A Witch's Feast

by C. N. Crawford

  At one point, a spark of hope glimmered when he’d discovered the letter E engraved below the zodiac wheel. In desperation, he’d convinced himself it must be the mark of Eirenaeus, the brilliant young philosopher. After all, William had said that Eirenaeus refused to bow to the Throcknells, like he was some kind of colonial-era rebel. And what if the brilliant Eirenaeus had left clues of an escape route in a revolutionary gesture?

  But as the rising sun stained the sky orange, despair began to smother his hope. He listlessly stared at the empty fireplace. Lots of people had names that began with the letter E, and anyway, he had no idea how to convert a zodiac wheel into an escape route. Besides, Oswald had said no one had escaped since then.

  Whatever torments Oswald was enduring, Thomas had dragged him into it with his bungled attempts at atonement. He couldn’t give up on an escape plan for Oswald.

  Pushing himself up, he crossed to peer out the window. He jiggled the iron bars. One in the center was loose enough to yank free with a piercing sound of iron on stone. The others wouldn’t budge, but it was a large enough gap to fit his head through.

  Vertigo overwhelmed him as he stared down at the sheer drop. It must be nearly a thousand feet down, the shining white walls as smooth as ice. The nearest neighboring tower was at least a hundred feet to his right. Without a stout rope, exiting through the window would be suicide, and he couldn’t fit more than his head through even if he decided to leap to his death.

  He shoved the bar back in place, slumping down against the wall. Hunger gripped his stomach. If only he could speak to one of the Throcknells, maybe he could convince them he’d been right. He could get them to see that they’d be better off ruling over a healthy populace than a sick one. He could make them understand that torture was never effective, that they should leave Oswald alone.

  As the day wore on, he tried to uncover a code from the names on the walls, arranging and rearranging anagrams. By the time the sun dipped lower in the sky, his head was filled with a jumble of senseless words, playing in a loop: raven tower iron irony ironing rioning… He sat cross-legged on the floor, blinking slowly. Is rioning a word? Rioning, ravening, ranting…

  His mother’s ranting episodes had always started with a discovery. She’d discovered things thrown away in the London streets—who would throw away dozens of good clocks, or the wooden dolls with painted smiles and no legs? Thomas would come home to find the living room full of boxes, and his mother’s excitement would be infectious. The clocks, you see, could be used to make a time machine that would change the world. And the discoveries always started off full of wonder. After all, little Thomas wanted to build a time machine too. But then came the sleepless nights and the paranoid ranting. She smashed the clocks and called the police to have them arrest the sky demons lurking outside the windows.

  Thomas swallowed. His throat was painfully dry. He pulled the pewter cup toward him, taking a long sip. Starvation and fatigue were sapping his mental faculties. No, I’m not like her—I’ve always looked at things logically.

  He turned to inspect the zodiac wheel again. The carvings were dulled and muted, worn by time. Think, Thomas. We need to approach this rationally. The wheel was made of two roughly carved concentric circles, the inner one filled with crisscrossing lines.

  Perhaps the inner circle represented the earth—a relic of a geocentric model of the Solar System. In the center, the lines joined up at points that corresponded with seven of the twelve star signs. He chewed on his nub of a fingernail. Why only seven points? Why not one for each sign?

  He rose, walking to peer out the window again. He stared at the gleaming white towers and mentally tallied the number—seven towers. Seven points, and seven towers.

  Just as an idea was beginning to form, the lock clicked in the door, and Thomas jumped at the noise. The door creaked open, and three guards stood in the entrance, light streaming in from behind them.

  A dark-haired guard with an enormous gut spoke first. “King Balthazar wishes for you to join the court for dinner.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Jack

  It was the golden hour, Jack’s favorite time of day, and the setting sun bathed the graves outside in honey. He’d have to keep this beautiful light in place when he rewrote the material world.

  He sipped the remains of his herbal tea, inhaling the scent of chamomile and hawthorn. Steam from his cup clouded his window. His father had often grown angry when he spent too much time admiring the sunlight, and Jack would pay for it with the skin off his back. After all, idleness and time-wasting were sins.

