by J. A. White
Fen’de Stone turned to Lucas, his voice suddenly calm and conversational. “Did you know that her hair didn’t turn white until she was two years old? The mangled leg was there from the start—her mother screamed when she saw it, the last sound she ever made—but Grace’s hair . . . it was extraordinary. Golden yellow, like saffron. Like she was touched by the sun.”
They ate the rest of their meal in silence.
It was early evening when they found the graycloaks.
They waited over the next rise, as still as statues, ball-staffs held across their bodies. Six of them in total. Their heads were bowed down, concealing their faces beneath the shadows of their hoods.
“Maybe they can help us,” Kara said. She started forward, but Fen’de Stone snatched her arm.
“Those men belong to Grace now,” he said.
Kara lay flat against the ground. The three of them were concealed by a tangle of overgrown weeds and several medium-size boulders. To the east Kara heard ocean waves crashing against the shore. The salty air teased freedom.
“They haven’t seen us yet,” Lucas whispered. “We can circle around. We won’t reach the house till tomorrow, but—”
“That’s too long,” said Kara. “Taff needs me.”
“Taff needs you alive.”
“This is the only way,” said Fen’de Stone. “The other path takes you too close to the village.”
Kara replied with what she hoped was more confidence than she felt. “Fine. Then I’ll face Grace now.”
“You’re not ready.”
“I’ll never be ready. Now is as good a time as any.”
“No. You’re exhausted and starving. You need to rest. Strategize. You’re only going to get one shot to save my village.”
“I don’t care about them. I only care about my brother!”
“Just a thought,” whispered Lucas, “but maybe you two should lower your voices. . . .”
“Your duty is to De’Noran.”
“Duty?” she asked. “Why should I help any of you? I’ve spent my entire life being tormented and humiliated, and I haven’t deserved any of it!”
“Kara,” Lucas said. He placed a hand on the back of her neck, but she shook it away. These were things that needed to be said.
“Did anyone try to help me after my mother was killed? Did anybody have a word of kindness to say? No. But now things are different, because now you need me. Even if I could save this place, give me one good reason why I should!”
Fen’de Stone’s red-rimmed eyes gazed back at her with shocking desperation. He loves them, she thought, and the sudden realization that a man who could torture and murder was also capable of love shifted something in her irrevocably. The old man wiped a trail of snot from beneath his nose. “If there is any good in that heathen heart of yours, hear this: You are the only one who can help them. If you do not, they will die. Now get ready to run.”
With more quickness than he had shown in two decades, Fen’de Stone leaped to his feet. The graycloaks, as one, turned in his direction.
“Men!” Fen’de Stone shouted. Kara kept her head pressed against the earth but heard his footsteps as he made his way down the hill. “Timoth Clen requires your skills one final time! To me, to me!”
Kara heard a whisper of grass as the graycloaks glided closer. “What’s he doing?” she asked.
Lucas held a finger to his lips.
“You are lost, my friends,” Fen’de Stone said. “But I am here to guide you back into the light. Take my hand. Join me. Let us fight this demon together.”
Kara lifted her head just enough to see over the weeds. There hadn’t been nearly enough time for the graycloaks to walk so far up the hill, and yet there they were, surrounding the fen’de in an eerily perfect circle.
“We have to go,” Lucas said.
Kara shook her head.
“We can’t just leave him here—” she started, but then a flash of motion caught her eye as Fen’de Stone was struck across the knee with the ball end of a staff. A whistling noise filled the air, like steam from a kettle. Kara suspected it might have been laughter.
From his knees Fen’de Stone extended his hand out to his attacker. “Come back, my friend.” For just a moment his eyes met Kara’s, and while she might have expected to see terror there, all she saw was joy. “Come back to the Fold. Do not listen to her lies! Have faith! Timoth Clen will return to us. He will never allow such evil to continue!”
As one the graycloaks raised their ball-staffs high into the air. Their cloaks dipped far enough for Kara to see that they were not holding the staffs at all; rather, the wood had become an extension of their left arms, a weapon of flesh and bone.
Fen’de Stone bowed his head.
“Work hard, want nothing,” he whispered.
“Don’t look,” said Lucas.
He pulled Kara to her feet, and the two of them ran away as fast as they could, trying not to think about the sounds behind them.
The Lamb house had been well fortified. Wooden planks, nailed together in tight rows, blocked the windows. A tower of seed sacks leaned against the side door. Stones and broken glass speckled the front yard.
All was silent.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Lucas asked.
Kara advanced slowly, careful to avoid the debris in her bare feet. “Fen’de Stone said my family was here.”
“Maybe at some point. It sure looks empty now.”
“I have to see for myself.”
They climbed the porch steps. Kara remembered her last visit to the house. It had been an unusually cold day, and Mrs. Lamb had given Taff a pair of mittens.
Hardly a season ago. It seemed like a lifetime.
