I wait for her to agree, to flick her hair or make a comment on the Council, on the strangeness of it, on anything.
She just pushes another piece of clothing beneath the water.
I stand and brush a few leaves from my skirt. This is a waste. Wherever Helena is, my Helena, she’s not here.
“Where’s your grandfather?”
She waves a raw hand in the direction of her house.
“I’ll come back soon. I promise.” With that I turn and leave my friend by the icy stream.
There’s a porch on the house that wraps around three sides. At the corner, just before the narrow wood columns and the simple rail vanish, a shadow of a man stands, looking out.
I approach the porch, trying to stand straighter, make my shoulders somehow broader, hold my head high. It’s odd to see Master Matthew so far from the action, tucked away in his old house, the one he has lived in since before he was named to the Council. I hear the flutter of pages and realize he has a book braced against the wooden rail, a dark shawl wrapped around his shoulders.
“Lexi Harris,” he says, without turning. His voice is deep and strong for such an old man. “Your uncle seems to think you’ve taken up your own search at night. What brings you here in daylight? Some wasted hope for clues? I assure you we’ve looked.…I’ve looked.” He keeps his back to me, turning a thin page. “Or are you here to clear that boy’s name, to convince me that it isn’t him? I fear that will not go well for you.”
My legs weaken a fraction, but I only swallow and hold my head high.
“I’m here to speak to you, sir.”
At last he turns to look at me. Master Matthew’s eyes have a softness to them, a feature I don’t readily attribute to the Council. It must be from having a family, children, grandchildren. Those things that shape us, round our edges.
He tips his face down and takes in the sight of me over his spectacles, standing there without a coat, trying not to shiver from cold and things that have nothing to do with weather.
“You look just like your father, standing that way. Like you can challenge the world and the way of it if only you can hold your head high enough.” When I don’t answer, he adds, “Stop holding your breath, Lexi. It doesn’t matter how straight you stand.” He raises a hand, gesturing me to the porch beside him. I join him. The western sky is plunging into reds and oranges, and all I can think of is fire.
“I need your help, Master Ma—”
“Just Matthew.”
“Matthew,” I whisper, “I need you to tell me a story.”
He turns his head toward me, eyebrows arching. The setting sun lines his face with red-lit wrinkles. I can’t help but wonder how old he is. He must be at least eighty, but when he turns his head some ways he looks years younger.
“I need you to tell me the story of the Near Witch. Just the ending.”
In a heartbeat, his eyes change from curious to wary. I try not to fidget beneath his cold pale gaze.
“The part where the Council dragged her out onto the moor and buried her.” What am I saying? “I really just need to know that part.…”
The frustration painted on his face has shifted back into surprise, but I don’t know whether it’s the question or my boldness. My father would smile. My uncle, on the other hand, would slaughter me if he heard me speaking this way.
“I know nothing more than an old legend, child.” There’s no malice in his voice, but no kindness either. Each word is careful and measured.
“I think the Near Witch is back, and she’s the one taking the children. If I can find where she was buried, then I think I can find them. How can you not help, if there’s any way, any way at all to find your grandson? Blaming the stranger won’t bring Edgar back. What happens when they get rid of him and the children keep disappearing? Even if you don’t believe it’s the witch’s doing, it’s a possibility, and that’s more than my uncle and his men have.”
I feel like I’ve used all the air in my lungs.
After a painful silence, he says, “The Near Witch is dead. Chasing ghosts does no one any good.”
“But what if—”
“Child, she’s dead.” He slams the book to the porch floor. “Hundreds of years dead.” He looks down at his hands, fingers white from gripping the railing. “She’s long gone. Long enough to be a story. Long enough that some days I doubt she ever lived.”
“But if there’s any chance,” I say in a small voice. “Even if it’s just a silly theory. A theory is better than nothing.” I place my hands over his, both of ours cold as the last light bleeds out of the sky. He just stares at my fingers. “My sister, Wren, is friends with Edgar. They’re almost the same age. I can’t…” I tighten my hands over his. “I can’t sit and wait for her to disappear. Please, Matthew.” I don’t realize I’m near tears until my voice hitches in my throat.
Master Matthew won’t meet my eyes. He’s looking at the dregs of light, which have lost their color, casting the world in shades of gray.
“Five hills due east, in a small forest.” The words spill out of him in an exhale, barely above a whisper.
“The founding Council took her east, out past the house, what was left of it, out five hills until they reached a group of trees. According to the stories, it was barely a grove, but that was a long time ago, and things grow fast out on the moor, if they choose to grow at all.”
Funny how when we start to tell a secret, we can’t stop. Something falls open in us, and the sheer momentum of letting go pushes us on.
“I choose to believe, Miss Harris, that the Council did what they thought was—not right; right is the wrong word. What they thought was necessary.”
“She didn’t kill the boy.”
He finally looks at me. “I doubt it mattered.” And in that moment, I realize how much danger Cole is in. My hands slide off of Master Matthew’s.
“Thank you.”
He gives a small tired nod. “You really are like him, your father.”
