Once upon a time there was a clever little girl who lived alone in a stone cottage on the outskirts of a village. She had shown up one day and to the villagers it seemed a hut no one had remembered as being there before had appeared to suit her, right at the river’s edge among the sedge marshes, the forest behind.

The girl was clearly an orphan, as no parents had ever been spied; but she was self-sufficient and managed for herself, selling the potions she concocted to the nearby villagers. There was a guile to her expression, eyes narrowed like a goat’s, a certain air of sly not expected in the face of a child that caused the villagers to call her No-Name, for it described her as nearly as possible without giving offense. And no one wanted to offend such a creature.

As the girl grew it became apparent that one who once was thought to be entirely solitary had on earth one real human friend, the son of the minister. He was as good a lad as could be found, speaking only when spoken to, a plainness to his looks, as humble as any and a credit to his parents. If there was a certain unrest about him, and an uneasily defined peculiarity about him, well, that could easily be overlooked by his finer qualities, of which there were many. It transcended understanding as to why such a boy—the minister’s son—would consort with the goat-child.

His parents roundly forbade him from seeing the changeling: such beings of other worlds were best appeased at a distance, and met only with downcast eyes. Each time his father reprimanded him so, the lesson rounded off with a good reddening of the bottom, he would mumble his agreement, the promise to do as he was told, and everyone was satisfied.

And yet. It was clear he continued to disobey his parents after all. He would slip from the house when others slept, running to the cottage by the river. Morgana, the elderly gossip who lived next to the minister on the hill, reported she witnessed the children like wraiths melting into shadows under the full moon’s glow, sliding into the forest pools and emerging dry, transforming into animals and demons as they chased each other through the forest.

While such accounts could not be proved, and the terrible near-sightedness Morgana was noted for detracted from her credibility, such tales of witchcraft were disturbing nonetheless. No matter how his parents forbade him, or spanked him, or pounded the Good Word into his reluctant ears, at the slightest chance the boy would run away, darting through the forest to the distant cottage, the fire within which seeming to glow brighter in welcome.

And a noticeable change began to take hold of the minister’s son. Wide eyes grew narrowed and distrusting; when once his father might have held his attention for hours, now the gaze was focused sullenly downwards. He who had always been of few words became silent to the point of unease, and something in his murky brown eyes became sly—a character which mirrored the girl’s own, villagers whispered.

What had started as mere rumors of enchantment grew to accepted fact: the boy was demented, possessed. He could not help himself, but spurn his tearful mother who feared to release his hand from hers lest he turn and run, who could not stand to look at her son and see the darkly wild gleam there, a changeling who had once been her own.

It only grew worse. The boy would only return at first light of day, legs apparently moving of their own accord, for the eyes would stare with a desperate longing out the window towards the forest, begging to return to their true home. There was a sickness about him, clearly the body’s rejection of the malignant spirit within, that gave him a green pallor and a yellow tinge in the eyes, and where once there had been a well-built child there was left a gaunt, soon to be emaciated, rag doll. The villagers shook their heads. ‘He will be gone soon,’ they said. ‘The demon-child wants another of its kind to be its plaything. Curse the devil for preying so.’

At last the minister could bear no more. Convinced of the darkness possessing his son’s soul, he fell upon the boy in the early hours of the morning when he slinked back to his parents’ house, and with a thick rope bound him fast to a chair, hands knotted behind him, legs pinned together uselessly. The boy’s bloodshot eyes bulged from his face, his sallow cheeks sucked in as to make him seem skeletal. His black eyebrows furrowed in anger at his containment but he remained completely mute, speaking not a word as he thrashed futilely at his bindings.

His mother wailed at what had become of her darling, her dearest, her only, and buried her face in her hands before fleeing the room, the tears on the dusty floorboards her parting glance. But the father remained strong for the sake of his son’s salvation. He advanced on the shadowed figure, slumped over in the chair to which it was confined, eyes two black holes staring from beneath the sweaty hair to watch the older man.

‘I do not wish to do this,’ the minister spoke to the creature within his boy. ‘It causes me pain to see my son this way. But you have controlled him for too long.’ And so saying, he withdrew the leather whip he had concealed from behind his back, long and black and slender. He whistled it through the air to land on his skin, letting the demon hear the sound it made on flesh. He advanced slowly, his nails buried in his palms where they gripped the whip.

At last he stood over the chair, shaking violently though he tried to master himself, afraid of the dark holes of Hell below him filled with the desire to cause harm, though he knew eyes could not injure without the aid of arms and legs. He raised the whip high, cocking it sharply towards the milky face, and then let it fall, the wind whistling through it, down through the air towards his son’s cheek.

‘Ah!’ He cried out with unbearable pain as he felt his back sliced open, a cat with thistled iron tails having struck there beneath his shirt, ripping back his skin where the barbs caught. Again the whip struck, and he heard the tear as again his skin was rent, blood wetting fast through his shirt. He fell to the ground as again the whip struck, and once more, and was only dimly aware of the ropes tying his son falling away uselessly.

The creature stood and spoke at last, a thick, slurred version of his son’s voice, as if the demon there had not yet learned how to manipulate the human tongue. ‘Look not again for me,’ it said, and turned away, a fire flickering to life in the cottage only barely visible in the distance.

