THE MILLER'S SONG

The children were buried under the footbridge. That’s what the entire town always said. But Leila said there’d never been a footbridge, though how she would know Owen wasn’t sure. Her dad barely ever let her out of the house, let alone into the forest as far as Miller’s Creek.

Today was different. Today her dad hadn’t stopped her from leaving with Owen and Ben because he didn’t know she’d left. No one did. The three of them had conspired weeks ago.

‘Best we go during Hogmanay,’ Ben had suggested. He liked suggesting. Leila had disagreed. She often disagreed. As always, though, she’d eventually gone along with the plan. Just as Owen had.

The adults had gone out for Hogmanay, dancing at a ceilidh until their feet gave way. The children should have been there too. Instead, they’d taken the opportunity to sneak out and find the truth behind the old town legend. Now they were hours into a long walk with nothing but their warm breath forming tiny clouds in front of them, like a thread they’d laid to find their way back.

‘I’m so hungry, I could sleep,’ Ben said.

‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ Leila said with a shake of her head.

‘Dad always tells me when I’m hungry I should sleep it off,’ he replied defensively.

‘Then your dad doesn’t make sense!’ Leila countered.

Truth be told, Ben said a lot of things that didn’t make sense. He’d also said there’d never been any children buried under the footbridge. The stories were all made up by adults to keep them away from Miller’s Creek.

‘It’s the Baba Yaga what’ll get you, not the bloody miller,’ Ben often said.

Owen had no clue what a Baba or a Yaga was, but the way Ben lowered his voice whenever he mentioned them gave Owen the impression that neither was anything he’d like to meet.

They didn’t meet anyone at all as it were. Not a Baba Yaga in sight. They did, however, come across a wide-eyed wildcat as they entered the woods. It stared at them without blinking. In a tree nearby, a conspiracy of ravens sat perfectly still as the light of the sun began to lick the skies.

‘Should we go back?’ Ben asked. ‘We’re going to get in a lot of trouble.’

‘We’re already in a lot of trouble. What’s the point of going back without finding what we came looking for?’ Leila replied.

‘It’s scary here,’ Ben murmured. ‘And I’m burning hot from all this walking!’

Ben wasn’t far wrong about the woods. Even Leila didn’t argue. The trees this far into the forest made Owen feel less as though they were deep in Highland woods than in the belly of a beast. They were tall, ancient and imposing, their bark darkened as if charred. Some were so twisted and warped that they resembled tortured faces. They looked like sentinels of Lucifer come to protect his kingdom.

For the first time, he wished Ben and Leila would bicker. The silence and their breath spilling out in ghostly plumes only made the forest scarier. Leila and Ben were forever bickering. Owen was forever listening to it, and it had, in a way, become almost soothing. An awkward lullaby to calm his unease. They reminded him of his parents. They, too, spent their days bickering. His parents had ended up getting a divorce. He hadn’t really known what divorce was until it happened. He still remembered the day of the divorce. It was a few days after Christmas. A few days before Hogmanay. He watched from his bedroom window as his mother left wrapped in that cashmere crimson scarf of hers. He hoped Leila and Ben didn’t end up getting a divorce. That would make him sad.

After a while, the soldier-like trees opened up a path broad enough for them to walk side by side. Ben took this opportunity to tell them everything he knew about the murders. He said there had been four children. No. It had been five. Actually, no. It’d definitely been three. Ben often found it difficult to remember things. He also said it had been the man who owned the mill. No. It hadn’t been the man who owned the mill. It had been the Baba Yaga. The Witch. No, she wasn’t a witch… she was an entity.

‘What’s an entity?’ Leila asked, rolling her eyes.

‘Dad always said it is something that is. But isn’t. That was. But wasn’t. That will forever be… and never will be.’

‘That doesn’t make any sense!’ Leila replied. ‘Anyway, I was told there was a group of children. My cousin Blair said she and her friends found them by following their calls.’

‘Now that doesn’t make any sense!’ Ben replied. ‘The dead don’t call out to you!’

‘My cousin Blair doesn’t lie! She said they are under the footbridge, in the stream of water.’

‘Just how deep do you think a stream of water is?’ Ben asked, shaking his head.

‘Deep enough that the dead don’t notice.’

‘But you said there wasn’t a footbridge,’ Ben countered.

