by Katie M John
Fox scanned the tree line, although it was difficult to see anything beyond the heavy darkness of the night. “Where’s Swan?” Fox asked.
“She went with him – that man,” Rose said stonily. “There was no way to stop her. They headed over there.” She nodded her head to indicate direction.
Fox’s turned to the ruins of the cottage. It had once probably been a pretty place, but now it was scared and ugly. A blinding pain hit Fox in the middle of her forehead and if it hadn’t been for Jeremiah running up behind her and catching her in his arms, she would have fallen face first into the snow.
Screams ricocheted around her head. They were her sister’s. Flames were everywhere. They scurried up the base of the wooden pillar her sister was tied to. She had been stripped of her warm winter layers, and was shivering against the cold, in just her white vest and jeans. Her boots scrabbled against the pile of wood underneath her. It took Fox a moment to work out whereabouts he had taken her. It looked like the half-rotten framework of an outbuilding. The wood piled at the bottom of her feet suggested it was …
Fox gasped in the ice-cold air and her eyes flew open. “The woodshed! He’s taken her to the woodshed.”
Fox searched the ramshackle group of buildings. To the side of the cottage, was the one that looked most likely. She took flight, leaving Jeremiah behind her. She stopped only when she felt her sister’s body under her fingertips and the fire nipping at her skin. Despite Fox’s desire to hold on to her, Fox’s body refused to stay and be burned. She changed tactic, removing her coat and battering at the flames, which were eating up the wood. All she succeeded in doing was fanning them, so that smoke rose and little flames rose up and nibbled at Swan’s boots.
“Fox?” Swan croaked, opening her eyes. “Go!” Swan whispered.
His voice came from the shadows from where he was watching. “Your sister is right – you should go.”
The flames rose higher, and Swan started to cry. There was no time left. Voices erupted behind them.
Bunny, with the sleeping child still on her hip, came jogging in. Seeing Swan, she started to scream, but the sound wouldn’t come out. Her chest rose and fell, and Fox could see she was at risk of full-blown panic attack. The child moved in her arms; its sleep disturbed, despite the powerful sleeping spell.
“Bunny, get out! Take the child outside now!” Fox commanded.
Prim arrived at the door, and after surveying the scene, grabbed Bunny and forcefully guided her outside. Already, a wall of flames blocked Swan from view. Her cries turned into screams. Everything happened too quickly. In a moment of insanity, Fox lunged forwards towards the flames, but just as they kissed her cheek and palms, strong arms circled her waist and dragged her backwards. The cold winter air nearly stung her blistered hands as much as the flames. Jeremiah’s voice boomed around her,
“Stop it, uncle! Stop it! This is wrong! It’s all wrong!”
Fox, who’d been kicking and struggling against him, now collapsed against his arms, sobbing.
“It’s too late, Jay. It’s the price she must pay. She knew that,” his uncle said stonily.
Rose stood behind them. She watched on in silence. Despite the horror, it would have been wrong to leave Swan to endure it alone. The flames spread.
“We need to get out!” Rose said. “The whole shed is going to go up.” Already the flames were spreading into the damp wood and the space was rapidly filling with smoke, causing them to cough. Confident his job was done, Jeremiah’s uncle led them outside.
He walked them over to where Bunny was stood, cradling the child to her chest like a comforter. Bunny’s eyes were wide with grief and pain, but she wasn’t seeing; although her body stood there, her spirit had retreated somewhere safe and far away. When Jeremiah’s uncle held out his arms to receive the child, Bunny handed her over automatically without looking at him.
He headed in the direction of the footpath that would take them down to the main road and back to Heargton – where the child’s distraught mother would be waiting. Sensing his nephew was not following behind, he turned and raised a questioning eyebrow. Jeremiah simply replied, “I’ll catch up with you later.”
Jeremiah’s apparent closeness to the Meadowsweet girl was both unexpected and disapproved of; not that Jeremiah cared about his uncle’s stance on the situation. He’s no better than my father! he thought.
