The Year of the Witching (20 page)

“Adrine, this is Immanuelle Moore,” said the priest, and he nodded between the two of them. “You’ll take her to the ruins of the Ward house.”

Adrine appraised her, expressionless, nodded, then turned on her heel and stalked out of the chapel. Immanuelle turned to bid the priest farewell, but he was already praying over the altar, his face veiled by a haze of smoke.

The doors of the Father’s house are always open to those who serve him faithfully. But the sinner will be turned away.

—T
HE
H
OLY
S
CRIPTURES

IMMANUELLE AND ADRINE
walked in silence through the empty streets. The village they passed through was so quiet, Immanuelle might have thought it long deserted. There were no children playing in the streets. No dogs barking. No signs of life at all, save for the vultures circling overhead.

“Everything is so still,” Immanuelle whispered as they passed yet another shuttered house. There were bone wind chimes strung from the rafters of its porch, and they clattered together with a hollow sound when a breeze swept down the street. “The Glades are crawling with the blight sick.”

Adrine wrinkled her nose. “Is that what you’re calling it in the Glades? The blight?”

Immanuelle shook her head, embarrassed by her slip of the tongue. “It’s just . . . my own colloquialism. I’m not sure it has a proper name.”

“We call it an affliction of the soul,” said Adrine. “Our ancestors passed down stories of witches and soothsayers that used to curse men with a similar sickness.”

“So it was used as a kind of weapon?”

Adrine nodded. “In a sense.”

“Do you think there’s a cure for it?”

“I think the sickness is the cure,” said Adrine.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand your meaning.”

“Sometimes the things that seem like they’re hurting us are really a part of healing. When a child is sick and you bleed them, to them the bite of the knife seems like a punishment, when really it’s the cure. When your people purge, you do great harm, but you see the violence and the fire as a cure for sins that are far worse. Maybe this sickness is much the same. Maybe it’s a kind of purging, meant to root out a deeper evil.”

Immanuelle mulled that theory as the two started down another path. This one diverged from the main road, weaving through a series of slums. Here, the stench of sewage was thick on the air. The streets were mostly packed earth and mud, and several times Immanuelle stepped into ruts so deep the muck reached the top of her boots. The main road that weaved through the slums was narrow, the houses so tightly packed that at times the alleys between them were little more than shoulder width. Most of the homes were far too modest to have luxuries like glass windows, but Immanuelle caught glimpses inside these strange abodes when the wind blew their curtains back. There were families huddled together in prayer, children playing with corn-husk dolls, a mother nursing her baby, a black cat sleeping peacefully at the foot of a long bed mat. It was clear to Immanuelle that despite their squalor, none of the inhabitants had been touched by the blight.

Immanuelle was relieved when the little outcrop of houses gave way, once again, to open grassland. In the Glades—where wealthy farmers coveted every spare scrap of land—these wild ranges would have been farmed and converted into capital. But here, the land was left entirely untouched, save for the lone road that cut through it.

In the distance, the Darkwood lurked, the trees so dense they seemed almost impenetrable. Here the forest’s pull was far stronger than it was in the Glades, the trees sang to her when the wind moved through them, and it was a struggle for Immanuelle to keep to the path instead of drifting toward them.

“We’re here,” said Adrine, and she motioned to a wide plot of land, just beyond the reach of the forest where the grass grew waist-high. Immanuelle stepped off the road, into the meadow, and it was only as she drew closer that she saw the charred bones of the house’s ruins and the cracked stones of what used to be its foundation.

By the wreckage alone, she could tell that the house was far larger than the ones in the shanty village they’d passed through. In fact, it may have rivaled the size of the Moore house in its day. It was clear that despite their residing in the Outskirts, the Wards had been of good standing. Only a family of consequence could afford such a large home.

Immanuelle lifted her skirts, stepped gingerly over a charred piece of timber that may have been a rafter. She walked the perimeter of the house once, stepping carefully through the debris, then stopped and dropped to a crouch beside one of the large slate foundation stones. Up close, she saw that it was deeply carved with a strange symbol—a cross in the center of a circle—that looked like a letter in some foreign alphabet. The longer she stared at it, the more it reminded her of the witch’s mark.

“What is this symbol?” Immanuelle asked, tracing it with her fingertips. Despite the unrelenting heat of the midday sun, the stone was strangely cold.

“It’s a sigil,” said Adrine, stepping forward. “It’s our custom to carve the foundation stones of our houses with them. For luck, prosperity, protection.”

“What does this one mean?”

“It’s a siphon,” said the girl, whispering now though as far as Immanuelle could tell there was no one around to hear them.

“And what is it siphoning?”

Adrine looked reluctant to answer. “Power. From the forest.”

“And that one?” Immanuelle pointed across the ruins of the house to another foundation stone. This one was carved with a series of eight overlapping gashes that looked as though they were inflicted in anger.

“A shield,” said Adrine. “Meant to repel danger.”

