Witchlanders (9 page)

“Stop it!” Skyla said. Girls' underclothes and a few other items spilled out onto the dirt at their feet.

“Where do you think you're going?” Ryder demanded. He picked up a scrap of blue cloth and shook it in her direction. “Is this Pima's dress?”

Skyla bent down and gathered the fallen things,
bundling them tightly into her arms. “The witches have invited Pima and me to stay in the coven for a while.”

Ryder almost laughed. “Mabis would never agree to that.”

“I just asked her, and she said yes. It's an honor.”

Ryder frowned in disbelief. Mabis would
never
let them go to the coven. But the look in his sister's eyes said the opposite. Why would Mabis allow it? “Is this what you were doing this afternoon? Begging for an invitation? Well, I'm sorry, Skyla. This is no time for a pleasure trip.”

“It's not . . . ,” Skyla began. “No, you don't understand—”

Ryder didn't let her finish. “It's all over, Sky. You were there. Mabis saw nothing. The witches can take our tithe up with them, we'll get the rest of the crops in, and we'll have just enough for the winter. We can finally go back to the way things were—you're not going to ruin it by shirking out of the last of the harvesting.”

He expected an angry retort, but Skyla only lowered her voice and said almost gently, “Do you really think everything can go back to the way it was?”

“Of course.”

His sister's eyes were filling with tears. “You don't understand. I didn't either until they explained it to me.”

Skyla hardly ever cried, and now it was twice in two days. The last time was in the hicca fields when she'd asked Ryder what he thought she wanted. A realization came over him. Maybe now he knew.

“You want to be a witch,” he said, even more certain as he spoke the words. “You want to stay in the coven for good. Study there.”

“No! I mean—well, yes . . . But it's not about that.”

It was so obvious now—Skyla always had been a romantic when it came to the witches—but he was surprised she could be so selfish. “You can't, Skyla. We can't always get what we want.”

“Oh!” she said, fully bursting into tears now. “Just talk to Kef!” And with that she ran toward the prayer hill, clutching her belongings to her chest.

Yes, he'd talk to Kef.

In the dying light, Ryder could see Kef's dark silhouette at the top of the largest planting hill. He was waiting for him, pacing and looking down on the valley.

“You can't have them!” Ryder shouted, climbing toward him through the rows. Most of the hicca was stripped now, and the bare stalks stood up like spines from the soft earth.

Kef held up his palms in a gesture of truce and called down to him. “We need to talk.”

“You can't have my sisters,” Ryder said, breaking into a run. He reached the top quickly and stood panting in front of the broken pole where the lucky man once stood. His mother's words came back to him.
It's not really me you
want to lure to the coven, is it?
Mabis had known. Mabis had known what Kef was up to. But how could she just let this happen?

Kef must have seen the hard look on Ryder's face, because he backed away, his hands still raised. Ryder pressed forward. “They're needed on the farm. Do you think that just because you're witches you can take whatever you want?”

“Ryder . . .”

“I'm no fool. I know you'd love to have the nieces of Lilla Red Bird in your grip. But you can't just come here and break up our family!”

Kef took a step forward, reaching out a tentative hand to touch Ryder's shoulder. “Skyla came to
us
. And sending Pima was your mother's idea.” The false calm in Kef's voice was maddening—he sounded like he was trying to soothe a horse with its leg caught in a fence. Ryder pushed his hand away.

“I don't believe you. Mabis had it right. You're here to lure them to the coven.”

“No, not them. You. It's you the witches want.”

Ryder struggled to take in what Kef had said. “The witches want . . . what?”

“Sodan sent me along to speak to you because we're friends. Ryder, you can't really be surprised.”

It was almost laughable. “Oh, I'm surprised.”

“I know your feelings about witches, but—don't refuse too quickly. Life can't be easy on this farm. It wasn't easy when . . . when your father was alive. But in the coven, you'd have everything you need. And Mabis might decide to come too if you were going. It would be the best thing for her.”

“My mother would starve before she went back there! And I'd join her.”

Kef gazed at him, unperturbed. “You can't put off your destiny forever.”

“My what?”

Kef paused, shaking his head. “She never told you, did she?”

“Told me what?”

Kef scowled at the ground. “She should have,” he muttered. Then he lifted his chin. “Sodan says that before you were born, your mother's sister threw the bones and made a prophecy about you.”

Ryder narrowed his eyes. “My mother's sister? Lilla Red Bird?”

Kef nodded. “She said you would have the gift, that you could be a great boneshaker. Like her. Like your grandfather.”

Now Ryder really did laugh. At Kef, and at himself, for almost falling into such an obvious trap. “Oh, Kef, what have they done to you? Don't you remember? You and I
used to sit up on Dassen's roof and talk about what nonsense all that was.”

Kef's voice stayed calm and kind. “I remember. You used to tell me you were meant for something more than farming. And you
are
meant for something more. You'll find it in the coven, Ryder. I did.”

Ryder's laughter died on his lips. “Listen to me. You might actually believe what you're saying, but I've lived with a boneshaker all my life. I know how it's done. The secret to making some horse's ass believe a prophecy is to be flattering. ‘Oh, you have a great destiny. Oh, you're so different from everybody else.' How many poor young men and women have been tricked into coven life with that foolishness? I wonder. Is that how they got you, Kef?”

A look of anger flashed across Kef's face, breaking through his calm serenity. “Coven life means something to some people, Ryder. It means something to me.”

“Well it doesn't mean a thing to me, so you can just pack up your tents and go. My sisters are staying.”

