Immanuelle obeyed, skirts sweeping around her ankles as she ducked into the kitchen, grabbing a basin of water and a bundle of dried yarrow flower from the herb box beneath the sink. She raced upstairs as fast as she could without tripping on the hem of her skirts and entered the children’s room.
There, she found Anna tightening the knots around Glory’s wrists, tethering her to the headboard to keep her from escaping, as she had tried to do six times since the night she first took ill. Anna tied the cloth cuffs so tight there were bruises around her daughter’s wrists, but it couldn’t be helped. Nearly half of those afflicted with the blight had maimed or even killed themselves in the throes of their madness, jumping out of windows or bashing their own heads in, as Honor had nearly done the night Immanuelle found her.
At her mother’s touch, Glory thrashed and shrieked, legs tangling in her sheets, her cheeks bright with fever.
Immanuelle set the basin beside the bed, took the yarrow from her mouth, and grabbed the bowl on the nightstand. She crushed the blooms as best she could, mashing them into a paste. Then she added a little water—still faintly tinged by the last traces of the blood plague—and mixed the pulp with her fingers.
It was Martha who administered the draught, seizing Glory firmly by the base of her neck and thrusting her upright, the way one holds a squalling newborn. She forced the bowl to her mouth, and Glory thrashed and spat, dragging at her binds, her eyes rolling back in her skull as the draught dribbled between her lips and down her chin.
Honor lay across the room with her eyes closed, her blankets tucked beneath her chin. Immanuelle put a hand to her cheek and winced. The fever raged in her yet. The girl lay so still Immanuelle had to slip a finger beneath her nose just to see if she was breathing. She hadn’t stirred once since the blight had arrived. That night, she’d struck herself into a deep slumber they feared she’d never wake from.
It went on like that for hours—Glory thrashing in her bed, Honor comatose, Anna weeping on a chair in the corner—until Immanuelle couldn’t bear it anymore. She left the farmhouse for the pastures. Days ago, their farmhand, Josiah, had been called back to his own home in the distant Glades to tend to his blight-sick wife. So apart from Immanuelle, there was no one to keep watch over the grazing sheep.
As she crossed the pastures, crook in hand, she weighed the options available to her. Her darkest fears had become reality. The sacrifice she’d made at the pond hadn’t worked after all. Blight was upon them, and if it didn’t end soon, Immanuelle feared the lives of her sisters would be forfeit. But what could she do to stop it?
Her blood offering hadn’t been enough to break the curse, and she had no one to turn to for aid. The Church seemed helpless in the face of such great evil. Immanuelle considered turning to Ezra for help, as she had done before, but decided against it. He’d made it plain that he wanted no part in plagues or witchcraft, no part of her. The last time she’d dragged him into her schemes he’d almost paid a mortal price. It seemed cruel to call upon him again.
But if not Ezra, whom could she turn to? There had to be someone, something. A cure or scheme to stop this. She had to believe that, on principle alone, because if she didn’t, it meant that hope was lost and her sisters were going to die.
A memory surfaced at the back of her mind, an image of her census papers, the witch mark below her name and the names of the Wards who came before her. Was it possible that the very answers she sought—about the plagues, and the witches and a way to defeat them—could be waiting for her in the Outskirts, in the form of the family she had never known? If the witch mark was any indication at all, they were versed in the magic of the Darkwood and the coven that walked its corridors. If there was any help to be found in Bethel, Immanuelle was certain she’d find it with them.
But how could she slip away to the Outskirts unnoticed, with Honor and Glory as sick as they were? There was no way she could excuse her absence for more than an hour, and she would need at least a day to find her kin in the Outskirts.
Immanuelle frowned, staring past the flock of grazing sheep, to the windows of Abram’s workshop glowing in the distance. An idea took shape at the back of her mind.
Abram. Of course.
Immanuelle might not have been able to win Martha over . . . but perhaps Abram would be more sympathetic. He was kindhearted, gentler than Martha, and less pious than Anna. Perhaps he would see the merit in her desires to reach out to her kin in the Outskirts.
