Chapter One
The river knew her name, though she had never told it.
Khali knelt in the soft mud of the riverbank, her fingers trailing through water that ran colder than it should in the height of summer. Around her, the willows wept their green curtains down to kiss the current, and somewhere in their shadows, a thrush sang three notes that almost formed a word—almost, but not quite. The boundary between meaning and music had always been thin here, in this place she'd chosen for precisely that reason.
She rose, wiping her hands on a skirt that had seen better decades, and turned back toward the small cabin that crouched like a secret between the trees. Smoke drifted from its chimney in lazy spirals that broke apart before they could form patterns—another small rebellion against the ordered world beyond her garden gate.
The herbs needed tending. They always did, demanding attention with the quiet insistence of growing things that knew their worth. She moved between the raised beds with practiced grace, pinching back the dreamroot where it grew too eager, coaxing the moonbell to unfurl its silver-veined leaves. These were not the medicinal plants that any village wise woman might grow. These were older cultivars—varieties that thrived on whispered words and careful intention, that bloomed best under starlight and turned bitter if harvested in anger.
A sound on the path made her pause, shears still raised above a particularly unruly patch of night jasmine. Footsteps—but not the bold stride of a merchant or the furtive scurry of someone seeking forbidden knowledge. These steps came slowly, each one seeming to argue with the next about whether to continue forward or flee back to safer ground.
Khali set down her tools and brushed the earth from her hands, watching the bend in the path where visitors always appeared. She didn't have to wait long.
The woman who emerged from between the willows looked as if she hadn't slept properly in weeks. Her brown hair hung limp around a face carved hollow by worry, and her hands clutched a small leather pouch against her chest as if it contained her last hope in all the world. Perhaps it did. People rarely found their way to Khali's door unless they'd exhausted every other option.
"You're younger than I expected," the woman said, then immediately flushed, as if the words had escaped without permission.
"Are you…" the woman began, then stopped—as if the words themselves might be dangerous. "They say in the village that someone here can help with… with dreams."
Khali studied her visitor with gentle attention, noting the way grief sat heavy on the woman's shoulders, the way fear had carved fine lines around her eyes. She was young, perhaps no more than twenty summers, but sorrow had aged her beyond her years. There was something familiar in her bearing—the particular exhaustion of a mother watching her child suffer.
"Dreams can be many things," Khali replied, her voice carrying the soft cadence that had always made mortals feel strangely at ease. "Some are gifts. Others are burdens. What kind troubles you?"
The woman's composure cracked slightly, and she pressed her lips together as if holding back words that might break her completely.
"My son," she whispered. "He's only seven, and he… every night he dreams of drowning. He wakes screaming, calling for his father, but his father—" Her voice caught, and she looked toward the river, eyes bright with unshed tears.
Understanding settled over Khali like a familiar cloak. The river that sang such peaceful songs to her ears held darker memories for others. She had felt it in the current lately—the echo of violence and loss, the way water remembered everything it touched.
"The river took him," she said gently. It wasn't a question.
"Three weeks ago." The words came out in a rush, as if the woman had been holding them back too long. "Jorin had been drinking—he did that more and more after the harvest failed. He said he was going to the mill to speak with the owner about work, but instead…" She gestured helplessly toward the water. "They found him caught in the rocks downstream. And now Tam, my boy, he dreams of drowning every single night. He's so afraid of sleep that he fights it until he can't keep his eyes open any longer."
Khali felt the familiar tug of purpose—the ancient calling that had drawn her to this work long before she had retreated to this quiet corner of the mortal world. In the realm of dreams, she was not diminished or hidden. She was exactly what she had always been meant to be: a guide through the dark places, a voice singing lost souls back to safety.
"Children's dreams often carry more weight than they should," she said, moving toward her cottage with the fluid grace that marked all her movements. "Come inside. Let me brew something for the boy, and we'll speak of how dreams can be healed."
The interior of the cabin reflected its owner's nature—comfortable shadows broken by warm candlelight, shelves lined with carefully labeled jars and bottles, bundles of dried herbs hanging from the rafters like sleeping bats. A fire burned low in the stone hearth, and copper pots gleamed softly in the flickering light. Everything spoke of quiet competence, of knowledge gained through careful practice rather than scholarly study.