Rose and Prim still tended Violet. They were both crying. Fox reached for Bunny’s limp fingers and laced them with her own. She didn’t know if Bunny could feel her, but she needed to hang on to her and stop her leaving, too. Jeremiah stood by her side. His arms folded across his chest. His head bowed. Despite being desperate to take hold of Fox’s other hand, whatever intimacy had been between them earlier, had passed. In its place was an impenetrable wall.
They stood and watched the shed burn, knowing that somewhere inside were the remains of Swan Meadowsweet.
It took almost two hours for it to finally collapse into a shouldering heap of timber and ash. Snow fell, quenching the last stubborn flames.
“Is it finished?” Fox whispered.
“Yes,” Jeremiah replied. His voice was thick with regret. He knew there would be no forgiveness. Whatever could have been between the two of them had died alongside her sister.
“We need to get back,” Prim said, gently placing her hands on Fox’s shoulder. “We need to let your mother know. There are things that need to be done in the hours following a Witch’s...” she stopped and changed focus. “Your hands! We need to get your hands treated before there is permanent damage.”
Fox nodded and squeezed Bunny’s hand. The Meadowsweet cousins headed slowly towards the footpath, supporting Violet’s frail body between them. Seeing her cousins leave, Bunny snapped back into her body and said to Jeremiah, “Take Fox home!”
Fox turned to her. “Why? I can’t leave you here.”
“Please,” she whispered. “I need some time alone.”
“I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“There’s something I need to do,” she said enigmatically.
“We’re not leaving you, Bunny,” Jeremiah said.
She stopped at the sound of his voice. “Don’t you speak to me! No one of your blood ever speak to me again!” She spat her words out viciously.
Jeremiah flinched from them.
Fox turned to him. “You never answered my question.”
“What question?” he asked.
“What are you doing here?”
He sighed heavily, and implored her, “I’m not here for the reason you think.”
Fox challenged him with her eyes.
He breathed in deeply and explained, “I bumped into Daniel in the woods. I was coming… I was coming for a different reason.”
“Which was?”
Jeremiah coughed uncomfortably. He really wanted to tell her he had been coming to be by her side and protect her, but he couldn’t. He’d failed. He’d worse than failed. In the end, it hadn’t been the Ravenhearts who had harmed her, it had been his own kin. His face crumpled with thoughts - too many thoughts.
“I see!” she said, not really seeing at all.
“No, no you don’t,” he said, shaking his head. “I hate them. I hate them all; my father and my uncle.”
Fox and Bunny exchanged looks.
“You are one of them,” Fox said.
Jeremiah shook his head. “Not anymore. Not after…” he stopped, unable to decide which of their unforgiveable deeds he should choose as reason for the divorce he now felt.
Bunny weighed up the sincerity in his voice and seeing there was no way he was going to leave her to do what she needed, she said, “Very well, but if you are to stay, you will need to seal a blood bond – you will need to make a sacred vow that you will not speak of what you are about to see.”
Jeremiah nodded. “I need to be here.”
Fox threw him a glance before asking Bunny, “What’s going on? I don’t understand what’s ha
ppening.”
Bunny ignored her. “Jeremiah, you do understand that once a bond is made, it cannot be unmade. We will become forever locked together – Witch and Witch Hunter.”
Jeremiah shook his head. His forehead creased with confusion. “Witch Hunter? I don’t… I don’t know what you mean.”
It took a moment for Bunny to comprehend the depth of Jeremiah’s confusion. “Oh my! You don’t know – do you?”
“Know what?” he asked.
“That you’re a Witch Hunter. That’s why you were able to petrify Nigella. Your hand must have pressed against the space above her heart.”
Jeremiah shook his head. “No. You’re wrong. My uncle, Daniel, is the Witch Hunter, not me. I don’t believe in all that…” the sentence faded. He was about to say he didn’t believe in all that supernatural rubbish, and yet, the events of the evening had been real, very real.
Bunny was increasingly agitated. Her feet jabbed against the snow. She had work to do and really didn’t have time to teach a Chase his own blood history. “I haven’t got the time for this. Make a choice. Either make the bond between our blood, or leave.”
