by C. L. Polk
“The train’s running? How? The line’s buried. What are you going to do with the witches?” Memory made him shake his head. “You’re going to release them? Why—you can’t do that. It’s not safe.”
“The Witchcraft Protection Act has been abolished,” Grace repeated. “We have come to bring them to Kingston, where they will be reunited with their families, or sheltered until they can return to their homes elsewhere.”
“You can’t—you can’t do that.” He shook his head, reaching for the baton hooked into his belt. “You can’t set them loose—in Kingston? It’ll be a bloodbath.”
“Please stand aside,” I said. “We’ve come to free them. If you won’t assist us, then get out of the way.”
“You can’t. They know how to behave here. They’ll go wild without us.” He backed up another step, still fumbling for his baton.
Guards stepped forward. I stayed them with a gesture. “I know what you’ve been led to believe, but it isn’t true. You work with witches every day. Have you ever seen any of them fall into believing something that wasn’t real? Did you ever see them use violence?”
“That’s the therapy,” Sellers said. “The therapy keeps them from using their power. The power makes them violent. But if we’re not here to correct them—”
I shuddered at what these doctors, isolated and empowered, could have done to the people imprisoned here, and how the witches were “corrected.” I didn’t have time to convince Porter Sellers. “I’d like the keys, please. You kept the witches safe. We’ll make sure you’re not held responsible for their abandonment.”
“We’re here by direction of the King,” Grace said. “The keys.”
“You’ll frighten them,” he said. “There’s no telling what they’ll do. They’ve had no therapy for weeks.”
“I am tired of arguing with you.” Grace put out her hand, palm up. “You are obstructing the wishes of the King. Hand over the keys or be arrested.”
Very few people defied the Chancellor, but he put the keys in my hand instead of hers.
“This will end in tears,” he said. “They don’t know what the outside world is like. They’re not prepared for it.”
That was ridiculous. They had all had lives outside the asylum. But there was no more time to waste if we were going to get everyone out of here.
I led the way up the stairs and sorted through dozens of keys, reading their labels. Grace nearly danced with impatience. “What did he mean, they don’t know what the outside world is like?” she asked.
“I wondered that too,” I said. “It doesn’t make sense. Ah!”
The key turned. I pulled the door open, and held up my hand for quiet. “Do you hear that?”
Grace and the guards went silent. Floating down the narrow corridor lined with barred cells came the sound of an infant crying.
“Children,” Grace said. “They have children.”
How had that happened? The usual way, of course, but how had hospital policy allowed a child to be born in captivity?
Sellers’s words came back to me in a nauseous rush. “They,” he’d said. The baby we heard crying wasn’t the only one.
“We have to find out what happened here,” I said, “after we get them all out.”
I led our party past empty cells. They were narrow and bare, with a few pegs holding gray pajamas. They smelled like unwashed laundry, stale and musty. There were no pictures, or keepsakes, or anything to distinguish one narrow little cell from another until we found ones with cribs crammed inside. One, two … no. A dozen. More.
“This is too many babies,” I said.
“Far too many,” Grace agreed.
“This isn’t right,” I said. “This shouldn’t be happening. There are rules against this.”
One of the guards cleared her throat. “Ma’am. Down the hall.”
“Hm?”
The end of the corridor was blocked. Three gray-clad, barefoot witches crowded the end of the hall with their fists up, every one of their wrists encircled with copper bands. They were too thin, their cheeks hollow, and—
Their heads were shorn nearly to the scalp, fuzz growing on their heads, black witches and white ones alike. No braids. No locks. No curls to the shoulders—their pride had been stripped from them.
They guarded a larger room, where the others—the children—must have huddled, not knowing who invaded their unit.
“Ahoy,” I said. “I’m Robin Thorpe. I’ve come from Riverside. This is a rescue.”
They glanced at each other. “How did you get here?”
“We’re from Kingston,” Grace said. “The laws that locked you in here have been abolished. We’re here to release you.”
The witches glanced at each other. “We’re free?”
I shut my eyes and blinked my vision clear. “You’re free.”
They looked at each other again. One of them looked back at us, his lip quivering. “But where will we go?”
My heart cracked open. “Home. We’re taking you all in to find your families. And if you weren’t from Kingston, we will shelter you until you can travel back to your hometown.”
“But what if they don’t know us?” that same witch asked, and then I looked at his face. Hunger had thinned him, and that had aged him, but he couldn’t be much older than fourteen.
Children. Children born here, raised inside prison walls. I smiled at him, fighting nausea. How had this happened?
“You have a place to go,” Grace said. “We’re not going to punt you into the snow.”
“We’ll find your families,” I promised. “Who is your father?”
The boy’s shoulders went up. “The doctors don’t tell us that. They don’t tell us who they picked to make us.”
Who they picked to … Oh, Solace. Solace, no.
An older witch covered the boy’s bony shoulder with one hand. “He has forty fathers,” he said. “We don’t talk about it.”
“What is going on here? Were the doctors forcing you to—” Grace stopped talking and covered her mouth.
“Breed more witches,” I said.
