Sea witch and tentacles on a forearm

The snow shut the Scarth road on Tuesday, so you will have to take my word that the woman who came over the top before it did was no ordinary carrier. She arrived at the Bield with a trunk of sea shells and eyes painted up green like a bank holiday, and she asked for a room facing the tarn. Nobody asks for the tarn. Father always said it has no bottom, only a long grey throat that runs down to the sea.

She paid in silver that had gone green by morning, and she spent three nights at the window with her lips pressed close to the glass, humming a tune with the wrong number of beats. On the fourth morning the eel came up. I have no other word for it. It was teal as a jay's wing, with eyes like lamp flames, and it lay on the ice like a dog waiting to be fed. She laughed, a sound like a kettle cracking, and said she had only come to collect what the tarn had owed her family since the old king's time.

I went out with the poker. I will not pretend I was brave. I was cross, and cross is quicker than brave. But when I raised it she only nodded at my arm and said, "Don't fret, love, I only want a bit of your voice." Then she gathered her skirts, walked straight out onto the black ice, and the tarn took her without a splash.

The trunk is still under my bed. Every shell in it is shaped like the same small curl, and I have started to wonder what she was paid with.

Your sister, Nell