Eternity: Immortal Witches Book 1 (The Immortal Witches) (22 page)

I blinked, and glanced at Arianna. She lifted her brows and looked at the girl. “Magic?”

“Yes! Magic!” Laughing River said, nodding hard.

“Is that what a Shaman does?”

“Yes.”

She looked again at Trees Speaking, as I did. And then at those around him. They looked at him with respect, listened when he spoke, seemed to love the man.

“Then, I guess we are Shamans...of a sort,” Arianna finally said. I heard the relief in her voice, for it seemed obvious a person of magic would be treated far differently here than among the whites.

“White man fear Shaman,” Laughing River said. And her eyes went sad. “Trees Speaking say white man try kill all who make magic.”

I nodded. “Trees Speaking is telling you the truth, I fear. They do not understand us.”

The girl translated, and the old man nodded. Then he spoke again, and the girl smiled. “Trees Speaking say no one hurt you here. Magic sacred, even white woman’s magic. He say you stay.”

I glanced at Arianna. She swallowed hard. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I hate to drag them into this. Suppose Dearborne hurts them because of us?”

Laughing River quickly translated what was not meant to be shared, and to my surprise, the men around the fire burst into laughter. Our eyes must have registered our surprise, because the girl quickly explained. “They laugh because they know one old white man no threat to them. They warriors, Crow-Woman.”

Crow-Woman? I supposed it might be close to “Raven” from her point of view, but....

“No white man harm you here. Our warriors fierce. Strong.” There was pride in her voice.

Trees Speaking rose from his cross-legged position on the ground and smiled down at us. “Show me,” he said, very slowly, eyes narrow as he struggled to put the words together properly in his deep, raspy voice, a voice like the wind he was named for. “Show me...your way...your...magic?” Then he touched his chest, patted it three times. “I show you my way, my magic.”

I looked at Arianna and blinked. A sparkle appeared in her eyes. “There are many, many kinds of witches, Raven,” she whispered, “and not all of us use that particular word for what we are. Some call themselves Druids, some monks, some holy men.” She glanced at Trees Speaking. “Some Shaman. He could teach us a great deal, I think.”

Looking back at him, I recalled the way he’d watched me—perhaps, watched over me—when I’d spent that lonely night in the woods so long ago. “Why not?” I replied. “We have nothing to lose.”

A flash of sadness clouded her eyes, but she turned to Trees Speaking and nodded. “Yes. We’ll stay. Thank you.”

Trees Speaking smiled broadly. And so we stayed.

* * *

We spent well over a fortnight at that Iroquois village, sharing knowledge and esoteric wisdom with Trees Speaking. And I realized that Arianna had been right. There were many kinds of witches. He was practicing virtually the same belief system we did ourselves. We only called it by different names. Trees Speaking told us of the sacred importance of the circle, and how he worked within one when making medicine. And we told him we did the same. He spoke of calling upon the Divine spirit residing in things like the wind, and the water, and the earth itself, and we marveled at that, for we had, as well. He told us how the basis of his power was his belief that all life is truly linked together through a common source, and again, we were awestruck.

But there was more Trees Speaking taught us. Things we hadn’t seen or practiced before. He taught us to hear what animals might be telling us by watching their movements and picking out signs and omens. He taught us the medicinal uses of many plants and herbs native to this land and growing wild within its forests. And perhaps, most amazingly of all, he taught us the secrets of invisibility.

I thought the man insane when he brought this up with us, but he only smiled, and, through Laughing River, explained. One doesn’t truly vanish. One simply becomes so attuned to his surroundings that he blends into them, and onlookers don’t see him there. He demonstrated this by hiding and asking us to search for him. When we did, we couldn’t find him anywhere. But then he spoke, and we turned and saw him clearly, standing with his back pressed to a tree trunk. He insisted he’d been there all along. So we listened and practiced and learned, and tested our newfound knowledge by games of hide-and-seek with the villagers.

Each night Trees Speaking would whisper some of his beautiful words to me before I retired to a place of honor in his family’s long-house. He would move his hands over me and chant. And he told me he was working to mend my broken heart, for he could see it clearly in my eyes. Truly, my time there helped me far more than anything else could have done. By immersing myself in learning about these people and their ways and their magic, I was able to go on living. But the pain of losing Duncan remained fresh and strong in me. I thought it likely always would.

Finally we had to move on. ‘Twas riot planned, nor even thought through. But we knew ‘twas time to leave when one of the young men returned from a journey bearing meat and furs aplenty, and bringing news that shook me to the marrow. He spoke it to Laughing River, and her face paled, eyes widened. She turned to me, and I saw moisture spring into her shining eyes.

“Crow-Woman,” she said. “Bear Killer say white women...die. Many, many killed.”

I frowned. “I don’t understand. What white women? How were they killed, and why?”

She lowered her head. “White man say they like you. Shaman. Witches. Lock them up and kill them.”

My stomach convulsed, and my lips pressed tight as if to stop it.

Arianna’s face went stony. “Where?” she asked.

“If you go they kill you, too!” Laughing River cried.

“Where, Laughing River?”

She closed her eyes. “Place called....Salem Village.”

“Salem Village.” Arianna shook her head, closed her eyes. “I doubt there’s a genuine witch in the bunch. ‘Tis a Puritan village. They’re bastards.”

“Does it make a difference?” I asked her.

“Of course not. They’re executing innocents either way. Innocent witches, or innocent women who know nothing of magic, wrongly accused.”