“Only the channelers,” the older witch said. “They needed them to power the aether engines, and no one they bring in from outside has the power.”
I was going to vomit. The floor didn’t even feel solid. “I’m Robin Thorpe,” I said to the young witch. “What’s your name?”
“Murray.”
“I’m Grace,” Grace said. “Murray, did they make you go downstairs to the basement?”
He nodded. “Only a few times. I didn’t like it.”
“What did you do down there?”
“I linked with the other witches,” Murray said. “And then I let the visions come through me. I had visions and feelings, like I’m very old or a woman or in strange places. I feel sad, but I’m not sad. It’s the vision. And then there was another one, and another one, all day long.”
“And now that you don’t go downstairs anymore,” I said, keeping my voice gentle, “do you see people only other channelers can see?”
Murray nodded. “They’re all dead. That’s what the visions were. Dead people, and their memories.”
I really was going to be sick.
“He’s a Deathsinger,” Grace said.
“Like me,” I said.
Only I lived outside, believing myself powerless. I grew up outside, wishing I could do something more than just make a witchlight, while Murray and the children like him were bred and raised to use the magic of a soul to light our homes and play music on the wireless and lighten the burden of our lives.
Grace covered her mouth again. “Excuse me.”
She dashed into a cell, and I held onto my dignity with all my might as the sounds echoed through the hall.
I strode forward, pulling my own keys from my pocket. I pinched between my fingers the manacle key I carried with me from my days monitoring patients in restraints, and held it up so they could see.
“I can unlock your bracelets,�
�� I said. “We’re getting out of here.”
Behind the three witches, others gathered, curious now.
“The Witchcraft Act has been abolished,” I announced for all of them to hear. “You are all free. We’re getting you out of here. You’re going to be free.”
“Robin?”
I knew that voice. The witches stood aside as one of their number shoved through the line of defense, halted at the front of the crowd, and stared in disbelief.
I knew that long, narrow nose, even if the planes of kher cheeks were sharp and underfed. I knew kher eyes: heavy-lidded, long lashed, resting under eyebrows arched like ram’s horns.
Years had changed kher hair to silver streaks, cut cruelly short. Khe hunched bony shoulders covered by a sweater mended with whatever wool came to hand, its loops and twists and bobbles the clan pattern I knew by heart. I had knitted this sweater. I had given it to kher, twenty years ago.
“Zelind,” I said. “You’re still alive.”
* * *
I had forgotten how to dream of this moment. I had fought to set kher free. As the years wore on I fought in kher name, and then in kher memory.
But khe was here, and I had forgotten how to dream of seeing kher again, to imagine what it would be like. What I would do, what I would say—and the moment to seize kher in an embrace sped past. The moment to take kher hand wandered off, leaving me to stand here, staring, unspeaking.
Zelind watched me as if I would vanish if khe looked away. Khe said nothing. Khe shifted kher weight from one bare foot to the other, long fingers tracing over the bends and curves of kher spirit-knitted sweater.
“I tried to visit you,” I said. “I filled out the paperwork over and over. They always refused. And then they told me that you were permanently unavailable to visitors, and I—”
“So you broke in, trussed up the guards, and came to see for yourself.” Zelind smiled, and it wrenched at my heart. “Thank you.”
Now. Now. Go to kher now. I didn’t move. “We have to get you out of here. Are you all in the common room?”
Zelind stretched kher arms out and shuffled backward, making way for our entry. “How are you here? The road’s been impassable for weeks.”
“The Windweavers cleared the snow off the tracks to get here,” I said. “They’re exhausted, but it worked.”
Zelind licked kher lips. “Is he here?”
I turned my head to the left before I could control it. “He never joined the Circle.”
Zelind’s eyes went narrow and hard. “I shouldn’t be surprised.”
But before I could say anything, more people crept into the room filled with ratty, mended furniture and not much else. Behind them, children cried, probably picking up on their mothers’ fear. More thin faces. More shorn heads, and every eye was too wide to be anything but afraid. All were barefoot—and then I wished I hadn’t refused the boxes of new shoes Jamille had extorted.
Murray ran to one of the older patients, and they let Murray wrap them up in long, skinny arms as he said, “They’re here to set us free.”
“But—”
“They said they’ll take us to Kingston,” he said. “Zelind knows one of them.”
“It’s true?”
Zelind nodded. “It’s true. Get your things, everyone. Come back here when you’re ready.”
People moved cautiously to their rooms. Others waited, watching us with carefully blank expressions.
Zelind turned to me. “There’s someone here you should meet.”
“Who?” I asked, but khe was already moving across the room, headed for a young woman who made me stop in my tracks. The shape of her eyes and the short rounded nose, the gap between her two front teeth—I had seen her face before, in photographs made back when the subject had to sit very still to get a good image.
Zelind offered kher hand, and the girl took it. She stared at me, studying my face as intently as I had hers, and I knew before Zelind cleared kher throat.
“This is Jean-Marie. Her mother was Ophrah, and her grandmother was—”
“Mahalia Thorpe,” I said. “Jean-Marie, you’re my cousin.”