  He turned, leaning against the window and pulling out his golden pocket watch to examine its etched surface. He had all the time he needed now. Still, he couldn’t escape the feeling that someone was watching him. Probably a relic of my early days.

  As he took a final sip of tea, he glanced at his new companion, Alexandria. She sat hunched over her laptop on his dusty green sofa. Her wavy hair and heart-shaped face reminded him of Fiona.

  He had full confidence that she would be able to decode the Voynich manuscript. Other code-breakers before her who’d failed to unravel the mysteries of the ancient alchemical text hadn’t been sufficiently motivated. But of course, they hadn’t been as desperate for meaning as Alexandria.

  Staring at the screen, she toyed with her lip ring. Her eyes were different than Fiona’s. Fiona’s were amber, framed by long lashes, but Alexandria’s almond-shaped eyes were a deep brown.

  “Will wine interfere with your work?” He walked over to the kitchen that adjoined his living room. “Pinot noir is your favorite, right?”

  “Yeah, sounds good.” She stretched out her legs, resting her bare feet on his coffee table. Silver rings decorated two of her toes.

  He pulled out two long-stemmed glasses and uncorked a bottle of an oaky 2007 Oregon pinot, pouring out two large glasses. He hadn’t been feeling himself lately, and this might revive him.

  “You said you were going to tell me more about this project,” she called out before turning to look at him. “And teach me magic. How have you learned so much? You look younger than me.”

  He crossed the room and handed her a glass, joining her on the sofa. His watch was set to eighteen years—his physical prime. There were times that it would be convenient to look a bit older, especially in this modern world where childhood stretched out ever longer: no drinking until twenty-one, no children until after thirty. People had been lucky to live past thirty when he was a boy. But he didn’t feel eighteen today. He felt—old.

  “I look young for my age,” he said, smiling. Of all the things he could say to her, this was the truest. He took a sip of wine, leaning back to savor it. “The project, since you asked, is to find something that’s been lost for a long time. The most important object in the history of the world, in fact. Cracking the Voynich code will tell us where it’s been hidden.”

  “Is it like the Holy Grail?”

  He leaned back into the sofa’s armrest, gazing at her. “Some call it that.”

  “What did you mean about rewriting all of creation?”

  “Death, mostly. I want to conquer it. I want to save everyone. The gods made us in their image, except they put us in rotting bodies. It’s a travesty they should atone for. And I’d like to fix it.”

  She squinted in the sunlight angling in through the window. “Okay, but… the world will be wildly overpopulated if nobody dies. There wouldn’t be enough food or space. The whole ecosystem would be in chaos.”

  He leaned forward with a wry smile. “You see, Alexandria? This is why I need you. You think of these things. But you’ve got to think on a larger scale, too. With the Grail, we can remake everything just the way it should be. There’s no heaven waiting for us after we die. That’s a lie designed to breed complacency.” His cheeks grew hot as he spoke. “We have to make paradise ourselves. No disease, no starvation. No children dying from cancer, no plagues to eat at our brains as we grow old. Just paradise.”


  “Wow. You really think you can do this?

  He tilted his head down, a few dark curls falling into his eyes. “I think we can do this.”

  She toyed with her shirt’s low neckline. “What is the Voynich, exactly?”

  He rubbed his chin. “It’s a coded history book. It was written by alchemists in the fifteenth century. At one point, it belonged to Queen Elizabeth’s great alchemist, John Dee. Many of his books have been lost, but this one survived. Only no one has been able to read it. And somewhere in its pages, it details the Grail’s secret location. All I know right now is that it’s somewhere in Europe.”

  She beamed. “Are we going to Europe?”

  “Assuming you get back to your coding at some point, I don’t see why you shouldn’t join me when you’re done.”

  She grinned, folding herself back into a cross-legged position to resume work, and Jack rose to stare out at the dusky graveyard, sipping his wine. There were still things to take care of here before he could even think of going to Europe. He still needed to pay a little visit to Virginia.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Thomas

  Thomas’s jaw dropped. “What?” They must be joking.

