The Year of the Witching (15 page)

He snapped the reins, looking a little smug. “I’ll meet you by the well.”

Immanuelle nodded. Then something occurred to her. “Why did the Prophet want those names?”

“What?”

“In the Haven, your father asked you to compile all the names of the women and girls in Bethel. Why?”

Ezra’s answer was halting. “It’s said that a curse can only come from the mouth of a woman. From the mouth of a witch.”

A curse. There it was, then. The truth out in the open. “That’s what he thinks this is?”

“Well, it’s certainly not a blessing,” said Ezra. “What else could you call it?”

Immanuelle thought back to the cathedral, to the stained-glass window that depicted the Mother’s legions being burned and slain. She thought of the muzzled girl, chained to the market stocks. She thought of jeering crowds and flaming pyres. She thought of Leah lying prone on the altar, blood pooling in the hollows of her ears, a blade at her brow. She thought of young girls married off to men old enough to be their grandfathers. She thought of starved beggars from the Outskirts squatting by the roadside with their coin cups. She thought of the Prophet’s gaze and the way it moved over her, lingering where it shouldn’t.

Immanuelle answered Ezra’s question in a hoarse whisper: “A punishment.”

When the forest is hungry, feed it.

—F
ROM
T
HE
U
NHOLY
F
OUR
:
A C
OMPENDIUM

THE FOLLOWING MORNING,
Immanuelle woke before sunrise and went to Abram’s empty workshop to fetch supplies. She sorted through the tools before making her selections: a thick coil of rope long enough to run the length of the farmhouse with slack to spare, a clean roll of gauze, and Abram’s sharpest whittling knife. The rope was heavy enough to throw her off balance, but Immanuelle managed to sling it over her shoulder as she crossed through the fallow fields to the gated paddock where the sheep spent their nights. Hurriedly, she let them out to pasture, where they would remain under the watchful eye of the farmhand, Josiah, while she was away in the woods.

With the flock attended to, Immanuelle started toward the well on the eastern edge of the pastures, where she waited for Ezra to arrive. To pass the time, she flipped through the pages of her mother’s journal, revisiting the sketches of the witches in preparation for what she was about to do. If all went according to plan, she would locate the pond, go into the water, and make her sacrifice, and by the time she emerged from the Darkwood again, the blood plague would be over. She just prayed that the daylight was enough to keep Lilith’s coven at bay.

Several yards off, cresting a hill and crossing into the pasture, came Ezra. He wore work clothes and his hand was freshly bandaged with a few strips of clean white gauze. On a leather strap slung over his shoulder, his rifle.

Immanuelle frowned, peering up at the sun. It had already risen above the horizon. “You’re late.”

The sheep scattered as Ezra moved through the flock. He stopped just short of her. Up close he looked rather tired, perhaps from a night spent sorting through the census. “And you’re reading forbidden literature.”

Immanuelle snapped the journal shut and hastily shoved it into her knapsack. “How do you know it’s forbidden?”

“You look guilty. No one looks guilty reading a book Protocol allows.” He nodded toward the coil of rope by her side. “What’s that for?”

“Fishing,” she said, brushing the dirt off her skirts as she stood. “Shall we?”

Ezra started forward first, wading through the waves of high grass to the forest’s edge. She followed him into the brush, hating herself for the way her heart eased the moment the trees closed in around her. The woods were as beautiful as she’d ever seen them. Sunlight filtered through the trees, dappling the narrow path that wended through the forest thicket.

Never had the woods seemed so gentle and alive. In comparison to Bethel—where everything was withered and dying—it was a stark juxtaposition. There, in the Darkwood, it almost seemed like the blood plague was some vague and distant nightmare. If not for the glimpses of the red river threading through the trees, or the blood-filled ruts in the path, Immanuelle might have believed the blood plague had been contained to Bethel alone.

