by J. A. White
Fen’de Stone raised one hand into the air, commanding their silence.
“Of course,” he said. He wore a smile of relief on his face, but Kara knew that it was just for show. “It appears as though she’s not a witch after all. How fortunate.”
He held out a hand to Kara.
“Allow me to help you to your feet, dear. I am so sorry if we scared you—but I’m sure you understand. One can never be too careful about these things.”
“My mother,” she said.
“Oh yes,” the fen’de replied, and his smile transformed into something far more genuine, far more terrible. “Your mother.”
Afterward the crowd began to shuffle toward the village, conversations already turning back to practical matters such as livestock and fertilizer. The sun had risen in the sky, the day’s work begun.
Kara’s father stood at the base of the stairs. The baby in his arms wailed fiercely.
“He’s hungry,” Father said. There was a large, red welt on his cheek where one of the graycloaks had struck him. He refused to meet her eyes.
Kara looked at the small bundle in his arms.
“Can I hold him?” she asked.
Father nodded, passing the baby to Kara with a relieved expression on his face. He collapsed to the earth as though holding his son had been the only thing keeping him on his feet.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m—”
Kara left him and started toward the village.
Gently folding back the blanket, Kara regarded the newest member of her family. She hadn’t seen many babies before, but she could tell that Taff was small, even for a newborn. His eyes, barely open, were light like their father’s.
“Hello, baby brother,” she said. “My name is Kara.”
The morning was cold, and Kara held him close, trying to pass her warmth into him.
“I have sad news, Baby Taff. You’ll never get to meet Mama. But you don’t have to worry. I’ll always be here. I’ll always protect you.”
Kara took one last look across the field. Her mother’s body had been removed. Workers were already dismantling the scaffold. The only sounds came from a group of giggling children tossing pinecones at Bailey Riddle, who spun round and round and screamed girlishly in mock pain.
“No one is ever going to hurt you,” Kara whispered to the baby.
She stared at Bailey Riddle until he finally looked up and met her gaze. Unlike Taff, Kara had her mother’s eyes, black as a forest night.
The man gasped.
“No one,” she said.
Kara held her brother close the entire walk back to the village. By the time they reached their house, he had fallen asleep in her arms.
Bailey Riddle died later that night, viciously attacked by some sort of wild animal. There were no witnesses, and as Bailey was not especially well liked, he was simply buried and forgotten.
These things did happen.
BOOK ONE
SIGNS
“A witch often hides behind an innocent face.
That’s why you must know the signs to look for.”
—The Path
Leaf 17, Vein 26
Hand in hand, the witch’s children walked down the empty road.
The girl, twelve and as thin as a willow branch, wore a simple black school dress with a white collar, patched in several places but immaculately clean. Her dark hair was coiled in a tight bun. Sometimes she allowed a few rebellious strands to hang across her forehead, but not today.
Her name was Kara. Mostly she was called other things.
Taff, her brother, was small for his age, with sandy hair. The morning was cold, and twin blooms of red spotted his pale cheeks. Without thinking, Kara reached over and checked his temperature with the back of her hand.
In the distance a figure approached.
It was early, even for the few farmers who used this road to transport their goods to the main village. Past hills of plotted land, sunlight peeked through the sky-scratching branches of the Thickety like an uncertain visitor.
Taff squeezed his sister’s hand.
The figure drew close enough for Kara to recognize the plodding gait of Davin Gray. He lived on the edge of the island but spent most of his time traveling from farm to farm, making repairs. She had once asked him to patch their roof when Father had been in a bad way. Davin Gray had laughed in her face.
Despite this, Kara knew her manners.
“Good morning, Mr. Gray,” she said. She squeezed Taff’s hand, who surrendered a quiet, “Morning.”
Refusing to meet their eyes, the man spat on the ground and traced a path as far from the pair as the road would take him.
“Evil,” he growled. “Just like the mother.”
When Davin Gray had passed, the children, used to such encounters, continued their journey. Perhaps Kara held her brother a bit closer. That was all.
