A Spell for the Revolution (3 page)

The afternoon sun warmed everything, even the dust that rose from the narrow road as it wound between familiar stone walls. Proctor smelled like a man who’d been in the saddle for the better part of a month. Two days’ stubble roughened his face. He was sore in places he didn’t even know he had. But as he rode Singer to the crest of the hill, there was a smile on his face.

He had never been so glad
not
to see a place.

Below him, a great oak tree leaned over the road. Knolls crowded together behind it, with a bog on one side and forest on the other. Uncultivated land. Nothing more.

The spells that Deborah used to conceal The Farm and protect it from strangers were still intact. She and the others were probably safe.

“We’re almost home, girl,” he told Singer, reaching down to pat her neck. Her head hung low, and she didn’t respond to his touch. She was nearly spent, and he felt that he owed her one more healing spell to restore her strength. He knew to keep that strength for himself—just in case.

He checked his musket, knife, and tomahawk, which were all sparkling clean even if he wasn’t. Then he tapped his shoes against Singer’s side, and she started down the road toward the shade of the oak.

As soon as they came down the hill, Proctor felt a tingle pass over his body, like hundreds of tiny pinpricks. Singer nickered, her ears flicking and her skin twitching all over. Her tail whacked at invisible flies on her flanks.

That hadn’t been there before. Maybe he’d been too quick to feel relief.

He dismounted beneath the oak, next to a solitary post that had no apparent purpose along this empty stretch of country road. After three weeks in the saddle, Proctor felt much shorter all of a sudden. The ground, steady as it was, seemed to rock beneath his feet.

Proctor gripped the weathered gray knob of the post. As soon as his skin connected with the wood, he heard distant chimes, almost like fairy bells. The landscape flickered as if a veil were removed from his eyes. The knolls receded from one another, growing into hills. Between them a gate appeared, set in a wall of fieldstone. Behind the wall, at the spot where the two hills joined together, rose the rooftops of a house and barn and outbuildings, surrounded by gardens and orchards and pastures. The Farm.

Already halfway from the house, walking toward him, was a welcome face.

With Singer’s bridle in hand, Proctor hurried through the gate. “Deborah!”

She grabbed up her skirts and started running; he dropped Singer’s reins and, forgetting all his aches and tightness, sprinted up the path toward her.

They stumbled to a stop ten feet apart from each other.

Deborah was dressed plainly, in the drab grays and duns typical of her Quaker upbringing. But her face was as bright with life as the flowers that she loved, and her nut-brown eyes had more intelligence in them than in all the schoolteachers Proctor had ever met. She smiled at him for just an instant, then reached up and straightened her plain cap, feeling with her fingers to make sure all her hair was tucked in. She glanced over her shoulder. Her half a dozen students were neatly lined up on the porch of the house.

Proctor rubbed his chin, self-conscious of the stubble and the dirt from the road. Just once, he wished Deborah would look at him with the same exuberant expression
Emily used to have when she saw him. Things had been awkward between Proctor and Deborah for a while, growing worse as more people joined them on The Farm. For months, they had both been so busy with work that they’d stopped trying to find private time together. “You’ve worked hard while I was gone,” he said.

“Thank you, but the credit belongs to Ezra and to Magdalena.” She looked past him. “You’re alone.”

“I couldn’t find Alexandra.” He’d let it go at that for now. “How did you know I was coming?”

“I added a second warning spell, farther out, along the ridge of the hill. For the past few days, someone’s been poking around the borders of our spell—”

“Who? When?” Fear pushed its icy fingers into Proctor’s heart as he thought of Bootzamon or another creature like him. “Have they gotten in?”

“Of course they haven’t gotten in,” Deborah said disdainfully, as if he were questioning her ability. She paused, peering at him more closely. “Why do you ask? Did something happen on the road?”

Singer had walked over to Proctor’s side and nuzzled his hand for a treat. Proctor rested a hand on the saddle, next to his musket. He was still thinking about his answer when a voice came down from the house.

“Is everything all right?”

Squat, bandy-legged Ezra, the only other male witch at the school, stood halfway down the hill.

