The Thickety: A Path Begins

by J. A. White

  “Kara!”

  His voice was surprisingly sharp in the darkness.

  “Do you remember Tanith? The old Burner who lives in the house next to mine? Too many years close to the flames, mutters about dry waterfalls and words made of minced sky?”

  “Yes . . .”

  “You’re making her sound downright lucid right now.”

  “You’re not funny,” Kara said, but she couldn’t help smiling anyway. “It’s just—everything has spiraled out of control. I don’t even know where to begin.”

  Lucas slid his hand into hers.

  “I’m no talespinner, but I’ve found that the beginning is usually an excellent place. Take your time. We have all night.”

  She told him everything.

  The one-eyed bird. Her trip into the Thickety. Finding the grimoire. Her first spell. The dark temptation of the book. Grace’s power. Taff’s kidnapping. Simon’s death. Her vision in the Well.

  Lucas remained silent, offering neither judgment nor sympathy. Just listening.

  By the time she’d finished, dawn was less than an hour away. Though Kara hadn’t slept, she felt more refreshed than she had in weeks. She was reminded of something Mother had once told her, when Kara—plagued by guilt—had confessed to some meaningless fib: Now you understand, child. Secrets and lies can weigh more than boulders.

  Lucas got to his feet and stretched in the dark. He looked out the tiny window.

  “Do you think anyone can use this grimoire? Or just . . .”

  “Witches?”

  “. . . people with the right sort of talent?”

  “Constance said she couldn’t use it. My guess is that Mother originally planned to teach both of them, but only Abby had the ability.”

  “Let me see if I understand this correctly. You see a blank page until you conjure a creature, and afterward its image appears in the book. But Grace . . .”

  “. . . opens the book, and whatever she wants appears.”

  “But what does that mean? How are you two different?”

  “She’s more powerful. All I can do is conjure animals. Grace can do anything she wants.”

  Lucas shook his head.

  “I’m not so sure about that. Remember, it’s the grimoire that decides what Grace can and cannot do. Your ability might have limitations, but it’s still your ability. Even without a spellbook, you’ve always had a way with animals that bordered on enchantment. The grimoire just helped you focus your talent, take it one step further. With Grace, it’s too easy. I get the sense that the grimoire is using her, not the other way around.”

  Kara had never thought of it like that. “It’s giving her exactly what she needs so she’ll keep using it, because once she casts the Last Spell, it’ll have her forever, just like Aunt Abby.” She shuddered, remembering the terror in Abby’s voice. “What do you think happened to her? Is she still . . . alive?”

  “I don’t know,” Lucas said. “Just make sure you never find out.”

  “You don’t need to worry about that. I’m through with magic. Everything we’ve learned, all the Path’s teachings—they’re totally correct. Magic is evil.”

  “Really? After listening to your story, I’m not so sure.”

  “All of this happened because of magic!”

  “No. All of this happened because Grace Stone—who, as you might have noticed, was not a very nice person to begin with—liked the feeling of power that magic gave her and became obsessed with getting more. You need to stop blaming yourself. As far as I can tell, your use of magic includes saving my life and Taff’s.”

  “You’re wrong. I’ve done bad things.”

  “Who hasn’t?”

  “I’m a witch, just like they say I am!”

  “Sure. But that doesn’t make you bad.”

  “I killed a man!”

  “And if you had done nothing? Then Taff’s death would have been your responsibility. You did what needed to be done, even though you didn’t want to. That’s not evil. That’s courage.”

  Kara wrapped her arms around her legs.

  “Then why don’t I feel brave?”

  “Because you’re too busy feeling guilty. If this is going to work, you need to accept the fact that being a witch is part of who you are. Because, if everything goes well, you’re going to have to use magic again.”

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  “You will. When the time is right, I know you will. We just have to figure out a way to escape from the graycloaks . . .”

  “. . . sneak back into the village, past hundreds of people who will be hunting me down, and convince my greatest enemy to heal my brother.”

  “When you put it like that, my plan to rescue you doesn’t sound half as crazy.”

  Kara rose and stood next to him.

