by Jasmine Walt
My teeth shift, all turning to sharp points, and I accidentally bite the inside of my cheek. The sweet, berry-like taste of my own blood fills my mouth.
Instinctually, I know my last hope is to bite Verity. William was right—I always know what to do, as though all this knowledge came when I was transformed. The way a newborn baby knows to drink its mother’s milk. Biting Verity will release a high dose of my poison that no Mort can withstand.
When I bite her, the bite mark steams, and the Mort explodes into black particles.
Immediately, I set to run, knowing I need to get away before the town can get me. But my movement is restricted. The world slows. Everything comes to a halt. Something restrains me, but I still don’t understand how. I am stronger and faster than these people.
“Did you see that?” a voice shouts.
My arms are bound painfully behind my back. My wrists are burning.
Iron. It must be.
How could they know to bind me with iron? Or was this mere coincidence?
A young man comes into my line of sight and kneels in front me. He touches a red splotch on the ground that I know is my blood. It must have fallen from my mouth. It’s healed the dead winter-grass it landed on.
Slowly, he looks up at me. “What are you?”
An older man points to the revived grass stained with my blood. “Her blood is cursed! It brings the dead back to life! It will curse us all!”
I struggle to escape, but the iron has completely shut down my ability to move through time and space. My teeth at least have returned to normal, but blood still dribbles from my mouth. My attention slides over to Verity. Her tea-colored irises are filled with sadness and sympathy.
She shakes her head. She’s already saved me once from this town, when I first arrived as Abigail, and I know that was only because she saw me like a daughter, having lost her own child to cholera around the same time she discovered me in the woods as a young teen.
But she can’t save me this time.
No one can.
“Abigail, you shouldn’t have,” she says.
With that, I know she knows that I saved her. Wishes that I hadn’t.
I have to get out of this, though I can’t imagine how. I’m stuck. I just want this all to end.
“Look at the bite on Verity’s shoulder!” a young woman yells.
“A demon bite!” hollers another.
Quickly, Verity adjusts her dress, covering her shoulder where I bit her. Covering the perfectly circular wound created by my razor-edged teeth. Good luck, she would have called it, a perfect circle like that. But her luck is a death sentence for me.
Two large men seize Verity by her arms. “We’ll put her in quarantine for now. Bring Abigail to the cell.”
The cell? Why did they say it like that? As though it means something more than their words alone imply?
I look around for some further clue, some indication, but my vision is clouded by a sea of horrified and fascinated faces.
And then, I’m yanked away.
13
January 1692
I’m in the cell.
I understand why they said it that way now. They took me past the cells more frequently used and down into the jail’s basement. I hadn’t even known the jail had a basement. Although I appreciate the darkness here that conceals my wings from impending daylight, being underground makes me panicky, especially here where I fear the dirt walls might cave in and bury us alive.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe. I’m going to die in here.
“Pa, please, let me out!”
I rattle the closet door. The padlock knocks against the wood. The slats of the closet doors do little to let in any light.
Why did I tell the neighbors what he did to me? They weren’t going to believe me anyway.
Pa says I am ungrateful. I don’t appreciate the life he provides. Food. Shelter. Love. But there’s never any of those things.
“You think you don’t get those things?” he shouted when I said that. “Then perhaps you need to see how it is to live without.”
It’s days before the door opens, before light stings my eyes.
Days before my Pa needs me again.
I wipe away the tears and try to focus on anything other than the fragment from my past. I look around for someone to talk to, someone to occupy my mind. Something to keep me in the present time, where I need to be. I’m not alone, but I can’t see my company as well as I can smell them.
Urine. Feces. Dirt. Sweat. Decay. Rot.
Each scent brings a fresh rise of vomit to my throat, and the sweet herbs I drank earlier taste bitter as they come back up. I’ve tried to determine how many people are here by the number of moans and whimpers, the different locations from which the rattle and clang of bars originates, from the rustle of hay sliding along the ground.
There’s no source of light except for the soft glow of a lamp set on the ground at the end of the hall. I see the shadows of at least a dozen people. I wish my Ankou sight was working. I wish I knew why it wasn’t. Even without the iron shackles, I do not feel the way I know I should. I need a way to escape without getting killed, but I am not able to travel out of the cell, as I should be. What will William and Tess think when they don’t hear from me? They have no way of knowing what happened.
I nudge the person beside me. “Hey.”
They don’t move. I nudge them again. Whisper a little louder. “Hey.”
This time I nudge harder, but before I can open my mouth to say something, the body slumps over. A scream burns the back of my throat, but I cover my mouth and scoot away.
They’re dead.
“Dead,” says the person I’ve consequently scooted closer to. It’s a young woman. “His name was Robert. Robert Zimmermann. Z-I-M-M-E-R-M-A-N-N. That’s two N’s, now. Nice man.”
She says this as though completely unaffected that this ‘nice man’ now lies dead two feet away.
I swallow and nod. “Anything I need to know in here?”
“The guilty hang at sunrise,” she says. “You won’t escape. No one escapes.”