“I can’t tell whether you think that’s good or bad.”
“What does it matter? It’s simply true.”
I step off the porch when he adds, almost too quietly to hear, “Good luck.”
I smile and press north, toward home, to wait for night.
There is a wooden crow nailed to our door.
The center stick is almost as gnarled and knobbed as Magda’s fingers. Two long nails have been driven through, one pinning the stick to the door, and the other splitting the wood as it breaks through the front, like a rusted beak. A few black feathers dangle to the sides, bound to the stick with rope, and they flutter in the evening air. And there, just above the sharp nail of a beak, two river rocks, as smooth and polished as mirrors, glisten for eyes. I push the door open, and the wooden crow rattles against it. What was it Magda said?
Watchful eyes turned out at night, keep the evils out of sight.
INSIDE, THE HOUSE IS TOO QUIET.
I wait for Otto’s grumbling to pour out of the kitchen, for the sound of his cup hitting the table, but there’s nothing. Wren is sitting cross-legged in one of the kitchen chairs, spinning a makeshift top on the old wooden table and looking painfully bored, while my mother clumsily mends the hem of a dress. Even the sounds of the fabric and the top are dulled, as though the air has been sucked out of the room. I hover in the doorway, my earlier argument with my uncle replaying in my head.
“Where’s Otto?” I ask, and my voice breaks the strange quiet, sends the moment crashing down. The wooden top falters and bounces off the table with a harsh tap tap tap tap. Wren hops down and hurries after it. My mother looks up from her work.
“The men were meeting. In town.”
“Why?”
“You know why, Lexi,” she says.
I want to scream from frustration. Instead I clench my fist until my nails dig into my palm, and say only, “Cole is innocent.”
Her eyes sharpen. “The sisters trust him, don’t they?”
I nod.
>
Her brow knits ever so slightly, and she says, “Then he can be trusted.”
She reaches out, and her fingers come to rest on my arm. “Near might not look after the sisters, Lexi, but they look after Near.” She offers a sad smile. “You know that.”
They are my father’s words coming from her lips. I want to throw my arms around her.
At that moment, Wren bobs back into the kitchen, Otto in tow. His dark gaze immediately falls on me.
I remember Matthew’s words. Your uncle seems to think you’ve taken up your own search at night.
“Otto…”
I brace myself for another fight, but none comes. No loud accusations or threats.
“Don’t you see, Lexi?” he says, his voice barely above a whisper. “You’ve betrayed me and my wishes. That I can forgive. But you’ve betrayed Near by helping that boy. The Council, they are not forced to forgive. They can banish you, if they see fit.”
“Banish?” I ask. The word feels odd in my mouth.
“There would be nothing I could do to protect you from it.”
Otto slides into his chair, and my mother peels away from me, fetching him a mug. My uncle puts his head in his hands. The image of the wild moor, rippling to every side, flickers in my mind. No signs of Near. Only space. Freedom. Would it be so bad? As if reading my mind, Otto says, “No home. No family. No Wren. Ever again.” The image in my mind begins to darken and transform until the endless space feels too small. Terrifying. I swallow and shake my head. It will not come to that. I cannot let it.
It will be over soon. I will fix things.
I don’t know how the town meeting went. I don’t know the Council’s plans, or those of Otto and his men. But I do know this: They might have a plan for the morning, but I intend to settle this tonight.
Deep in the house my mother is humming.
It’s something old and slow and sweet, and the sheer fact that it is not the Witch’s Rhyme makes my shoulders loosen and my body sigh against the dresser by the window. The candles are already lit. The pouch still dangles from Wren’s wrist. Outside the light is gone and the moon is low. My mother’s song fades away, and moments later I see her through the weathered glass, leading Otto home. She brushes the tension from his shoulders and ushers him toward his cottage, waiting by the door until he vanishes within. Moments later a dull glow fills the space inside, and she turns back home.
Behind me, Wren fidgets with the bracelet, legs swinging back and forth from the edge of the bed.
“Listen, Wren,” I say, turning to her. “Do you remember the way Father used to tell the Near Witch stories? What he said about the way she would sing the hills to sleep at night?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t remember him,” she says, and my heart sinks.
“Father was…” How will I ever recreate our father for her? Not just his stories, but the way he smelled like firewood and fresh air, and his smiles, impossibly warm and gentle for such a large man. They’d be just images, pretty pictures with no weight.
“Well,” I say, clearing my throat, “Father used to say that the Near Witch loved children very much. And, well, she…” I cannot find the words, cannot seem to reconcile these stories with the idea that the witch is real and somehow back and stealing children from their beds instead of singing to them in her garden. It is all knotted, like the time between sleep and waking, where dreams and real life get tangled, confused. I try to mimic my father’s stories.
“What if it’s not your friends calling, Wren? What if it’s the Near Witch coming to call you out onto the moors?”
“Because children taste better in moonlight,” Wren recites, clearly not amused. “Don’t try to scare me,” she adds, wriggling beneath the covers.