“Hello!” Lucas shouted. He reached past Kara to knock on the front door, and she grabbed his arm, knowing with sudden certainty that Taff was dead and that if they stepped into this house there would be no turning back, and the loss of her brother would become a real thing, a forever thing. But it was too late. The door opened, and Jacob Lamb stepped onto the porch. Three days’ stubble roughened his cheeks, and he stank of moondrink. The wart beneath his eye leaked a thick, clear fluid.
He held a hatchet in his grimy hands.
“Come to gloat, witch?” he asked, his words a drunken slur. “You come to celebrate? We’re done for. All of us.”
“Where’s my father?” Kara asked.
Jacob leaned closer. His breath was warm and rank.
“Maybe she sent you. You’re one and the same. Evil through and through.” He gazed blankly at a point just to the left of Kara’s eyes. “We should have roasted you along with your mother when we had the—”
Suddenly Jacob stiffened. His throat emitted a low, rumbling sound.
“Drop the hatchet,” Lucas said, holding the fen’de’s dagger against Jacob’s neck. “Grace is our enemy. We have to work together, not fight with each other.”
Kara tensed, waiting for Jacob to do something. Lash out with the hatchet. Spit in her face. Grab the dagger from Lucas’s hand.
The last thing she expected him to do was cry.
“It ain’t fair,” he said, his eyes welling up. The hatchet slipped from his hands and clattered to the wood below. “Why did it have to be her? She never hurt anyone her whole life.”
A numbing cold sunk through Kara.
“Constance?” she asked.
Jacob winced at the mention of his wife’s name. “She ran. But she wasn’t fast enough, not for something like that.” He turned to Lucas. “Why didn’t it go after me, boy? I ain’t walked the Path like she did. Why didn’t it go after me instead?”
Lucas lowered his dagger. Kara stepped forward, intending to offer some words of consolation, but Jacob turned from her.
“I called her Connie, when we was alone,” Jacob said. Despite the tears a bright smile filled his face. “Even at the end, I was the only one she ever let call her that.”
He stumbled off the porch and into the bleak afternoon. T
hey watched him for a few moments and then entered the dead woman’s house.
Father lay on the floor of the master bedroom, deeply asleep with no blanket to cover him. His breathing was light and rapid. Kara stepped over him and looked down at the small form in the bed. “Taff,” she whispered. Several quilts were tucked carefully beneath his chin, and a small washbowl filled with murky water sat on the table next to him. Even standing an arm’s length away Kara could feel the heat radiating off his body. The bandage around his head had been freshly changed, yet it did little to contain the black stench of infection that spoiled the air.
“You’re here,” Father said, joints cracking as he pushed himself into a sitting position. Though he seemed genuinely relieved, he looked too exhausted to embrace her. “I wanted to get you myself, but I couldn’t leave him.”
Kara studied her brother. There seemed less of him somehow. She was glad the windows had been boarded up. She feared the slightest breeze might blow him away.
“Taff is more important,” Kara said. “You did the right thing.”
“We should let him sleep. It’s the one comfort we can offer him right now.”
“I’ll wait here. Lucas is out back. He can tell you what happened.”
“We need to talk. There are decisions to be made.”
Father tried to take her by the arm, but Kara shook him off, so he sat on the edge of the bed and cupped her cheek with his hand. Kara’s tears ran freely between his fingers.
“It’s not your fault,” he said.
“I need to be here when he wakes up.”
“He’s not going to wake up, Moonbeam.”
It was the name—the name he hadn’t called her since before Mother died—that convinced her. She allowed him to guide her downstairs into the kitchen. He lit a small fire and heated a pot filled with thick gruel. Kara watched the flames sputter and crackle. She thought, Taff is going to die. Time passed. She looked down and saw a steaming bowl in front of her. Kara had no desire to eat, but her stomach grumbled rebelliously, responding to the smell.
Father sat across the table from her. His eyes were red and swollen but filled with a clarity she hadn’t seen in years, as though this latest sorrow had awoken him at last.
“He hasn’t spoken for two days,” he said. “I change his bandage, make sure he’s clean. Cover him with quilts when he’s cold. Pry open a few planks when he’s warm. I don’t know what else to do.”
“There are weeds in the Fringe that can cool his temperature,” Kara said. “That’s the most important thing. We have to control his fever to give his body a chance to fight the infection. I can leave now, be back with what we need before nightfall.”
Father shook his head.
“I don’t pretend to know as much about healing as you do. But I know when an infection has made its home for good.”
“Wendsdil might help too. Hard to find this time of year, but not—”
“It’s a fool’s errand.”
“I’m not giving up!”
Father looked at her, his eyes hard. “I’m not either. We’re leaving the island first thing tomorrow. Six families in total, plus a few children with nowhere else to go.” He spoke the words slowly, for even now the thought of leaving De’Noran was difficult for him. “If we follow the shore and avoid the village, we should be fine. We aim to steal the ferry and take our chances in the World. I’ve heard there are medicines there that can cure anything.”
