The Near Witch (22 page)

“You can’t be certain,” says Otto. “As soon as the meeting is over, we’ll go to the forest ourselves. If something, or someone, is in there, we’ll find out.”

“And if not, we’ll burn the forest down.”

Master Tomas clears his throat. “There is a traitor among us.”

My foot comes down on Tyler’s, and he yelps, releasing me. Only a moment, but it’s all the time I need. I slide the knife free, spin on him, then pull his body back against mine. The tip of the knife rests under his chin.

“Lexi,” he hisses. “Don’t do this.”

“Sorry, Tyler.”

I shove him back, hard, and run.

The crowd is thick around me, pressed close, and Tyler catches my arm just as I break through at the edge of the square. But his hand falls away suddenly, and he’s sitting on the ground, dazed. A broad form stands over him. Mrs. Thatcher. Her large hands wrench him up by the collar.

“Show some respect, Mr. Ward,” she says, turning him around. “Your Council is speaking.” He tries to free himself, but she escorts him back into the crowd, glancing at me with only a strong look and a nod, and I’m gone.

I
CUT BETWEEN THE HOUSES
, weaving out of the town center. The wind rushes through my lungs as my feet find the path to the sisters’ house. The fastest way. I never look back. Across the fields, through the grove, and up the hill, and all I can picture is the world on fire.

Magda is squatting in the garden bed, muttering something and looking more than ever like a large and very wrinkled weed. Dreska is leaning on her cane and telling her sister she’s doing it wrong, whatever it is she’s trying to do. I can just see buds and shoots poking through the soil. Several feet away, on the scorched patch of earth, a pile of stones that wasn’t there before rumbles and shifts.

The sisters look up as I climb the hill.

“What is it, child?”

I stagger to a stop, breathless.

“Wren’s gone,” I gasp. “The Council’s turned the village against Cole. Bo plans to burn the forest down. Now.”

“Foolish men,” says Dreska. Magda uncurls herself, turning her creased face to the sun as she stands.

“Where’s Cole?” I ask, drawing deeper breaths.

Magda shakes her head. “He waited, but you didn’t come. He went on ahead to the forest.”

If I’d had any air left in my lungs, it would have been knocked out.

The forest.

Everything I hold dear is in those woods.

“Bring us the bones,” says Dreska, glancing at the shifting pile of stones. “All of them. We’ll have the rest ready.”

“Run, Lexi dear,” adds Magda. “Run.”

I want so badly to stop running.

My heart feels like it will abandon my chest. My lungs are screaming.

I don’t need air, I tell myself.

All I need is the image of Wren wandering through a forest on fire. The image of Cole surrounded by men, watching the world go up in flames again. The cocoon crumbling down over the witch’s bones.

How far out are Otto’s men? Does Bo have matches on him? The dead trees of the forest will go up like straw.

I crest the final hill, and there in the valley I see it, the tangled branches so close and dark at first I think they’re smoking. I half slide down the hill to the cluster of trees jabbed into the earth, just as a gray cloak slips into the forest.

I plunge in after.

“Cole,” I shout, upsetting a crow on a nearby branch. The gray cloak turns as I close the gap between us, and I practically launch myself into his arms before remembering his wound. His shirt is gone beneath his cloak, and his chest is a web of bandages, here and there a slice of dusty red seeping through. The pain lingers like a shadow on his face, and his fingers tighten around the handle of a basket at his side.

“You didn’t come, so I thought I should…” He stops short, searching my eyes. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“It’s Wren,” I say, gasping for air. “She’s gone.” My chest tightens, and I can barely breathe. It is not the running, but the words themselves, sealing my throat. Cole pulls me in close, and his skin is cool against my flushed face.

“And the village,” I say. “They all think—”

“Lexi,” he says, keeping his voice even and calm, “it doesn’t matter now.”

I pull back. “Cole, they’re coming now to burn the forest down.”

His eyes narrow, but all he says is, “Then we’d better hurry.”

He casts a last glance back to the edge of the trees and the hills beyond. The wind over the wild grass picks up, growing tangled and fierce. It grows and grows until the ground ripples this way and that. The world begins to blur. It’s strangely quiet, this wall of wind, at least from our side.

“To slow them down,” he says, meeting the question in my eyes. We set out, hand in hand, for the clearing and the bones.

“You’ve been practicing,” I say, glancing behind us.

“I’m trying. I’ve got a ways to go.”

“What were you thinking when you made that wall?”

“Not thinking, really,” he says, without breaking his stride. “It’s just
want
. I want to keep you safe. I want to find the children. I want to put the Near Witch to rest. Because I want to stay.” He looks down at the ground, but I can hear him add, “I want to stay here, with you.”

I weave my fingers through his as the thickest part of the forest closes over us.

“Everything about this place, it’s listening to
her
.” Cole gestures to the entire forest, to the ruined nature of it. Everything is half rotted, half collapsed, like a spectacular grove fallen into total disrepair. “She must have been a very strong witch.”

“But how can she control it? It’s day. The sisters said she could only take shape at night.”

“Take shape, maybe,” says Cole. “But she is still here, and still strong. The woods obey her. They’re enchanted.”

I lead him through the sharp scrawny trees, my boots adding to the many sets of smaller feet still vaguely stamped into the soil. Otto’s men have added prints, cutting their own road. Large feet clumsily dragged across the earth. No method, no skill. I try to follow the children’s, but many of the small tracks are ruined. I look up at the thin light slipping through the canopy.