Her lifeless voice gives me the chills, but I write off her claims as insanity. Salem hasn’t hanged anyone, and I can’t give up hope as she has. I need to talk to someone else, but I’m too terrified to move or draw attention to myself. I hear the troubled cough of an older man toward the corner. I notice the bony ankle of the woman I was just speaking to. And I realize she’s probably right in her own way.
This is where people are brought to die.
A small sliver of light filters through a window the size of a brick, and I crawl quietly around the woman then scoot my way closer to the small window. Outside, a cluster of large rocks blocks most of my view, but here I feel a little closer to the outside world. A little safer. The first thing I need to find out is how this cell is stopping me from using my Ankou abilities. But who is going to have the answer to that question?
William and Tess might, but they’re not here.
My throat gets painfully tight as I fight the tears. In my previous life, I loved being alone. I felt safest when no one was around. What has come over me, that now, without William and Tess, I feel so lost? Feel like pieces of me are missing. And not just Anna.
My touch moves to the birthmark on the back of my hand, near my wrist. I caress it through my sleeveless gloves, keeping it hidden, allowing it to let me feel a little less alone. A little closer to my Anna, my baby who shared the same mark.
I can only hope it is the only thing we share.
She needs me.
Damnit, Cord!
This is what William had feared. My impulses getting in the way. My impatience causing trouble. William would have walked away. He would have turned his back on a friend if it meant serving a greater good, would have risked the Mort ratting him out long after he was gone. William—he was unbiased. Not me. No, I was the one who justified my foolish actions as though I had no real choice in the matter
.
If I were more like him, I wouldn’t be in this mess. But at the same time, I like him a little less when I think of him that way—think of him as someone who cares more about his duty to humanity than he does about humans themselves.
And yet, I do care about him. Here I am, thinking about him now, when I certainly have more important things to think about.
Why?
He’d made me go to him in the woods. Made me become something I didn’t want to be, even if he let me do it on my own terms. And yet, none of that is really his fault. Is it? He hasn’t used his influence on me since then.
I shake away my thoughts of William. I would be better served thinking about Tess. Because she, despite her frequent hostility, is easier to understand. She’s opportunistic, like me. Adventurous. She acts on her instincts, and even if that’s not quite the same as the way I act on my impulses, it’s at least something within my reach. One day, perhaps, she and I will have more in common. I just have to figure out that line between acting on instincts and acting on impulses. Then I won’t leave so much damage in my wake.
I sigh, unable to get her out of my mind. Unable to forget her dark pendulum braid and radish-stained lips. I care about her, too. Not in the way I do about William, but in the way that makes me feel like I’m a terrible person for letting her down, even though I know she’ll be fine. Perhaps even happy that I’m gone. She’ll probably just boast to William that it’s for the best, that I was just getting in the way, and now the Universe will be forced to send them someone more competent.
Because that’s Tess’ way.
And yet, somehow, she still seems more vulnerable than William.
I catch myself spiraling down, too far down into my thoughts, staring into space, probably looking crazier and guiltier than I need to while trapped in this place. I try to run my fingers through the tangles in my hair, but the knots are so thickly matted that I can’t get them out. This will probably only add to the court thinking I have a pact with the devil, if I am ever even given the opportunity to stand trial.
I shake my head. I can’t think this way. I won’t be here long. I won’t die here. I won’t have to wait for a trial. I will get out of here. I keep repeating these thoughts to myself, trying to believe them.
I tuck my knees to my chest and close my eyes, trying to figure out my next move. I’m too cold and too terrified to come up with a coherent thought. The gritty, moist ground unsettles me. Hay pokes sharply into my thighs. The bumpy stone behind me crushes into my spine and skull as I lean back again the wall, but I’m too tired to sit upright or do anything about it. My arms and shoulders still hurt from when they seized me in the courtyard. I feel the tender ache of a bruise on my elbow and the drip of blood from a scrape on my hand—both wounds I received as I was thrown into the cell.
But the greatest pain of all is my heartache. This is a hopeless place.
The guard—a chubby man with pants too short and sideburns too long—keeps dozing off. His head falls forward, then he jolts awake again. If he falls asleep, that could make it easier for me to escape. I need to formulate a plan so I can be ready if that happens. But I know he won’t be my only concern. We passed dozens of guards on our way in here.
My mouth is so dry that my lips crack and bleed. Early hunger pains jab through me with my need for herbs. With each moment that passes, I feel hungrier just thinking of how long I might go without the life source I need.
As my eyes adjust to the darkness, I look around. Just past the dead body on my other side, a man keeps touching and exposing himself in his sleep. My skin crawls and my stomach churns. I quickly turn away.
The guard stands and nods to a middle-aged man holding a lantern that fills the cell with so much light I soon find myself wishing for darkness again. “Good evening, Thornhart.”
“Good evening,” the man says. “You are excused.”
The guard leaves, and we are left alone with this man with a thin pointy nose and long, gray, stiff hair that looks as though it’s been smoothed with spit.
He turns to us. His eyes are black, just like Verity’s had been. He must be possessed by a Mort as well, though with my Ankou abilities disabled, I cannot confirm.