  “There’s one thing I didn’t tell you,” she said. “I saw Sordyr.”

  Lucas didn’t say a word, but Kara saw his grip tighten around the bars of the window.

  “What was it like?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s like trying to describe a dream after you’ve woken. I only remember the way I felt in his presence. Cold. Lost.”

  “The Thickety is hundreds of miles deep. We’ll make our escape as quickly as possible. Chances are, we won’t come anywhere near him.”

  Lucas was trying to sound brave, but Kara could hear the fear in his voice.

  “I want to believe that. But he spoke to me. He knows my name.”

  “You think he wants to hurt you?”

  And finally Kara spoke her greatest secret, the thought—too horrible to say out loud—that had been circling through her head since the night she’d stepped into the Thickety.

  “I don’t think he wants to hurt me at all,” she said. “I think he wants to keep me.”

  Lucas’s eyes widened. He turned back to the window. It was still dark, but a soft nimbus of purple light had appeared on the horizon. “We should stop talking,” he said, “and save our energy. The only thing we can do now is wait for them to come.”

  They never came.

  The sun rose and bathed the stall in light and warmth, but it remained quiet outside. No sounds of guards changing duty. No horse clops in the distance.

  No one brought them breakfast.

  “Fen’de Stone must have gotten distracted by something important,” Lucas said. “We should try to get some sleep while we can.”

  Kara nodded, but she had trouble believing that Fen’de Stone had simply found something more important to do. You didn’t hear him. He aims to find the grimoire and restore the honor of his people. Nothing could be more important than that.

  Despite her swirling thoughts, Kara managed to fall asleep. When she awoke again, it was early evening and Lucas was standing by the window.

  “Still quiet,” he said.

  It remained that way the entire night.

  The next morning they combed the stall for possible weaknesses. At first they had no luck, but then Lucas saw a hoof file that had slipped between the cracks of the floorboards.

  “I might be able to use that to pick the lock,” he said. “If I knew how to pick a lock.”

  “Maybe we could use it to pry under the nails,” Kara suggested. “Pull a piece of the wall away. Sort of dig our way out.”

  They tried everything to get the file: stomping on the floorboards, using their fingernails to dig beneath the wood, tying strands of hay together to lasso it up. Nothing worked.

  Three days passed. The hunger was bad but nothing compared to the thirst. To conserve what little moisture remained in their cracked lips, they began to use hand signals. Mostly, though, they just lay on the floor and waited for something to happen.

  “Why doesn’t anyone come?” Lucas whispered when it had grown dark.

  “He’s trying to make us weak,” Kara said. “This way he knows we’ll do what he wants us to do.”

  “What if he changed his mind?”

  “No. He wants the grimoire too much.” />
  “He could have found it on his own. Caught Grace with it.”

  Kara shivered. She had not considered that possibility. “You’re right,” she said. “If he has what he wants, he might just leave us here to die. That’s something he would do.”

  Lucas laid his hand on her arm.

  “Forget what I said. You were right. He’s just doing this to make us weak. We can’t let him win.”

  “Can we talk about something else?” Kara asked. “Just pretend things are normal for a little while?”

  “Sure,” Lucas said. The stable grew silent as Kara tried to think of something to say—something normal. . . .

  Lucas spoke first.

  “Hanson Blair lied. He has no idea where my family is. I caught him laughing at me with a group of his friends. I feel like such a fool.”

  “You’re not a fool, Lucas. You just wanted to believe. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  An uncustomary desperation crept into his voice. “And now I’m never going to know who they are. I’ll never be able to ask them why they left me here.”

  Kara longed to comfort him, but his wounds cut deeper than words could mend. Instead she put an arm around his shoulders.

  “Well, I’m glad they did,” Kara said. “You’re my best friend.”

  In the darkness she saw Lucas smile. “You’re glad my parents left me to a life of servitude working in a field of deadly plants? Some friend.”

  Kara pinched his arm.

  “We’re going to get out of here,” she said. “Watch. We’re due a little luck.”

  She was awoken by the jingle of keys.

