Wit'ch Fire

  Maybe it would be best if Tol’el didn’t show up for the party, maybe even best if the party was canceled. Who was going to believe she was a woman?

  Elena suddenly shivered as a stray draft blew across her exposed back. The bathwater was quickly losing its heat. Elena sank to her shoulders, the tepid water still warmer than the chilly bathing chamber. Why couldn’t the bathwater stay hot a bit longer? A twinge of ire flashed through her. Couldn’t she at least have a few more moments of steamy bliss? She sank deeper into the cooling water.

  As she lay there, she pictured herself soaking in the hot springs of Col’toka. She had read about them in a school text: volcanic springs deep in the snowy Teeth. As she dreamed about their mineral-rich waters, her own soapy tub seemed to warm with her thoughts. She sighed, a smile playing about her lips. This was nice.

  As she continued to recline in the bath, picturing in her mind the steam-choked chambers of Col’toka, her bathwater continued to warm, soothing at first, then becoming surprisingly hot! Elena’s eyes fluttered open.

  Her skin began to redden from the heat. She sprang to her feet in the water. Bubbles started to rise along the edge of the tub. Her lower legs and feet began to scald. Elena leaped from the tub just as the water began to roil with steam and bubbles.

  As Elena backed away, the water erupted over the edge of the tub, hissing as it splashed to the oaken floor. The room swelled with choking steam. Elena’s naked bottom bumped into the bathing chamber’s cold door, startling her to action. She fumbled for the handle. What was happening?

  Swinging the door open, she stood in the doorway, a call to her mother frozen on her lips. At that moment, the remaining water blew from the tub in a final explosion of steam. Elena was thrown forward by a wall of superheated air and flung naked into the next room.

  She landed on a rug and slid across the floor, the loose rug bunching up under her. As she came to rest, she noticed she was not alone in the room. Her father had sprung from the couch where he had been enjoying his evening smoke. Her brother sat frozen in a chair by the fire, his mouth hanging open.

  As she sat up, her father’s pipe dropped from his slack lips and clattered to the floor. “Elena, girl, what . . . what did you do?” he asked.

  “I didn’t do anything! The water just kept getting hotter and hotter.” Elena began to feel the sting of her scalded skin, and tears welled up in her eyes.

  Joach stood up and stomped out the burning tobacco that had spilled from his father’s pipe before it scorched the rug. He seemed to concentrate fully on his chore, his cheeks blushing slightly. “Elena, don’t you think you’d better grab a towel?”

  Elena glanced at her naked form, and now a sob of embarrassment escaped her throat.

  Just then her mother clattered down the stairs in only her nightgown, her robe clutched in one hand. “What happened? I never heard such a noise!” Her eyes settled on Elena’s crumpled form and grew wide. She hurried over to her daughter. “You’re red as a boiled potato. We need to get some salve on those burns.”

  Elena allowed herself to be bundled up in her mother’s robe. But even its soft cotton was like coarse burlap against her tender skin. Wincing, she pushed to her feet.

  Her father and Joach had stepped to the bathing chamber entrance. “The tub is cracked,” her father said, his voice thick with shock. “And the wax on the floor has bubbled up from the planking. It looks like someone tried to set the place on fire.” He turned questioning eyes toward Elena.

  “Whoa,” Joach said, shaking his head, his eyes wide. “You did some damage, Sis!”

  “Hush, Joach!” Her father turned to face her fully. “What happened here?”

  Her mother put a protective arm around Elena. “Now, Bruxton, I won’t have you pointing fingers. She’s hurt. And besides, how could she do such a thing? Do you see any wood ash or smell coal oil?”

  Her father grumbled under his breath.

  “Elena is already shook up enough. Leave her be. We’ll solve this in the morning. Right now she needs medicine.”

  Elena leaned into her mother’s arms. What truly had happened? How could one explain a tub of water suddenly trying to boil you alive? Elena had no real answer, but in her stomach, she knew somehow she was to blame. She remembered the burning apple, and her head began to ache. The whole day had been one mystery after another.

  Her mother gently hugged her. “Let’s go upstairs and treat those burns.”