I don’t want to do this, Kara thought as they approached the farmhouse. She started to turn around but then remembered her desperation last night upon boiling water and finding nothing—literally nothing—in the cupboard to cook. What Kara wanted wasn’t important anymore. It was all about need.
Before she could change her mind, Kara trudged up the wooden steps, dragging Taff behind her. The farmhouse had recently been whitewashed, and an expensive Fenroot branch hung across the door so Timoth Clen would recognize the residents’ devotion upon his Return. It reminded Kara that she needed to chop some firewood before night fell.
She took a moment to straighten her dress before knocking on the door.
“Be good,” she told Taff.
Taff nodded.
“Promise.”
“It ain’t me. They’re the ones—”
“Promise.”
Taff sighed deeply. “I promise, Kara.”
The door opened.
Constance Lamb’s face, a poorly harrowed field of scars, loomed before them. Kara looked away. The sins of my mother are not mine to bear, she reminded herself, but the thought provided little comfort. It never did.
“What are you doing here?” Constance asked. She wore a freshly starched housedress and a white linen bonnet. Even the clouds of flour on her apron looked neat and orderly.
“Good morning, Mrs. Lamb.”
“It’s barely morning at all. And I asked you a question.”
“I’m here about your horse, ma’am. Mr. Lamb sent for me. He spoke to my father and told him he had a mare with a gimp foot. My father suggested I offer my assistance. I’m good with animals.”
Constance inhaled, slowly and deeply, then freed the air through clenched teeth.
“Well, if there was such an arrangement, it’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
“Mr. Lamb agreed to two browns.”
“Two!” Constance held a hand to her heart as though such an outlandish sum might strike her dead on the spot. But Kara felt that the price—which would buy them little more than a dozen eggs and some new socks for Taff—was more than fair.
“I’ll do a good job,” Kara said. “I promise. I’m good—”
“—with animals. Yes, you mentioned that.”
Kara waited. There was no sense in speaking more. The woman would either allow her to earn the seeds or she would not.
“You can find your way to the stable, I presume?” Constance finally asked.
“Yes, ma’am. What’s the mare’s name?”
“Shadowdancer’s what we call her. Though I don’t see why it matters any.”
It mattered a lot, but Kara didn’t bother explaining. Constance wouldn’t understand, and the truth would only cause rumors and whispers.
“May as well know, that horse is crazy. Don’t let my husband or any of the farmhands near her on a good day, and now that she’s hurting . . .” Constance shook her head. “Broke Eric Whitney’s arm when he tried to help her.”
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Lamb. I’ll be careful.”
“Be quick about it, then.�
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Constance began to close the door.
“Ma’am! There is one other thing.”
“What now?”
Kara wasn’t sure how to begin. It had been so long since she asked for another person’s help that the words felt strange, a language unspoken for years. But once upon a time, Constance Lamb had been her mother’s friend, and Kara hoped that still counted for something.
“It’s a cold morning, and my brother has been frequently ill.”
Taff tugged at his sister’s hand. “I’m fine!”
“If it’s at all possible, could he wait inside your house while I attend to Shadowdancer? You needn’t even know he’s there. Taff is as quiet—”
“I am not staying with this loony old mudswallow.”
“—as a mouse.”
Constance regarded the two of them, and Taff in particular, with what might have been the slightest hint of amusement.
“Wait,” she said, and went back into the house.
Kara and Taff stood in silence, Kara glaring at her brother.
“What?” he asked.
Constance returned with a thick, woolen blanket and a pair of mittens.
“Take these. Leave the blanket on the bench outside the stable when you leave. The mittens are far too big for you, but you can keep them anyway. I knitted them for my husband, but he refuses to wear them. Says they’re ‘itchy.’ Consider it a gift from a—what was it?—loony old mudswallow.”
Constance Lamb shut the door in their faces before they could thank her.
It was the blanket—and not the mittens—that made Taff’s skin itch, but within minutes Kara noticed that he had stopped sniffling as much. Mrs. Lamb’s gifts were a threadbare sort of kindness, but a kindness nonetheless.