Emboldened by this idea, Immanuelle herded the last of the sheep into the corral where they spent their nights and started toward Abram’s workshop. It was a humble space. The wood floors were dusted with a thick carpet of sawdust. As usual, a series of half-finished projects cluttered the workspace—a pair of tree-trunk side tables, a stool, and a dollhouse that was no doubt intended to be a gift for Honor’s birthday.
Paintings adorned the walls, all of them her mother’s. There were sweeping landscapes on wood panels, parchment painted with faint watercolor flowers, a few still lifes. There was even a self-portrait, which featured Miriam, smiling, with her hair unbound.
Immanuelle peered over Abram’s shoulder to see what he was working on and stopped dead. There, on the table, was a small, half-carved coffin. It was big enough for only one member of the Moore family: Honor.
“She’s still . . . with us,” said Abram without looking up from his work. “I just want to be ready . . . if the worst comes.”
Immanuelle began to shake. “She’s going to wake up.”
“Perhaps. But if she doesn’t . . . I have to be prepared . . . Always promised myself . . . that if I had to . . . bury another child . . . I would do it properly. In a coffin . . . of my own making. I missed that chance . . . with your mother. I’ll not . . . have it happen again. Even if . . . I have to collect . . . her bones from the . . . pyre, I intend . . . to give her . . . a proper burial. Should it . . . come to that.”
Immanuelle knew what he referred to. Bethelan custom mandated that the blameless were buried and the sinful were burned, in the hopes that the flames of the pyre would purge them of their sins and allow them passage into the realm of purgatory. On account of her crimes, Miriam had died in dishonor and, as a result, she never had a proper coffin or burial plot in the graveyard where her ancestors were laid to rest. “Do you miss her?”
“More than you know.”
Immanuelle took a seat on the stool beside him. “And do you regret breaking Protocol to hide her here, years ago?”
Abram’s hand tightened around his chisel, but he shook his head.
“Even though it was a sin?”
“Better to take sin upon . . . one’s own shoulders . . . than allow harm . . . to befall others. Sometimes a person . . . has an obligation . . . to act in the interest of the . . . greater good.”
This was her moment, and Immanuelle was quick to seize it. “During that time, did my mother ever speak of my father?”
Abram faltered, then lowered his tool. “More than she did . . . anyone else. When the madness . . . took her she used . . . to call for him. Claimed his ghost . . . was wandering the . . . halls. She’d say he was . . . calling her home. I like to think . . . that he did in the end.”
Immanuelle’s throat clenched so tightly she could barely speak. “I want to go to the Outskirts, Pa. I want to know the people that knew him. I want to meet his kin. My kin.”
Abram remained expressionless. He returned to his work, scuffing a bit of sandpaper along the wall of the coffin. “Why now?”
“Because if I don’t do it now, I may never get the chance to. What with the fever spreading.”
“When do you . . . want to go?”
“Tomorrow, if possible. But I’d rather Martha not know. It would only trouble her.”
“So you’ve come to ask for my blessing?”
“That and your help. Perhaps you could distract Martha.”
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“You mean lie . . . for you. Mislead her . . . into believing something that . . . isn’t true.”
Immanuelle flinched but nodded. “Like you said, sometimes a person has an obligation to act in the interest of the greater good even if it means they have to sin in order to do it. And is it not good for me to meet my kin while I still have the chance to?”
Abram offered her a rare smile. She could have sworn he looked almost proud of her. “Pity you weren’t . . . born a boy. Would’ve made a . . . fine apostle with your penchant . . . for talking in circles.”
“So you’ll do it?” Immanuelle whispered, barely believing her good fortune. “You’ll help me get to the Outskirts?”
Abram paused to blow sawdust from the inside of the coffin. “What won’t I do . . . for you?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
For the fires of purging are righteous and the Father rejoices at the sight of its flames.
—THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
IMMANUELLE LEFT FOR the Outskirts at daybreak. The journey passed in a series of disembodied glimpses, as though she was so overwhelmed at the prospect of meeting her kin she couldn’t process what she was looking at. There was the flash of a man in a mask like a crow’s face, stoking a pyre’s flames with a pitchfork, a shroud-wrapped body in the back of a wagon bouncing with every rut in the road. Blue smoke broke in waves above the treetops, so thick it stung her eyes, and the air rang with the cries of the blight sick.
There were women wandering in nothing more than their slips. Barefoot men shambling along the roads, a few of them shaking, others howling and scratching themselves bloody. As Immanuelle passed a neighboring farm, she saw a girl running through a dying cornfield, arms outstretched toward the Darkwood. She was wearing nothing but a long, bloodstained nightgown, and its skirts tangled around her ankles as she fled. A man tore after her, her father or husband perhaps; the distance made it hard to tell. He caught her around the waist and dragged her kicking and screaming to the dirt just a few feet from the forest’s edge.
Immanuelle averted her eyes. The scene seemed like the sort of indignity that was wrong to bear witness to. Shaken, she walked on, traveling fast down the main road, until she saw the Outskirts emerge from a haze of pyre smoke.
Her heart kicked up to a fast rhythm, even as she slowed to a stop in the middle of the road.
After all of these years of pining, she was finally going to meet her kin.
Immanuelle started forward, noting that the Outskirts were strangely quiet. No children in the streets, no fever-struck fleeing for the forests. The roads were mostly empty, apart from the odd farmer or merchant steering a mule cart. The windows on the houses were shuttered. Dogs were tethered to lampposts and fences; a few of them barked at her as she passed them by. Every so often, a crow shrieked in the distance, but apart from that, the silence was near complete. For whatever reason—whether it be the small population, or some act of mercy on behalf of the witches—the Outskirts were spared the full wrath of the blight plague.
After a long walk through the winding streets, Immanuelle found the village center, where the chapel stood. It was an odd structure. Unlike the Prophet’s Cathedral, which was built from slabs of slate, the Church of the Outskirts was comprised of a rustic thatching of woven branches and saplings. Its windows were set with stained-glassed portraits of strange dark-skinned saints that Immanuelle didn’t know by name. Each of them held some sort of talisman—a lit candle, a cut branch, a red ribbon woven between their fingers, the twisted knob of a knucklebone.
In all her sixteen years, Immanuelle had never seen any saints or effigies in her own likeness. None of the statues and paintings housed in the Prophet’s Cathedral bore any resemblance to her. But when she looked at those saints immortalized in stained glass, a kind of aching familiarity settled over her, as if something she’d forgotten she’d lost was finally being returned.
The front door was cut from a thick slab of oak, and it looked like it belonged on the hinges of a vault, not a church. Even though it was slightly ajar, Immanuelle had to throw her shoulder against it and heave her full weight into the effort of forcing it open. The room within was dim, cast in a haze of incense smoke so dense her eyes began to sting and fill with tears. There were no pews there, just long, narrow benches that ran half the length of the room, positioned in rows on either side of the aisle. Overhead, a balcony wrapped around the room’s perimeter, where several women stood watching her.
At the aisle’s end was a kind of altar. But unlike the one in the Prophet’s Cathedral, this altar had a raised lip around its edges, creating a sort of shallow basin within, where a small fire burned. A man stood over the offering, his face bathed with smoke. As Immanuelle drew near, she saw that he wore a holy dagger—albeit an old and rusty one. He had a shaved head, and his eyes were the palest shade of amber, a sharp contrast to the rich ebony of his skin. If she had to guess, she’d say he was about Abram’s age, perhaps a little younger. He wore simple robes cut from what appeared to be rough burlap, belted at the waist with a leather cord so long its tassels skimmed the floor. Approaching him, Immanuelle felt a certain gravitas that she had only ever experienced in the woods when Lilith first emerged from the tree line.