“It’s a three-day journey, Father. What if he doesn’t make it?”
“We have to try.”
“We can heal him first and then go.” Kara’s voice grew quiet. “There’s a spell.”
Father absentmindedly stroked his chin. Usually there was stubble there, but he was clean-shaven today. “So it’s true,” he said. “What they say about you.”
“No! I mean, I can do magic—that part’s right—but I never meant to hurt anyone! I was trying to protect Taff. I’m not bad, not like they say! You believe me, Father, don’t you? Please tell me you believe me!”
Kara’s father did not reply. Instead he gathered her into his arms, and Kara let herself sob freely. It had been years since he’d held her, and it felt so good to feel safe and protected. To be a little girl again.
When Kara returned to her seat, she was suddenly starving. “Grace knows a spell that can cure Taff,” she said between mouthfuls of gruel. “I have to convince her to help me somehow. Or maybe I can steal the grimoire and—”
“No,” said Father.
“No?”
“That’s right. No.” He removed a notebook from his back pocket. Kara half expected him to pull out a quill and start writing the usual words, but instead he just twisted the book in his hands. “I realize I haven’t been the best parent since your mother died, but you are still a twelve-year-old girl, and I am still your father. And I am telling you no.”
“You can’t—”
“You’ve been locked up in a cell. You have no idea how Grace Stone has changed. That girl has killed people, Kara. You can’t just waltz into the village and expect her to listen to reason.”
“What other choice do I have?”
“Heal Taff yourself.”
Kara slammed her hands against the table in frustration.
“You’re not listening to me! Even if I wanted to use magic again, even if I knew what spell to cast, Grace has the grimoire!”
Father shook his head. “Grace has Abigail’s grimoire.” He slid the battered notebook across the table. “You have your mother’s.”
Kara stared at the book. Dumbfounded.
“Father?” She spoke slowly and softly, as she did whenever he had an episode. “That’s just a schoolbook. There’s nothing magic about it. You can buy one at the general store for three browns.”
“One of your mother’s more clever ideas, actually. From what she told me, most witches’ grimoires are bulky, ornate tomes—a bit of an ego thing, apparently. What better way to hide it than as a simple notebook?”
“But you’ve written in hundreds of these. I’ve seen you!”
“You assumed there was more than one book, because that’s the reasonable thing to think. But magic isn’t a thing of reason.”
He opened the book and folded it back to the most recent entry of FORGIVE ME sliced into the page. Kara watched as a single E bubbled to the surface and cascaded down the page, vanishing before it hit the kitchen table.
“Every day I fill this book,” Father said. “And by morning it’s blank again. Every day. For seven years.”
He held out the book to her, his hands trembling. Kara looked into his eyes and saw the pleading there: Please take it. Please rid me of this curse.
Kara took it.
She knew the moment she touched the book that it was indeed her mother’s. This is right, it seemed to be saying. You have found your path at last.
Kara opened the book.
Her father’s words had vanished, replaced by the same liquid-black leaves she had seen in Grace’s grimoire. Kara placed her finger into one of them and sent concentric ripples to the four corners of the page.
My mother used this page to cast a spell, she thought. But it’s closed to me.
Kara turned to the next two pages. Both black. She flipped frantically through the book, trying to control her rising panic. Black, black, black. Is this some sort of joke? Why would Mother leave me a useless spellbook? She flipped the book over and started from the back. The last page was torn and yellowed with age, but blank. Except that one doesn’t count, Kara thought, remembering Abigail’s horrifying final screams. I can’t cast it. She flipped to the previous page and sighed with relief: At least she could use this one.
Kara worked her way backward, counting castable pages. It did not take long.
“Five spells,” she said. “That’s all she left me. Not counting the Last Spell, which is—”
“—not an option. Ever.”
Father’s quick response surprised her. “You
sound like you know a lot about it,” Kara said.
Father shrugged wearily. “Just enough,” he said. “Helena explained it to me one night and never spoke of it again, which was fine by me—I could overlook the fact that she was a witch because I couldn’t imagine a life without her, but I never got comfortable listening to the details. She said that a grimoire, like a lantern, needs fuel to power it—except instead of kerosene it burns the life force of witches foolish enough to have used it. When such a witch is all used up—when the grimoire has sapped her completely dry—she just fades from existence. This process might take decades. Or centuries. But according to your mother—and I have no reason to doubt her—the pain is so excruciating that you would be driven mad within the first hour.” Father looked at her with a curious expression. “But all it takes is one spell to heal Taff. As far as I can tell, you have more magic than you need.”
Kara leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. There was no longer any need to confront Grace at all. The spell Kara needed to save her brother’s life was right in her hands.
Once she figured out how to cast it.
Kara filled the washing basin and splashed some water onto her face, then tied her hair back so it wouldn’t get in her eyes. The candle next to Taff’s bed had been reduced to a misshapen stub, so she worked with the last vestiges of daylight filtering through the wooden beams.