Gunhild crouched low …
“Frey.” Trigve took my arm. “Now.”
I snatched my pack from the ground as Trigve pulled me into the water.
The river grabbed me. I was sucked down into the darkness.
I arched my spine and rose to the surface. I heard metal hitting metal. A man cried out, then a woman. Arrows fell beside me, stone tips ripping through the water, but none hit their mark.
I relaxed and let the river embrace me, nestling me in close until all I could hear was the hollow echo of its churning.
NINE
We floated on, until the river began to slow. I felt it ease its grip on my body, and settle into a calm, gentle flow. We pulled ourselves onto the bank, huddling together in the long grass, gasping, shivering.
It had been easy to close off my mind when I was in the water, floating in the dark, my limbs going numb with cold. But now my heart began to pick up speed again.
I strained my ears, listening for the sounds of horses.
They would hunt us—Keld’s men wouldn’t be satisfied with Gunhild.
Ovie was the first to get to her feet. She shook off water, beads spraying outward, then straightened her shoulders and glanced at the horizon. “We need to run. Come. The men won’t be far behind.”
I looked at Juniper, who was curled under her wet Mercy-cloak, hair dripping. “How far away are we?”
She glanced around, marking where we were. “The river moves quickly—we’ve come almost two miles downstream. The path to the Sea Witches lies only a few miles from here. We will be safe once we reach the Thiss Brambles.”
We all stood, except Sasha. Aarne took her arm and pulled her to her feet. He adjusted his wet quiver and bow and then lifted his chin. “We can keep up. Let’s go.”
Ovie cocked her head.
Trigve did the same.
A moment passed.
“Horses,” Trigve said. “Run.”
We were Boneless Mercies. We had grave-dug weapons and the courage of the Vorse, but we ran.
I heard hooves pounding into dirt, close behind.
We ran.
My legs felt thick, slow. I stuck my chest out, willed my heart forward. My thoughts tightened, lift leg, lift foot, hit ground, again, again …
Finally, Juniper raised a pale, moonlit arm and pointed. A dark line of nine-foot-tall Thiss Brambles ran along the edge of the meadow in front of us.
We came to a stop in front of them, panting, staring into the thorns.
“Come.” Juniper pointed again. “This is the way.”
Aarne stepped forward.
Runa thrust her arm out in front of Aarne. “No. He’ll be pierced to pieces.”
“Not if he follows the path.” Juniper hovered, half her body already in the brambles. “Look down. See the line of small white stones? They mark the route … except when they don’t.”
I saw the stones, hardly more than pebbles. They led into the dark thicket, then disappeared.
Runa, Ovie, and Trigve looked at me, unsure what to do. I peered into the twisting branches. Each Thiss Bramble bore thousands of tiny spikes, the soft white color of bone.
Juniper pulled the wet hood of her cloak up over her curls. “Follow me, do not veer off the path. All will be well.”
Runa crossed her arms. “I’m not going in there. And I won’t let Aarne go in, either.”
“Frey.” Ovie caught my eye, and then nodded at the horizon. Four horses, four men, dark shadows against a midnight-blue sky.
Scathe wasn’t with them. Gunhild had gotten her revenge.
The archer with the broad shoulders spotted us first. He gave a short, deep yell—
The arrows began to fall. They thrummed into the thick brush and disappeared, lost among the dark thorns. I felt the air stir as one sank into a spiny trunk two feet from my head.
Runa threw herself in front of Sasha and Aarne.
“Thorns are better than arrows.” Ovie grabbed my arm and dragged me into the brambles.
Another round of arrows hit into the ground, inches from Runa and Aarne. They backed into the briar, Trigve and Sasha right behind them.
“Come. I will keep you safe.” Juniper turned and began to move down the path in a slow, careful trot.
I followed her, and the rest followed me.
We wove through the dark branches, dodging and twisting, sliding between thorns.
I looked back over my shoulder. Trigve, Aarne, and Runa followed Ovie, with Sasha at the end. She was moving quickly and smoothly, despite her grief.
