Salem's Fury (Vengeance Trilogy Book 2)

by Aaron Galvin

  Ciquenackqua and I wheel upon hearing the voice behind us, finding Creek Jumper slipped among us silently. He holds a folded wolf pelt in one hand, a bowl filled with liquid in the other, and a small drum tucked beneath his arm.

  “But you are not meek, son of Whistling Hare,” says Creek Jumper. “When I were a boy, the old ones said sons take after their grandfathers. I think the little turtle in your dream fast will keep well alive the fighting spirit of his grandfather, Whistling Hare, and temper it with the patient wisdom of his father…you, Ciquenackqua.”

  Creek Jumper lays his pelt and drum upon the ground. Then approaches us with his bowl of liquid that shines black in the firelight.

  “But that is the future,” he says. “And we must live in the present now.”

  Creek Jumper offers up his voice, singing the old songs as he dips two fingers into the bowl. Paint drips off his fingertips as he pulls them from the bowl then touches them to the corner of Ciquenackqua’s eyes. He lets them stray down the young brave’s cheeks giving the impression Ciquenackqua weeps streams of blood.

  Creek Jumper approaches me next.

  His hand and voice shakes with fervor as he dips his fingers anew then raises them to my temple. He drags three fingers across my eyes and bridge of my nose, slathering a red-painted mask across them whilst continuing the ancient war song.

  I open my eyes when Creek Jumper beats the drum.

  Mercy stares at me from her tied position, her eyes rounding at the sight of Ciquenackqua and me. So, too, do I notice George and Hannah surprised at the doorstep of their cabin, and Mary behind them.

  The drum calls me to move, to make the war dance.

  I close my eyes again, let my head rock back, and allow my body to shift in blissful sway to the tune of Creek Jumper’s voice rising and falling in time with the drum.

  Fetching my tomahawk and Father’s dagger free from my belt, I add my voice to Creek Jumper’s and begin the dance. I twist and spin around the fire, warding off evil spirits with my weapons and voice.

  Ciquenackqua joins me in the dance, his movements yet stilted, but freer and with no regard for how he appears.

  We dance around the fire, my body never tiring. My thoughts dwell on Sarah, Sturdy Oak, and Deep River, and all the others killed by Mercy and her minions. Memories of Father dragged away bid me dance faster. I scream war cries, giving my loss and sorrow a voice for the first time. Power radiates through me, and I open my eyes to stare on Mercy to let her know the face of death that she might fear it.

  Instead, I find her grinning back at me, as if I am a child that pretends at the war dance.

  I raise my tomahawk and sling it at the pole, watching the blade buried near her ear.

  She flinches at the sound, a sight I relish as I dance near her and pluck it free again.

  Ciquenackqua halts near our shaman, raising his dagger high.

  “I am Ciquenackqua—”

  “No,” I cry to him.

  His arm drops to his side and he looks on me with concern as I approach.

  “No,” I say. “We make no claims or boasts this eve. Tonight we avenge those stolen from us and allow any who live to sing our—”

  A chunk of wood from Mercy’s post explodes in shards.

  I wince at the echo of a rifle blast and wheel toward the shooter.

  “That were a warnin’ shot,” Bishop yells. “Take another step and I send yer queen bitch back to Hell, ye powder-snortin’ harpies!”

  He drops the already fired rifle and raises his second one. As he marches closer to us, I glance over my shoulder to where he focuses. I find the answer beyond the barn.

  A group of hooded women, clutching naked blades—hand scythes, daggers, and tomahawks—head toward us.

  “Let ye call out to ‘em, wench,” says Bishop to Mercy. “Call ‘em off.”

  The witches approach us slowly, unafraid.

  “Over there,” Ciquenackqua shouts. He points to the other end of the yard, toward Bishop’s cabin, where a second band of witches makes their presence known.

  Indeed, I almost think there are others hidden in the shadows at every corner of the yard, all of them waiting for us to fire or for a word from their mistress.

  I look to Mercy and find her smiling.

  “Call ‘em off.” Bishop insists.

