Psychopomp Magazine Winter 2016 | Page 28

Mike Petrik

The Three Daughters of Long Kate

We are buried to just above our top lips in the slack-tide sea behind our home, and there is little enough moon that we are well hidden. From where we stand we can just see the house where our mother’s newly dead body is spread out on the table. I, the youngest, am also the tallest, and my knees are folded a little; I, the eldest, am flat-footed; as am I, who followed so soon after her. It is August and the water has finally, thankfully, warmed.

The table where she is laid out is made of ship’s timbers, though not the ship that brought our mother here. That one burned when the tide pulled away from its broken keel. She showed us the spot much later, and with her we kept the truth from our father. Our father, who sent us away from the house and told us to fly to our only neighbor’s, the peat-tugger and self-purported last Manisses Indian, Aaron Church. He was clear that we should not return until he comes for us or Church leads us away. Now father will be sat upon the bench beside the table with mother’s hand in his, facing the door and waiting for the wreckers to arrive.

He wouldn’t be surprised we haven’t listened. We are her daughters more than his, and he loves us the more for it. We’ve stayed close by to see what becomes of him when they come for our mother. They call her Long Kate—their witch’s name—and these men of the town across the island have been waiting for her to die so they may do away with her remnants, too afraid to come for her while she lived.

The young Swede who nursed our mother these last two weeks since she stopped speaking will have brought them the news, as we warned our father she would. He was returned early from the fishing grounds thanks only to something our mother taught him, but she had already been struck dumb.

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