We’ve been walking for too long.

“It shouldn’t be this hard to find.”

“What are we looking for?” asks Cole.

“A nest of trees. A clearing. Even if the witch could move, those trees are old, deep rooted.” I look down at the half-smeared steps and stop. Set over the others, flitting and light, is a new pair of feet.

Wren.

Her steps are so light, they barely leave a mark, but I know them and the ways they move. I kneel, studying the strange little dance. She was playing a game. Not the circle-spinning game of the Witch’s Rhyme, since that one takes a group, but one of her own games, the kind she played in the hall before bed.

“What is it?” asks Cole, arms crossed, but I hold up my hand. I stand and scan Wren’s hops and skips and sideways jumps. Then I hurry along, following the strange steps that would never look like tracks to anyone but me. Cole follows silently behind.

At last, Wren leads us to the small clearing, the space where the trees have scooted back to make room for the earth, and the boughs bend low to form a kind of shelter. In the clearing, Wren’s footsteps vanish with the rest, and I try to bite back the panic of having lost her trail.

“Wren?” I call out, but only the cracking trees reply. I circle the clearing, searching for something, anything, but there’s no sign.

“Lexi,” Cole calls, but he’s not looking at me. He’s looking back the way we came. I follow his gaze, but the woods are thick, and the edge of the forest is far beyond our sight. I wonder if the hunters have reached the tree line, if Bo is already digging out flint or matches or oil.

“They’re coming,” Cole says. “Where are the bones?”

“In there.” I point to the mass of branches. On all sides above the nest, a dozen crows like black signposts sit and wait and watch with small stone eyes and beaks that glint even in the gray light.

Cole drops the basket and makes his way up to the cocoon, peering in between the crossed limbs. He looks as if he expects the cocoon to simply peel itself back and let us in, but the mass doesn’t stir. If it did, I would trust it even less. He unfastens his cloak, letting it fall away and exposing the bandages that crisscross against his chest and back. The branches crack and snap in protest as he hoists himself through an opening, vanishing into the dark interior. Overhead, one of the crows flutters its wings.

“Wait.” I hurry over, thinking of his wounds. “Let me do that.” I keep my voice low, in case the men are getting close.

“I’m fine,” he says automatically, his words muffled by the wall of sticks.

I find one of the larger openings, a place where the branches cross to form a kind of window. I peer down into the earthen nest, and the moss and rot make me feel ill. Cole stands in the center of it, up to his knees, and begins to dig. He hands me one bone after another, glinting and white as though they’ve been picked clean and bleached, despite the mud and moss clinging here and there. He searches in the semidarkness, and I lift the basket and climb the nest toward the top.

“Watch out,” I warn, as I bring my boot down hard against the roof of branches. Most of them resist, half petrified with time. But several smaller ones snap, showering Cole with slivers of wood and shavings of light. The white bones glint where they jut through the earth, caught by the new beams of late afternoon sun. I resume my post, taking bones as he hands them up to me. Each one is a surprise of sorts. A thin finger. A splintered femur. A shoulder blade.

And then, a skull. He passes it to me, and I gasp as I take it, the half-crushed face blossoming with moss and weedy flowers. It’s like a horrible flowerpot, roots escaping out the eye. So this is what they did to her, to the Near Witch, when they found the dead boy in her garden. I run my fingers over the ruined skull—the cracked cheekbone, the crushed eye socket—and shiver as I think of the hunting party dragging Cole out onto the moor.

“Lexi?” he asks, waiting to hand me another bone. “Are you all right?”

I take a deep breath, let it out, and place the skull gently into the filling basket. Through the trees the sun is crossing the sky. It took too long to find the bones. It’s taking longer to collect them.

Cole continues to dig, but the hunt is getting harder, and minutes stretch between finds. A gun fires in the distance, and I spin, looking back, though all I can see are trees.

“How badly do you want this, Cole?” I ask. And he knows what I mean.

“With all my heart,” he says, wincing as he passes me another bone. His hand grows thin around it, and I swear I can hear the wind pressing out against the rolling hills and the hunters. “But I can’t keep them out for long.”

There’s a
click, click, click
overhead, and I look up to see a crow toying with a small bone, just like before. Only this time, I need that bone. I hop down to the ground, set the basket aside, and find a stray pebble, taking aim. This first rock falls short, the shot hurried and clumsy. The crow doesn’t budge, doesn’t seem the least bit disturbed by the assault. I hear my father’s scolding even now.

Focus, Lexi. Make it count.

I slide the knife free, feel my fingers slip into the old grooves, before turning the weapon, pinching it by the blade. I stand slowly, measuring the distance. I raise the knife behind my shoulder, then feel the familiar release of metal past skin as I let go. The blade soars through the air, pinning the crow to the tree beyond its perch. It gives an agonizing caw, and then, to my shock, crumbles into a pile of black feathers and sticks and stones. Just like the wind-made Cole on the moor at night. I stare down at the heap, where the small bone waits like a crown, and pluck it off the top of the pile. I consider taking aim at the other crows, when I hear a flutter and a rustle, and the pile of forest things begins to piece itself back together at my feet. It assembles into a vaguely birdlike mass, except the beak is now a little off center, and one stone eye droops. The marred crow alights, and as it reaches its abandoned perch, it looks more bird than dirt again. I shiver, free the knife from the tree trunk, and hurry back to the basket and Cole, dropping the small bone in with the others and slipping my father’s knife into the leather sheath around my waist.