The woman—she introduced herself as Sophia—perched nervously on the edge of a wooden chair, her eyes darting around the room as if expecting to find evidence of the darker rumors that followed Khali's reputation. Instead, she found only the tools of a healer: mortar and pestle, drying racks for herbs, bottles of clear liquid that caught the light like captured starshine.
"You're not what I expected," Sophia admitted as Khali began selecting ingredients from her stores.
"People rarely are." Khali's fingers moved with confidence among the jars, choosing dreamroot for its gentle properties, moonbell to quiet an overactive mind, and a touch of silver sage to ward against the intrusion of unwanted visions. "What did you expect to find?"
"Someone… older. More frightening. The stories they tell in the village—" Sophia caught herself, color rising in her cheeks. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to give offense."
Khali's laugh was like water over stones, soft and musical. "Stories have a way of growing in the telling. By next season, I'll likely have turned into a crone with iron teeth who steals children in the night." She began grinding the herbs with methodical precision, the sound rhythmic and oddly soothing. "But you came anyway. That speaks well of a mother's love."
"I would do anything for him," Sophia said simply. "Tam is all I have left."
The grinding stopped, and Khali looked up with eyes that seemed to hold depths far greater than their pale green suggested. For a moment, something ancient and compassionate flickered in her gaze—something that spoke of understanding gathered across centuries rather than years.
"Then we will help him," she said with quiet certainty. "Dreams of drowning often speak to fears of being overwhelmed, of losing control. When a child watches the world take his father, his sleeping mind tries to process a loss too large for his waking thoughts to hold."
She added hot water to the ground herbs, creating a mixture that steamed with a fragrance both soothing and mysterious. The scent seemed to carry whispers of distant shores and moonlit gardens, of places where sleep came peacefully and dreams were kind.
"This will help him rest without struggle," Khali explained, straining the mixture into a small clay bottle. "Give him half a cup when the sun touches the horizon, no more. But the true healing..." She paused, considering her words carefully. "The true healing comes from knowing he is safe, that someone watches over him in the dark places where fear likes to grow."
Sophia accepted the bottle with hands that shook slightly. "How much do I owe you?"
"Whatever you can spare without hardship to yourself or the boy."
The copper coins that emerged from Sophia's pouch were few and worn, speaking of a household where every piece was precious. Khali accepted them with the same gravity she might have shown to a king's ransom, understanding that poverty made every gift a sacrifice.
"Will you..." Sophia hesitated at the door, clearly torn between gratitude and lingering uncertainty. "Will you sing for him? The stories say you sing lullabies that can guide people to sweeter dreams."
Something in Khali's expression softened, and she nodded slowly. "When the moon rises full tomorrow night, bring him to the riverbank. I will sing, and the water will remember different things for a while."
After Sophia left, walking back toward the village with lighter steps than she had arrived with, Khali remained in her doorway watching the river flow past. The water caught the afternoon light in countless tiny mirrors, each one reflecting a different fragment of the world above. She could feel the current's pulse like a second heartbeat, could sense the memories it carried—joy and sorrow, life and death, the endless cycle of mortal experience.
Soon, word would spread further. More would come seeking her particular gifts, drawn by whispers of the witch by the river who could heal nightmares with song and herb. They would bring their fears and their broken sleep, their children who cried in the dark and their own dreams turned sour by loss.
She would help them all, as she always had. Not because they worshipped her or even understood what she truly was, but because in the quiet hours between midnight and dawn, when the boundary between worlds grew thin, every soul deserved a gentle voice to guide them home.
Tomorrow night she would sing by these waters, and a small boy would learn that darkness need not always mean danger, that depth could cradle as easily as claim. It was such a small magic, really. Nothing like the grand workings she had once woven when the world was younger and less careful about its boundaries.
But perhaps that was the point. Perhaps the greatest power lay not in mighty demonstrations but in small acts of compassion, in being present when fear threatened to drown hope entirely. Perhaps this was why she had chosen this form, this place, this quiet work among mortals who would never truly know what walked among them.
The thrush in the willows sang again, and this time the notes did form words, though only Khali could hear them. They spoke of threads being woven, of patterns taking shape, of a storm gathering somewhere beyond the horizon. But that was a worry for another day. Tonight, she had herbs to prepare and lullabies to practice, and somewhere in the village, a small boy named Tam was steeling himself to face another night of dreams.
She would not let him face them alone. That much, at least, was still within her power to promise.