  “They’re going to send you home in gratitude for your help with Rawhed.” The guard’s bulbous gut gave him the look of a penguin. He looked Thomas over, surveying his dirt-stained woolen garment. “We’ll have to get you cleaned up first.”

  Thomas shook his head. “What about Oswald?”

  “Returned to Tuckomock Forest.”

  Part of him wanted to fall to his knees and thank God for his release, but Oswald’s warning about trusting the Throcknells tickled the back of his brain. He scratched the stubble on his chin, crossing toward the door.

  A dizzying feeling nearly knocked him backward as he looked past the guards, disoriented as though his head were swelling and contracting. The guards stood not in a dank stone stairwell as he’d expected, but in an enormous, sun-filled hall.

  He stepped over the threshold and gaped. Carved stonework arched hundreds of feet above them. The hall was at least the size of St. Paul’s Cathedral. I must be dreaming. It wasn’t possible for something this vast to fit into a narrow tower.

  “We need to make you presentable.” Holding a palm near Thomas’s chest, the penguin muttered in Angelic.

  Thomas stared as his shirt transformed from rough brown wool into a silky, grass-green jacket embroidered with pearls. It fit snugly, apart from the puffed shoulders, and lace sleeves that flounced around his wrists. Gold trousers bloused out at the thighs, tied with green ribbons around his knees. Further green bows decorated his shoes. A cap sat on his head, and he pulled it off to find it made of green velvet and covered in pearls. He gritted his teeth, shoving the cap back on his head. I look like a twat. He schooled his face into a pleased expression.

  “Are you coming, then?” the penguin asked gruffly.

  “I didn’t think the cell was adjacent to a grand hall like this,” Thomas muttered, squinting in the bright light. His heels clapped unsteadily on the marble floor, and a part of him cringed. They put me in high heels.

  “It isn’t adjacent.” The man glanced back at Thomas. “You don’t expect us to trudge up and down hundreds of stairs in the Iron Tower, do you?”

  It wouldn’t do your waistline any harm.

  “We use portals,” continued the guard. “Saves time.”

  Late afternoon light poured through tall, arched windows, each one bearing the Throcknell herald in stained glass. Below the heralds were interlocked Bs. Queen Bathsheba and King Balthazar, of course. No doubt the previous windows with Queen Morella’s initials had been replaced soon before her execution.

  Thomas peered out the windows at a grassy courtyard. They had arrived at the ground level without descending a single stair.

  Across from the windows, marble statues towered over the hall, nearly the height of the ceiling. A woman with flames erupting from her hair pulled open the front of her dress, revealing a sun symbol on her bared chest. It blazed in the amber light. Thomas stared, his mind foggy.

  A hand pushed him from behind. “What’s the matter—never seen tits before?”

  The other guards burst into barking laughter. Apparently, that joke was hilarious. Thomas faked another smile.

  A statue further on depicted a figure covered entirely in a cloak, decorated only with a few stars. Next to that, a mournful man in military garb displayed a pair of slashed wrists—the penitent blood god, no doubt. As they walked through the hall, he recognized Druloch—a man’s strong body intertwined with a tree, an ecstatic look on his face.

  Thomas’s stomach rumbled. Was he really about to feast with a magical royal family? But why had they been starving him if they’d meant to send him home all along?

  His high-heeled footsteps echoed off the flagstones. Closer to the far end of the hall, an elegant goddess statue rose from sea foam, a crescent moon on her forehead, and another muscular goddess reclined on a mountain range with a serene expression. The earthly gods.

  Each statue was beautiful and terrifying at the same time. And there were seven of them. Seven points, seven towers, and seven gods. Maybe that was all the zodiac wheel had meant, just a coded reference to the gods.

  At the end of the hall, a short flight of steps led up to an immense set of wooden doors. As they approached, the doors swung open with a groan. The fat guard motioned for Thomas to walk up the stairs, and he stepped up the marble staircase into a hall—if it could be called a hall. It looked like the nave of a ruined abbey, all crumbling stones overgrown with vines. He’d never seen anything so stunning in his life.

