She headed out into the cold blue of that late January morning just as the world seemed to be starting to stir. The season was notably turning and the bright lick of the sunrise was starting to spill over the horizon a little earlier each day. The village huddling close around the main street was already gathering itself indoors. Chimneys puffing smoke, families crunching toast around the table, trying to put something warm into their bellies before a day of toiling in the cold.
Sarah was an old woman now and had put her main days of toil behind her. She spent every day following a hollowed out version of the same routine she had been ruled by since her twenties. Only now she filled the spaces vacated by the hours of work it had taken to feed and grow her children, and their children, with collecting enough wood to allow her to sit and read for the rest of the day by the fire. The aged dog curled at her feet in place of slippers, wriggling every so often with dreams of chasing things about.
That invaluable beastie now ambled along slightly ahead of her, disappearing into the foliage every so often to bury her shining nose deep in the smells of the new day. The path that they followed up the hill used to be known as the captain’s Walk, but it was re-named nearly 60 years ago now. Catherine’s Pass was an old route, leading from the village, up the hill, to the cliff top.
From here you could see for miles out over the ocean. When the village had been more outward facing, more invested in the water, this exposed grassy headland had been crowded every morning. The women of the place walking daily up the path to keep vigil for their oft travelling loves, waiting a moment every dawn together to hope for a sighting of returning ships. They would celebrate each victory together in glad chatter or mourn each blank slate horizon in solemn quiet on the walk back to their homes. And then they would get that day started and their families turning through it.
On its way the path wound past a cloud of mist thrown up by the waterfall that happily lent its own name to the settlement but hid just out of sight of the marked track. Most of her lifetime the folk round here had been frightened of the waterfall. The pool beneath the tower of falling water was deep and dark and it was commonly thought that the place belonged to the fair folk.
She had never been afeared though. It had been their special place and they had never been disturbed there. Young bodies paying tribute to one another without fear of discovery. A place they had enjoyed still after pledging the bonds of marriage and bringing their children into being. Right up until the day he had gone away. It all seemed so long ago but she had been waiting for his return ever since.
She paused and breathed the delicious clean damp deep into her lungs for a moment and tried to remember his eyes the last time she had looked into them. It ached a little. But then everything ached these days. She tended to push into the tenderness in her joints, in her bones. It was proof of a long life lived and a lived in body still waking to live another day.
Now the children of the village were starting to reclaim the waterfall and on the warmer longer days of the year the cheerful whoops and screams of play now pierced the air and echoed about in the waterfalls deeply carved hollow. But they always fell silent when she encountered them on her way. Every one of them knew the sad tale of the old woman who climbed that path every day, still waiting for sight if her long lost husband and perhaps remembering the young friend she had lost by the cliffs edge too.
Such age and the stories of sadness that follow it are often enough to send the mouths of babes dumbstruck. And many of the children now also figured her for a witch, not a bad one of course! They could tell by the class of her baking and looked forward to the honeyed biscuits she baked for the Easter service as the tumbledown village church each year. But as the oldest and therefore wisest person they knew they regarded her with a reverence that frankly often made her chuckle.
Last summer they had found a skeleton wedged deep in the water. She had been sat out in the garden, sleeping under the pages of a well-loved book, the heavy scent of roses hanging all about. But news like that travelled fast in such a compact community and soon the men were running up that path for once, to help drag up the poor soul and calm and comfort the thrilled children.
It had been picked clean by the fairies they said, even though she had noticed that people had stopped paying the fair folk so much mind in recent times.
Sarah was the kind that sill left out crumbs of bread and saucers of sweet milk on the right calendar days. She kept the small ends of her leftover wool by a cracked open window after knitting on a cold night and the fragrant petals of roses from the garden in the height of summer. These offerings seemed to shift and she hoped they were appreciated still.
The village folk shielded her from much of the news. In her dotage she was often babied by them as the assumed so enough grief had passed her way and aimed to deflect as much of it as they could. Sometimes this made her grumble low to herself but that day she played along. It had frankly been too hot to pay much attention to anything that June.
People had spent more than a little pity on Sarah ever since her husband had not returned with the rest of his crew that dark September long ago. You have to look after your own after all. And the wistful relentless waiting that the perpetually reluctant widow ritually observed from that day on, it was a mournful habit to take, bless her bones. Up and out before the rest, before first light, just in case. Clearly she held a determination to never miss even the smallest sign.
This is why she had been the one to find poor young Catherine on that black and stormy January morning. She had been entirely alone in the discovery of Catherine crumpled at the bottom of the sheer cliff, the red morning sunlight gingerly fingering the dark pool of blood that had quickly blossomed around the edges of her small broken frame. It had been a formidable tide that day and the sea had taken her before the men could get the boats around.
The path had been renamed to give her some marker on the earth in lieu of a proper grave. But the villagers decided Sarah had been dealt a terrible hand with all the loss and the shock and would keenly rally round to help care for her the rest of her days. It was a habit they all developed quickly and to tell truth she had been glad of it. It had allowed her to carve out quite a simple and pleasant life for herself in the end.
At the top of the cliff Sarah smiled. Her finger circled the old gold ring sewn into the bottom of her pocket. His size. The last bit of him she could hold close now.