One thing I know for certain: there will be no convincing him to let me go.
“Witchcraft is an evil thing,” Thornhart begins. “An enemy to light! An ally to the powers of darkness, destruction, and decay.”
My mind swims with why he would be telling us this. Why do the Morts act as though it is others who are evil? Why act this out here, where no one is watching the charade? He’s speaking so loudly I can only imagine the display is for the guards out in the hall who might overhear him. The ones who aren’t yet possessed by Morts themselves.
I tune him out, focusing instead on the details of my surroundings. Any way I can get out of here. I wonder if the book Thornhart holds might have some answers. The Malleus Maleficarum. I don’t know what it means, but just looking at it gives me an ominous feeling.
If I can’t use my abilities to escape, then I must find another way. Fighting these guards as a human seems futile, but I can’t just wait around to die. I can’t act rashly, either. Not again. Though time is not a privilege I have, I need to learn more about this place before I try to escape.
14
February 1692
Nights in the jail are filled with the rustling and stomping of guards and the clinking of keys and creaking of doors and hushed whispers of prisoners. Insects scamper across the ground, looking for a warm place to burrow away from the moist cold. A few feet away, a mouse nibbles on a crumb. I pick at small stones embedded in the dirt floor, watching the guards in the narrow hall outside the cell, trying to learn their patterns or find weakness in their actions or opportunity for escape.
But there’s nothing. Not that I can see in this dim, almost non-existent light.
There’s just enough glow outside the window to watch the rain dripping, turning into icy spots on the ground between patches of lingering snow. My wrists always hurt when it’s cold and wet out, the result of old injuries—phantom pains from the broken bones of another life. Scars branch out on my shins, and my stomach churns. As soon as they’ve appeared, they dissolve, and I know I’m going crazy in this place, unable to maintain sanity while trapped in this small room.
It’s been several weeks now, and that hope I told myself to keep is rapidly wilting. If it weren’t for Anna, I would have given up by now. But even as my brain clouds every time I think, still I try. Still I attempt to formulate a plan of escape. Each time, my mind draws a blank.
My mouth, throat, and stomach burn with thirst and hunger, and that’s the only thing that makes me think I’m still Ankou—this need is much different than a human need for nourishment.
I try not to, but I miss William and Tess. Before arriving in this cell, I’d spent the last weeks—aside from a few moments of weakness—wishing to get away from them and back to Anna. But right now all I want is to see William’s handsome face and know that Tess is safe. She reminds me of myself, and I wish someone had looked out for me.
I need to get out of here. I remember what William told me...’Next time, wait. We will always come for you.’
But he’d also told me to meet with them. They have no way of knowing I’m trapped here, and they aren’t coming for me. Not this time.
Sitting here with nothing to do but fail to think up a plan for escape, I’ve had a lot of time to think. Time to get to know myself better—the me I’m supposed to be and not the one I’ve become. I remember sitting on the edge of Mama’s yellow floral bed right after Grandma had passed away.
I’m eight. Mama is sitting at her vanity, brushing her hair, making eye contact with me through the reflection in the mirror. My heart feels as though it has burst, and my face is red and blotchy and streaked white with tears. Mama sets her brush down, moves to sit beside me on the bed.
“It’s a process, Rose,” she says. “However long you car
e for someone, it takes half that time to stop caring for them. Your world might be crumbling now, but it will get easier. Give it few years, and you’ll see.”
I always thought the clock for that would start at the moment of separation, but that’s not the case now. I am nowhere near getting over Anna, and I had only spent a few hours with her. And I can’t stop thinking of William, even though we’d only known each other a few weeks before my capture.
Now I understand, though: the clock doesn’t start until you are ready to stop caring. But I’m not ready, and I never will be.
I’ve thought about why that’s the case with William and have finally come to understand why I am so drawn to him—why I forgive him for playing such a large role in dragging me into this life. Because although he led me here, he did not force me to drink, even though he could have. He is not the kind of person to take away a person’s right over their own body, and I think that, although he hides behind his duties, his role in the Universe takes a toll on him.
Knowing him has been...healing. It’s given me a chance to reclaim power over myself, taught me that I choose how I’m connected with another person. That I can let the right person in, if I want to, and I don’t have to let the things Pa has done leave me running forever.
If I ever see William again, I’m going to embrace these new realizations of mine, even if for no other reason than to prove to myself that I am not broken. I am not ruined. I am capable of loving not only my daughter, but a man as well.
But none of this matters unless I find a way to travel out of or otherwise escape this cell. What if I’ve somehow lost my abilities completely? What could cause that? William and Tess never warned me that anything like this could happen.
It’s hard to fall asleep in this place, but my attempts to leave haven’t gotten me anywhere, and I’ll need more energy to give it another try. Several times as I’m trying to fall asleep, I catch myself grinding or clenching my teeth, every muscle in my body tense. One time, I accidentally bite the inside of my cheek, and a small pool of blood puddles beside my gums. I take a deep breath. If I close my eyes and imagine a perfect world, sleep will come.