by J. A. White
“It does,” Kara said. “It has to.”
For if it didn’t, her father was already lost.
Two days passed. During the sunlit hours they made steady ground over rough roads. At night, West packed their heads with names and history and customs. Kara had trouble keeping everything straight, and Taff’s attention—after the initial novelty had worn off—began to wander, but Safi had become a surprisingly apt pupil. For some reason these increasingly dry lessons had a healing effect on her. Kara was delighted to wake up after a brief nap in the carriage to find Taff and Safi playing a simple game of dice, the hint of a smile gracing Safi’s face. She left them to it and made her way around the side of the slow-moving vehicle to the coachman’s seat. Lucas, holding the horses’ reins loosely in his lap, offered her his canteen.
“How’s it going in there?” he asked as she took a seat beside him.
“Not bad,” Kara said, and she meant it. There was a part of her that wished they could stay on this carriage forever, their own private world, but she knew that was impossible. The Well of Witches awaited them.
It was cold out here, especially with the wind whipping her face, but it was still an improvement over the stale air of the carriage compartment. The road ran between a half-frozen lake, above which the Swoop line dangled from massive stanchions, and a forest of tall, naked trees that might have been more impressive were it not for Kara’s experience in the Thickety. In the far distance lazed a snowcapped mountain range.
She took a swig of icy water.
“Look at all that snow,” Lucas said, smiling at her. “Back on De’Noran there was never enough of it to do anything fun. Remember that day we tried to go sledding with some old barrel lids and ended up covered in mud for our troubles?”
Kara nodded, though in truth she had no recollection of the day whatsoever. I must have used that memory to build a mind-bridge in the Thickety. I never would have forgotten something like that. Occasionally Kara would be faced with these gaps in her mind, moments that she missed as ardently as lost friends. She could have explained all this to Lucas, of course, but Kara was reluctant to admit that she had traded her memory of their day together for a spell. He might not understand.
“How long until our next stop?” Kara asked.
“We should be in Gildefroid any minute now,” Lucas said. “It’s a friendly little town for people on their way to Ilma Station. We’ll be able to stock up before we board the Swoop.”
Kara winced at his use of the word we.
He assumes that he’s going with us. I should have spoken to him days ago.
From the beginning, they had known that West would not be coming with them to Penta’s Keep—he felt that his age would only slow them down—but Lucas’s plans had remained curiously unaddressed.
“Lucas . . . ,” Kara started.
“Don’t bother. I’m coming. I know it’s dangerous. And you may think you’re protecting me—”
“Actually, that’s not it.”
“—but now that you’re not a witch anymore, you need someone to protect you. Let me help.”
Kara stared at him in shock.
“I never told you I’d lost my powers. How long have you known?”
“Taff told me. The first night.”
Taff!
“Not on purpose, mind you. He just likes to talk. Sometimes I wonder if he even knows he’s doing it. Have you noticed that?”
“Yes,” Kara said between clenched teeth. “I have.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Kara dipped her head to her knees, trying to make herself as small as possible. When she spoke her voice was soft and timid.
“You were so proud of everything I did in De’Noran. I liked hearing that. I didn’t want to tell you that I wasn’t special anymore.”
Lucas turned in his seat and gazed at her intently.
“It’s not magic that makes you special.”
Kara’s cheeks burned. His face was so close to hers. She needed words, something to fill the silence. . . .
“I want you to follow Timoth Clen.”
“Huh?” asked Lucas, drawing back.
“That’s why you can’t come with us. I need you to follow the graycloaks. There’s so many of them, and they can’t move that quickly with all those iron cages. They should be easy to track, right?”
“I guess. I can go back to Nye’s Landing and pick up the trail there. A single rider should be able to catch up in no time at all. But why in the world would you want—”
“Let me explain. When we find Sablethorn, we’re going to enter the Well of Witches . . .”
“Which is insane.”
“And come out with Grace . . .”
“Who’s evil.”
“So she can restore my father. But based on what I know about grimoires, I’m thinking that she won’t be able to just undo the curse from anywhere. Grace will need to be near my father for the spell to work, so I’ll want to get to him as quickly as possible—time is definitely a factor here. Not just for my father, but for Bethany and all the other girls. If we don’t banish Timoth Clen from his body in time, he’ll execute them all.”
“You have no idea where he’s taking them?”
“He said to the ‘bones of his first life,’ which I assume means the grave of Timoth Clen—the real Timoth Clen. Which would be incredibly helpful, if anyone knew where that was. The problem is, most people don’t believe Timoth Clen ever existed at all. They think he was just a figure the Children of the Fold made up, along with magic and witches.” Kara pushed back her hair with two hands. “Everyone thought our people were this crazy cult. And in some ways they were right.”
The carriage rattled along the road. A school of golden-finned fish skipped above the surface of the lake, then once again vanished into its depths.
“This will never work,” Lucas said. “Say I find Timoth Clen. How will you know where to find me?”
“That’s the fun part.” She reached into her cloak and pulled out two conch shells, handing him one. “You talk into this, and I’ll be able to hear you on the other end and talk back.”