It had taken some time but the money had finally been raised to give the discovered bones a proper burial. Nobody had come forward to claim them. There were no identifying features, no wedding ring, nor gold teeth even! So the village had clubbed together to get them laid in the ground properly. At least the poor wretch could have that. Of course Sarah had not been expected to contribute. It was not done to ask for coin from those as were no longer working, we have to look after our own of course.
It had taken so little to put the man down. And with the softening of time she was unsure if he had been more angry at his betrayal or at that of her own intuition that had ignored the signs of his trespass. It had taken a small voice on the wind to spur her out that morning and she had rushed up the path thinking it told of his return and not of his heart closing to her.
She had seen Catherine leaving at a distance, sloping of dishevelled and damp with the telling glow of blood rosy on her face. The back of her white gown painted with the ground in grub of the leaf mulch she knew peppered the edge of the waterfall’s pool. Sarah had even smiled at the sight, thinking chaste little Cathy had finally found a lover and wondering which of the young village men it might be.
Sarah had been keen to get to the cliff-top to watch for the sails of her husband’s ship, which the resonant tremble of excitement in the pit of her stomach must surely signify. But her curiosity got the better of her and she ducked off of the path to peek into the cavernous hollow carved by the falling water. And there he swam, naked as the day he was born, her one and only love. His clothes piled in a mess of wrinkles and muddied knees at the edge of the pool by a scuffled patch of dirt gathered on the smooth slate ledge.
In the devastation of knowing he had departed her trust her mind turned black. She responded to the painful crack in her chest by picking up a large wedge of stone and lobbing it with all her hurt at the back of her husband’s head. By a miracle she often reflected, it had met his skull with a pronounced thud and he had stopped stock still in the water. Sarah had watched him reach his hand to the back of his head and pull it away with a bloodied palm. And then she had watched him sink. As she came to a little she had cursed him being so close to the furious white foam of the falling water. It had been a rain soaked month and the falls were in high force. She would never have any hope of getting to him without severe danger to herself.
The morning sun was heaving up properly now and she realised she would be missed by the women if she wasn’t careful. Sarah scrambled together her husbands clothing for want of knowing what else to do. She lobbed his shoes into the water after him, he had still not come up thank the day, and lifting her skirts tied the remaining clothing about her swollen waist.
She was pregnant with their last and thankfully nobody paid any mind to her awkward gait or thickened middle as she waddled on her way. As she had picked them up his wedding ring had fallen away from the pile. She had grabbed it in haste and pushed it deep into her pocket. Later that day, when the children were sleeping she had sewn it into the lining of the pocket in her heaviest winter skirt.
For a good few days she gave pretence of feeling ill, terrified that he might bob up in the water at any point and she would be undone. But it didn’t happen at first and then a fortnight later she had to call in the midwife, so had other things to think about. The girl that she laboured hard to push into the world had grass green eyes and she hoped that perhaps this last child would share the cunning that had always seemed to run in the women of her line. But it wasn’t to be. Still she took joy in all her gifts and the child grew, as did her older brother, and time passed a little.
On the morning that Catherine had died she had followed Sarah stealthily up the path, so silent it was a jumping shock when her voice hurled spiteful words into the whispering dawn air. She was not known to be an early riser, hailed locally as a bit of a spoiled one to be honest, and must have stayed up most the night to make it there so early too. Looking at her at the time Sarah had thought she had looked tired but that was of no consequence now.
Sarah had been discovered by the conjecture of her husband’s mistress. It should have frightened her more but to be honest, looking ad the wild sad girl shouting away in her nightdress in the cutting January wind she felt sorrowful for the desperate girl. She hoped she might talk her down, after all the slight was keener surely on the one of them that had been left behind with children to raise and a house hold to run.
But Catherine was having none of it and had talked her over to the edge of the cliff. Her rage was burning and Sarah had backed away form it bit by bit until she was left within a step or two of the sheer drop to the sea. The women had looked at one another and time seemed to stop for a good long moment there. Sarah thought of her little ones and as Catherine inevitably lunged for her she had wished kisses into the wind for them.
Now her eyes had been closed for the next part and all of a sudden she was shunted by force. Not into the void as she had expected but to the side and hard onto the cold sharp frost. Her stomach flipped at the sound of flesh crashing onto the rocks below and it took a moment for Sarah to realise that it had not been her own.
She made herself stand and peer over the edge just to be sure she was still in fact alive. There was the poor girl after all and the tide starting to climb the rocks. She levelled her eyes to the horizon and for a moment there, not inches from her face, was a pair of smiling eyes scratched out of ice crystals hanging in the air.
Sarah had known from then on that her secret was safe and only for her to keep.
Moments later she found her feet and started tumbling them back toward the path, crashing into the other women that had only just arrived. It seemed even our early bird Sarah was a moment too late they would all say later, after the cry had been raised and the boats had tried and failed to collect the body of the poor young girl.
The Chimney at her parent’s cottage soon stopped it smoking and the place was left to other tenants in the hope they would find more joy in it that Catherine and her family had.
Soon she knew that her own chimney back in the village would cease to smoke and it would be her time to go back under the hill. She was not of immortal stock after all and would decay just as we all must. But she was of a line that belonged, by virtue of a centuries old love, and would turn to dust in time as the last of the line with that magical blood diluted into human veins. None of the children had inherited the sight and the world was changing fast anyhow.
The old ways would be left behind before the decade was out. But she had lived a life and that is all there is to tell. Her dog barked at a sound from back down the path and gave chase. She followed on, the waiting was done for the day and she could now go on as she pleased.
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