“I’m not,” I insist. “I’m very serious.” But she’s right. I cannot make it sound real. These are the stories we grew up with. I smooth the covers over her small form, and touch the charm around her wrist. “Magda and Dreska are witches, Wren, that much is true. And they made this to keep you safe. No matter what happens, you’ve got to keep it on.”
“More and more are going to play,” she pouts, “and I haven’t gone yet. They all try to call me out.” Wren lets out a heavy sigh and curls up beneath the covers.
“They’ll all stop playing this game soon.” I stroke her hair and whisper stories, the soft, sweet kind my father told. Not of witches or wind songs, but hills that rolled and rolled until they slipped right into the sea. Of clouds that grew tired and sank from the sky, and stretched out on the moor in tendrils of fog. Of a little girl’s shadow that grew and grew until it covered the sky and became the night, and under it, all things slept, safe beneath their covers.
FIVE HILLS DUE EAST, IN A SMALL FOREST.
I repeat the words over and over in my head as I slip barefoot from the window to the ground beneath, and slide on my boots. I look back at Wren fast asleep, and say a silent prayer that her charm continues to work. I tighten my boots and latch the shutters, checking twice that they won’t open, before I turn to face the moor and make my way to the sisters’ house.
When I get there, the windows are dark and the roof blots out the moonlight so that the space hugging the house is a ring of black.
“Cole,” I whisper, and then I catch the faint movement as my eyes adjust to the shadowed house and the glaring moon beyond. He’s leaning back against the cottage stones, arms crossed and chin tucked against his chest as if he’s fallen asleep while standing. But as I draw near, he looks up.
“Well, Lexi,” he says, coming to meet me. “Have you got a plan now?”
I smile in the dark. “I said I would.”
Cole gives a silent nod and takes my hand, and we hurry to the edge of the sisters’ hill. I tell him about the afternoon, about Matthew, about the five hills and the forest separating us from the Near Witch. We pass the small scorched plot where the witch lived, reaching the place where the sisters’ hill gives way to the moor. We pause, as if we are standing at the edge of a cliff, looking out to sea. And for a moment I am utterly terrified by how vast the world is. For a moment the five hills seem like five mountains, and then like five worlds. Doubt begins to creep in. What if we’re wrong? What if Matthew lied?
But then the wind begins to blow, just enough against my back to urge me forward. Cole’s hand tightens around mine, and with that, we set out for the first hill.
The sisters’ house is quickly lost from sight. We keep the rising moon in front of us, and under its silvery light I scan the untouched earth for any signs of trespass. But the land is messy and wild, and it’s hard to tell what’s untouched, really, in a place where everything looks tousled. Now and then I kneel, sure I’ve caught sight of a step, or a trace, but it’s only the moor playing tricks.
I notice a few sticks snapped cleanly by the weight of a foot. Up close it is clearly the work of a deer’s hoof, not a child’s foot, and an old break at that, nearly swallowed by rain and dirt and change.
We make our way up the second hill.
“Where did you learn to hunt and track?” Cole asks.
I stop and kneel, my fingers tracing a stone embedded in the weeds, smooth and dark like the ones the sisters used for eyes on the wooden crows. I lift it, rubbing the dirt away with my thumb.
“My father taught me.”
Cole kneels next to me. “What happened to him?”
I let the smooth stone fall back to the earth with a small thud.
I know my father’s story. I know it as well as the ones he told me, but I cannot tell it in the same practiced way. It’s written in my blood and bones and memory instead of on pieces of paper. I wish I could tell it as a tale and not his life and my loss. But I don’t know how yet. A small broken piece of me hopes I never know how, because my father wasn’t just a bedtime story.
“If you don’t want to…” he says.
I take a deep breath and begin to descend the second hill.
“My father was a tracker. The best,” I say
as Cole falls in step behind me. “He was a big man, but he could make himself as small and silent as a field mouse. And he had this laugh that shook the leaves from the trees.
“You can ask anyone in Near, and they’ll tell you about his strength or his skill, but I will always remember him for that laugh, and for the way he could make his booming voice soft and warm when he told me stories.
“People loved him so much they gave him a title, right beneath the Council. They called him their Protector. He watched over the village, and even the moor seemed to trust him. As if he knew how to be both, to walk the line between person and witch. That’s how I always thought of him, growing up. I wanted to learn to walk that line, too.”
“Is that why you keep calling this”—he gestures to himself and the breeze tousling his hair and his cloak—“a gift?”
“I can’t help but think that if…if I were like you, I’d never feel alone. My father had this way with the moor,” I explain. “Like he knew what it wanted, like it confided in him. I know witches are born, not made, but I honestly thought he’d found some way to speak to the moor, to make the land and the weather answer to him. I thought that it was the ultimate gift, to be connected to something so vast.”
“It is the loneliest feeling in the world,” says Cole. “I don’t feel like a person. I want to feel pain, and joy, and love. Those are the things that connect humans to each other. They’re much stronger threads than those connecting me to the wind.”
I frown. I’d never thought of it that way. “So, you don’t feel those things?”
He hesitates. “I do. But it’s easy to forget. To lose yourself.”