Proctor waved to him. “I’m home—”

“It’s only Proctor,” Deborah shouted. “Go back to work! We’ll be up shortly.” Turning back to Proctor, she said, “What happened in Virginia? You’re scaring me.”

“We’ve got reason to be scared,” he said. He took a deep breath. “Alexandra was already gone—I don’t know where. But an agent of the Covenant got to her house before I did.” He paused, then decided to say the next part straight. “He murdered her parents.”

Deborah’s hand flew to her mouth. “May the Light shine on them,” she whispered. “The poor girl.”

Deborah’s own parents had been murdered by the Covenant just a year before. The wound had not entirely healed over; it might never heal. Not that she ever let anyone see that side of her. Proctor was about to say something comforting, but the horror faded from her face and was replaced by her more usual intense thoughtfulness.

“How do you know it was the work of the Covenant?” she asked. “Are you guessing?”

“No, unfortunately, it’s no guess. The murderer was still there when I arrived at their house.”

Her hand darted out to touch his arm, but he was too far away, so she pulled it back. “What?”

“It was the uncanniest thing I’ve ever seen, a scarecrow brought to life and animated by some ghost or spirit. He said his name was Bootzamon. Magic made a man of him, at least to look at, and he had gift enough to blow away my protective spell as fast as I could sprinkle salt, and he could call things to him—”

“What kind of things?”

“The tomahawk, after I knocked it out of his hand.” He might as well be honest. Deborah understood more about witchcraft than anyone else, and if they were going to stop the Covenant this time, she had to know what they were facing. But he didn’t give her a chance to dwell on it now; she would do that plenty later. “And he could summon this imp or demon, a creature named Dickon, that kept his pipe lit. The pipe was the focus of the spell. When I realized that and broke the pipe, Bootzamon turned back into a scarecrow and fell apart. Then I came back here as fast as I could.”

Deborah’s hands were clenched in fists at her waist. The news had scared her, though she only looked angry. “Why didn’t you stay and look for Alexandra? If the Covenant is moving, we need her skills with us more than before.”

“I told you, she was long gone. Bootzamon tortured her parents before he killed them, and they didn’t say where she was. Bootzamon said something else too: he said his master wanted him to
capture the young witches and kill the old.
I was already too old for him. I was worried about you, all of you,” he added, with a gesture toward the porch, where the neat line had turned into a clump with heads bent together, talking. “That’s why when you said someone was poking around the borders, I worried more.”

Deborah shook her head, puzzled. “I’m not sure I understand completely. Was this Bootzamon a puppet?”

“A puppet without a puppeteer. There was no one pulling the strings, no biloquist casting his voice. He mentioned a master, so maybe he was more like a slave than a puppet.”

Deborah turned her face east, squinting against the wind. “Maybe it’s best if we say nothing about this to the others.”

“We can’t keep this from them,” Proctor said, shaking his head. “We agreed on that at the very beginning, after last summer. Everyone who comes here has a right to know exactly what dangers we face.”

“Just don’t scare them more than necessary.” Her voice was almost pleading. It was always so hard for her to ask for anything.

Singer nudged his hand again. He took her bridle and started to lead the horse toward the barn. “I guess I’ll get her out of this saddle and get her rubbed down and fed.”

“Proctor?”

He turned, expecting her to say thank you. Maybe expecting her to express amazement that he’d just ridden a thousand miles in twenty days, because she’d asked him to, because he was worried about her. “Yes?”

But she had that thoughtful look on her face again, as if she was trying to keep track of everything. “Ezra needs
help out in the pasture, repairing the fence. The clearer our borders are, the stronger our protective spells will be.”

He looked past the barn, along the line of the hill, where the rail fence had tumbled down. Proctor’s back ached from the saddle, and his legs felt too stiff to walk much farther, but she was right. The Farm needed a strong border to protect them. “I’ll get to it as soon as I can,” he said.

“Good,” she said, sounding relieved. She hurried past him, heading for the group on the porch, probably to lecture them on the evils of laziness when there was work to be done.

“Come on, girl,” Proctor said, rubbing Singer’s neck as they plodded toward the barn.