“Magic,” he said, turning the conch in his hands. “Is it safe?”
“Of course.”
“And I’ll be able to talk to you at any time? No matter how far apart we are?”
“I think so,” she said. “We only tested them about a mile apart or so. And Taff has to be holding the other seashell, otherwise it won’t work.”
Lucas stared down at the conch.
“And this is really what you want?” he asked.
No! I want you to come with me! I don’t want us to be apart again!
“Yes,” Kara said, straining to keep the tears away. “This entire plan is crazy enough as it is, but it won’t work at all without your help.”
Lucas slid the conch into his cloak.
“All right.”
“Thank you. Keep your distance, though. Timoth Clen can’t know you’re spying on—”
“Oh no.”
The carriage had rounded a bend, revealing Gildefroid—or, at least, what was left of Gildefroid. Kara imagined that at one point the road before them had been lined with small shops and houses. They might have used glorb-lanterns to light the road, maybe not. She would never know. The buildings had all been reduced to heaps of wood and stone. Debris littered the street, forcing Lucas to slow the carriage to a pace no faster than walking.
“What happened here?” he asked. “It looks like a storm flattened the entire town, but that can’t be—”
“Shh,” Kara said. “I hear something.”
A rhythmic sound drifted through the eerie silence. Kara, the daughter of a farmer, recognized it instantly: a shovel slicing through dirt. Lucas carefully navigated the carriage through the remnants of Gildefroid, the digging sound growing steadily closer, until they reached a large field just outside the town. It was a pretty place with a small pond at its center and plenty of trees to provide s
hade in summer. At one point it had probably been a gathering spot for town picnics and festivals.
It was now a graveyard.
Fresh mounds of dirt stretched out in haphazard rows. There were no headstones. Instead, simple wooden signs had been driven into the ground, each bearing a name painted with unsteady brushstrokes. A man stood three feet deep in a freshly dug hole and tossed shovelfuls of earth to the ground above him. His face was blackened with dirt, his ungloved hands bloody and callused. Kara forced herself not to wince at the stench of him.
“Good afternoon,” Lucas said.
“Afternoon, travelers,” the man mumbled. He did not stop digging. “Ilma Station is close. Just keep following this road and you’ll be there in less than a day.”
“Thank you,” said Kara. “That’s helpful. But we don’t need directions.”
“What happened here?” asked Lucas.
“Look around you,” the man said, digging even faster than before. “That’s what happened. Telling the how of it won’t bring them back.”
“We have water,” Kara said. “And food. Would you like some?”
The gravedigger paused in his work and considered his shaking hands. “Perhaps that would be wise,” he said. After warning Safi and Taff to stay inside the carriage, Kara brought the gravedigger a fresh canteen of water and some hard biscuits and cheese. The man ate hesitantly at first but then with increasing fervor, as though his body had suddenly remembered what it needed to survive.
When he was done, the gravedigger planted the shovel in the earth and rested on it unsteadily.
“I’ll tell you what happened,” he said. “But I don’t expect you to believe me. I wouldn’t believe me.”
“Try me,” said Kara. “At this point, there’s not a lot that I wouldn’t believe.”
The gravedigger brushed his hair out of his face. Due to his stooped posture and drawling voice, Kara had originally pegged the man’s age at around fifty, but she saw now that he had the unlined features of a much younger man.
Whatever happened was terrible enough to add decades to his appearance.
“There’s a little girl who lives here—used to live here. Four years old. Summer’s her name, and it’s an apt one—she burns hot. Temper like you wouldn’t believe, stomps her feet, throws toys, that whole bit. Her parents are good, solid folk, but what are you going to do? ‘She’ll grow out of it,’ they always said, and they might have been right, had things gone differently.” The gravedigger scratched the side of his head with a mangled fingernail. “I imagine they were the first to die. I don’t know what set Summer off, probably her parents telling her she had to eat what was on her plate or brush her teeth or some such matter. Usually she would just scream and cry and pound her fists like she was wont to do—‘a Summer storm,’ we called it—but this time it went a lot further than that. This time her temper brought entire buildings crashing to the ground.”
“Sounds like magic,” Lucas said.
The gravedigger spit into the dirt.
“Like I said,” he snapped, “I didn’t expect you to believe me.”
“We believe you,” said Kara, bending down to touch the man’s shoulder. “All too well. How did you know it was her?”
“We didn’t, at first,” said the gravedigger. “We thought it was just some freak storm. But then I saw Summer walking through the center of town. There was wood and glass and . . . people flying everywhere, but that little girl didn’t seem to even notice. She was holding something in her hands, an—”
“—old book,” Kara said.
“That’s right,” said the gravedigger, regarding Kara with newfound suspicion. He tightened his grip on the shovel. “How do you know that?”
“We passed through another village a few days back,” Lucas said quickly. “They had witch troubles as well.”
The gravedigger nodded, his suspicions seemingly mollified.
“Witches,” he said. “I knew it.”
“What happened to Summer?” Kara asked. “Did a man with iron cages come and take her away?”
