by Josh Woods
She had to make sure his airway was clear, that they hadn’t gagged him with a rag or pushed his tongue too far back with the bit, so she reached her fingers into his mouth to check. Blood coated his teeth, tongue, and all, and the bit had cut him at the corners of his mouth, and one of his teeth had been knocked out by their blows, but he was not choked. He would keep breathing fine. And it was her fingers in his mouth that finally woke him up.
He sputtered and spit and made hacking sounds, and he shook his head. Then he calmed. “DiFranco,” he said with a soft smile, as if he were awakening in some familiar place of theirs. “I knew you’d come for me. I told them you would come for me, and that they’d be sorry.”
“I’m glad you were right,” she said. “Getting here was tough.”
“I was talking again like I didn’t know what I was saying, but this time it was about you. I told them you would herald the reckoning. I said you would lift the veil and reveal their doom.” He blinked with rolling eyes, still in and out of his fuzzy awareness. The blow had made him a little punch-drunk. “I told them that as I speak, thus speaks the Black Palace. And we were right, weren’t we?”
“Sure, we were right. It’s okay now. Listen, Jan,” she said, trying to get him back to his senses. “How does it feel to move? Do you think you can stand?”
“You and me and the Black Palace. We’re a team again.”
“Yes,” she said. She patted him on the cheek where he was not injured. “Now look at me and try to answer. Do you think you can stand? If you can, I’ll need you to take those guns of his.”
She sensed that his eyes finally focused. And his voice changed, saying, “Oh, god. DiFranco. Oh no. Are you okay?” He reached out his hand though it pained him to move his arm as such, and he touched her face, the patterned fabric across her eyes, the warm glow that came through it. “What happened? Can you see anything?”
“I can see that things are changing,” she answered. “I can see that this night will change everything.”
Chapter 18
A cloud of mist began to cover Hava’s sight as she lay helpless under the witch who sewed her and screamed at her and seemed to crush her lungs, and she hoped for the mercy of a coming unconsciousness. But she did not fade. The mist grew thicker, swirling, and her sight went gray and orange with flickering wafts from the nearby stump-fire, but she did not fade. She could still hear. And she heard the witch change her cursing and her wailing. The witch now cursed for it to go away, cursed for it to get out of her. Then she stopped sewing Hava, and she gurgled.
Hava felt the witch’s weight fall off of her chest, and she saw the mist follow.
The witch lay beside her on the ground, arching and writhing, and the mist wove into her choking throat, into her nostrils, into her ears, under her eyelids. It was Seph.
The witch arched one last great time, lifting herself above the leaves by toes and topknot, and then she fell lifeless.
Seph’s ether rose out of the witch’s mouth and gathered to form her vague shape again. She stroked the image of her own face and then stretched her fingers far from her. “I am refreshed,” she said.
Hava felt the life coming back into her head and neck, and a little life coming into one of her arms. It was the tingling pain of a sleeping limb awakening. But her other arm, down her torso and hips, into her legs, there she could move nothing, and she could feel nothing. Most of her body might as well have been turned to wood.
“Is she dead?” Hava asked Seph of the witch. Her tongue was slow from recovering numbness.
“I have taken her ether and her mist,” Seph said. “But I do not know if she is dead. I have much less understanding of death now.”
Hava could move her head and one of her arms again. She guessed that without the witch’s conscious will binding them, the needle pricks and threads were losing their power to paralyze her, but Hava looked down over the rest of her body to find it still frozen. Stuck in her right hip bone was the witch’s needle. Hava reached her good arm to the needle, and she pinched the eye of it, and she tugged to try to draw it out, but it would not budge, and the tug she gave it sent a sudden shock of pain through her. She cried out, not meaning to.
She paused to gather her strength again, what little she had, and she tried with all she had to pull the needle out again, faster and stronger, but her fingers slipped off of it, and the pain knocked her head back to the ground again. It felt white hot.
Lying there in the leaves, catching her breath and recovering from the shock of pain, she tried to figure out what was wrong, why she could not remove it. Perhaps the witch’s needle could not be removed by the victim, even after the witch’s power was gone. Perhaps it could never be removed. She said to Seph, “That witch has frozen my body. Can you pull that needle out? There, in my hip.”
Seph said, “I do not think I can move much in the world, Hava. Not anymore.”
“It is just a little sewing needle,” Hava said. “Just try.”
The ghost of Seph leaned down and swirled her fingers around the needle. She pulled. Nothing happened, not even pain this time. “I cannot,” Seph said.
“Try again,” Hava said.
Seph tried again and failed again. “I cannot.”
“Keep trying.”
“Hava, I cannot do it. I could strain myself until I fade, and I do not think I could so much as wiggle it. It tires me greatly to try, I think because it is so sharp and shiny. Yet it feels like nothing, like grabbing at a beam of light. It is a strange thing. This is strange.” Seph looked over her own fingers and seemed more interested now in contemplating them than in helping Hava.