I tipped my head back, searching the sky. “We have to go,” I said softly. “We’re stronger, more powerful, harder to kill—”

“Much harder to kill,” she said.

“We have an obligation, then.”

“We do,” she agreed.

We stared at each other, both of us wondering what turn life would bring to us next. Both of us afraid, and yet a bit excited. My losing Duncan had done one thing for me besides cause me unspeakable pain. It had made me lose my fear of dying.

For the next six months Arianna and I were shadows in the night. We’d slip into Salem by darkness, freeing women from the stocks, and from the locked rooms where they were imprisoned. Often with their children, even babies, locked up with them. Filthy, malnourished, and thirsting, no blankets. Many had been tortured. And none of them seemed to have a working knowledge of the Craft of the Wise. Perhaps some genuine witches had been hanged when the madness had first run wild in Salem. Perhaps, but not now. Now anyone with a grudge could cry accusations against her enemy, and see that enemy tried, her very life in the balance.

‘Twas the purest form of evil I’d seen since the day I set eyes on Nathanial Dearborne. And ‘twas only much later that I learned that Dark Witch himself had been in Salem Village only a short while before the madness began. No doubt the bastard had been instrumental in starting this fire that swept through the place, destroying everything it touched.

We rescued dozens, Arianna and I. Women and children whose fates had been sealed. We took them deep into the forests and hid them there. Some had families still alive and not yet accused. So we located those loved ones and brought them out as well. Our band of outcasts and refugees numbered fifty and more by the time the fury in Salem had run its course. And at last we led them all southward, into Pennsylvania Colony and a Quaker settlement there.

The journey took nearly two months. Alone, they’d have perished. But Arianna and I were able to find food, to fish the streams, and gather roots and greens thanks to all Trees Speaking and his people had taught us, and they survived.

In their new village, they used false names, just in case. But they would be safe in this place. I sensed it, and felt good about something for the first time since I’d lost Duncan.

And yet those we hadn’t been able to save...how they haunted me. I knew their names, every one of them. Sarah Osborne. Bridget Bishop. Sarah Good and her tiny baby, whose name I never knew. Elizabeth How. Susannah Martin. Rebecca Nurse. Sarah Wildes. Martha Carrier. George Jacobs. John Proctor. John Willard. Ann Foster. Giles and Martha Corey. Mary Esty. Alice Parker. Mary Parker. Ann Pudeator. Wilmot Reed. Margaret Scott. Samuel Wardwell. Sarah Dastin. I knew not whether they had been of my own faith, nor did I care. They had been living, breathing sisters of the human race. My sisters. And brothers. And children. My dear mother’s face seemed to appear in my mind as I tried to imagine the faces of the women who’d died.

And Duncan’s face hovered in my mind’s eye when I thought of the Reverend George Burroughs, a minister who’d suffered the same fate as my beloved Duncan. Not being pitched from the cliffs, no. Reverend Burroughs was hanged. Choked to death by a rope, and I knew that feeling all too well. But just like Duncan, the man had died at the hands of his own flock. Had I been a Puritan in Salem then, I’d have renounced my faith out of sheer shame for what had been done in its name.

I wept for all of them nightly for a long, long time after that. Sometimes, when it’s quiet and I’m alone, I still do. I cry for them. I cry for Duncan. I cry for myself, having lost him.

And my grief, it seems, is as immortal as my body, for it lives on still. Every bit as powerful, every bit as painful, as it was before, though three full centuries have come and gone.

PART TWO

Chapter 12

300 Years Later

Three hundred years later, on the anniversary of Duncan’s death, I stood on the cliffs of Sanctuary, facing the sea. There was a lighthouse standing offshore now. It reached skyward from the tiny, lonely island where before there had been only seabirds and the occasional treasure hunter. Built a century ago, it had been used for a time, and then forgotten. Then it had been abandoned for the better part of five decades, its rounded glass looking like a lifeless, sightless eye. A sad reminder of the way time moved on all around me. The way the world grew and changed and evolved.

I did not.

There had been movement at the lighthouse a month or so ago. For a moment I’d felt an absurd hope spring up in my heart, a foolish joy the place seemed to be about to come back to life.

But it had not.

I was in limbo, living, but incomplete, waiting, always waiting for the return of my soul mate. My lover. I’d been many places in the endless years of my life. But wherever I roamed, I had but one purpose—to search for him. I scanned every sea of strange faces in search of the one I hoped to see.

In three hundred years that search had left me with nothing but disappointment.

I stood with my feet apart, arms spread wide, head tilted back. The sea wind whipped my hair behind me, and a soft glow painted my face as the full moon rose over the ocean. I knew, had always known, of the power in the moon. A physical tug, a pull. The waves felt it; the tides changed because of it. Animals felt it. Coyotes and wolves bayed in response. Lunatics felt it, stirring the sickness in their minds.

Witches felt it.

The surge of power within growing stronger and peaking with the moon. At the full moon I felt I could do anything. I was invulnerable, invincible, and as powerful as the Goddess herself. And I had only one focus for the immense power the full moon gave to me.

Duncan.

But something was different tonight. Perhaps it was only the endless longing in my heart—heaven knew it had been often enough before—but I felt more hopeful than usual. I felt as if...as if perhaps he were near.

And yet I couldn’t trust my own feelings where Duncan was concerned, for “wishful thinking” was real and powerful and sometimes too potent to distinguish from true intuition.