  She nodded, but already the worst of the stinging was beginning to fade. Glancing down at her palms, she noticed that the stain on her right hand had faded from a deep purplish red to a ruby color that hardly stood out from her singed arms. At least the scalding had boiled away a fraction of the dye—a small blessing considering her sore skin and the ruined bathing chamber.

  “SO WHAT REALLY happened?” Joach whispered. He sat cross-legged at the foot of Elena’s bed. He had snuck into her room after her mother had finished smearing her arms and back with medicinal balm.

  Clutching her pillow in her lap, Elena sat with her knees almost touching her brother’s. “I’m not sure,” she said, keeping her voice quiet in the dark room. Neither of them wanted to attract their parents’ attention. Elena could occasionally hear her father’s rough voice echo up from below. She cringed with each of his outbursts, shame burning her cheeks. They were not a rich family, and it would cost much to repair the ruined bathing chamber.

  Suddenly, her mother’s voice carried up to them. “They said she might be the one! I must tell them!”

  Her father’s voice rose higher. “Woman, you’ll do no such thing! That side of your family is daft! Fila and Bol—”

  Joach nudged her with his knee. “I’ve never heard them so mad.”

  “What do you think they’re talking about?” Elena strained to listen, but her parents’ words had lowered back to a murmur.

  Joach shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Elena felt tears beginning to well in her eyes. She was thankful for the darkness that hid them.

  “I’m surprised that cracking the tub got them so upset,” Joach said. “Heck, I’ve done worse than that. Remember when I fed Tracker that basket of hazelnuts Mother was going to use in Father’s birthday cake?”

  Elena couldn’t stop a smile from coming to her lips. She wiped at her eyes. Tracker, their stallion, had suffered from diarrhea all night, and their father had spent his entire birthday shoveling the barn clean and walking the horse to keep it from getting colic.

  “And the time I told the Wak’len kids that you could touch the moon if you jumped from the top branches of a tree.” He snickered in the dark.

  Elena punched his knee. “Sam’bi broke his arm!”

  “He deserved it. No one pushes my little sister in the mud.”

  Elena suddenly remembered that day two years ago. She had been wearing the flowered dress Aunt Fila had given her for the midsummer celebration. The mud had ruined it. “You did that for me?” she asked, her voice a mix of shock and laughter.

  “What are big brothers for?”

  Elena again felt tears beginning to threaten.

  Joach slid from the bed, then leaned over and hugged her. “Don’t worry, El. Whoever is playing these pranks on you, I’ll find out. No one messes with my little sister.”

  She hugged Joach back. “Thanks,” she whispered in his ear.

  Straightening up, Joach slunk to the door. He turned to her just before slipping from her room. “Besides, I can’t let this mysterious prankster get the better of me! I’ve a reputation to uphold!”

  4

  DISMARUM KNELT IN the damp weeds in the moonlit orchard, a cowled figure, crooked as a rotten stump. Not a single bird called this night; not an insect whirred. Dismarum listened, both with his ears and with his inner senses. The last of the mol’grati had snaked into the soil, worming their way toward the distant homestead. The ragged-edged wound in dead Rockingham’s belly had long stopped steaming into the night as the carcass chilled.
br />   Pressing his forehead against the cold dirt, Dismarum sent his thoughts to his creatures. He received their answer back like the singing of a thousand children’s voices, a chorus with one message: hunger.

  Patience, my little ones, he sent to them. Soon you shall feast.

  Satisfied with their progress, Dismarum stood up and stumbled over to Rockingham, feeling with his one good hand, seeking his dead guide, his weak eyes of little use in the dark. His fingers settled on Rockingham’s frozen face. Squatting beside the dead man, Dismarum unsheathed his knife. He tucked the hilt in the crook of his stumped arm, then pricked a finger with the dagger’s blade. Ignoring the twinge from his sliced finger, he sheathed his dagger and turned to Rockingham. Using his bloodied finger, he painted Rockingham’s lips with blood, like an undertaker preparing a corpse for viewing.

