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Much better.

I have never seen the sense in stuffing the beak with herbs as mortal physicians do. The pestilence cannot touch me, and spending half the day breathing nothing but rosemary and camphor sounds miserable enough without adding sickness to the bargain. Even so, few pleasures are greater than taking the damned thing off so I can breathe properly.

I rest my forearms against the wet rim of the well and peer down.

Thirty feet below, the moonlight reaches just far enough to pick him out from the darkness, hunched in the foul water that has stood stagnant for years, too spent, it seems, to shout. A greasy film of scum clings to the surface, breaking around him whenever he shifts, and his clothes are soaked through, stiffening with frost wherever the cold can reach them. His broken leg lies twisted awkwardly beneath him, the thigh swollen to nearly twice its proper size, with the displaced bone pressing so hard against the flesh that I can make out the dreadful bulge of it even from up here.

The fall down there, of course, did not break it. I broke it. Four nights ago, when I caught him making his way home and dragged him off the lane into the darkness, it required only a brief, precise application of pressure against the femur to produce a thoroughly satisfying snap. A structural correction, to balance my own scales. If he were to spend time in the dark, it seemed only fitting that he do so with an injury that mirrored the one he gave to Ophelia Harrow.

It is abhorrent to look at, and William Mercer appears to have reached much the same conclusion.

I take an apple from my pocket and draw the little knife from my belt. I pare away a strip of peel and toss it into the well. It lands with a wet plop across the top of his scalp.

He flinches and looks up, squinting through the darkness until his gaze settles on my face. For a moment, he simply stares, his mouth falling open as his eyes travel over my features. Then a strangled little noise escapes him, and he scrambles backwards so desperately that both hands disappear into the sludge.

"Devil," he weeps, his voice cracking against the walls. "Mercy, Lord, mercy... don't eat me. Please, don't take my eyes..."

I pare away another strip of peel and let it fall before tucking the knife back.

“Eat it, William,” I advise. “Scurvy is a thoroughly unsightly way to expire.”

Juice drips down my chin as I take a healthy bite for myself. I have no need of mortal food to sustain me, but that has never prevented me from enjoying it, and I will admit, the apples in Beswick are delicious.

As I chew, I reach down for the small tin pail at my feet, drop in two stale crusts of bread and a skin of ditch-water, then feed the old fraying rope through my hands and lower it into the dark.

He scrambles for it, splashing filthy water up his sleeves as he drags the pail towards himself and tears into one of the crusts, washing it down in desperate gulps before the words spill out between breaths.

“I know why tha’s come,” he rasps, his northern vowels dragging thickly. “I know what tha art. God’s sent thee for what I did to her, hasn't He? That’s what this is.”

I take another bite of the fruit and chew slowly.

“She weren't no sweet little innocent, whatever she’s told folk! Creeping about woods like an odd sort, knowing which mushrooms wouldn't rot your guts and which ones’d kill a man stone dead. Folk were saying she were a witch, weren't they? Lads were frightened of 'er! And she were always running that mouth of 'ers, making 'erself clever at everyone else’s expense. I only went to kiss 'er, that were all, and she cracked me one right across t'mouth hard enough to split me lip, in front of all t'lads! Then she laughed.” He spits into the muck through chattering teeth. “Laughed right in me face! Made me look a reet fool and stood there smiling as if she were summat grand.”

I swallow the mouthful slowly, my eyes narrowing as I look down at him.

“We were only meaning to scare 'er,” he blubbers on, wiping his snout along a sodden sleeve. “She kept walking off, still laughing at me, so I grabbed 'er. She fought me like a wild cat, so I gave 'er a shove! How were I to know she’d go over t'edge? If she’d just held 'er tongue and stopped acting like she were too grand to look at me, none of it would’ve happened! We pulled t'rope up to give 'er a fright, that were all! She should’ve just said she were sorry!”

William has spent days at the bottom of a freezing well with a shattered thigh, and still he can tell the story of what he did to Ophelia Harrow as though the greater offence was hers.

Meanwhile, she braces herself against counters and has to stop halfway up staircases, gripping whatever happens to be nearest until the pain passes. She has spent years dragging herself through each miserable day, all because this wretched little man could not bear being laughed at by a girl.

Below me, the little boggit looks up expectantly.

“You misunderstand me, William. I was not sent by your God, and I have no interest in hearing you repent. You hurt her because she embarrassed you, then left her in the dark because your pride mattered more than whether she lived. She has carried your cowardice in her bones for more than half her lifetime, while you have never once had to suffer for it. So no, I am not here to forgive you, nor to balance some divine ledger on your behalf. I merely thought it was time you experienced a little of what you have so generously inflicted upon her. You can remain where you are a while longer.”

“It were years ago!” He slaps the water, splashing foul mud against the stones. “She’s nowt but a sour, dried-up spinster as can’t walk straight! I’m a man! I’ve got a life, haven’t I? Tha cannot leave me to freeze in a pit over a—a bairn’s game!”

He keeps going, spluttering one excuse after another until I can scarcely tell where one ends and the next begins. I let him talk for a while, though with every miserable attempt to make himself the victim, my patience wears a little thinner. By the time he returns to the apothecary being the cause of his misfortune, my teeth are aching.

“I’m fair freezing!” he wails, clutching his arms across his ribs. “Me leg’s gone rotten! I’ll die down 'ere, and for what? 'Cause some arrogant little witch tripped and went over?”

I press my eyes shut and let the thin secondary membrane slide across the sclera. When I open them again, the darkness of the well has shifted, the stone and water washed through with deep blue until William is no longer just a trembling shape.

The ragged threads of his soul cling stubbornly through the ruined body beneath them, tangled through flesh and bone, while his heart beats rabbit-fast against his ribs, each frightened thud sending a small pulse of warmth through the cold.

A cry tears from his throat as he scrapes his fingernails against the wall, begging for a merciful death.

No, Iscairn. No. Do not let this miserable creature reduce you to the beast he expects you to be.