  Through sleep-hazed eyes she saw a large figure, his face concealed beneath the folds of a hooded cloak, struggling to open the lock to their cell. The man’s hands shook badly.

  “Lucas,” Kara said. “Lucas! Get up!”

  Lucas mumbled something incoherent and turned over.

  The man dropped a large ring of iron keys. Bent down to pick them up. Fumbled with the lock some more.

  Kara shoved Lucas. Hard.

  “What?” he asked. He was still groggy, but his eyes were open.

  Kara pointed at the figure just as the door swung open. The man stepped inside and removed his hood.

  It was Fen’de Stone.

  Although he did not appear to be wounded, there was blood everywhere. His face. His clothes.

  His eyes found Kara.

  “You,” he said.

  The fen’de withdrew a long dagger from a sheath inside his cloak. The jeweled weapon seemed more ornamental than functional, though judging from its gore-encrusted blade, it could still serve its natural purpose.

  Lucas stepped in front of Kara.

  “Fen’de Stone?” he asked.

  If the man heard Lucas, he made no indication. He continued to approach Kara, step by lumbering step, his mad eyes never leaving hers.

  “You,” he repeated. “You.”

  When he was only a few feet away, Kara felt Lucas tense, ready to pounce. But there was no need. The fen’de collapsed to his knees and laid his dagger at Kara’s feet.

  “You need to save us,” he said, the words nearly incomprehensible through his blubbering tears. “I tried, but I can’t do it. I’m not strong enough. You need to make her stop hurting my people!”

  “Who?” Lucas asked.

  Fen’de Stone looked at Kara with pleading eyes, and for a moment she almost pitied him.

  “My daughter,” he said.

  Kara would never take freedom for granted again. She luxuriated in the warmth of the sun, the playful caress of the morning breeze. After the initial flush of pleasure, however, she realized that it was all wrong. The air should have been fragrant with the whistlebuds and landrils that bloomed this time of year, but instead it was as stale as a tomb. Eerie silence, bereft of the usual buzzing and fluttering, accentuated every footstep they made.

  She felt like a stranger in someone else’s dream.

  “It started four days ago,” Fen’de Stone said, moving with surprising speed along the crooked path. “Little things at first. Milk spoiling for no reason. Plants sprouting out of the ground, roots up. The Elders were convinced it was your evil presence leaking into our community. They promised that everything would go back to normal once you were executed.”

  Fen’de Stone stopped so suddenly that Kara nearly ran into him. He regarded her with bloodshot, bulging eyes.

  “They wanted to kill you right away. It was me who saved you. I told them that they were wrong. I protected you, Kara! Remember that. Remember that I’m your friend.”

  He stood close, waiting for her to respond, his body rank with dirt and sweat.

  You hurt me. You killed my mother and made me watch.

  “I’ll remember everything,” Kara said quietly.

  With a short grunt of satisfaction, Fen’de Stone spun on one heel and continued walking, his pace even more frantic than before. Kara assumed that they were headed toward the village, but although it would have been shorter to cut through the wooded area to their left, Fen’de Stone refused to leave the main path.

  “It was the cattle that changed everything. Rancher Samuelson called on me—pulled me out of bed in the middle of the night. I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t believe him at first. Thought maybe he had been tipping the moondrink again, as he was wont to do in his younger years. But he’s been a good member of the Fold, so I donned my cloak and followed him out just the same. I noticed that Grace’s room was empty as I left, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. That girl always had some odd ways about her, and sometimes she just went walking. I punished her as a righteous father should, but it never did any good.”

  He’s speaking about her in the past tense, Kara thought, as though she were never his daughter at all.

  “What happened?” Kara asked.

  The fen’de scratched a dried spot of blood on his scalp. “Samuelson’s property, as you know, borders the Clearer land on one side. That’s nothing he’s happy about, but his family was one of the last to settle here, and someone has to live close to those . . .” The fen’de hesitated, his eyes shifting in Lucas’s direction. “. . . people. But Samuelson can be a stubborn sort, and he got it in his mind that if he built a stone wall along the northern edge of his ranch, he might keep away any unwanted guests. It’s ridiculous, really—the wall is barely taller than I am. Any Stench with a mind for trouble could just—”

  “The cattle,” Lucas said.