  Once done, Dismarum leaned over and kissed Rockingham’s bloody lips, tasting salt and iron. He exhaled between the cold, parted lips, huffing out Rockingham’s cheeks, then slipped his lips to the dead man’s ear. “Master, I beg you hear my call,” he whispered into the cold ear.

  Dismarum leaned back, waiting, listening. Then it came: The air grew frigid around him; he sensed a malignant, icy presence. A noise like a wind rushing through dried branches escaped the dead lips. Then words trickled up from Rockingham’s black throat.

  “She is here?”

  “Yes,” Dismarum answered, his eyes closed.

  “Speak.” The word echoed, as if from a dank well.

  “She has ripened, bloodied with power. I smell it.”

  “Get to her! Bind her!”

  “Of course, my lord. I have already sent the mol’grati.”

  “I will send one of the skal’tum to aid you.”

  Dismarum shivered. “That won’t be necessary. I can—”

  “It is already on its way. Prepare her for it.”

  “As you command, Master,” Dismarum said, but he could already sense the receding presence. The wintry orchard seemed sultry in the wake of its passing. Still, Dismarum pulled his cloak snugly around his shoulders. It was time to go. The mol’grati should already be in position.

  Dismarum lowered his hand to Rockingham’s belly, his palm sinking into the gelatinous wound, clotted blood slipping between his fingers. He sneered, revealing the four teeth still rotting in his black gums.

  Kneeling beside the carcass, he grabbed handfuls of dirt and hurriedly stuffed them in Rockingham’s wound. After adding thirteen handfuls, Dismarum used his good hand and the stump of his one arm to pull the edges of Rockingham’s wound together.

  Holding the clammy edges, he whispered the words taught him by his dread master. An ache developed in his own belly as he recited the words. The last words were spoken in a push of agony, as if he were giving birth. He squinted at the almost unbearable pain as the last syllable stumbled from his tongue. His old heart hammered in his breast. Mercifully, though, the agony subsided with the last word.

  Leaning back, Dismarum ran a hand over Rockingham’s wound. The edges were now sealed together, healed. He placed a finger on his dead guide’s forehead and spoke a single word. “Rise!”

  The carcass jerked under his finger, spasmed almost a handspan above the cold dirt, then settled to the ground. Dismarum listened as a single ragged breath escaped Rockingham’s cold lips. After several heartbeats, a second rasping gurgled out, then a third.

  Dismarum pushed to his feet, struggling up with his staff gripped tight in a single fist. A cow lowed mournfully from a nearby field. He stood silently as Rockingham struggled, gasping and choking, back to this world.

  After several racking coughs, Rockingham pushed to a seated position. He raised a tremulous hand to his belly and pulled his ripped shirt over his exposed midriff. “Wh-what happened?”

  “Another fainting spell,” Dismarum answered, his attention aimed toward the distant dark homestead.

  Rockingham closed his eyes and rubbed at his forehead. “Not again,” he mumbled as he rolled to his knees, then slowly to his feet. He pawed at the trunk of a tree to steady himself. “How long have I been out?”

  “Long enough. The trail grows cold.” Dismarum pointed a finger toward the farmhouse. “Come.” The old seer began walking, thumping his staff with each footfall. Exhaustion from the use of his master’s black art made his limbs as weak as a hatchling’s. He noticed that Rockingham remained standing by his tree trunk.

  “The night grows thin, old man,” Rockingham called to his back. “Maybe we should return to town and come back for the wench in the morning. Or at least let us ride—the horses are near enough—”

  Dismarum turned his cowled face toward Rockingham. “Now!” he said with a hiss. “With daybreak, we must have her shorn and trussed. The master left explicit instructions. She must be bound while the moon still glows.”

  “So you say.” Rockingham shoved off the tree like a boat leaving a safe harbor. He stumbled toward the seer as Dismarum turned to follow the trail of the mol’grati. Rockingham continued to blather. “You’ve been reading too many scribblings of madmen. Wit’ches are from stories to frighten children. All we’ll find at this farm is a frightened farmgirl, her hands thick with calluses from working the plows. I’m losing a night’s slumber in this mad pursuit.”

  Dismarum stopped and rested on his staff. “You’ll lose more than slumber if she slips our net tonight. You’ve seen in the master’s dungeons how he rewards failure.”