I felt Ovie’s fingers on my elbow and stopped.
“Listen,” she whispered.
Men, their voices creeping through the brambles. They were arguing about whether to follow us into the thorns.
I looked up, but the stars were gone, blocked out by thick, waxy Thiss leaves. The men’s voices grew louder.
I heard their swords, hacking at the brambles as they tried to reach us.
Juniper glanced at me over her shoulder. “Don’t worry. Only a Sea Witch, born and bred, can survive the Thiss.”
“Would you stake your life on it?” Ovie put her hand on her ax, her head turned back the way we’d come.
Juniper picked up her pace. We were now going as fast as we dared, one careful step after another, the white thorns glowing faintly in the dark.
I kept my feet on the winding white pebbles, afraid to step even a few inches to the left or right. I reached up to push back the hood of my cloak, and a thorn tore my right arm, opening the sleeve of my wool tunic at the seam. Beads of blood broke across my skin.
We loped on and on. The sounds of the men began to fade. I breathed easier. I looked up again and saw tiny Thorn Doves darting in and out among brambles, chirping their melancholy midnight songs and grabbing the small Thiss berries in their beaks.
There was beauty even in this bleak forest of spikes.
In front of me, Juniper raised her chin and sniffed the air.
I smelled it, too. Salt.
And then suddenly I could hear the sea, waves crashing on sand.
The brambles began to thin slightly, allowing the moonlight to come through. Juniper was now several feet ahead, darting between thorns as quick as the birds. She still feared Scathe’s men. Or was simply eager to get home. Both, perhaps.
The rest of our company piled up behind me, hissing curses as thorns tore through their cloaks and tunics and skin and hair. I tried moving as Juniper did, dodging instinctively like the doves, but I was clumsy and slow. My wet hair hung limply down my back, making me shiver.
Another thorn cut across my face, temple to ear.
“Juniper?”
“Yes?”
“Are these thorns poisonous?”
She slowed and looked back at me. “Yes, but only if several prick you all at once.”
“That’s comforting.”
I heard Trigve laugh behind me. I shuddered, feeling something shift inside me, as if my heart were shaking off ice.
I felt Ovie’s fingers touch my arm. “On your left, Frey. Look.”
I turned. A small animal skull hung from one of the branches, swinging lightly though there was no breeze.
We spotted many more skulls after that, squirrel and rabbit, mostly, until …
“Juniper?”
“Yes?”
“Are you sure the Sea Witches will welcome us? These bones say otherwise.”
Juniper came to a halt and turned around. “The Thiss bones aren’t prayer-cast. They can do us no harm. They’re simply here to keep people away.”
“The thorns aren’t enough?” Behind me, Ovie ran her thumb down a rip in her sleeve, and it came away with blood.
Juniper put out a small finger and touched a bramble near her cheek. “The witches call this the Prickly Path. Or sometimes the Barbed Briar. Mother Hush refers to it as the Ticklish Trail, but that’s just her little joke.” She twisted at the waist and caught my eye. “Can you taste the salt in the air? We are i
n the Merrows. I am home.”
I envied her suddenly. Juniper had a home.
It was something.
It was everything.
We walked on, another few dozen yards. A sea breeze swept down the path and rattled two nearby skulls. I turned—
A body in the thorns. Tangled dress and hair and pale limbs, dead fingers almost touching my hip.
“Juniper,” I whispered.
She followed my gaze. “Oh.”
The rest of our company piled up behind me on the path again. We stood frozen in place, eyes on the girl.
“Dead a few days,” Ovie said. “Maybe longer.”
Her clothing hung in shreds, dried blood on pale skin. I leaned forward to get a better look at her face, and a bramble slit the front of my tunic. A line of blood shot across my abdomen.
“Careful,” Juniper warned.
I nodded and fought the urge to straighten the girl’s skirt and touch her dead-white cheek.
Dying in these brambles alone … It was a sad end.
Juniper began a death prayer. It was a familiar invocation, asking the sea to bring the peace of deepest sleep, and the wind to whisper the girl’s name in its travels. I’d heard Juniper murmur the same chant many times after a Mercy-kill.