And Hava worried. With all her effort, all her will, she could not make her legs move, nor could she even shift her hips. Even with that witch beside her defeated—dead or powerless—she herself remained helpless, a mouse in a trap waiting for the collector to arrive, waiting for La Voisin to arrive. “You must try again,” Hava begged Seph. “I cannot be stuck like this.”
“I am sorry, dear Hava,” said Seph. “I cannot. This is the end I warned you of.”
Hava was not ready to accept that yet. She looked around for anything else, any other option. On the far side of the stump-fire, the third witch remained. The steam from the boiling pot made her image waiver, but she seemed to be backed up against the tree, cornered by the remaining wolf, holding out a bundle of wild onion in her defense with a shaking hand.
Hava called out to her, “Do you have the power to remove your sister’s needle?”
“Call off your wolf,” the witch said. “And tell your vampire to keep away from me.”
“I am no vampire,” Seph said. “And I will do as I please no matter what commands are thrown at me. If I wish to, I will drink your mist too, witch, like I did your sister.”
“Don’t, Seph, not yet.” Then Hava said to the witch, “First tell me if you can free me.”
“Why would I?” the witch said. “I have nothing to gain from it, and I have better odds fighting my way back to La Voisin.”
The witch was saying nothing about revenge for her fallen sister, or about punishing Hava for having broken open the cave. She sounded only interested in the odds of self-preservation and, perhaps, profit. So Hava said, “You have failed your queen already. Even if she comes here to see what I have done and destroys me for it, you will already be a failure in her eyes, but if you help free me, you will be my ally. You can share in my victory, and I will not bind you to any oath to stay with me.”
“You do not look so victorious,” the witch said.
“And you look cornered by a hungry wolf and a hungry ghost.”
The witch said, “That does not mean you will win any spoils to share with me.”
“It is true that I might fail,” Hava said. “Even if you freed me, I might fail.”
“Yes,” the witch said, curious and waiting for more.
“And if I do, you may say that I bound you as my hostage,” Hava said. “I will not bind you, but you m
ay pretend that I did. And I will swear that you were, even if pressed by pain, for then I would be protecting one who was my ally.”
The witch was silent for a while. Then she said, “And you will make no attempt to hold me as prisoner or servant, not now and not ever, even if you are victorious? Do you swear that?”
“I do,” Hava said.
“Your wolf must stay away from my fingers. And you must order your vampire to keep away from me. I will not be a dried shell in the leaves.”
“Free me,” Hava said, “and they will not harm you.”
“Then you are fortunate that I have more guile than my sister,” the witch said. “I will remove her needle.”
Hava asked the wolf to let her come nearer, and she asked Seph not to attack.
The witch said, “You must do more than ask. I must hear you order your vampire to keep away from me. And I must hear it accept its command.”
Seph had strayed away toward the cold black mouth of the cave. She looked back to Hava and tilted her cloudy face back at her, skeptical.
Hava said, “I need your help in this, Seph.”
Seph said, “So be it. Command me, Hava the fierce, Hava the merciful.”
“Seph, I command you not to harm this witch unless she first harms me.”
“I accept your command,” Seph belted out like a bitter stage-player.
The witch must have been satisfied with that. She inched her way past the wolf, around the stump-fire, and neared Hava. She watched Seph as she did, but she had little regard for the body of her own fallen sister. She stepped over it and knelt beside Hava.
Hava clenched her jaws, biting tight, waiting for a third shock of pain.
The witch pinched the needle and removed it smoothly.
Hava felt nothing.
Then the witch kept drawing the thread out of the skin of Hava’s legs and arms and body, until there was no thread left in her. “Luck has been turning your way, and it has just turned a little more, for now,” the witch said. “It is done.” She stood and backed away a few steps.
Hava still could not move her legs, which she told the witch.
The witch unthreaded the needle and wiped it on her sleeve and placed it in the corner of her mouth, holding it in her teeth by its end. “Give it a moment.”
The blood flowed into her legs again, tingling and throbbing, but she could move them. Her feet were last to awaken, and she had to crawl before she could stand, but they were recovering quickly. The many needle-pricks stung, but that pain was a better sensation than that of being made of wood. She stood wobbly. “Thank you,” Hava said.
“I will not accept any thanks,” the witch said. “You must hold to our bargain.” Then she walked away toward her camp beyond the stump-fire.
“Are you leaving?” Hava asked her. She checked the glass cuts in her lower back and rump from the broken float. They had bled some into her dress, but they were not so bad that they couldn’t be ignored for now.
“I must stay with you if I am to appear as your hostage, or to share in the profits. I will prepare my own gag and falsely bind my own hands and fingers. Otherwise I wait and watch.”
Hava said, “And what is the treasure in the cave? What is in there that La Voisin wants?”
“I dare not speak about it, especially not to help you more than we bargained for. I am not your counselor. And we are not friends.”