Jean-Marie slouched. She bit on a chewed corner of her nails, then set her hands in her lap, clenching one hand around the other. A movement caught her attention, and a ghost drew near, hovering beside her in the shapeless gray dress of the asylum.
“She looks like your grandmother,” the ghost said. “No bigger than a robin.”
Jean-Marie turned to me. “Mother says it’s true.”
“I heard her. Funny thing. My name is Robin,” I said. “Robin Mahalia Thorpe.”
“You’re a channeler too?”
“We call ourselves Deathsingers,” I said. “We only just learned what our power does.”
“Why didn’t you know?” she asked.
“Because there were no ghosts to talk to,” I said. “Because…”
She looked away.
Because the channelers had been forced to pour them into the soul-engines. No more. I’d live in the dark for the rest of my life if it meant getting them free.
“You’re getting out of here. You’re never coming back.”
She shrank into herself. “But I have nowhere to go.”
“You do,” I said. “The Thorpes live in Kingston. Our part of Kingston. We live in clan houses, surrounded by family. You can live there too.”
“You’ll let me live with you?”
“Let you?” I smiled wide. “You are a Thorpe. The clan is your family. The clan house belongs to you by right. You’ll be coming home where you belong. Why don’t we go get your things?”
She stared at me for long, anxious seconds before she nodded and pushed herself to her feet.
Zelind offered Jean-Marie kher hand. “I’ll help you.”
I should have moved to follow them, but I didn’t.
FOUR
Kingston
We had made it all the way to the train before we found out just how deprived the asylum-born had been. They stood before their seats, each one supplied with a warm blanket, a box lunch from the train kitchens, and a small selection of books—none of them suitable for children. Jean-Marie picked one up and gazed at it upside down, ignoring the writing board with its paper and pens.
She offered the books to me. “I don’t need these.”
“You don’t like reading?”
“I don’t know how. None of us do.”
Zelind put a comforting hand on Jean-Marie’s shoulder. “That’s not quite true. You know some words.”
“Flour, eggs, sugar, tea.” Jean-Marie shrugged. “Hay. But the others got in trouble if they tried to teach us more.”
“They don’t speak Samindan either,” Zelind said. “It wasn’t permitted. People got in trouble if they spoke it.”
Inside I boiled, but I kept anger or pity from my face. “You can learn,” I said. “You all can learn. It’s your right.”
“What does that mean?” Jean-Marie said.
I thought for a moment. “A right is something you don’t have to ask permission to have. It’s a freedom no one can morally take from you. You are supposed to have hundreds of them—and the right to speak the language of your people is just one. The right to a minimum standard of education is another. You have the right to know how to read and write.”
“They didn’t tell us that,” Jean-Marie said.
“You will all learn your rights,” I said. “Every one of you. But for now, I can read to you.”
They stared at me, quiet and unsure.
“She means stories,” Zelind said. “She’s going to tell you stories.”
All the asylum-born turned to me at that. They gathered close, curious. “You can read stories?”
The question hurt my chest. “Any time you want.”
They listened to me read for a moonlit hour, the train speeding past miles of fields and farms. When my voice gave out, Zelind took over. So long as one person was awake, another was reading to them, and
they were careful with the books on their seats, which were treated like precious things.
It was deep night when the first train pulled into Main Street Station, and the platform was full of people holding candles and cheering. The windows filled with witches staring at the assembly, glancing at each other, groping for a hand to hold.
“It will be all right,” I said. “The people here are waiting for you.”
“Not for us,” a young Deathsinger said, her white face tight with worry. She bounced the baby in her arms, backing away from the windows.
“For you,” I said. “Look how many people came. They’re here to see you come home.”
“I just want to sit here for a minute.” She took a cushioned seat away from the windows. “Just for a minute.”
“All right,” I said.
It took a while for the asylum-born to move. The others couldn’t wait to get off the train, and were soon enveloped in the arms of their families. But many didn’t move off to go home. Instead, they waited.
And since the witches weren’t going anywhere, the crowd stayed.
Then some of the witches came back to the train. One woman pushed back the brim of her knitted green hat and came to the Deathsinger who wouldn’t look out the window.
“Come with me, you and your littles,” she said. “I talked to my family. There’s always room in a clan house. We’ll get you sorted.”
The Deathsinger rose, looking fearful, and followed the woman off the train. Joyful cheering faltered when she stepped through with her daughter tucked in the crook of one arm and her son clinging to her free hand.
All the mothers and children went through, greeted by horrified murmurs, but one by one, a witch took them along to their family or their clan and gave them someone to belong to. Others were taken to the clans of their grandmothers and great-grandmothers, until there were only a few left.
Those mothers clumped together, huddled against the stares and muttering. They watched as Jacob Clarke and his wife drew near. They shivered as the breeze stole away their body warmth.
Jacob stopped a few feet away and bowed. “I’m Jacob Clarke,” he said. “Welcome home. We’re so glad you’ve been returned to us. We have extra sweaters and blankets. Will you come and pick out what you like?”