Start reading Song of the Saltings by Rachael King

Dive into this atmospheric folk horror fantasy set in a world both terrifying and mysterious, from the award-winning author of The Grimmelings.

The dead mare lies just a few feet away. A hooded crow has settled on a nearby stone, watching with interest. Lotta looks up as the needle-sharp cry of a wheeling buzzard pierces the damp air overhead.

‘Chancers,’ she says. She’ll need to come back to the moors with men to bury the horse later — if the birds don’t strip it dry before they get there.

She takes the glass bottle from her satchel and jumps from the dapple-grey gelding’s back. She doesn’t bother tethering it. It’ll stay with her no matter what.

The skewbald mare on the ground could be asleep except for the flies that have settled in its eyes, and on its brown and white patchwork hide. Lotta doesn’t have much time. The colostrum — the thick, rich first milk that will give the orphaned foal its much-needed nutrients — will dry up within a few hours of death. Lotta can’t be sure how long the horse lay there before she found its foal and galloped with it back to the stables.

She rolls up the sleeves of her shirt and kneels on the moist ground, feeling the muddy coldness seep through her trousers into her skin. She reaches for the swollen teat, places the bottle beneath it, and squeezes.

Nothing.

She curses. ‘Ah, for Glimm’s sake.’

She tries again, with the other teat this time.

There’s a pause, then a popping sensation, and thick yellow liquid oozes into the bottle. Got you.

It doesn’t take long to get all that’s on offer — not much, but it’s better than nothing. If they’re lucky, one of the other brood mares will accept the foal.

As she slips the stoppered bottle into her shoulder satchel, then rolls her sleeves back down, the grey horse throws its head up, its neck stiff. Its ears prick forward, and it lets out a crying whinny.

It’s answered by another, beyond the barrow, the burial chamber to the west of the village. This call is high and terrified. Another escaped horse, wandering the treacherous peat bogs.

Lotta leaps onto the grey’s back and urges it into a canter.

The distance is farther than she expects, across the rolling moorland. The light is fading fast. Soon it will be too dark to see the way home, and she nearly turns back, but then she hears the horse cry out again, weaker this time. The figure of a man waits in the gloaming. A black mare with a mane the colour of the surrounding heather stands up to its chest in murky water, trembling with exhaustion, eyes rimmed white. Its rider — not a man, but a boy her own age, no more than sixteen or seventeen, with dark, sweat-matted curls — stands frozen on the edge of the bog, dragging on the reins.

‘Help,’ he calls. ‘She’s stuck.’ His thick eyebrows are clamped in determination.

Lotta doesn’t hesitate. She vaults from the grey’s back and plunges into the bog.

At first, the ground seems firm, but then it starts to move beneath her in slow pulses, like lungs filled with thick, peaty air. Each step makes a slurping sound as she sinks deeper. The cold reaches her ankles, soaking through the leather of her boots, but she doesn’t stop — she has to keep moving if she wants to keep them.

‘Careful!’ The boy’s pale face shines in the gloom. ‘The Glimm!’

Water swirls around Lotta’s calves as the bog tries to grab her and hold on, but she won’t let it.

‘Have you ever seen the Glimm this far inland?’ she says, scowling. ‘No.’

There’s no time for superstition, nor rumours, not even those based on truth.

‘Jenny, then. I hear she comes up from below.’

Lotta ignores him. She closes her eyes and imagines herself as light as air. She’s always had a knack for it, and she has no idea how or why. Many have disappeared into the bog and never come out; she doesn’t know why it favours her, why she alone can move through it freely.

The horse tries to heave away from her at first, but every panicked move creates a sucking sound and sinks it further into the water.

‘Stop tugging on her,’ she says to the boy. He releases the reins.

She approaches from the side and moves to the horse’s head. It’s a large animal, with a broad, convex nose and a white star beneath its forelock. Its neck is as thick and solid as a standing stone. Lotta murmurs sweet nothings, just noises, but they seem to do the trick.

The horse’s body stills and it blows on her offered hand.

‘What can we do?’ The boy’s voice is raised in panic. ‘We can’t lose her; she’s all we got.’

The horse senses his agitation. It begins to shudder, a small earthquake rippling across its shoulder. Behind Lotta, the grey gelding shudders in sympathy. Just being near another horse with an elevated heart rate is sending shocks through its body; it could give in to its instinct, turn and flee. But it stands its ground.

‘You can start by getting a long, sturdy rope.’

‘But it’s too far. And I can’t go back without her.’

He’s right. There’s no time to wait for a rope. ‘Move away, then,’ she says. ‘You’re only making it worse.’

‘She’s my horse,’ he says. ‘I’m not leaving her.’

‘Do you want my help, or no? You’ll have to trust me.’

The boy opens his mouth as if to argue but closes it again and nods. He backs off and sits on a stone a safe distance away, arms folded tightly, eyes never leaving his horse — or Lotta.

She brings her attention back to the animal. Then she calls down into the thick, oily water.

She sings for the bog to set the horse free.

 Song of the Saltings by Rachael King releases April 28.

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Song of the Saltings

by Rachael King

Every year on Brack a sacrifice must be made to the Glimm, a creature that haunts the salt marshes. But something is stirring, and to uncover the islands' deepest secrets, outcasts Lotta and Moss will need to trust each other and risk everything they hold dear to learn the truth.

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