He should feel happy to be home. Their garden beds overflowed with carrots and cabbages, lettuces and leeks. In the orchard, branches sagged with ripening pears and apples, with the plums ready for picking. Beyond the orchard, rows of field corn stood shoulder-tall and thick with ears. Half a dozen pigs dozed contentedly in the shade of the barn, out of the hot August sun, while the oxen and sheep grazed in the lower pasture where the fence was still intact. A lot of this was his work coming to fruition. He had taken the run-down farm Deborah inherited from her parents and turned it into someplace prosperous enough to feed all of them. He knew that he should feel proud.

Instead he felt like a sand castle at the tide, about to be overwhelmed.

He paused at the barn door and looked across the yard and the well at the house. Deborah had already shooed the other witches back inside for lessons, but his attention was drawn to the rear, where a new wing rose as big as the main building. Ezra had made a lot of progress the last fortnight. He’d been a ship’s carpenter most of his life and hated the farming chores, but he tackled the building projects with skill and enthusiasm.

The overwhelming tide retreated for a moment at the
prospect of a real house to sleep in again, instead of the barn. No one could say there was anything improper about him and Deborah sharing space under one roof, not when the men would have a separate door and separate rooms from the women.

A small tug at his shirt hem made him spin around. A girl of ten or eleven stood there. She was small for her age, with dark straight hair cut short like a boy’s. Darker skin and almond-shaped eyes hinted at a mixed heritage.

“Hello, Proctor,” she said.

A knot melted in Proctor’s jaw. “Hello, Zoe.”

“Watch this.”

She closed her eyes and furrowed her brow, her hand held out in front of her. After a couple of seconds, a spark popped to life in her open palm.

His hands darted out and squeezed her fingers shut, extinguishing the flame.
“Never
do that near the barn.”

“I’m not in the barn,” she said, pointing at the door to indicate that she was a few steps outside.

“I said
near
the barn, not
in
it.”

She jerked her hand away and cradled it against her chest. “You’re just like my father. And yes, I’ll never do it near the barn or in a house or anything like that. I just wanted to show you.”

He sighed, realizing that he was reacting to his memory of the widow Nance, the Covenant agent responsible for, among other things, the scars on his arms. “I’m sorry, Zoe. That just reminded me of a very bad witch who could make fire appear that way. She used it to hurt Deborah’s mother and father. I was scared for a moment, and I reacted too strongly.”

“Well, that’s stupid,” she said. “I’m not a bad witch.”

That brought a smile to his lips. “No, you’re not,” he said. He reached out and mussed her hair. She leaned into his hand, almost like a cat.

“Can I pet Singer?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said. “How about I put you in the saddle for a minute? Then when you get down, you can help me take off her saddle and brush her.”

She nodded eagerly, and he grinned. He lifted her onto the mare, who bore this further delay with a toss of her head and a nip at Proctor’s hand.
Capture the young witches and kill the old ones.
He didn’t know what the Covenant wanted with witches, but if Alexandra was young enough at fifteen or sixteen, then Bootzamon’s master would be even more eager to have someone like Zoe. Proctor wouldn’t let that happen.

“Who’s giving you your lessons today?” he asked.

“Ugh. They
all
fuss over me, telling me what to do,” Zoe said. She sat perfectly still, her hands braced on the pommel. “Can I ride her in the pasture?”

“Not right now. But tomorrow or the day after, I promise. None of them have children of their own, you know.”

“Neither did the sailors, but they didn’t fuss so much.” Zoe’s father was Captain Mak, a merchant engaged in the China trade; once her mother died, he had taken her aboard his ship to look after her. When Mak discovered that she had a talent like Ezra’s, he entrusted her to the carpenter’s care and sent her to The Farm to learn how to control her gift. Zoe shifted in her seat, leaning forward to brush Singer’s mane. “Miss Walcott, she—”

“Zoe Mak.”

Deborah stood at the front of the house, her hands planted firmly on her hips. Zoe slipped off the horse and dodged behind Proctor.

“Come on, I’ll go with you,” he said. He took Zoe’s hand, and they walked over to Deborah. “She came out to see Singer,” he explained. “I told her it was all right.”

Zoe let go of Proctor’s hand and ran around Deborah, slipping through the door without a word. Deborah stared
at Proctor for a moment, then lowered her arms and sighed, following Zoe inside.