She finished the prayer, and Runa tossed her the flint box. Juniper lit the stick of Heart Ash and swept the smoke over the body. A thorn cut her across the forehead as she moved, dripping blood into her eyes.
“Another dead girl,” Ovie whispered. “Death tracks us, unwilling to let us go.”
“We’re cursed.” Runa brushed a thorn away from her shoulder, and it sliced open the top of her hand.
“What would cause a girl to run into these thorns if she didn’t know the way through?” Trigve’s black hair was loose and wet, clinging to his shoulders like ivy. “Nothing good brought her into the Thiss.”
Juniper sighed and put her hand on her heart. “Girls come here hoping to join the Sea Witches. We couldn’t take them in, even if they did get through the thorns, but they don’t know this. Mother Hush sends armored witches into the brambles a few times a year to clean up the bodies. This one is too new. I … I will tell her about it when we arrive.”
Juniper began another prayer, one of long sadness and quiet forgiveness.
“What a waste.” Runa swatted at another bramble, and then swore when it cut her palm. “Who are you Sea Witches to deny girls who are willing?”
Juniper simply shook her head. “It’s not as I would wish, Runa. But these girls are always running from something. They bring demons with them. And Mother Hush says a witch needs to be born in the Merrows to understand the magic that lives here.”
Runa threw back her head and swore. Another thorn sliced her cheek. She wiped away the blood with her forearm.
We walked on.
I figured it was near dawn, but the darkness of the Thiss path was disorienting. Exhaustion was closing in, making my mind drift.
When we finally stumbled out onto the white sand of the Merrows, the sun was scratching at the horizon. I closed my eyes and angled my face toward it, soaking up the first pink rays of light.
I felt Trigve at my side, shoulder touching mine. “Look up, Frey.”
I turned. My eyes followed the white sand inland, some fifty yards, until it ended in a pile of leaves and a line of black trunks. I tilted my head back …
The witch trees.
They were as thick across as I was tall, and they towered over the landscape, the shortest forty feet high, the tallest, over a hundred. Their dark trunks stood straight and proud, but their branches wove together overhead, like entwined fingers—forming a loose, twisted sort of ceiling. The roots of the trees were so thick they arched up out of the ground like the tail of an ancient sea serpent, and the forest gave off a scent of ash and burning that cut through the sharp scent of the sea.
I’d been to the Quell Sea only a handful of times—twice when I was a child, and three times with Siggy, for a Mercy-kill. The rugged coastline belonged to another Mercy group—Allis and her three companions—but Siggy was older and well-known, and she was occasionally requested outside our territory.
My visits had been to simple fishing villages much farther south, ones that had been easy to reach via the main coastal roads. This was something else entirely. Few people had been to the Merrows, protected as they were by towering rock cliffs on two sides and brambles on the other.
The Scorch Trees formed a crescent-shaped forest, framed by the cliffs, with the white sand in front leading to the sea. The core of live Scorch Trees burned like fire and gave off heat all year long—the witch huts were warm as a summer’s day even in winter. I knew this from Juniper’s tales, of course, but there was also an old nursery song called “The Merrow Tree” that every Vorse mother sang to her child.
Narrow grow the Merrows,
Women straight as arrows,
Scorch Trees, torch trees,
Black bark burn.
Narrow grow the Merrows,
Women straight as arrows,
Tree Witch, Sea Witch
Seasons never turn.
I shaded my eyes from the sunrise and spotted dozens of witch huts in the strong top branches of the trees, wooden bridges connecting one to another, conical tops like the funnel-shaped hat of a Potion Peddler.
“Home.” Juniper spun in a circle, whispering a prayer of thanks to the wind and the sea.
We moved inland, feet shifting the soft white sand as we walked. The sand ended as we reached the first line of trees, giving way to dirt and leaves. We stopped, blinking in the deep, sudden shade.
Ovie reached forward and put her hand on a trunk. She smiled as it warmed her palm.