“Very well,” Hava said, looking around to survey all that she had lost, to face the absence of all her friends, to see what all had happened in those few thunderous and frantic moments. And there he was: Moses. He stood still in the creek, facing away from them, clear from the shadows of the trees, his wide shoulders white in the moonlight. “Moses, come back to me,” she called.
He turned to her and trudged back. In his heaviness, he seemed slow and annoyed, but he was soon at her side again.
“Shamir!” Hava cried. Where was he? Seeing Moses again reminded her that all was not lost, that her friends lived on, and that Shamir was somewhere nearby. She feared that he was crushed by the half of the golel that fell flat, and she went to it immediately without considering that he could have ended up elsewhere. She pulled at the stone powerlessly, and said, “Moses, help me lift it! I have to get Shamir.”
Moses walked to the stone, dug his great fingers under its edge, and propped it up, holding it like the roof of a leaning shack. Hava dashed under it on her hands and knees, and swooped the pressed leaves away in bunches. “He’s tiny. He’ll be hard to see.” And upon hearing herself say that she moved the leaves away more carefully, looking for him along the soil.
Moses was bent over, watching her crawl around under the stone he held.
“Do you see him, Moses?”
Moses made a strange sound.
Hava said, “Take the globe out of your mouth.”
And as soon as his fingers moved and she saw the stone ceiling begin to shift, beginning to fall on her, she cried, “Keep the stone held up!”
Moses paused and frowned.
“Just spit the globe out,” Hava said. “Or use your free hand to take it out, but keep holding the stone up. Don’t crush me under it.”
Moses used his free hand to take the globe out of his mouth. He kept the stone leaned up.
“You almost crushed me to death.”
Moses said, “I would not have killed on purpose.”
Hava went back to looking, brushing the leaves and crawling in circles. “Did you see Shamir anywhere?”
Moses said, “Yes, I saw him on the edge of the other stone that he broke.”
Hava stopped. “Is he still there?”
“Yes, he is still there.”
“You see him?”
“Yes.”
Hava huffed and crawled out. She would have to be patient with Moses, and she would have to appreciate that he had heard her yell for him to stop as he had begun his walk toward the sea needlessly, and appreciate that he had decided to stop. She hurried to the other half of the golel, which still rocked slightly, like a child’s seesaw. Shamir hunkered on one end of it, looking content. Hava scooped him up and thanked him and apologized for leaving him. Then she went back to Moses, took the globe pendant and chain from him, and secured Shamir back in it and around her neck. Once she was quite clear from the stone, she told Moses that he could set it back down again.
He did.
Seph was near, still looking into the darkness of the cave, looking enthralled but afraid of it. She had not seemed concerned about the losing or finding of Shamir, or of anything else in the world at the moment. Hava did not know yet what she saw in there that held her so, but she would find out soon enough, though not quite yet.
“Moses,” Hava said. “Did you see where my wolf went?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Where has he gone?”
“One is there, sniffing the goat. The other fled that way, along the creek. I have also seen birds.”
“Birds?” Hava said. This was a strange warning to hear from him. “What kinds of birds?”
“I have seen chickens and sparrows,” he said. “I should like to own a bird one day. But I do not covet those who already do.”
“I shall see what I can do about that, Moses.” Then Hava walked past the light of the stump-fire and saw that the wolf who had cornered the witch was now standing on the same bare tree roots that the goat did. He had torn his blouse but still wore his skirt, and he hunkered low, sniffing at the goat, unwilling to strike at it. The goat wagged its head and lolled its red-hot tongue at the wolf. Its mouth glowed red in the dark. It indeed looked frightening, which is what she guessed the wolf thought.
Hava whistled and called for the wolf to come to her. He quickly forgot the goat and remembered Hava. He splashed into the creek, getting his clothes wet, then shook off, then ran to her. He walked round and round her legs.
“Go see if you can find your fellow wolf. He fled that way.” Hava pointed out the direction to the wolf, who looked only
at her finger, not up the valley. “If he is wounded, try to tend to him. If he is not, lead him back here. Let him know that he is welcomed back, even if he fled in fear.”
The wolf left as she told him, sniffing the ground as he went, not exactly in a rush.
The witch, Hava saw, was busying herself in her camp equipment, likely for a rope and a gag for herself.
Hava went to the edge of the cave and stood by the white shape of Seph. “It is time,” Hava said. “I must go in the cave now.”
“It is not right,” Seph said, never looking away from the dark inside it. “Do not go in there.”
“What do you see?”
“Nothing. I cannot see very far, but it is not good for you. It is not safe.”
Hava said, “La Voisin wanted something in there. And she still does. She wants something in there so badly that she went through all of this to get Shamir just to open that cave and acquire it.”
“Are you so certain?” Seph said. “I would have heard something about it if that were true, and I heard nothing about this, not this cave.”
“You mean you would have heard something during your scheming with La Voisin and the Malandanti?”