Immanuelle didn’t need to ask about the marking on the next foundation stone. “The witch’s mark.”

Immanuelle walked to the last of the four stones, which stood at the far corner of the ruin, nearest the forest. It was capsized and cracked into two large pieces. The girls had to work together, rolling the stones over—as spiders and worms writhed in the newly exposed soil—and push the broken pieces back together. Immanuelle brushed the dirt off the stone to see it clearly, and when she did, Adrine drew back so quickly she nearly stumbled over a fallen rafter.

Immanuelle peered down at the marking, ran her fingers along the cuts in the stone. It looked innocuous enough, just a small hexagon with a series of crosses cut through its center. “What is it?”

“We should go.”

Immanuelle frowned. “Why?”

“Because that’s a cursing seal,” said Adrine in a hiss. “It’s meant to do harm.”

“But we don’t intend any ill will.”

“Doesn’t matter. Who knows what the sigil’s caster intended when they made that mark.”

“But it’s been years,” said Immanuelle, “and the house is long abandoned. There can’t be any power left in these stones now.”

“Once a sigil is made and a curse is cast, it’s done,” said Adrine, clearly exasperated with her. “It doesn’t matter if a person leaves or dies or forgets; the power that mark was made to represent lives on.”

A pit formed in Immanuelle’s stomach as she thought about the witches, and the plagues they cast with her blood. “So you’re saying that curses live on forever?”

“I’m saying that it’s difficult, often impossible, to undo what’s already been done. When you make a mark, it’s there forever. It can be altered but never fully erased.”

If what Adrine said was true, it meant there was little hope of breaking the cycle of the plagues. It seemed that the dark power of the woods would have to run its course. But what did that mean for Honor and Glory and the rest of the blight sick? Would they even survive long enough to see the plague’s end?

Immanuelle thought of the prophetic entry at the end of her mother’s journal:
Blood. Blight. Darkness. . . . Slaughter.
It was clear that if they didn’t find a way to break the curse, then there would be a mortal price to pay. There had to be a way to stop it, and based on everything she’d gathered thus far, her best chance was to decode the sigils, the language of the witches’ magic. If the people of Bethel had any hope of defeating Lilith’s plagues, they would need to understand them, know what they were fighting against.

Immanuelle slung her knapsack off her shoulder, dug through its contents, and produced a slip of paper and a small nub of graphite. Carefully, she smoothed the blank sheet of paper across the stone and rubbed the graphite back and forth across it, creating the perfect transfer image of the foundation stone. She proceeded to make copies of the next three sigils after that, then collected all of the slips, folded them carefully, and slipped them back into her knapsack for safekeeping. She turned back to Adrine. “How do you know so much about these markings, anyway?”

“They’re a part of our language.”

“You mean your origin tongue?”

Adrine nodded. “These marks are just words to us. It’s the intention behind them that makes the sigils something more . . . something dangerous.”

Immanuelle crossed through the ruins of the house and into the narrow stretch of land between it and the Darkwood. A few paces away were the abandoned bones of what might have been an outhouse or a small work shed like Abram’s. Beyond that, just a dark, dense stretch of the forest. Its thrall was almost intoxicating.

Immanuelle started toward it and tripped, her boot catching on what she thought was an upturned rock. But when she searched for the source of her near fall, what she found was a small stepping-stone and several more just after it, each of them leading to the sprawling forest beyond the property. Immanuelle followed the path to the feet of two large twin oaks standing side by side, their branches tangling overhead to form a kind of archway. Each of their trunks was carved with matching sigils: one long dash that reached from the start of the first branch down to the roots, the top of which was cut with what appeared to be twenty shorter dashes of varying lengths.

Adrine shook her head. “I don’t know those sigils.”

“I do,” Immanuelle whispered, reaching into the depths of her knapsack. She opened her mother’s journal to the page that depicted the cabin where she claimed to have spent the winter. In the foreground of the drawing were two large oaks carved with marks identical to those on the trees in front of her.

Immanuelle edged closer, scuffed her boot through the fallen leaves, uncovering a series of stepping-stones that led into the depths of the Darkwood, to the cabin where her mother endured her last winter. She pressed a hand to the sigil-carved trunk of the nearest oak, half turned to face Adrine.

But the girl merely shook her head. “I’ll not go with you. Not in there.”

Immanuelle only nodded, a part of her relieved. It was as if she was jealous over the forest, like she wanted its secrets for herself, and herself alone. And so, without so much as pausing to look back, Immanuelle gathered her skirts and stepped past the looming oaks and into the shadows of the Darkwood.

I made a home in the woods. I thatched a roof and built the walls. And it was there, in a room of stick and stone, that the bargain was struck, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

—M
IRIAM
M
OORE

T
HE SOUTHERN WOODS
were different from those that ran along the Glades. They were thicker, crowded with solemn pines that whispered when the wind moved through their needles. The rest of the world seemed to fall away as Immanuelle walked through the trees. Sunlight dimmed and the shadows thickened, threatening to swallow her up. The path she attempted to follow was quickly devoured by the snarling thicket. She couldn’t feel the stepping-stones beneath her boots any longer. And while she knew she should have been afraid, all she felt was a horrible sense of completion. Like she was exactly where she was meant to be.

