Beneath the Marshes
Nobody was supposed to go near the marsh. The elders said that there was a monster imprisoned under it, and when he writhed in his chains, poison dripped into the waters.
If there had been a monster, which Gwen had no doubt about, the prison had been abandoned long ago, and the part of the marsh that made you sick could easily be avoided if you were careful. She wasn’t foolish enough to go near it when anyone could see, but she had no parents left and two younger siblings to feed, and the good parts of the marsh were full of fish and edible plants.
So she went quietly. She tickled fish, and dived for cattail roots, and stood firm when the will’o’wisps swept around her. They wanted her to follow, she knew. To lure her into a bad part of the marsh where she would (if they were lucky) die or drown and they (or the monster) could devour her.
From a distance it might have worked. From a distance the will’o’wisps looked like flickering lanterns.
This close, however, they looked like someone had spilled a whole bagful of tiny white balls and left them bobbing around in the air.
So no, she wasn’t going to follow them again. Not today. Not until her sibs were grown.
Once was enough.
She had seen the monster - if he was a monster and not the man he looked - looking back at her from one of the poison pools. Eyes as blue as marshfire, skin as pale as a will’o’wisp. His name, he said, was Arthur.
He called her sometimes to come back. To sleep beside him in this marsh as his queen.
But Gwen had promises to keep, and miles to go before she'll sleep.