~*~

The boy was dead, much though his lover had tried to revive him. He had staggered to her house in Death’s clutches, and no amount of potions nor charms would return the ruddiness to his cheeks or lift his heavy eyelids. She had left him in her web of enchantment for too long and, like the forgotten fish flopping on the boat’s deck, at last he could not draw breath. She cursed the boy’s frail body which could not deliver its precious charge, her dearest soul, to her intact, and defied Death himself for taking away her darling, her only, when just she had had him closest, at the moment when he would finally have been hers.

In all her books it was said that last art of necromancy was a false one, and the dead must be laid to rest when sealed in the earth. But books had only the knowledge of their mortal authors, and she denied the impenetrability of any law when set against her will. So she set about making a potion to split open the world of the dead.

Water from the river, in a cauldron over fire, set to blaze with oak wood, gave off steam. Salt from the ocean, laced with salamanders, stewed with the herbs of the undergrowth, cooled by her breath. In such a way did she pattern the elements twicefold, creating a bond unbreakable by ordinary magic. And then, the smallest pinch of her secret ingredient—a hole Summoned from its place in the earth when met with air lost itself, splitting open the universe. So she unlocked the gate between the worlds, retaining her own life. So she would reclaim the one that was hers, the one she had worked so hard to have.

As the hole-that-was dropped into the cauldron with a hiss of protest, a plead against the unnatural, a dark mirror rose from the steam. The world reflected in its silvery glass was the one in which she stood, except overcast with a gray shadow, and she did not exist in it. She took a cup from her table and with a parting glance of intimacy at the boy laid to rest on her bed, the boy she would reclaim, she scooped up a draught of the fluid bubbling in her cauldron’s depths, and downed it all.

At once she felt cold, and sad, and forgotten, but it was to be expected: she was almost entirely dead. With a sense of entitlement she walked through the dark mirror, entering the world beyond.

~*~

Though in the world she had left it had been midday, here the sky was a uniform dark gray, time nonexistent. The mortal world’s landscape had been reproduced almost exactly on the other side of the mirror, but with all the details left out, as if a giant pencil had crosshatched the bushes, the trees, the pathway on which she walked.

She came to the river. She knew she must ford it to reach the orchards beyond, and then her lover’s house on the hill, but the water flowed fast and strong and it repulsed her. Hurry, the water told her, hurry, or he will be gone forever soon enough… She wished she had thought to bring a staff, but she would not touch the wood on the river’s bank—it was gray and slimy, and something in it seemed malicious to her, as if it would snap the moment she leaned on it. She must cross the water alone. She slipped off her thin leather sandals and held them in one hand as the other lifted her cloak.

The first step was agony, the water icy yet thick, sluggish, almost like gelatin. She reeled at the sensation as her vulnerable toes screamed with the cold, wanting to run back to the dry shore but trying to grip the slippery rocks beneath them. She forced her feet onwards, clenching her jaw with the pain, compelling herself to think beyond the ice to the force of the river which might sweep her below. She tried to focus on each footstep, but her eyes were drawn downwards, to the blank faces of the dead there, eyes facing upwards and yet unseeing.

At last she managed across, with a backwards shudder, and climbed up the hill to find herself in a beautiful orchard, filled with golden light and apple trees heavy with fruit. And there—not where she had expected him, in his parent’s house—stood her beloved, leaning casually against a tree trunk, just as she had first seen him, so innocent, not aware of his own powers. She was relieved to see she had not been too late; the gray shadow of death was not yet upon him.

‘My love!’ she cried, overjoyed, but stopped herself from running into his arms. Something was strange about him; his smile was not the same as it once had been. He did not move to embrace her, but chewed an apple slowly, watching her. ‘Do you not recognize me?’ she asked, on the verge of heartbreak. ‘Has death erased all memories of the girl you once professed to love?’

He did not speak, but continued to watch her. Her heart was falling into pieces. He was so perfect, his brown eyes wide and sweet as they had first been, but there was something hollow in his look, and no spark of recognition. Had she been too late after all? Or had he never been hers, had the spell of binding been their only attachment? Had she gone too far in her bewitchment and affected his mind?

Suddenly he pulled one of the rosy red apples down from the tree he leaned upon and smiling, tossed it to her. She caught it easily but with surprise, for it did not feel as an apple should, with taut and smooth skin. Upon touching her hand it oozed, pooling as if a month rotten, and from its insides there came a hundred maggots and flies. She shrieked and dropped it, frantically trying to cast off the revolting creatures, stamping them beneath her toes. Across from her the boy made no move to help, but continued to smile, wider and wider until all his teeth showed; but no teeth there, instead thirty-two white worms, filthy and fat, twisting and turning in his mouth.

The girl screamed and leapt back, horrified, and put out her hands to protect her from the evils of decay. But her outstretched hands were not whole and white, but crumbling away, becoming dust before her eyes. It was then that she realized her mistake. She had touched a thing of the dead, and now must join them.

But her will was strong and she would run to her house, leap through the dark mirror before it could close, before her entire body was taken by death. She stepped backwards from the orchard that rotted before her eyes, graying and dying and molding into the earth, but too far—her foot caught on the long grass and backwards she fell, over the hill’s lip into the river below, to join her fellows there.

And the boy with worms for teeth smiled, for it was how it should be, and none could voyage into death and return.