But the truth was even more startling. Unlike Bethel, which had been ravaged by the horrors of the plague, the forest was
thriving off it. As if the woods were glutted with blood. The trees bloomed out of season, their branches lush with new growth. The bramble thicket was so dense it encroached on the path, making it hard to follow at times. It almost seemed like the forest was expanding, growing past its designated limits.

Was that what this blood plague was all about? Was it some ploy of the witches to take dominion over Bethel? Was Lilith trying to claim what had been lost to her all those years ago?

Ezra glanced back at Immanuelle. “For someone who claims to fear the Darkwood, you certainly seem at ease.”

He was right, at least in part. There was something about the Darkwood that made her feel as though she became more like herself when she entered it, and when she left it, less. But perhaps that was just the trickery of the witches. “You seem rather tense for someone who doesn’t.”

“If you’re ready for the worst, then you won’t have anything to fear in the first place.”

“Is that what you expect to find out here?” Immanuelle asked, ducking beneath the bough of an oak. She felt a little pang of guilt for all the secrets she’d been keeping from him. “The worst?”

“Perhaps,” he said. “I may not believe in witches and folktales, but I know enough to realize few good things come from the Darkwood.”

The words stung, and it took her a moment to realize why: She was from the Darkwood, at least partially. It was the place where she’d grown in her mother’s belly, her first home, whether she wanted to admit it or not.

Ezra turned to look at her. “You don’t agree?”

“I don’t know,” she said, stepping closer, halving what little distance there was between them. “I guess I’m inclined to think good things can come from unexpected places.”

Ezra reached above his head, grasping a branch with his good
hand, leaning on it a bit. They were close to each other, too close to be considered proper by Bethelan Protocol. But they weren’t in Bethel anymore, and the Darkwood was lawless.

It was Ezra who broke the silence, a ragged edge to his voice. “You’re a bit of a puzzle, you know that?”

Immanuelle tilted her chin to peer up at him in full. Ezra’s lips were parted, and the sunlight played over his face, painting shadows along his cheeks and jaw. Though there was barely a finger’s length between them, all Immanuelle wanted to do was step closer. But she didn’t dare let herself go. She couldn’t. “So I’ve been told.”

They walked in silence for a time after that. Immanuelle was all too conscious of the sudden quiet, and the careful distance between them. It seemed like hours had passed when Ezra finally stopped and motioned to a break in the trees. “We’re here.”

Immanuelle stepped in front of him. Sure enough, they were. There was the pond, a wide, bloody wound in the middle of the forest. The trees that encircled it were much taller than Immanuelle remembered, and their roots reached into the pond’s depths, submerged in blood, glutting themselves on it. The sweet stench of decay was so cloying and thick, Immanuelle almost gagged at the smell of it.

She turned back to Ezra, slipped the coil of rope off her shoulder, and lowered her knapsack to the dirt. “Close your eyes and turn around.”

“What are you—”

Immanuelle lifted the hem of her skirt up to her knees and looked at him over her shoulder. The forest’s song turned taunting. It was in the quick rhythm of her heartbeat, in the hiss of the wind, in the dull
thud
of Ezra’s boots on the dirt as he stepped a little closer.

“Eyes closed,” she reminded him.

This time, Ezra obeyed, closing his eyes and tipping his face to
the treetops. “Why do I feel like whatever you’re up to is a bad, creed-breaking idea?”

“I don’t know.” She paused to kick off her boots. “Maybe because you’re a bad, creed-breaking heir who has a taste for such ideas.”

She wasn’t looking at him, but she could hear the smile in his voice when he answered. “You think I’m a bad heir?”

“I think you’re a devious one.” She wiggled out of her dress, the fabric pooling at her ankles. She folded it quickly and retrieved the rope, knotting it around her waist. When it was secure, she walked to Ezra and slipped the slack into his good hand. “Hold this and don’t let go.”

Ezra turned to face her fully, and his eyes flashed as he traced the rope from his hand to her waist. Immanuelle’s slip suddenly felt as thin as mist in the morning. “I told you to close your eyes.”