Kef took a deep breath as if to recover his composure. “You don't understand. There are reasons why Skyla and Pima should come with us,
must
come with us.” Ryder felt himself flush with anger. “Even your mother sees it's for the best.”

“You don't seem to be hearing me, Kef.” Ryder drew himself up to his full height.

“We're having a peaceful conversation. I see no reason to change that.”

“Are we?” Ryder stepped forward, his hands tightening into fists. When they were boys, Kef's few extra years had given him the advantage, but now Ryder was both the taller and the heavier of the two.

Kef stepped back again in alarm. “She's sick!” he said abruptly. “She's worse than you know.”

Ryder froze. The words made no sense to him at first, but they seemed to strike him in the chest like an arrow. His hands fell to his sides.

“I'm sorry,” Kef said. “I practiced what I was going to say and . . . that wasn't it.”

“You mean Mabis,” said Ryder, shaking his head. “She's fine.”

“The others think differently, and . . . and I do too. My parents were dyers, Ryder. They taught me about plants like maiden's woe and darkroot. They're dangerous. I think your mother's in trouble.”

“Mabis knows what she's doing.”

Kef pulled nervously at his braided beard. “Don't you think there might be a reason she's letting your sisters go to the coven—the coven she hates? She wants to spare them. She knows what's coming.”

“No!”

“I'm sorry, Ryder. I've done this very badly, I know.”
Again he tried to put a hand on Ryder's shoulder, but Ryder turned away with a hiss, hating the pity in his friend's eyes.

“You're wrong,” Ryder insisted.

For a while, the two of them stood in tense silence. The dry hicca stalks made a shushing sound in the breeze. In the valley, small points of orange light began to appear—villagers celebrating the end of the harvest with great bonfires.

“You might not remember this,” Kef said softly. “But when we were small, a stranger followed the river to the village.” He hesitated, searching for words. “This man, he'd gotten a taste for maiden's woe in the summer when it was thick and plentiful, and by the time the chilling came, he couldn't live without it. My parents took him in at first, but he got so violent they couldn't let him stay.” Kef turned to Ryder now with emotion in his voice. “I remember him, Ryder. I remember him begging for maiden's woe like he was begging for his life. Eventually the miller took him in, but—”

Ryder interrupted. “I know what you're trying to say, but Mabis isn't like him. She's strong.”

Kef shook his head. “It's no use lying to you. Your mother will resist the flowers for a time, three days at most. Then she will give in to her craving and eat as many as she can—I saw it today when she came to throw for us. This can go on and on, but when the chilling comes and the
river freezes, there won't be any flowers left. There will be nothing to feed her hunger, and after a few days it will become unbearable.” This time, Ryder didn't shake off the hand Kef set on his shoulder. “I'm not saying she'll die of it. I honestly don't know how many die and how many live, but she will become a person your sisters shouldn't see.”

Ryder's thoughts blurred into one another. “But . . . I just have to keep her away from them,” he said weakly. “I just have to find where she's getting them and pull them all up!”

“Even if you could, it wouldn't help her now.” Kef's words were hard, final.

Ryder struggled to speak, struggled to find the argument that would refute what Kef was telling him. It couldn't be true. He could fix this. If he could just find out where she was getting the flowers . . . Ryder gulped for air. He felt like the hand of the Goddess had just come down and swept him to the ground.

“That man,” he said. “What happened to him?”

Kef hesitated.

“Tell me!” Ryder demanded, his voice breaking.

“He died at the miller's, so I was told, begging for the black trumpets with his last breath. No one ever learned his name.”

A loud wailing sound rose up from the direction of the cottage, and both of them turned. It was Pima's voice,
sounding the way Ryder felt. Someone had told her she was leaving home, he guessed, and she didn't like the idea any better than he did. He tried to imagine what it would be like not to wake up to her sharp little knees climbing all over him.

Up on the prayer hill, one of the black tents sagged, then came gracefully down. The witches were getting ready to leave.

“You're not going tonight, are you?” Ryder asked, a ripping feeling in his chest. He thought he'd at least have one more night with Skyla and Pima.

Kef nodded. “Visser and Aata's Right Hand are eager to get back to the mountain. You can send word to the coven if—” He stopped and corrected himself. “You can send word to the coven when your mother is herself again, and we will send your sisters back.”

Ryder shook his head dully. Skyla wouldn't want to come back. And why should she? His own dreams were dead and buried under sixtyweights of earth—why should he do the same to hers? “You should go,” Ryder said, his voice ragged.

“What will you—?”

“Just go now. Please, Kef,” he said.

Kef nodded and withdrew.

Ryder looked down into the valley, the lights from the bonfires blurring in front of his eyes. A year ago the
whole family, including Fa, had celebrated the harvest in the village. Ryder remembered going to a dance in someone's hay barn. He'd hated it. The only person he had danced with was Pima. Toward the end of the evening, he had found a quiet place to watch without being seen, a place where no one would come up to him and say, “Look how tall he is,” or “Where's your beard?” or “Have you met Farmer Someone's daughter?” Ryder had watched his mother and father dance that night. They held hands, swinging each other around the floor, Mabis's hair flying around them in a circle. It was only a year ago, but his mother had looked so young and pretty then.

“Stupid woman,” Ryder whispered to the night. “Stupid, stupid woman. Why did you even start?”

And then Ryder bent down low into the hicca stalks and cried silently into the earth.

CHAPTER 7
A SPOT UPRIVER

“Long ago there lived two sisters,” said Mabis. “Twins. They were alike in every way except that one, Aayse, could not speak.” She sat in bed, staring intently at the space where Ryder was standing, but she didn't seem to see him.