“Can’t I come with you?” Taff asked when they had reached the stable.
“No.”
“I want to see.”
“It’s just a horse.”
“But I love horses. They’re interesting.”
Interesting was Taff’s newest word, and he used it as frequently as possible, playing with it like a new toy.
“You know what’ll happen,” she said.
Saying this made Kara feel cruel, but Taff needed to accept the truth of things; he couldn’t get close to an animal without gasping for breath, or getting a headache, or breaking out into a coughing fit, or all of the above. Once he had stubbornly fed the sheep, and angry red splotches had erupted all over his body.
“I brought an apple,” Taff said. “To feed him.”
“It’s a her. And she’s sick, so she would probably just spit it out.”
Taff withdrew the fruit from his pocket and offered it to his sister. It was shrunken and sad, the only type of crop their fields produced these days.
“Could you give it to her anyway?” he asked softly. “And tell her it’s from me?”
Kara stroked her brother’s hair, which had begun to curl around his ears. She mentally added “give Taff a haircut” to her list of chores.
“I can do that.”
After making sure that Taff had his drawing pad and a piece of charcoal, Kara entered the stable. She found Shadowdancer in the last stall. The mare was as large as a draft horse, with glossy black hair and wiry muscles. A silver puddle spilled across her neck like moonlight.
“I’m here to help you,” Kara said, patting the horse’s flank. Shadowdancer regarded her cautiously but did not shy away. “I might be able to make the hurt go away, if you let me.”
Kara needed to see the injured leg, but she couldn’t just grab it—that would be a breach of trust—so she asked the horse, singing the song her mother had taught her so many years ago, the one with the words Kara didn’t understand, whispering it in Shadowdancer’s ear like a lullaby.
Shadowdancer raised her hoof.
Kara saw the problem instantly: a too-small puncture rimmed with red. Unless the infection was given enough room to drain, the sickness would spread up Shadowdancer’s leg, and once it did the blood fever would overtake her and make recovery impossible. It was a common problem, but one that had to be fixed quickly.
Reaching into the pocket of her dress, Kara withdrew a penknife. Shadowdancer bucked and turned, but Kara sang her mother’s song again, her hand straying to the wooden locket beneath her dress, and the mare’s eyes glazed over. Kara dug deeply into the hoof and quickly made two new holes to either side of the main wound, then packed all three with a poultice that would draw the infection downward. The medicine was her mother’s recipe, ground together from Fringe weeds—two little facts Kara would not be mentioning to the Lambs.
“I doubt the next few hours will be very pleasant,” she whispered in the horse’s ear. “But after that you’ll be fine.” She slipped Taff’s apple into Shadowdancer’s mouth. “That’s from my brother, Taff. He’s sick like you. But you’re both going to be better soon.” She stroked Shadowdancer’s mane, and a warm feeling—the feeling that she had done something good and right—expanded throughout her body.
With newfound confidence Kara searched the barn for Jacob Lamb, intending to get her seeds before she left for school. She found the farmer feeding his pigs, a squirming mass of mud-cloaked bodies packed tightly into a pen. They snorted fiercely as he dumped a bucket of cornmeal onto the ground.
“How’s my animal?” Jacob asked. He spoke slowly, but his eyes were quick and sharp.
“Shadowdancer’s wound got infected. But she’s going to be fine now,” Kara said.
Jacob stood there. He seemed content to stand there forever.
“Sir?” Kara shifted uncomfortably. “You spoke to my father of payment?”
Kara couldn’t hear his reply over the cacophony of snorting. Jacob kicked one of the pigs and called it something indecipherable.
“Pardon me?” she asked.
“By the farmhouse, there’s three bushels of corn! Take a few ears!”
“Corn.”
“Picked it this morning.”
“You promised my father that I would be paid with seeds.” She winced at how weak she sounded. “Two browns, to be exact.”
“You know your father. He don’t always remember things right.”
“He wouldn’t forget this.”