‘I don’t remember saying that.’

Owen remembered her saying that. Ben gave him an exasperated look, then slipped his hands into his pockets as they entered a clearing thick with asphodel. He turned his pockets inside out.

‘I didn’t bring any snacks!’

He looked at Owen, then Leila. Neither of them had brought anything to eat either.

Leila went over to the flowers, picked one and held it to her nose. ‘They look edible.’

‘You can tell that by smelling them?’ Ben asked. ‘How does smell tell you they’re edible?’

‘Well, it doesn’t smell poisonous. Or manky. Or rotten.’

‘Blue cheese smells like all of those things, and my dad loves the stuff.’

Leila rolled her eyes and took a bite. ‘See? I’m fine.’

She picked some more and shared them with Ben and Owen. They took tentative bites. The flowers tasted tangy and sweet, and soon they wanted more. Once their appetites were satisfied, they walked on, back into a dense section of the forest. Beyond the trees, light filtered through more easily, and with it came the haunting sound of a melody.

Eventually, the trees gave way to the cleanest stretch of land they’d seen for hours. Up ahead, the mill appeared as a hulking figure, its windows like eyes scowling at whoever dared pass by. Its black timbers were crusted with frozen lichen, and its roof sagged like a torn earasaid. Owen’s eyes fell on the great waterwheel, hanging dead over the black water behind the mill.

‘Look, the miller,’ Leila whispered.

He sat on his front porch. Between each line of the song they’d been hearing for the last few minutes, he sucked at pomegranate seeds and spat out the pips, and then continued singing:

I wish the wind may never cease,

Nor flashes in the flood,

Till my three sons come home to me,

In earthly flesh and blood.

The miller’s mouth was stained red from the pomegranate, and he kept singing as the three of them passed by. Owen tried not to stare at him. Ben had changed his mind about who’d killed the children half a dozen times, but looking at the old man, Owen thought, creepy as the old man was, perhaps he’d been right the first time. He walked faster. Ben and Leila followed. They hurried past the mill and followed the path back towards the trees.

‘There!’ Leila said. ‘The footbridge!’

It was smaller than Owen had imagined. A few old planks crossed a narrow stream, with trees rising so close on either side that their branches met overhead. What little morning light reached the water lay in broken pieces between the shadows. Owen could see how someone might pass through the woods without ever finding the bridge. He looked at Leila, but she was already hurrying towards it.

Ben’s face brightened. ‘See? I told you.’

But it seemed they weren’t the only ones curious to find the bodies. A dozen or so people had gathered around the bridge. They stood in small groups, speaking quietly. A woman in a green coat held a bunch of flowers with both hands. Near her, a man unfolded a camping chair for someone who looked as if she needed to sit down.

Owen stopped dead still. He knew the woman in the chair. It was Ben’s mother. She had her head bowed, and for a moment he thought she might be ill. He turned to Ben, his brow furrowed with confusion. Owen opened his mouth, then closed it again.

Leila pulled on Owen’s sleeve and pointed towards her father. Owen had met him often enough to recognise the way he stood, with his hands buried in his coat pockets. Today he looked smaller than Owen remembered.

‘Maybe they finally found them,’ Ben whispered.

Owen could see more people now as they shifted around one another: a neighbour from his street, the woman who ran the corner shop, a boy from the year above them at school. He looked towards the foot of the bridge, but the crowd blocked his view.

Then he saw it. The red scarf. Owen’s mother stepped out from among them.

She wiped her face with the sleeve of her cardigan. He looked back towards the mill. He remembered walking past the old man’s porch before, with Ben and Leila beside him. Before this morning. On another Hogmanay. The miller had been singing then, too. They’d reached the footbridge and looked down, expecting to hear the children calling from beneath it. But all they’d heard was the miller’s song. Owen remembered turning towards it and seeing the man standing over them.

The cock doth craw, the day doth daw, the channerin worm doth chide, the man had sung.

Before Owen could stop himself, he sang the next line. ‘Gin we be mist out o’ our place, a sair pain we maun bide.’

He remembered the voices in the water now. Ben falling. Leila falling…

Owen turned back to the crowd. His mother, Leila’s wailing father and Ben’s stoic mother were laying wreaths beside three photographs at the foot of the bridge: Ben’s, Leila’s and his own.