A choice? He didn’t even know what that really meant. All he knew was he didn’t want to leave Fox. As he had no intention of ever taking up the role of a Witch Hunter, what harm could such a pledge hold? He nodded. “I’ll make the bond.”
Bunny grabbed at his hand and drew out her knife. The blade glinted in the moonlight. She stabbed the point into the soft flesh of his palm and he winced as she dragged it across his skin. Blood welled from the cut. Bunny was just about to draw her own blood when Fox shouted, “Stop!”
They both turned to look at her.
“Make the bond with me,” she said holding out her hand. “It’s me who brought Chase blood to our door – it should be my responsibility.”
Bunny shook her head. “But you don’t understand what bargain you’re making.”
“It’s one you’re prepared to make,” Fox argued.
“Yes, but I have my reasons – What are yours?”
Fox looked at her sister with new sight. She shuffled and sighed with exasperation. “Just do it, Bunny!” she said nodding to her hand.
Reluctantly, Bunny cut her sister’s palm. It didn’t hurt as much as Fox thought it would, but that was probably the result of the burns, which still stung viciously. Taking both of their hands, Bunny pressed them together, incanting a spell under her breath. As Jeremiah and Fox’s blood mingled, an extreme pain tunneled through Jeremiah’s veins. The pain was so acute he could no longer stand; his knees buckled under him.
Visions flooded Fox’s mind. Jeremiah’s whole personal history unveiled itself to her – and this is how she learned Jeremiah Chase had fallen in love with her.
When she saw this, her instinct was to pull away her hand, but Bunny wasn’t finished and she continued to hold them together. Fox wondered if it was two-way traffic, and which of her secrets Jeremiah now knew. She wondered if he had learned how much she hated him.
“It is done,” Bunny said, dropping their hands. “Come on,” she said addressing Jeremiah, “you might as well make yourself useful.”
They walked up to the ruins of the woodshed. Despite the snow, they were still too hot. Bunny bent down and took her wand from her pocket. She placed the tip of it in the snow and they watched as ice spread up and over the steaming piles of charred wood. Convinced it was now cool enough, Bunny began pulling at the burned timbers.
“Don’t just stand there!” she cried.
Fox and Jeremiah began pulling at the wood, too. It didn’t take long before they could see something underneath. Nestled in the middle of the flames, curled up in a ball and surrounded by a wobbling transparent shield, was Swan; giving the surreal impression of a baby curled up in its amniotic sack.
“Oh, my word!” Fox exclaimed. “How…?” her words trailed off at the miracle in front of her. Swan’s clothes and hair were burned away, and she was covered in black soot but she looked peaceful, as if she were sleeping.
“I guess your uncle wouldn’t be too pleased about this,” Bunny said. “Now you understand why you had to make the bond. Your uncle cannot know of this.”
Jeremiah nodded. “I understand. You have my word no one shall hear of this from me.”
Bunny stared at him intensely and shook her head slowly. “We have no need of your word, Jeremiah; we have your blood.”
Jeremiah shuffled uncomfortably. He still didn’t truly understand what she meant by this, but the way Bunny said it suggested his pledge might come to be something he regretted at a later date. Subconsciously, he flexed his hand, as if he to hide the ugly red scratch and undo it.
As they continued to move away the burned logs and ashes, Fox asked Jeremiah, “So this is what your uncle does for a living? I’ve heard of Witch Hunters but I didn’t think they really existed.”
Jeremiah let out an awkward laugh. “That’s a bit like me and Witches. I mean I’ve always known Daniel was a Witch Hunter, but I didn’t ever really think the Witches he dealt with were actual Witches; I thought they were nut-jobs with over active imaginations and a sadistic murderous streak.”
“So you’ve met the Ravenhearts then!” Bunny said, cracking a reluctant smile.
The mention of the Ravenhearts prompted his memory of an earlier comment Bunny had thrown away.
“What did you mean when you said I ‘petrified’ Nigella?” he asked.
Bunny seemed surprised by the question. “When you touched the space above her heart, you stopped it, of course.”
Jeremiah’s forehead wrinkled.