Jacob shrugged. “Maybe I did say two browns. Maybe not. I don’t see why it matters none.” He placed a single gray seed in Kara’s hand and closed her fingers around it. “There’s no reason to pay you at all. You understand that? You tell anyone I cheated you, and I’ll just say you’re a liar. Now who do you think they’re going to believe? A fine, upstanding farmer like myself? Or the daughter of a known witch?”
Kara clenched her fist around the gray, a tenth of the agreed price. “It’s not fair,” she said, close to tears and hating herself for it.
“Of course it ain’t,” Jacob said. He chortled. “But take a few ears of corn too. I’m feeling downright charitable today.” He turned his back and poured water into the swine trough, continuing with his day as though she had already left. You shouldn’t treat me this way, Kara thought, scratching her palm with work-worn nails. She imagined the pigs seizing upon the man, snorts and screams and gnashing teeth blending together as he struggled in vain to escape. . . .
“Hey!” Jacob shouted. He shook Kara, snapping her back to reality. “What are you doing? Stop staring at me like that!”
“I’m sorry,” she said, backing away. “I’m so sorry!” Looking past the farmer, she saw the pigs lined up at the edge of the pen, watching her with rapt attention. They had finally stopped snorting.
The children made their way back up the hill, the boy wearing his new mittens, the girl clutching a potato sack that held six ears of corn. They did not speak. This was difficult for the boy, who loved to fill the air with words. He had grown proficient at reading the various silences of his sister, however, and he recognized, from her tight lips and the white-knuckled way she clenched the sack, that this was the type of silence best left unbroken.
&n
bsp; Neither of them noticed the bird.
It perched on a branch just above them, a single eye set into its breast. The creature regarded the girl and noted, with special interest, the wooden locket around her neck. Its eye spun like a top and flashed a panoply of colors—stone gray, ocean blue, forest green—before settling on a fiery crimson. The bird watched the children until they were gone, then extended its wings and swooped with surprising speed toward the Thickety, eager to make its report. After all these years, the girl was finally ready.
Kara was late. She walked between the perfectly spaced desks, past girls in their identical school dresses and boys in white shirts and suspenders. Eyes straight ahead. No eye contact, that was the trick. The less they noticed her, the less they would hate her. From the corner of her eye, she saw that Grace’s seat was empty, and even though Kara wanted to shout with joy, she kept her face void of emotion. They didn’t like it when she smiled.
Kara slid into her seat just as Master Blackwood entered the room. The old man, holding a freshly cut switch from a tamarind tree, gazed out at his young charges, waiting for silence. He did not have to wait long. When the switch leaned against the corner of the room—that was one thing. But when Master Blackwood held it in his hands, the class understood what that implied: a promise of pain. And although age might have caused the old schoolmaster to stoop over when he walked or occasionally forget his path during lessons, it had not made him any slower—or less forgiving—in his disciplinary duties.
“Work hard, want nothing,” Master Blackwood intoned.
“Stay vigilant,” the students replied in unison.
Master Blackwood smiled and touched the shoulder of a boy in the first row who was just a few years older than Taff. Students at the Older Schoolhouse ranged from eight to fourteen, but it was no secret that Master Blackwood favored the younger children.
“As you know, before he recorded his teachings in the Path, Timoth Clen cleansed the world of witches, sacrificing himself so we could enjoy almost two thousand years of peace.” He made his way deeper into the classroom, finding them one at a time with his eyes, the switch a constant presence in his hands. “But despite what those ungrateful fools in the World might believe, that does not mean magic is dead. We, the loyal followers of the Clen’s teachings, know that for sure.” He paused in front of Kara, and she felt a bead of sweat roll down her neck. What am I going to be blamed for now? “And so, my pupils, you must learn to recognize the signs of a soul in danger. Not just in danger of becoming a witch, but in danger of embracing magic in its worldly forms as well, for even this is a fall from the Path. We must remain ever vigilant, so we will be prepared when Timoth Clen returns to lead our people to glory once more.”