  The seer allowed himself a moment of satisfaction as Rockingham shuddered at his words. Dismarum knew that Rockingham had toured the nether regions of Blackhall and seen the twisted remains of those who once walked under the sun. His talkative guide now followed silently as Dismarum led the way.

  The seer appreciated the silence. He could have left the feeble man stiffening in the cold orchard, but besides harboring the mol’grati, Rockingham still had many other uses. Back at Blackhall, the master had splayed Rockingham open upon his blood altar and imbued him with the darkest of his arts. Dismarum still remembered the man’s screaming that midnight, how he bled from his eyes in pain, how his very back broke as he writhed on the bloody stone. Afterward, the master had put him back together again, piece by piece, then wiped the fool’s memory of the long night. Forged into a tool of the master, Rockingham had been granted to Dismarum to aid in his vigil of the valley.

  Dismarum glanced sidelong at Rockingham. He recalled one particularly odious rite, made at the stroke of midnight during Rockingham’s forging, requiring the slaughter of a newborn babe. The infant’s innocent blood bathed both the altar and Rockingham’s exposed, beating heart. He remembered the tool imbued into Rockingham at that moment—something so dark that even the thought of it now sent a shiver through the milky-eyed seer.

  Somewhere over the hills, a dog howled into the night, as if catching a brief scent of the thing hiding inside Rockingham.

  Oh, yes, there was much more that Rockingham would yet do.

  5

  ELENA COULD NOT sleep. Her burns chafed with every slight movement. Her mind still swam with the frightening events that had occurred in the bathing chamber. As much as she would like to believe herself blameless in the destruction of the room, in her heart she knew better. This concern, too, kept her eyes open, far from slumber.

  What had happened?

  Her mother’s words kept running through her head. She might be the one. There had been fear, rather than pride, in her mother’s voice.

  Elena slipped her hand for the hundredth time from under her blanket and held it up. In the dim light, the stain on her right palm appeared darker. The salve her mother had slathered over her arms glistened in the weak moonlight sifting through her bedroom’s curtains. The sweet scent of wit’ch hazel drifted strong from the balm. Wit’ch hazel. The very air she breathed spoke her fears.

  Wit’ch.

  Her uncle Bol, always a storehouse of old stories and tales, had kept her and her brother shivering in their bedrolls when out on hunti
ng trips, tantalizing them with stories of wit’ches, og’res, and the faerie folk—creatures of both light and dark, fantasy and folklore. She remembered the serious set to Uncle Bol’s lips and his intense eyes, highlighted in the cooking fire’s glow, as he spoke his tales. He seemed to believe what he was telling and never winked slyly or raised his eyebrows in exaggeration. It was the earnest way he spoke, his voice low and rumbling, that was the most disquieting aspect of his stories.

  “This is the true story of our land,” he would say, “a land once called Alasea. There was a time when the air, land, and sea spoke to men. Beasts of the field were the equals of those who walked on two legs. The forests to the distant west—what were even then called the Western Reaches—gave birth both to creatures so foul as to turn you to stone dare you see them, and to creatures so wondrous you would fall to your knees just to touch them. This was the land of Alasea, your land. Remember what I tell you. It may save your life.”

  And then he would talk late into the night.

  Elena struggled to conjure up some of Uncle Bol’s humorous stories to ease her worries, but her troubled mind kept dredging up darker tales—stories with wit’ches.

  Elena rolled to her side in her tiny bed, the soft cotton ticking scratching at her legs. She pulled her pillow over her head, trying to block out the old stories and new fears, but it didn’t help. She still heard the hooting of a barn owl from the rafters of the nearby horse barn. She threw her pillow back from her face, clutching it to her chest.

  The barn owl repeated his protest, and a heartbeat later, the flutter of heavy wings could be heard flapping past her window as the owl began its nightly foraging. Nicknamed Pintail, the owl earned its lodging by keeping mice and rats out of the grain bins. Nearly as old as she, Pintail had roosted in the barn’s rafters for as long as Elena could remember and began his hunt at the same hour every evening.