“I don’t know anything about that,” said the gravedigger. “But I seen what did happen to her. I hid beneath some rubble and watched. I’m not proud of it, but I was scared, and—”
“There was nothing else you could have done,” said Kara.
“Some women came on an old wagon. They were carrying books that looked just like Summer’s. All except one of them. She wore these long white gloves, and she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen—but there was something wrong with her eyes. They were broken, like glass.”
Kara rose to her feet.
“Her name is Rygoth,” she said. “You’re lucky to have escaped with your life.”
The gravedigger nodded absently, as though the thought had already occurred to him. “She told Summer that she had ‘passed her test’ and was a real witch now. Then they all went off together, and that was that. I crawled out of my hiding place like a cowardly rat and starting laying my neighbors to rest.” He lifted his shovel. “Which reminds me, I best get back to work. It’s been three days already, and while I’ve tried to keep the bodies as fresh as possible there’s only so much—”
“Why don’t you come with us?” Kara asked. “We’ll bring you to Ilma Station. You can start new. There’s nothing left here.”
The gravedigger shook his head. “Sorry, love. I am to finish what I started. After that I think I’ll just sit and watch over them awhile. I couldn’t save them, but I can give them that, at least. Someone to watch over them.”
Kara spent a few more minutes trying to change the man’s mind but quickly realized that it wasn’t going to happen. As their wagon pulled away, Lucas leaned over and asked, “What did that mean? About Summer passing a test?”
“That’s all this was to Rygoth,” Kara said, looking out over the graves. “Those people died so she could see if one little girl would embrace the grimoire’s evil or fight it, like Bethany. That’s why Rygoth is distributing all these spellbooks. She wants to see what the girls do with them, so she can make sure she’s gathering the right kind of witch.”
“The ones who are like Grace,” Lucas said. “The ones who like to hurt people.”
Kara nodded.
Behind them, she heard the gravedigger renew his efforts. Night was falling fast, and there were still plenty of graves left to dig.
The next morning they arrived at Ilma Station. It was packed with people, some already waiting on the stairs leading up to the elevated platform. Taff, worried that there might not be enough seats, wanted to join the line immediately, but West assured him that there would be plenty of space. They purchased what supplies they could at an overpriced general store, including new clothes: a green woolen skirt and white sweater for Safi; for Taff, a white shirt, gray slacks, and a tie (which he despised); and, for Kara, a lavender dress made from velvet. West thought these “city clothes,” as he called them, would help them blend into the general population of Penta’s Keep.
There were also bathing rooms, for which Kara was extremely grateful. Time vanished as she scrubbed the travel dust from her skin and washed her hair. When she finally came outside Taff greeted her with a look of exasperation.
“You took forever.”
She caught Lucas looking in her direction, but when she met his eyes he looked quickly away, his face reddening.
He hates my dress. He’s turning away so I don’t see him laugh.
The Swoop pulled into the station.
It was quieter than Kara had thought it would be, arriving on the underside of the Swoop line with the whoosh of tunneled wind. Seven sections—West called them “cars”—had been joined together by metal rods. Each was painted a lighter red than Bethany’s model but with the same gold trim, and though they were of slightly varying lengths, even the shortest car would have required a dozen horses to pull it along a road. Through the Swoop’s many windows Kara spied faces pressed against glass; Safi and Taff, by some unbidde
n instinct, instantly began to wave.
“I guess this is good-bye,” said West, enfolding each of the children in his spindly arms. “I look forward to meeting your father someday soon. Your real father.”
“I would like that,” said Kara.
He pinched her cheek, then ushered Safi and Taff onto the embarking line of passengers.
“What about Kara?” she heard Taff grumble, their voices already fading into the crowd.
“She’ll be right behind you,” said West.
“But why isn’t she coming now?”
“Sheesh,” Safi said. “You really don’t understand anything, do you?”
Kara turned to face Lucas, who had been uncharacteristically quiet since Gildefroid. She felt as though he had left part of himself behind in that wicked place, and it grieved her.
“Be careful,” Kara said, hugging him tightly. “Don’t forget, Timoth Clen has Father’s memories as well. He’ll recognize you from De’Noran. You must stay out of sight.”
She drew back, Lucas’s face surprisingly close to hers, and for a brief, stomach-fluttering moment Kara was certain he was going to kiss her.
Instead he said, “Don’t do this. It’s too dangerous.”
“He’s my father.”
“Exactly. Is this what he would want? His children risking their lives to save him?”
“It’s not just him. What about all the other girls? Timoth Clen is going to kill them!”
“I know,” Lucas said, shaking his head as though his very words confused him. “I’m not saying that Timoth Clen is a good man. He’s not. But he might be a necessary one. Rygoth is building an army of evil witches. And Timoth Clen, despite all his faults, is a witch hunter. He can stop her.”
Above them, a whistle sounded. Any last passengers needed to board.
“I can’t believe you’re saying this,” Kara said.
“You saw what happened to Gildefroid. What if Timoth Clen had gotten there in time? He could have saved those people!”
“How? By releasing his nightseekers and carting away a bunch of innocent girls just because they can use magic?”