Page 59 of The Washwoman at the River’s End

We attempted to drown her today. Held her underwater for near an hour, just to be certain she was well and truly gone. When she floated to the top, her lips and skin were blue, the whites of her eyes bloodshot. We thought we’d finally done it. And then, the creature rose from the dead before our verra eyes. Water poured from her lungs, blood dripping from her nose. It was unnatural. But even more, it shows her true wicked nature.

My stomach turns sour, but I take the book from Harold’s hands and force myself to keep reading.

Burned the Washwoman. The fire made her skin bubble, but it never progressed past that. The inferno was so hot, we couldn’t stand within two dragons of her. It burned out after half a day, but in the ashes, the Washwoman remained. Once again, she didnae die.

I almost drop the journal, so I grip it tighter, knuckles white.

Stabbed, over a hundred times.

Attempted with swords⁠—

Daggers—

Dirks—

Axes—

The list goes on and on, and my hands tremble with rage, the taste of bile coating my tongue threatening to bring the contents of my stomach up. I picture Marsaili. All the blood that had poured from the single wound in her neck. To be stabbed so many times, it must have been agony.

Slit her throat to the bone⁠—

Poisoned her with belladonna⁠—

Stoning—

I snap the book closed, rubbing my forehead, unable to stomach another word.

“Brennen?” Harold’s voice comes from somewhere verra far away, hard to hear over the rush of blood in my ears.

I close my eyes, trying not to picture the brutality of what the Washwoman endured. When I’d pulled my dagger earlier, she hadn’t even flinched. Hadn’t cowered away from it.

Now I see why. It was nothing compared to what’s been done to her before.

“This is—” my voice comes out as a growl, and I clear my throat. “This is savage. Ruthless.”

“The lass is a murderer!” Harold says, incredulous.

“Aye. So you torture her for decades? A century? She deserves death for her crimes. But a clean death. Not… Not this.” I shake the book with disgust. “This isn’t justice. It’s bloody sadism. It’s…”

I can’t finish the thought, because how else could I describe it, other than pure evil?

I open the book again, finding the final entry.

Consulted texts lent to me by scribes. Those with the immortality dàn cannot die by conventional means, but the runes themselves are vulnerable. Destroy the rune, destroy the power. We carved the dàn from her skin, but it appeared even in the layers below her flesh, down to the bone. It appears the texts were incorrect.

My vision goes black at the edges as I imagine the unfathomable pain actions as violent as this would have caused. They hadn't just tried to kill her. They’d carved the verra flesh from her body. Through muscle and bone. Did she beg for death then?

Harold keeps talking, but I barely hear him. My mind is spinning, my thoughts circling like the deep blue dragon above the glen, constantly dancing in the hazy sky.

These people had tortured the Washwoman beyond belief. Drowned her. Burned her and stabbed her and slit her throat to the bone—and she was forced to survive it. To wake up and face something even worse the next day.

No one deserves that kind of torment.

And it wasn’t these villagers' right to enact it. This—what’s written on these pages—isn’t the punishment the Washwoman was sentenced to by the Fates. She was sentenced to wash the clothes of the dead, not to be endlessly tortured.

I lift the book. “I cannae condone this.”

“No one asked you to. It cannae be taken back.” Harold straightens.