Mother insists I write this down. For those who come after, she says. I think she just wants someone to believe her before she goes.
I’m not sure I do. But she’s dying, and what harm can it do?
I turned the page.
7th March, 1817
Mother spoke of one of our great-grandmothers today. Mother says she was once greatly respected … until she wasn’t. I asked what happened, but Mother just shook her head, her eyes going out to the loch. Always to the loch. She told me, as part of her sacred duty, she’s kept the records. The history is written, if I want to learn it.
I fear I would rather not know, though I suspect it upsets Mother. I have enough trouble sleeping as it is.
“What do you mean you’d rather not know?” I complained. “We need you to know! This is ridiculous. Be curious! Damn it.” Somewhere there were records. Annoyed, I shifted in my seat and took another sip of my wine, hoping the diary would give me more information.
12th March, 1817
Mother is worse. She grabbed my wrist this morning and wouldn’t let go.
‘She killed it,’ Mother whispered. ‘And it’s cursed us. Her daughters.’
I told her she was frightening me. She said I should be frightened.
“Och, that’s bloody grand, isn’t it then?” I said, raising my eyebrow.
A creature. The Beithir’s voice echoed in my memory.
Had an ancestor of mine killed one of theirs? The very idea of even managing to kill the massive serpent was enough to have me drain my glass of wine and gulp a few steadying breaths, before I kept reading. But the entries grew sparse after that. Fragments, really. The writer’s mother had died shortly after, and whatever else she might have explained went with her.
April 1817
Mother is gone.
I keep thinking about what she said about the loch taking what we love.
Thomas has proposed marriage, and I told him I need time to consider his proposal. It causes me grave concern to know that I might lose him by choosing to enter into marriage with him.
I do not know how to tell him what I fear loving him might cost.
My throat tightened. I could very well be writing this journal entry in the here and now it seemed.
June 1817
I married Thomas. God help us both.
Nothing for months and months after that. Then:
November 1818
Thomas drowned yesterday.
I don’t even know how I can pen this, as my hand shakes so terribly. The water was calm. It was calm. There was simply no explanation. An act of God some people say. But others … they whisper her name.
Mother was right.
I should have listened.
The entries stopped entirely after that. I flipped through blank page after blank page, hoping for something more.
Near the back, I found one final entry. The handwriting was shakier now, dated years later.
