I know this isn't what you were looking for, but I like the prompt.
The Bog
Word has it that off not too far off to the west of the East Road, there lies a certain bog. I hear of it very infrequently. There’s very little reason to go there; it’s a long distance to carry the peat to any market, no large game lives nearby, there few woody plants to make a fire and the ground sinks beneath your feet with every step.
It has an odor, rich with methane like many other swampy areas. I have not read it in the accounts of any travelers, but when I ventured there one September in my youth, there was a sweetness to it.
No foul accounts are written about this bog. Not one. The records I’ve found of it are all cursory. A wrong turn made, a wind thick with swamp-scent, the rocky walls of a ravine opening up to reveal an open valley followed by the squish of a boot a foot or so down and a quick roundabout.
There is an old tale that treats upon star-crossed lovers who come upon a bog similarly located to this one. After travelling for weeks, the girl had fallen ill with fever and they needed a place to stay. The young man carried his lady to keep her feet dry and they edged around the swamp, passing through with the hopes of throwing off their pursuers. Sure enough, on the other side they found the same passage I discovered, leading further west. They walked on this more solid ground until they came to a small village where they found shelter. The girl quickly became well, the couple made their home, and they lived happily.
I, too, found this village. It is a quiet little place. Small families live in modest homes made of mud brick, one story high and bordered by well-tended vegetable gardens. The men, women, and children dressed mostly in dark wool, presumably to hide the mud marks sustained while crossing the bog to reach the road. It was a stern place. They had no inn in which to put me up. Instead, the town selectman allowed me a place before his smoky fire and a bowl of his stew. Eating with his wife and two daughters, there was no laughter, just news. After the meal, each of them set themselves to some piece of handiwork and, when it became apparent that there would be no music as I was accustomed to, I busied myself with my journal. I stayed two nights before it was kindly suggested that I move on.
I walked the four miles through the ravine back to bog. In my youth, I was plagued by a certain curiosity and therefore felt an urge to see the swamp better. As I said before, there are no trees in the soft earth, so to secure a better vantage point, I was forced to scramble up one of the rock faces. Looking west, I could make out the scar in the mountains I knew led back to the village and looking east, a similar path which would lead me back to the East Road. To the north and south, however, was a dark green smudge in my vision that I interpreted to be a forest.
Keeping to the firmer edges of the bog, I walked north for the best part of the day, breathing in the fetid air. The sound of crickets filled my ears and the sun beat down through hazy air. When darkness fell, I made a small camp. The air soon turned damp and chilly and I wished for a fire. I slept restlessly and continued on the next morning. Climbing up the rocks, I could now make out individual trees in the northern wood. Midafternoon, I reached the forest. This is where I first noticed the sweet bog-odor that followed me during the rest of my exploration. Fascinated, I began down a broken path in the foliage.
I had not spent more than thirty minutes along this route when I heard others approaching me. They dressed in the garb of the village, but I didn’t recognize them from my brief stay. They were shy to look me in the face, but firm in communicating me with soft words, gestures, and finally taking me by the arm that I was not to continue any further. My boots were saturated with mud, I had not slept well, nor had I eaten a good meal in days, so when the villagers escorted me back towards the East Road, I made little protest and was relieved to join up with a caravan headed for a familiar inn.
There, in the inn, I recounted to a local my short adventure about the bog. He asked me if I had heard the tale of the two lovers and I assured him that I had. The man smiled and asked me if I had heard all of it. I summarized my knowledge to him, and nodding, he supplied me with an ending of which I had been previously unaware.
The story goes that the couple found the East of the Bog, as he called the village, an inhospitable place, much as I had. Their light cottons set them apart from the rest who treated them with studious indifference. In spite of this, they were happy to finally be left alone together. Their neighbors, though lukewarm, helped them to build a modest home and plant a garden. Every detail matched what I had seen.
The villagers practiced no religion and so the lovers said their vows before their new hearth, considered themselves wedded and started a family. The wife bore her husband a lovely little girl – golden haired with skin softer to the touch than anything either of them had felt before. They were more smitten with their babe than they had ever been with each other and it seemed that happiness had finally settled into their lives.
Several months after the girl was born, the mother woke in the quiet of the morning just before dawn and went to her daughter’s crib. The baby was gone and her blankets cold. The husband searched for weeks. He exhausted every nook of the village and moved on to the valley. He searched north and south for days, making a similarly uncomfortable camp. One evening, a man from the village joined him. The two sat quietly for some time until the other man spoke up, advising him to stop looking – to stay out of the forest. The husband demanded to know why, to which the villager would give no response aside from the simple words, “A life for a life.”
When the man returned, the villagers had gifted him and his wife with new clothing, dishes of food, and sticks of incest – for their mourning the no-longer-young girl explained. Never quite so happy, the couple had two more children and lived out their days quietly.
I told the local man that I found his ending confusing.
“You, too, avoided the woods,” he replied.
I found nothing odd about this, having encountered already plenty of forests restricted for either their dangers or spiritual meanings.
The man laughed at me. “I suppose you are unfamiliar with witchcraft, then?”
I was.
“A life for a life. That is how the Sisters do it,” he told me. He went on to explain how deep in the woods to the north, there is a hollow where the villagers are accustomed to bringing their sacrifices – babies, children, the elderly. They tie them to the trees in the morning and return to their village before nightfall, travelling more quickly than I had. The bones are never there when they return. In return, an ailing member of the village is cured, a blight is lifted, a cripple learns to walk again.
“Why do they ask for these things?” I asked. “If the price is so high?”
“Sometimes, the witches give first, and like their payment later,” he said calmly.
The man seemed aware of both my disbelief and disinterest.
“Do you know where they find the bones?” he asked me.
“No.”
“Hanging from trees. In the south wood. All mismatched. Nobody’s legs with right arms and the like.”
This turned my stomach from my much-awaited meal and I moved to a different table. I left the next morning, headed north to my next destination and never looking back.
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