  “I would hear her swear again,” says Mercy to me.

  I approach her at the pole and put my dagger to her throat. “Mine are not the words that need proving, witch. You are a liar born of Salem evil. Let you prove yours to me now. Call them off and send them to slay our common enemy, or die with me here now.”

  “No. I am not so ready to leave this world yet.” She looks past me and shouts, “Wait! It is I, Mercy Lewis.”

  I keep my blade close to Mercy as a single witch steps forward from the others, her face scabbed and picked at, her teeth black and rotted.

  “Mistress,” she calls. “Give us the word. Let us make short work of these here.”

  “No,” says Mercy. “Not yet. Let you send scouts to the wilderness. Two Ravens comes to this place soon. Let him know I am here and swear over your allegiance in order to see me freed. When the time is right and they bring battle to this post, fall upon his men and slay them.”

  “But what of you, mistress?” the witch asks. “What of your life?”

  Mercy looks on me. “I shall be well protected here, and I would not see my master’s prizes tainted or taken from me.” She glances back to the witch. “Now go, before Two Ravens arrives and sniffs out our ruse.”

  The witch groups fades back into darkness, slipping out of sight but not from my mind. I wait awhile, my gaze searching the surrounding cabins for any treacherous sign.

  “Ciquenackqua,” I say finally. “Get you to the barn with Creek Jumper and hold it. Keep a weather eye on the riverbank.”

  He nods in reply. As the pair of them makes off for their post, I find myself praying Ciquenackqua’s bravery will stand and that his father’s spirit will find its way into him when we fall under attack.

  “Bishop,” I say. “Do you have your aim on her?”

  “Aye, lass. Cut her loose, and let’s be off.”

  I free Mercy from the pole and shove her forward.

  “Think on how you treat me now,” she says. “I will repay it later down the road.”

  I pay her no mind, instead whistling toward George’s cabin.

  Mary hesitates in the entryway, and ultimately runs for me with Hannah’s urging.

  “You hold the trade cabin with Andrew,” I tell her. “Shoot when you can, or else ensure his rifles remain loaded.”

  “A-aye,” she says.

  She near stumbles over herself as she leaves me.

  No small part of me wonders if my prayers would have been better served on her than Ciquenackqua. Bishop gives me little time to think on it, urging me follow him and Mercy back to his cabin. I bar the door once inside.

  The Wyandot brave sits near the hearth, bound and gagged. His eyes follow me warily as I cross the room and grab Mercy by the arm, leading her to the opposite corner.

  “It will not be long now,” she says.

  I bind her wrists and ankles together, much the same as I saw her people do to Sturdy Oak. She winces as I tighten the bonds, but she does not cry out.

  Bishop moves about behind us, and I glance over my shoulder in time to see him sit heavily in his chair by the fire. He wheezes and coughs, doubling over as his body racks him. He spits into the fire at the last, and breathes hard, as if the ordeal winded him after a long sprint.

  “He is dying,” says Mercy.

  “No, he’s not,” I whisper back.

  “He is. Many a night I have heard those in Boston cough with the lung sickness.” She motions her heard toward Bishop. “He has the same.”

  “She’s right, lass,” Bishop says, drawing my attention. “Lying wench that she is, she speaks true now.”

  I go to him, sitting in the chair he carved specia
l for me. The same chair I sat in as a girl and listened to the tales of his homeland, the place of leprechauns, harpies, and selkies.

  “When did you learn of this?” I ask.

  “Doesn’t matter when I learned it, does it? Can’t change it.” He fights back another cough. “In truth, I’ll soon be damned glad to have done with it all. A tiresome sickness, this.”

  He grins as he looks on Mercy.

  “Ah, but I’ll have me one final fight before the end.” He pats the rifle in his lap. “Won’t we, love?”

  He laughs himself into a grievous fit, one leaving his face purple by the end.

  “Will you have some water?” I ask.

  “Bah,” he says. “Give me whiskey, will ye? Let it burn its way through me.”

  I oblige and watch him drink it down. He spits half of it back out in another consumptive episode. Wincing, he rubs the phlegm remains from his beard. “I fear the banshee draws near.”

