Bogland is dark, tangled, and treacherous underfoot. Do not go there looking for the lady beneath the waters, for she may find you first.
Plants spilled from her gaping maw—tubular pitcher plants, the woody stems of bog-myrtle, butterworts. Tendrils that almost looked as though they were writhing. Her hair had long withered away, leaving only a wrinkled, misshapen head teeming with moss.
She sank deeper into the murky water, leaving only her flickering eyes visible in the dawn mist. Men were coming, she could feel it. The warning rippled up her protruding spine like hundreds of damselfly legs. The moss spoke to her in ways that humans could not comprehend. It whispered, murmured through the earth and its creatures. The bogland that she called home was alive. It was her.
For thousands of years, the terrain sustained her. It swallowed and digested her whole. Sapped the moisture from her body. Tanned her flesh into tough, dark leather. Protected her from decay. It metamorphosed the woman into something soft, rubbery, immortal.
The men stood at the edge of the wetlands looking out into the mist-thick morning. They came with rifles and booming voices. She had seen these men before, and she knew what they had come to do.
Old wives have always forewarned about navigating peatlands before sunrise. But men rarely listen. They cast caution aside and call them ‘tales,’ and they do as they please. The men came in their droves and spread a blight across the land.
The weed-choked woman crept closer, wading slowly through the acidic stew, her glowing eyes like two will o’ the wisps dancing above the water. The fluid around her flowed like smoke, allowing her to move silently through the bog. She stood directly beneath the men and waited for the right moment.
Their deep bellows travelled through the land, stirring creatures from their homes. An unseen owl screeched in the distance and began to take soundless flight across the peatland. One of the men readied himself and began to creep across the spongy ground. As quickly as the owl appeared, it made an abrupt turn and dissolved back into the mist. The man cursed and then the woman rose from the dark.
As she emerged, rivulets of water trailed down her leathery, boneless form. She towered over him momentarily, to boast her magnificence in its entirety. And he could do nothing but watch in horror and awe as she sank back down into her cauldron, dragging him into the muddy depths with her. The other men simply turned and fled.
Somewhere in the mist, a nightjar churred. Waters stilled. The sun would soon rise.
Jennifer Edwards is a British-Guyanese writer. Her writing is full of strange relics, tortured souls and ancient secrets. You may have read some of her work in the likes of Swim Press and Spellbinder.
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