“The same with the lips. If a Witch Hunter presses his lips to a Witch, it stops her breath. If the touch is brief, then it will simply petrify the victim, but if it is longer, then death will ensue.” Bunny scowled. “Hasn’t your father told you how this all works?”
Fox blushed at the memory of the kiss that never was. What would have happened if she and Jeremiah had kissed? Would she now be dead? For some inexplicable reason, a feeling of loss emerged rather than relief.
“My father?” Jeremiah asked.
“Yes. The Witch Hunter blood is passed down the paternal line,” Bunny replied.
“But my father isn’t a Witch Hunter – it’s my uncle who...”
Bunny wrinkled her nose. “But your father must be one, too – if your uncle and father share the same father, which I guess they do – and his father before him?”
Jeremiah snorted. The thought of his corporate fat-cat father living the alter-ego life of a Witch Hunter – all leather jackets and Holy Water didn’t seem likely – a hired assassin is more my father’s style, he thought bitterly.
“But just because you’re born a Witch Hunter, doesn’t mean you have to actually go hunting down witches – does it?” he offered.
Bunny shrugged. “I think it’s probably a bit like Witchcraft – you don’t get a choice when your gifts come in.”
Jeremiah had a million questions he wanted to ask, but their conversation was cut short by the surreal sight in front of them. With an adequate space cleared, Bunny retracted the shimmering protection shield, exposing Swan’s curled body to the cold air. She shivered when the snowflakes touched her naked skin. Normally, Jeremiah would have found the situation a little embarrassing, but this wasn’t – it was no more embarrassing than seeing a naked new born; only rather than the joy and wonder that accompanies birth, this perverted version felt sad and injurious.
Swan’s eyes fluttered open and slowly took in the scene. She was trying to determine if she were still alive or whether she had passed through to another world. Fox bent down and inspected her closely. She was shocked at the damage they had earlier underestimated.
Bunny let out a low, “Oh my!” at the sight of Swan’s cheek pressed against the embers. An angry red burn covered most of her face and neck, her hair had mostly burned away, and what was left, was so brittle it threatened to blow away in the wind. Although Bunny had
been surprisingly brave until this point, she now turned back into the baby sister. Tears brimmed her eyes. She held out her wand with a wavering hand and closed her eyes, silently mouthing a secret incantation. With the shimmering shield now gone, the sweet sickly smell of burning flesh hung in the air.
Swan opened a swollen eye-lid and looked straight at them with the eye of an injured animal. Fox dropped her voice so it was barely more than a whisper, “We should have asked Rose to stay; her powers of healing are stronger than ours.”
Bunny’s voice wobbled. “I thought I’d done it in time. I thought I’d saved her.”
“You did Bunny – you did save her!”
Fox smoothed the hair out of Swan’s eyes, at which Swan let out a small cry.
“Ssh, Swan, it’s going to be okay, darling, it’s going to be okay.” Fox offered these reassurances knowing in her heart that everything was going to be far from okay.
*
Getting her home was going to be almost impossible, Jeremiah thought. He stumbled up onto the base of the pyre and made to move her, stopping when he saw the injurious state she was in. He tried to hide his expression but he hadn’t been quick enough.
“We should call an ambulance,” he offered. “She looks really fragile.”
“And say what exactly, Jeremiah?” Fox snapped. “That our sister has been burned at the stake by a deranged Witch Hunter who mistakenly believed she was in league with the Devil?”
Jeremiah fell silent and shrugged his shoulders. There was nothing he could say to make things better. From that point on he did exactly as he was told and kept silent.
Swan screamed out at the sensation of Fox’s coat being wrapped around her and Jeremiah’s arms pushing their way underneath her. Despite her slight appearance, it still took Jeremiah by surprise to discover just how heavy she was. He stumbled, almost dropping her. He had no idea how he was meant to carry her all the way back to Meadowsweet Cottage. Sensing his anxiety, Bunny said, “Don’t worry, we’ll share the load.”
There was something in the way she said it that led him to believe there would be some magical assistance. He turned to Fox, trying to understand just who these weird sisters were and what power they truly held.