“I wish Gunhild could have seen this.” Sasha leaned back against one of the trees and sighed. They were the first words she’d spoken since we jumped into the river.
A moment later we collapsed onto a heap of black leaves and slept like the dead.
* * *
It was near noon when I woke again. I lay still for a while, tucked between Ovie and Juniper, and listened to the sound of the sea and the rustle of leaves high above.
I felt Ovie tense beside me, a small jerk of her right hand as she reached for the dagger at her ribs.
They appeared suddenly out of thin air, floating in like mist.
Seven Sea Witches.
Seven of them, seven of us.
Not even Ovie had sensed them closing in, and she had the instincts of a snow cat.
“Rise, Mercies,” I said. “The witches are here.”
Each was tall and straight as an arrow, like in “The Merrow Tree” song, and dressed in layers of green. Green hair, green tunics, sea and grass and moss. Earth colors. Witch colors.
They held long, gnarled pieces of driftwood. As one, they lifted the sea-worn branches and pressed them to our throats.
“Did you know they were coming?” I whispered in Juniper’s ear.
“Yes,” she said.
The witch wands smelled of salt and wood smoke and the toasted sweet smell of pine resin.
“Watchers.” Juniper lifted her chin as the wand pressed into her skin. “Lookouts. There’s no need to fear them. They knew we were here, and yet let us sleep.”
The witches turned to Juniper when she spoke, eyes taking in the pale green luster of her hair.
“Juniper?” The tallest of the witches lowered her wand. She had high cheekbones and bright green eyes. Her feet were bare, and she wore a green wool skirt over green wool leggings, same as the others.
“Sage.” Juniper lunged forward and threw her arms around the tall Sea Witch.
The other six witches lowered the driftwood wands but still watched us closely. I rubbed my neck where the point had been. My skin tingled in an odd way, something between pleasure and pain.
Juniper turned to us. “This is Sage, my witch-sister.”
Sage lifted her hand and ran a thumb over the cut on Juniper’s forehead. �
��How was the Thiss?”
“Prickly,” Juniper said, and smiled.
“I reached out to you in your dreams, soon after you left.” Sage slid her arm around Juniper’s waist and pulled the girl to her again.
“I know.” Juniper put her fist to her heart. “It saved me, those first hard nights. I would have been lost if you hadn’t sought me on the other side of sleep. It kept me from turning back.”
The sisters were quiet then, just for three or four heartbeats, but it spoke oceans.
I wished I had a sister.
Siggy would have said the Mercies were my true sisters. And she would have been right. I didn’t share blood with the other Mercies, but that matters little, in the end.
Runa stepped forward, toward the witch nearest her, a girl with brown eyes and a muscular frame. “What’s your name, then?”
The witch just shook her head. “Come. We’ll take you to Mother Hush.”
They led us a dozen yards deeper into the forest, our feet stirring up a blanket of fallen Scorch leaves as we walked. Juniper pointed to a ladder that stretched up the side of one of the trees—it was painted black to blend in with the Scorch bark and hard to see unless you were looking for it.
“We climb.” Juniper reached for the ladder and pulled herself up, quick and easy, as though she’d done it a hundred times before, which I supposed she had.
Next went Runa and Ovie, Aarne and Sasha, then the seven Sea Witches, one after another, green hair and bare feet, up and up.
Trigve waited with me while everyone else climbed. I’d never been easy with heights, and he knew this.
“Go on,” Trigve said. “Close your eyes and start moving, Frey.”
I took a deep breath and clamped my hands on a rung. He nodded at me again. I shook off my fear and began to climb.
TEN
Siggy had always wanted to meet the Sea Witches.
She’d been on her own for about a year after her companion died. If there’s one thing people hate more than a pack of Mercies, it’s a Mercy who walks alone. So Siggy sought out the four of us, starting with me.
There are three ways to keep warm during a Vorse winter. One is fire, one is Vite, and one is storytelling.
On a frigid winter night when it was too cold to sleep, Siggy unbraided her long white hair, shook it down over her shoulders, and told me a story from her past.
The Boneless Mercies Page 8