  Maremount wasn’t old enough to contain actual medieval buildings, so the Throcknells must have designed it to look ancient. Thomas had to admire their taste. Towering stone walls formed a long rectangle, each with peaked windows that overlooked gardens. There was no ceiling—just high arches enclosing the room like a stoney ribcage. And from these arches, a rainbow of wildflowers grew downward through some enchantment.

  In the center of the hall stood a banquet table, and the setting sun cast it in a nectarine light. A half-dozen people sat around the green-clothed table. Flowers grew from the table itself, and around them, gold platters held colorful cakes, roast turkeys, rabbits covered in sauces and plums, and pies shaped like lion’s-heads. Tendrils of steam curled into the air, wafting aromas of baked meat and breads, and Thomas had to restrain himself from tearing a leg off a browned turkey to gnaw on like a caveman. Isn’t there some legend about not eating fairy food? Does that apply here?

  The guests’ clothes were even more outrageous than his own: they lounged in gold tissue-cloth, green and blue velvet, ribbons, their hats sewn with rubies and emeralds.

  At the end of the table sat the King and Queen. Bathsheba’s pale, shimmering skin reminded him of moonlight, a contrast to her warm golden gown. A snow fox panted by her side, its black eyes alert. To the left, Asmodeus slouched in his black robes, his viper coiling around his hat. He glared at Thomas, his receding chin wrinkled with distaste.

  Thomas almost didn’t notice Celia sitting by his side. She was clad in a simple blue gown, and her face had a vacant look. She seemed to avoid his eye. Guilt, perhaps.

  He turned to the King. Is there some rule about not standing in the presence of royalty?

  King Balthazar stood, thrusting out a hand. Jeweled rings crowded his fingers. His neatly trimmed beard was the color of hay, and red veins discolored his nose. A mountain lion—his familiar—rested by his chair. “Thank you for joining us, Thomas Malcolm. Please, have a seat.” He gestured to a high-backed wooden chair across from Celia and Asmodeus.

  Wildflowers grew through the tiled floor, reaching toward their counterparts above. Thomas pulled out a dark wooden chair, the seat clothed in red velvet. He tried to catch Celia’s eye, but she was staring at the sky with a dreamy look, her eyes half lidded.

  The King smiled. “You must be wondering why we aske
d you here.”

  Thomas raised an eyebrow. “I was surprised. I thought you were going to execute me.” Too blunt. The first thing sleep deprivation destroys is social filters.

  To his relief, the King threw back his head and laughed. “Of course we wouldn’t kill one of my daughter’s friends. We wanted to speak to the man who buried the Wampanoag king.”

  A woman in a canary yellow gown grinned and clapped.

  “It’s quite a feat,” he continued, “and we owe you a great debt for ridding our city of the Harvester scourge. Also, my beautiful wife was terribly curious to meet someone from the other side.”

  When Bathsheba smiled, her teeth were a dazzling white against her ruby lips.

  Thomas took a deep breath. I have no idea what royal protocol is… Screw it. “What’s happened to my companion? He was taken from our cell. Your Highness.”

  The King and Queen stared at him. In person, Bathsheba’s icy gaze was no warmer than her statue’s.

  King Balthazar’s face was impassive. “We sent the boy home.”

  Thomas glanced at Celia again. While Asmodeus stared at the girl, licking his thin lips, she plucked a flower from the floor and began threading it through the tines of a fork, singing softly to herself.

  Thomas blinked. Has she lost her mind? Something was very wrong with her. Either she’d been given some sort of magical lobotomy, or she was pretending to be stupid because she didn’t trust her own father. Neither was an enticing possibility.

  He replayed Oswald’s warning in his mind: Never trust a Throcknell.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Thomas

  The rich scent of roasted and spiced meat was enough to distract him from his fears. He gaped at the pies lining the table, and the curls of steam that rose from their centers. Sure, he was supposed to be cautious, but there was no harm in enjoying a feast.