  “If you hear her song,” I say, “tell her I would keep you a little longer still.”

  Bishop grins as he pats my hand. “And I’ll demand that wailin’ wench take only me.”

  I chuckle at that, happy to share my time with him, sick though he may be.

  “Get some sleep,” I tell him. “I will take the watch.”

  “I’ll not have that,” he says. “Who’s to say ye won’t wake me when the fighting begins?”

  “I will wake you,” I say. “And be glad for your aim.”

  He winks at me as I rise and carry my chair to sit by Mercy’s side, not desiring her company, only ensuring I can cut her throat if our defenses fail.

  I take my seat next to the window. My gaze focuses through the small openings left me by the boards across the windows. Though there be little to see but dark and wilderness, I remind myself any manner of scout may be just beyond the tree line, skulking nearer as I should do if making an attack.

  “I hate cabins,” says Mercy, looking around Bishop’s home. “The smell and dark of them. We should have kept outside. At least there we could run, if need be. Here we are trapped.”

  I snort. “You would have me go outside that your witches could shoot me dead and rescue you?”

  “No,” she says. “Only so Two Ravens will not burn us alive. There be one escape in here. Only through the door, now that you’ve boarded the windows. No doubt Two Ravens and his braves will wait there to greet us with their blades.” Mercy sighs. “At least we should die of the smoke before the flames reach us.”

  “You need not worry about flames or smoke,” I say.

  Mercy grins at my meaning. “Good. If the time comes, see your dagger to my throat quickly. I have witnessed and heard others burned. Their screams still haunt me, aye, but more so their smell. Once you’ve known the stench of burning flesh, you never forget it. There be many a time I thought to cut off my nose and learn if it would rid me of the memory.”

  “You should have,” I say.

  “Perhaps. But then what man would have me?”

  “I find it hard to know men would have you now,” I say.

  “Oh, but they do.” She chuckles. “Travel to whatever lands you will, girl. If there be men there, you will find one who would have you, noseless or no. Indeed, some of our people in the colonies tell stories of native men who would enjoy a noseless woman. They who believe natives are the Devil’s minions, that is.”

  Mercy snorts as she rests her head back against the cabin wall.

  “But they understand little beyond their borders,” she says. “How could they know the Devil walks among them every day in different forms?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Men,” she says. “Of all colors, shapes, and sizes. They are the Devil’s true minions, and they think of us as their prey.” Mercy looks to me. “You asked me of Cotton Mather, and why I should follow him?”

  “Aye.”

  “He sent an angel to me. Your father, Dr. Campbell.”

  “My father—”

  “Oh, damn it, girl, think what you will of him. It seems you and I did not know the same man.” Mercy says. “Let others say his true purpose were greed, or gain, for both are right. But Dr. Campbell were also the one to give we prey our claws. Aye, teeth to bite the hands that fed us if only we accepted their loathsome offers and starved us when we did not.”

  “Yet Putnam wrote you lied against women also,” I say.

  “Aye. You would think our lot in life should bond we women together. Instead we allow men to divide us,” says Mercy, her voice rigid and cold. “The women in Salem despised me, shamed me for doing what I must to stay alive. But they never knew suffering like we servant girls. Aye, and those goodly women looked the other way when their husbands came for us in the night.”

  “Perhaps they deserved death,” I say. “But if so, you should have killed them outright rather than lie.”

  “Sometimes lies are all you have, girl,” says Mercy. “You will do well to learn that when we go to Boston. Truths come easy in the wilderness. The savages know nothing of lies and manipulation…but they are learning our ways. Look you no further than Two Ravens if you would know my words true.”

  I grit my teeth at her words. “You spoke of men looking on you as an animal, yet you speak the same of the natives. Near all of these people are good at heart.”

  “Let you admire their goodness, if you will, but know that will be the end of them.” Mercy exhales. “Not in my lifetime, perhaps, nor even yours, but some day our kind will take these lands from them.”

  “I am not your kind.”

