit.
I felt sorrowful for that lonely brownie. I think it must be hard to be the only one of something. Scully says it's not that bad, and he should know. He walks alone except for his old fiddle, and he never stumbles. His head and eyes roll as he goes, but each footfall is steady. He stops often to feel the sun on his face and takes slow high-steps like a cricket in the summer grass. Sometimes I close my eyes and try to walk like Scully. When you walk blind, arriving anywhere seems a victory of some kind. Even more than a victory; it seems like a miracle. Most of the time, I just fall over.
Ma's place draws creatures to it. Auntie Ushag has dug out most of the flowers from our gardens to encourage the bees into the meadows behind us, closest to the hives, but Ma's garden is full of bees feeding all anyhow. Birds come for the unswept crumbs and then nest all around the house, including one pair of stubborn eaves warblers right over the door. They shit on the threshold, but instead of chasing them off, Ma just throws water over the mess, shouting as she does so to warn any passing ghosts to whom the wet would be worse than fire. Hedge pigs come for the milk that she puts out in dishes for them. She says she has no choice; if she didn't, the hedge pigs would take it directly, and that's a terrible shock for any cow. They nearly die of shame.
I watched Scully move around his place, steady andsure. He cooked. He tended the fire. He never spilled anything. He never burned himself. He couldn't see, and his mam was too old and stiff to care, so the mess of shells and fish bones we were building around the hearth just grew taller and wider around us as outside the winter sleet flew and the black clouds crowded in. I loved their place.
While Ma told the stories, Scully added the detail. He knew a lot about the Others that even his mam didn't. For instance, he knew that faery talk is not pretty like tinkling bells at all. It's a lumpy sort of language, and everything they say in it sounds like a declaration of war. But they can, and will, take away wounds or deformities if they are asked decently.
"Well, why don't you ask for Scully's sight?" I asked Ma, convinced that if anyone could persuade a faery, that person would be Ma herself, with all her trust and good nature. She smiled fondly on her son and said, "Ah, now. There's a pert question. Will you be requiring your eyesight anytime, Scully?"
"No, Ma, and thank you very much," he answered. He thought for a moment and added, "It could be seen as mighty ungrateful."
Ma nodded. "That's right, my Birdie," she said. "Would you rather see the world, or see beyond it?" Scully blew his nose. I looked at my feet. I felt a long story coming on, and I stoked the fire, then settled into Bo's warm hide to hear it. She lowed to me in a friendly manner, and Scully shushed her.
"It's said that it's a wise father who knows his own child," Ma began, "but there's times when the same may be said about a mother.
Excerpted from Merrow by Ananda Braxton-Smith. Copyright © 2016 by Ananda Braxton-Smith. Excerpted by permission of Candlewick Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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