“My name is Immanuelle Moore—”
“No need,” he said and turned back to the fire. Beside it, on a small stone pedestal, was a group of young chickens, bound together by their necks. The priest picked them up by the rope and released them into the flames with the mutter of something that might have been a prayer, but it was so brief Immanuelle couldn’t tell. The scent of burnt feathers and seared meat mingled with the thick stench of the incense. “I know who you are.”
“How?”
The priest chuckled, like she’d told a particularly witty joke. “There are few of us who don’t. Tell me, what brings you to the Outskirts today?”
“I’m here for my family.”
“And why do you seek them now?”
“Because I’m ready.”
The priest raised an eyebrow. Appraised her through the rolling smoke. “You weren’t before?”
Immanuelle squared her shoulders. “I was scared before. But I’m not anymore. So I’d like to see them, if you could point me in the right direction.”
The priest’s expression shifted from cold to pitying. “I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place, Ms. Moore. There are no Wards here.”
The wind left her, as though she took a punch to the stomach. She leaned forward, braced herself on the back of a pew. “They’re all gone? Dead?”
“No. Not all of them. As far as I know, your grandmother, Vera Ward, is the last of your living kin. But she left Bethel just days after your father was murdered.”
So there was hope after all. Perhaps all wasn’t lost. “Do you know where she is?”
The priest nodded to the right. Immanuelle followed him down a narrow aisle between two benches and into a little room off the chapel. It looked much like the adjoining apses and galleries of the Prophet’s Cathedral, only this space was much smaller. Its walls were painted with the sprawling mural of Bethel and the territories beyond it. On the far wall were the Glades, Outskirts, and Holy Grounds, with the appropriate designations for famous landmarks like the tomb of the first prophet, the Haven, the Church of the Outskirts, and of course the Prophet’s Cathedral. Surrounding it all was the Darkwood . . . only it wasn’t painted that way. In the mural, the forest took the form of a naked woman, curled fetal around Bethel.
Immanuelle stared at the fresco for a long time in breathless silence, tracing the woman’s form, trying and failing to parse its meaning. Eventually, her gaze fell to a short verse etched into a wooden plaque on the right side of the wall: The forest is sentient in a way man is not. She sees with a thousand eyes and forgets nothing.
“Is that from the Holy Scriptures?” she asked.
The priest
shook his head. “Not one you’ll find in your holy book. Consider it . . . an unsanctioned addendum.”
“Is it meant to be a reference to the Mother or the forest?”
“Both,” said the priest. “The Mother is the forest. She is the soul, and the Darkwood is Her body. To us, the two entities are intrinsic. One is the same as the other.”
Immanuelle touched a spot toward the edge of the woodland, tracing the path of the tree line that ran along the Moore land. “I’ve never heard it explained that way before.”
“That’s because your people aren’t schooled in the ways of the Mother.”
Immanuelle didn’t like the way he said “your people,” as if to erase the blood tie that bound her to the Outskirts and the Wards. But she made no mention of that discrepancy. Instead, she turned her attention back to the mural, tilting her head to study the map above her. The ceiling loomed high, and it was painted with the faint outlines of maps, but the illustrations were far more abstract than the ones that depicted Bethel. She saw a few names she recognized—Hebron, Gall, Valta. “The heathen cities?”
“In the words of your Prophet, yes.”
“Is that where I’ll find my grandmother?”
The priest shook his head and tapped a small blank spot in the wilds just north of Bethel. The village was labeled Ishmel. To Immanuelle’s immense surprise, it wasn’t far from Bethel. Judging by the scale of the map, it was only a few leagues from the Hallowed Gate. She guessed that with a good horse, a trained scout could ride there in no more than a day or so.
“Is there any way to get word to her?”
The priest shook his head. “It’s illegal to send letters past the gate, and even if you could get a letter through, there’s no promise you’d receive a response. I doubt Vera would send a letter back to Bethel and risk the wrath of the Church. If you want to talk to her, you’ll have to do it in the flesh. Find someone to smuggle you through the Hallowed Gate, and someone else to smuggle you back in again.”
The Year of the Witching Page 17