Ezra’s gaze went from her to the water, then back again. She could have sworn he looked almost . . . flustered. “You’re not going to—”

“I have to. The blood plague won’t end if I don’t.”

“This is ridiculous,” said Ezra, shaking his head. He’d humored her antics thus far, but it was clear his patience was long spent. “If you’re hell-bent on someone going into that pond, let it be me. You hold the rope.”

Immanuelle shook her head. “It has to be me.”

“Why?” he demanded, exasperated. Angry, even. “What does this pond have to do with ending the blood plague? I don’t understand.”

“I don’t have time to explain it to you, and even if I did I’m not sure you’d believe me. But that doesn’t matter now. You’re here because you chose to be, so you can either help me or you can leave. I just ask that whatever you choose to do, you do it quickly and with discretion. I’ve kept your secrets, so you keep mine.”

Ezra clenched his jaw, conflicted. “This is a fool’s errand.”

“Just keep hold of the rope,” she said, stooping to take Abram’s knife from her knapsack. “If you do that, then there’s nothing to worry about.”

“But the water’s tainted.”

“Well, I’m not going to drink it, am I? I’ll make like a fish and swim. You’ve got the rope. If anything goes wrong—I’m under too long or I start to struggle—haul me back. No harm done.”

Ezra’s hand tightened around the slack. “Fine. But the instant that something goes wrong—you so much as splash too hard—and I’m reeling you back to shore.”

“Fair enough.”

Knife in hand, Immanuelle started down the shore. The cold, blood-black mud oozed between her toes and sucked at her feet, the brine making her blisters sting. Swallowing back a wave of nausea, she trudged in up to her ankles, her knees, her waist, cringing as the cold, bloody sludge lapped at her belly and seeped through her slip. Pausing to steel herself, she walked on, wading through the gore. When her bottom lip was barely above the water, she squeezed her eyes shut and whispered her prayer to the Darkwood.

“I’ll not tell you my name, because you know it already. I’ve heard you call me before.” She paused a beat, pushing up on her tiptoes, straining to keep her head above the surface. “I’m here on behalf of Bethel, to beg . . . no, to
plead
for an end to the plagues that were spawned here weeks ago. Accept this sacrifice. Please.”

And with that, she raised the knife to her forearm and made a deep cut.

As her blood mixed with that of the pond, a great wind moved through the forest, so strong it bent the pine saplings double. Wide ripples radiated from the center of the pond, as though someone had dropped a boulder in its depths. Waves broke against
the shore of the pond in quick succession, and Immanuelle had to root her feet in the muck to keep from being swept away.

Ezra gave the rope two sharp tugs, and she turned to look at him over her shoulder. He yanked on the rope again, harder this time, shouted her name above the roaring wind. But before Immanuelle had the chance to answer him, a cold hand wrapped around her ankle and dragged her under.

The woman is a cunning creature. Made in the likeness of her Mother, she is at once the creator and the destroyer. She is kind until she is cruel, meek until she is merciless.

—F
ROM
THE
E
ARLY
W
RITINGS
OF
D
AVID
F
ORD

THE WITCH OF
the Water floated in the shadow of the deep. She darted around Immanuelle, swift as a minnow, as she flailed and struggled, trying not to drown. The witch cocked her head to the side, ebbed closer, so they were nearly nose to nose. Her expression twisted into a frown, lips ripped apart, and when she wailed, the blood began to bubble, and great black shapes rose from the shadows of the deep.

Immanuelle thrashed, so startled she nearly snatched a breath and choked. The shapes were figures, women and girls. Some were Honor’s age, some even younger. As they drew closer, Immanuelle could see they were all gravely wounded in one way or another, little more than corpses caught in the current’s grasp. One woman’s throat was gashed open. Another wore a noose around her neck. A third’s face was so bruised and swollen she barely looked human. A fourth cradled her severed head to her chest the way you would a baby. More and more souls rose from the shadows of the deep until the dead were near legion.

From the black came a bellow, like a cathedral bell was tolling
in the deep. At the sound, the corpses stirred to life and floated back into the darkness.