  I glance out the window, believing I witness movement near the tree line. A deer moves past a moment later. I release the breath I held and feel my body relax as Mercy continues, almost as if she did not know I paid her little mind.

  “No, their kind only now learns the benefits of lying, babes fumbling with a new toy.” She scoffs. “But our people are well practiced in the art, and none more than Cotton. He molds this New World to his whims and our people have never felt their strings pulled.”

  I look on her with disdain. “How do you know your strings are not pulled now?”

  “I warrant he does move me,” Mercy says. “And it may be Cotton sent me out to have my strings cut. But if so, it were a better life he gave me than the one I had before. People will speak my name long after I am gone because of him. Your father assured us of that.”

  “I hope they remember you plain,” I say. “A lying whore who would betray anyone should the need suit her.”

  “Perhaps they will,” she says. “It matters little to me. I will yet be remembered. Who will know the name Rebecca Kelly? Hmm? None. Cotton will have you and your family wiped from the histories.”

  “I do not wish to be remembered.”

  “Liar,” says Mercy. “Everyone desires to be remembered by those who follow after, even if painted in a wrongful light. I were but an orphaned girl given to servitude. Who should have thought I would help craft a new nation?”

  I laugh at her claim. “You have supped on your Devil’s powder too often, if you believe that.”

  “No,” she says. “I never felt the need to see spirits, or learn who my husband should be in the Venus glass, like some of my Salem sisters. I sought only truth and were shown it through the plans of your father and Cotton.”

  She clucks her tongue. “You laugh at my claims and my wont for a legacy. But one day you shall think back on this night, Rebecca Kelly, and even if all other people from this day till the end of time think of me only as a lying whore, you will know I were the only one to speak truth.”

  “When I think of you, it will be twofold—the first as my sister’s murderer.” I seethe even as I speak the words. “The other of the day I take your life in repayment. Now keep your tongue quiet. I will hear no more from you, lie or otherwise.”

  She licks her lips. “May I say but one more thing?”

  My nostrils flare at her questions. A part of me would tell her no, and slap her th
at she might understand I spoke truth to her. Still, my curious nature would know what final words she has for me.

  “Speak it now,” I say. “And be quick with it.”

  “You wrestle with the truth of my words,” says Mercy. “A goodly sign if ever I saw one.”

  “You speak riddles, witch.”

  “No. Only truth,” says Mercy. “This world is not the one you knew before, but you are adapting, Rebecca. If you survive this night, it may be you learn that which I did when I were near your age.”

  “And what is that?”

  “You can shape it.” Mercy grins. “For better or worse.”

  -17-

  All night I keep watch through the small crack. My gaze never wavers, even as Mercy snores.

  Bishop, too, sleeps, his breath raspy and deep like a bear’s grumbling.

  I rub my eyes, slap myself awake. I lean closer to the window, peering out, and note the night no longer holds its darkest sway, it giving way to hints of purple dawning in the east. Even in dark, a white carpet of ice tinges the grass blades.

  Though the hearth fire has long since burned out, I give thanks at least the cabin logs shelter me with some of its former warmth.

  I yawn upon leaning back, wonder if Mercy lied about Two Ravens to bide herself time. The sound of wood slapping wood wakes me quick.

  A rifle barks, its sound hailing from Andrew and Mary’s position.

  “Away with ye, ye bleedin’ harpies.” Bishop shouts behind me. He rises and his bearskin cover falls to the floor. Madness clouds his eyes as he brings his rifle to the ready, searching for the sound’s origin.

  I grab up my own rifle, knocking over my chair as I run to the northwestern window for a better view.

  “What was that, lass?” Bishop asks. “Do they come?”

  “I know not.”

  I squint out the window crack, and see Andrew stumble off the trade cabin porch, falling flat on his face.

  “Oh no…” I say.

  “George,” Andrew cries as he fumbles to find his feet. “George, I’m sorry.”

  “Who’s that then?” Bishop asks.

  “Andrew…” I say, as he wobbles in the middle of the yard, planting his rifle and using it to steady himself. “He’s drunk.”