  “Dead, or well along the way. I am a great lover of animals—as our blessed Timoth Clen was before me—and this was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen. Flanks torn apart, legs shattered. My soul twisted in sorrow for those pitiable creatures. I helped Samuelson put them out of their misery afterward.”

  “Something attacked them?” Lucas asked. He inadvertently touched his ruined hand. “Maybe something from the Thickety?”

  “No. There were no bite marks. No unusual paw prints. As far as we could tell, the entire herd of cattle just kept battering the wall, over and over again, until they killed themselves.”

  “It was Grace,” Kara said. “Isn’t that right?”

  The pained expression on Fen’de Stone’s face was answer enough.

  Kara pictured Grace standing on a hill overlooking the cattle, watching them graze peacefully for a time before opening the grimoire. And then, after she spoke the words, a sly smile lifting her lips as the first cow charged the wall.

  Did she hesitate? For even a moment?

  “But why?” asked Lucas.

  “She was testing her powers,” Kara said. “Just like I did at the beginning.” She didn’t like admitting this connection between them, but it deserved to be spoken. “Grace killed all those poor creatures just to see if she could.”

  They journeyed in silence for a long time after that. Although Kara still had questions, the burst of energy that came with escaping the stable had faded, and exhaustion and thirst now made it difficult to con
centrate on anything beyond simple movement. Glancing over at Lucas, she could see the same struggle in his eyes.

  By midafternoon the ground had grown hazy, and her legs threatened to buckle beneath her.

  “We need water,” she finally said. “And food.”

  Fen’de Stone nodded. “Almost there.”

  A simple campsite waited around the next bend: one bedroll, a ring of stones where a fire had once burned, and, most importantly, two glorious water skins. Lucas snatched up the first one and handed it to Kara. She raised it to her cracked lips and drank deeply, limiting herself to three swallows. Vomiting would be very self-defeating.

  Fen’de Stone produced a stick of dried beef from beneath the bedroll. He was about to slice off a considerable portion for himself when Lucas yanked it out of his hands.

  “Give that back, boy!” the fen’de exclaimed.

  Lucas ignored him completely and sliced the meat in two, giving the larger portion to Kara. It was fresh and moist, and although Kara couldn’t help but wonder if it came from Samuelson’s cows, she was too hungry to care.

  After she had taken a few bites and another swallow of water, Kara turned to face Fen’de Stone.

  “The cows were just the beginning, weren’t they?”

  Fen’de Stone kicked at the dirt. “Are you going to make me tell it all, witch?”

  “Yes. If you want my help, I need to know everything.”

  “None of this is my fault!”

  Kara broke off a piece of meat and handed it to the fen’de. “Just tell me what happened.”

  The fen’de nibbled the meat absentmindedly as he spoke but never swallowed a piece. “I haven’t been a perfect father. I’ve often looked upon my daughter with shame. How could anyone blame me? I am the leader of the Fold, chosen to spread the Clen’s message! And yet one look at Grace and all my Children see is her ruined body.”

  “You’re wrong,” Kara said. “They loved Grace. All of them.”

  “No! They snicker about how she’s been touched by pagan magic. I know they do! They laugh at me, and it’s all your mother’s doing!” The fen’de leaped to his feet, eyes flaming with hatred, but his anger flared out as quickly as it had begun. He continued his story. “When I got back to the house after my visit to the Samuelson place, she was waiting for me. She opened that damned book of hers and patched the hole in our ceiling with a single word and then showed me my dead wife in a cupful of tea. ‘Isn’t magic wonderful?’ she asked. ‘I can bring Mama back to us for good, if you’d like me to.’ When I shrieked at her to stop, she grew hurt and angry. She said that there were such good sheep on this island, but they were wasting their time on a . . .” He paused here, as though unwilling to say the words out loud. “. . . dead god. She said the real world mocked the Fold, a bunch of loons living—by choice—on a cursed island. ‘Poor Father,’ she said. ‘I am going to give you all a gift: A god worthy of such noble devotion.’”