Then, from the murk and shadow, a new face appeared.

The Prophet?

No. Not him.

This was a face Immanuelle recognized from the statue in the market square, from the portraits that hung from the walls of the Prophet’s Cathedral and Haven.

He was the first prophet. The Witch Killer, David Ford.

Ford’s lips stretched into a ghastly grin, his mouth yawning wide like he meant to swallow her whole. He took a deep breath, and a lone cry echoed through the pond.

And then, from the black, there was fire.

The flames stormed through the water and devoured the women. Their cries became a chorus, mixing with the deep, roaring laughter of David Ford. The women wept and thrashed, some pleading for their mothers, others for mercy. But the flames didn’t relent.

Immanuelle strained forward, reaching for their hands, desperate to help them, but the rope around her jerked, the knot biting into her belly. She fought it, clawing forward, toward the women and girls, as the fire raged.

Another yank on the line knocked the wind right out of her. She gasped, and blood rushed in to fill her mouth. In the black depths of the pond, she could still hear Delilah screaming.

IMMANUELLE DIDN’T REMEMBER
breaking the surface of the water or being pulled to the pond’s bank. One moment she was in the bloody depths; the next she was lying on her back, staring at the treetops. She sat up—rolling to her knees—and vomited. Blood and bile spattered the shore. It wasn’t until the second wave of sick subsided that she raised her head and squinted through the
twilight shadows. She could swear it had been just past midday when Delilah dragged her under. How long had she floated in the depths?

The pond’s conjurings flooded back to her: the figures, the pleas and shrieking, the fire. Those women and girls weren’t all witches—some were too young to practice any faith at all. They were victims, innocents slaughtered by the likes of David Ford under the guise of a holy purging. He’d killed them in cold blood. The Holy Scriptures had always made those conflicts seem like battles and wars, but in actuality, it was just a massacre.

It was a horrible truth, but one Immanuelle was forced to push to the back of her mind. She needed to focus on the curses and the witches and getting back to Bethel and . . . Ezra.

Ezra.

She raised her head to look for him, knees buckling beneath her as she pushed to her feet. But he wasn’t by the bank where she’d last seen him. And the rope around her waist was slack.

Immanuelle staggered forward, calling for him, but he didn’t answer.

Then, as she scrambled up the bank, she spotted him lying in the reeds. She ran to him, stumbling up the shore, and fell to his side. Ezra lay limp, with his eyes wide open, his pupils swollen so large they nearly devoured his irises. His nose and mouth were smeared with blood, but she couldn’t tell if it was the pond’s or his. The gash on his bad hand was bleeding freely, the bandages ripped and the stitches split open by the friction of the rope, which he still had hold of in a vise grip. And his limbs . . . they were pinned to the forest floor, bound by a tangle of thorns and tree roots.

A few feet from where he lay was his rifle, lying useless in the reeds, the metal barrel twisted into a knot, as if it was nothing more than a bit of wire.

Immanuelle struggled to pry the growths away—bloodying
her hands as she tore at the brambles—but the forest’s grip on Ezra held fast, and try as she might she couldn’t free him. Desperate, she raised Abram’s knife and began to hack at the tangle of thorns and tree roots, painstakingly cutting his arms free.

Ezra reached for her, his hand hovering in the air between them. He stared up at her with a kind of dazed awe, but his eyes were vacant and completely unfocused, as if he was seeing something more than just her. But the longer he stared at her, the more his expression changed—awe turning to confusion, confusion to dread, and dread to outright horror.

Something shifted in the woods.

The air went cold. The pond began to gurgle, small waves lapping against its gory shores. Overhead, a bank of dark clouds churned, and storm winds hissed through the treetops. A few crows winged to the sky, fleeing east, and the wind began to roar, blasting through the trees so hard it bent them double.