Immanuelle didn’t know how long she walked, but it was nearing midday when she came upon a cabin. One glance at the place and she knew it was long abandoned. She wouldn’t have been surprised if its original owners were Bethel’s founders, who’d settled in the forest centuries ago. The whole house seemed to stoop on the stones of its foundation, warped and decrepit like an old man leaning on his cane.

In truth, it was less a house than a shanty. It had only one door
and one window. The roof was sunken, and the porch was so thoroughly rotten, its blackened planks crumbled beneath her boots. Immanuelle put a hand to the door and pushed it open.

She entered a cramped room that smelled of mildew. To her left sat a side table, its surface cluttered with an arrangement of melted candles. On the far wall, there was a fireplace with a cracked mirror pinned above the mantel, just big enough to house the reflection of a person’s face. In the center of the room was a rusted bed frame.

Immanuelle.

She turned, seeking the voice’s owner, but instead she found something she’d missed upon first glance. Just to the right of the fireplace was a billowing white cloth, and behind it, a narrow threshold. Raising a shaking hand, Immanuelle drew the shroud away. It drifted to the floor in a cloud of swirling dust motes, revealing a short hallway, lightless, save for a single ray of sunshine that illuminated the room at its end.

Immanuelle reached into her knapsack, withdrawing first her oil lamp, then a single matchstick. She struck the latter alight on the stones of the fireplace, then lit the lamp and turned back to the hallway. The red glow of the flame spilled across the walls as she walked.

At the end of the hall she paused, raising her lamp high to reveal a windowless room, empty save for the circle of ash at its center. Cut crudely into the ceiling above was a small hole to let out the smoke. Scattered throughout the ashes were bones: a mix of hooves and horns, ribs, vertebrae, and, in the midst of the shards, what appeared to be the complete skeleton of a ram—minus the skull.

But it was the walls that drew Immanuelle’s attention. They were carved all over with markings, shapes and words that ran together and overlapped, so there was scarcely an inch of the paneling left unmarred.

And the writings had been made by a hand she recognized: her mother’s.

The realization hit her all at once. This was the cabin—
the
cabin Miriam had written about in her journal.

Miriam’s words crawled like vines across the walls. They repeated the same phrase, over and over:
The maiden will bear a daughter, they will call her Immanuelle, and she will redeem the flock with wrath and plague.

Immanuelle traced the carvings with a trembling hand, following their path from one wall to the next. The carvings could be separated into three distinct shapes: one on the left wall, one on the right, and another on the far wall between them, where the two marks became one. It took her some time to recognize these shapes for what they were—sigils, just like the ones she’d seen on the foundation stones of the Ward house.

Three shapes. Three . . .
seals
.

Immanuelle stooped to set down the oil lamp, then slid her knapsack off her shoulder and withdrew the slips of paper on which she had copied the foundation stones’ sigils. It took her only a few moments to sort through the different symbols until she found the cursing seal. Immanuelle held the paper up to the wall to compare the two marks and found them to be a perfect match in everything but scale.

Swallowing her mounting dread, Immanuelle moved on.

The sigil on the left wall was not a match to any of the sigils carved into the foundation stones. It was a striking twisted shape, looking almost like folded hands or meshed fingers. But despite that, it looked distinctly familiar to her. After a few moments of puzzling in silence—assessing the mark from different angles, tracing the cuts with her fingertips—it came to her. Stooping to one knee, she snatched her mother’s journal from her knapsack, flipped through it to the page of her second self-portrait, the
abstract illustration she’d sketched in the days after her return from the wood. In the image, she stood naked, arms half wrapped around her modesty, her swollen belly painted with a sigil . . . the same one that was carved into the wall. If the first seal was a curse, then this second was, perhaps, the
conception
of it. A kind of birthing sigil, if you will. A mark of creation.

Puzzled, Immanuelle moved on to the last sigil, the one on the far wall, the only one that she immediately recognized, because she had seen it every day all of her life. It was the same seal that brides wore, carved between their brows—a symbol of union, a binding sigil.

Immanuelle stood up and went over to examine the sigils more closely. She traced the sweeping contours of each carving in turn, moving slowly from one wall to the next: one birthing seal, one cursing seal, and a binding mark between them.

Her blood begets blood.
The words from Miriam’s journal danced in her mind. She thought back to the night at the pond with the witches, to the start of the blood taint. The first plague, and all of the plagues to follow it, triggered by her first bleed.

Her bleed. Her blood.

They will call her Immanuelle. Her blood begets blood.

The truth struck her like a knife between the ribs.

Lilith hadn’t cast the plagues. Miriam had.

And Immanuelle was the curse.