Immanuelle kept hacking at the vines with Abram’s knife, working as fast as she could. She bloodied her own hands ripping at the brambles around his ankles. “You’re going to be okay. I’m going to free you. Just hold on a little longer; you’re almost . . . Ezra?”

He stared back at her like she was a stranger . . . no, worse than a stranger, an enemy. He stopped struggling against the vines and branches that bound him to the forest’s floor and started to fight against her, lashing out and yelling, demanding that she stay away.

But Immanuelle refused to relent. She kept hacking at the branches, working to free him from the Darkwood’s hold, even as he thrashed and struggled as though her touch was burning him. And when Immanuelle cut the last of the roots that pinned his legs to the ground, Ezra lashed out, locking a hand around her throat so quickly she didn’t have the chance to scream.

His fingers—slick with gore and blood—bit deep into the
hollows on either side of her throat, sealing it shut. Immanuelle tried to pry his fingers away, clawing at his hands, his arms, his shirt. But to no avail. Ezra’s grip was unrelenting, and his hold on her only tightened. Her hearing went first, and her sight began to go after it, the black edging in from her periphery. She realized then that she was about to die, there in the woods, at the hands of a boy she would’ve called her friend.

In a last act of desperation, Immanuelle raised Abram’s knife, forced it to Ezra’s chest, and the tip of the blade bit into the hollow between his collarbones. For a moment they sat there, frozen in place—Ezra with a hand around Immanuelle’s throat and Immanuelle with a blade to his.

Just as she began to lose consciousness, Ezra’s eyes came into focus. There was a flash of recognition, then horror after it.

He let go.

Immanuelle kicked away from him, gasping for air, and raised the blade between them, ready to use it should he reach for her again.

But before Ezra had the chance to do anything more than mumble her name, his limbs twisted in a series of convulsions. He thrashed, his head snapping on its axis, back arched so severely Immanuelle feared his spine would snap in two. But somehow, despite the throes of those horrible seizures, Ezra was . . . speaking, spitting prayers and catechisms, psalms and proverbs, and strange Scriptures that Immanuelle had never heard before. It was then, and only then, that she realized what she was witnessing—a vision, Ezra’s first.

Storm winds swept through the forest. Pines bowed low and the treetops churned. Immanuelle weighed her options as she fumbled into her dress. Her first thought was a selfish one: avoid the risk of a second attack and leave Ezra there in the woodland. Let him find his own way out. But as she stood to leave, her own
guilt got the better of her. She turned back to Ezra, who lay motionless in the dirt, the worst of his vision now over.

Either they left the forest together, or not at all.

So she sat Ezra up, ducked under his arm, and stood, with no small amount of struggle, gritting her teeth as she pushed both of them to their feet and staggered toward the trees. Immanuelle tried to cry for help above the roaring winds, praying that some hunter or field hand would heed them, but her calls for help were lost to the tumult of the storm. Still, she pressed on, fighting for every step, lungs burning with the effort.

The Darkwood’s edge seemed to retreat three steps farther for every two she took, so Immanuelle moved faster, even as the shadows rose around her like water. In the distance, she could just make out the bright line of the wood’s edge, where sunlight spilled through the trees. But as strange and twisted as it was—despite her terror and her desperation, despite Ezra’s dire state—there was still some wretched part of her that desperately wanted to stay.

But Immanuelle would not be so easily tempted.

Not now when Ezra’s fate depended upon what she did next.

She forced herself onward, fighting for every step toward the sunlight. And then, with a final lunge, she cleared the woods and broke to her knees at the cusp of the tree line. Ezra went down with her, and they struck the dirt together with a bruising
thud
.

Immanuelle scrambled onto her hands and knees, rolling Ezra onto his back, pushing the hair from his eyes. She pressed a hand to his chest, but she couldn’t feel his heartbeat.

Across the distant pastures, the farmhand, Josiah, broke toward them in a full run, scattering the flock as he approached. Immanuelle cradled Ezra’s head between her hands, brushed the dirt from his cheeks, pleaded with him to come back to her.

But he didn’t answer. He didn’t stir.