The Witch Hunter

by Virginia Boecker

  He takes one look at us and stops dead in his tracks.

  “My God,” he stammers. “What—what happened? My God,” he repeats, his eyes darting back and forth between Fifer and me in horror. He seems not to notice the enormous sword she’s holding at her side.

  Between the two of us, there’s a lot to be horrified by. Fifer’s red hair is matted and dirty, embedded with grass and twigs and broken leaves. Her shirt is mud-stained and her skirt hangs in tatters. But none of that compares with her face. Her eye, nearly swollen shut now, is a brilliant shade of purple. It stands out like a beacon against her pale skin.

  But however bad she looks, I look a hundred times worse. I catch a glimpse of myself in one of Humbert’s many diamond-paned windows and start at the reflection. My face is coated in blood and dirt. My arms are covered in moss and mud. But my stomach is the worst. Fifer’s beautiful white dress has been torn clear open, revealing an enormous, oozing slash across my midsection. She said she’d kill me if I ruined her dress, but I’m wondering if the sword might beat her to it. My stomach lurches and the ground slides precariously under my feet.

  “John!” Humbert rushes to my side. “George! Come quickly! We need help!” He and Fifer slowly lead me inside the house.

  John and George run into the hallway. I lift my head to look them over. Unlike Humbert, they’ve changed into fresh clothes from yesterday, both wearing long wool coats, heavy gloves, and boots. Their faces are flushed with cold, as if they’ve been outside for a while.

  “Oh,” I whisper. I’m surprised at how weak my voice sounds. “Were you out all night, too?”

  “We’ve been looking for you,” George says. He can’t tear his eyes away from my stomach, from the blood that drips onto Humbert’s pristine black-and-white floors. Then he looks at Fifer, at the sword dangling from her hand. “Did you do that?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she snaps. We take another step forward and I stumble. “John, help her.”

  John steps forward and scoops me up in his arms.

  “Take her to the dining room,” Humbert instructs. Dimly, I hear him call out to Bridget. She rushes over, and John quickly rattles off the things he needs. I don’t really listen. Can’t he do whatever he needs to do upstairs, so I can sleep? I’m so tired. I lean my head against his chest and close my eyes. He smells like outside. Leaves and cold, crisp air.

  “Bring me whatever sewing needles you have, and a spool of your strongest thread. No, I don’t care what color,” he adds. He carries me into the dining room, Fifer and George on his heels.

  “You’re going to sew my dress back together?” I open one eye and squint up at him. “That’s nice of you.”

  “No. I’m going to sew your skin back together.”

  “What?” Fifer and I exchange a frantic glance. My injury is right above my stigma. If John tries to help me, he’ll see it. I can feel the heat of it blazing into my skin, still trying to heal me. “No. You can’t.”

  “I have to,” he says.

  “No, you don’t. Just put me down. I’ll be fine.” I start struggling in his arms. But the pain is so intense it makes me gasp.

  “Stop moving,” he orders. “You’re making it worse.”

  In the dining room, John lays me on the table, now covered in a clean white sheet, and then shrugs out of his heavy black coat. Bridget rushes around, carrying trays of things and setting them out for him. Fifer and George hover behind her, identical expressions of fear on their faces.

  “No,” I say again. “You can’t do this.” I roll to my side, try to get away from him. But John pins my shoulders to the table and leans over me. His face is inches from mine.

  “If you don’t let me do this, you will bleed to death,” he whispers. “Do you understand me?” I look into his dark eyes and I can see fear there, lurking just beneath the surface. And I know he’s telling the truth.

  I let out a shaky breath. “Okay. But there’s something I need to tell you.”

  “Tell me later.” John grabs a bottle of spirits off the table, then pulls back the frayed edges of silk from my gory midsection. “This might sting a bit,” he says. Then he dumps the clear, cold liquid all over my stomach.

  The pain is sharp and penetrating. I stifle a groan, biting my lip so hard I taste blood. He presses a clean cloth to my side and begins cleaning off my skin. Any second he’s going to see my stigma.

  I glance at Fifer. She holds my gaze for a moment, a look of resignation crossing her face. Then she nods.

  “John.” She walks forward and touches his sleeve.

  “Fifer, please. Not now.” He lifts up the cloth.

  “I need to tell you something.”

  “Fifer, I told you—” He glances at my stomach. Frowns. Peers in closer. Then he sucks in a sudden, sharp breath. I don’t need to look to know what he sees: a black XIII, scrawled across my abdomen, burning bright against my pale skin.

  John stumbles away from the table, his eyes wide, the color draining from his face.

  “That’s a… you’re a…” He can’t bring himself to say it.

  I open my mouth to say something, anything, but nothing comes out. I start to reach for him, then think better of it.

  “I’m sorry,” Fifer says softly. “You weren’t supposed to know.”

  John doesn’t reply.

  “None of us were,” George adds. “It was Nicholas’s order. Fifer and I only found out by accident.”

  John still doesn’t reply. He just stands there, staring unseeing at the floor in front of him. An interminable silence passes, and I wonder for a moment if he’s just going to walk away. Leave the room and let me bleed to death.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Fifer says. “But she’s not like the others. She saved my life tonight.” She quickly fills them in about our run-in with the guards. “If she hadn’t been there, they would have taken me in. Or killed me. Or worse.”

  I stare at her, shocked by her words, by her defense of me.

  “And she knows where the tablet is,” Fifer continues.

  “She does?” Humbert and George say at once.

  George steps up beside me. “Where is it?”

  “It’s—ah.” A bolt of pain shoots through me, making me gasp. “It’s at Blackwell’s.”

  “What?” Humbert looks stunned. “How is that possible?”

  I open my mouth again, groan in pain again.

  “She can tell you about it later,” Fifer says. “But she can’t if she’s dead.” She looks at John. But he’s looking at me now, his jaw clenched, a flush of anger coloring his cheeks. Eyes so dark they’re almost black.

  “Hand me the needle and thread.”

  George lets out a small sigh of relief.

  Bridget steps beside John, looking apologetic. “I tried to thread it myself but my hands were shaking too hard. I don’t take to the sight of blood too well.” She presses the needle and thread into his hand, then quickly moves away from the table, as if I’m going to jump off it and attack her.

  John threads the needle without hesitation, as if he’s done it a thousand times, pulling it through and tying the ends together in a tight knot. I see the slightest tremor in his hands. If I hadn’t already seen how steady they can be, I might not have noticed. Without a word, he picks up the bottle of spirits again and offers it to me.

  I take two huge swallows. The sharp, strong liquid burns my mouth and throat. I shudder as it hits my empty, roiling stomach.

  John holds the needle up, a long length of thread trailing behind it. Green. The same shade as the knight in his tomb.

  I close my eyes just as the sharp needle penetrates my flesh.

  MY EYES FLUTTER OPEN. John is leaning over me, his palms spread across the table, his head bowed. I must have passed out for a moment, but I don’t think he noticed. I can hear him breathing: long, slow, deep breaths, as if he’s fighting to control them.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. My voice weak and hoarse, but I need to say it. “I’m so
sorry.”

  He jerks his head up. Snatches the spool of thread off the table, hurls it across the room. It hits the wall and clatters to the floor. Then he spins on his heel and storms away.

  George starts after him, but Fifer grabs his sleeve.

  “Let it go,” she says. “Just—let him be.”

  Fifer and George turn to me, and Humbert steps up beside them. They stand over me, watching me, silent. I feel vulnerable, lying here like this. My dress in tatters, my stomach exposed, my secret exposed. I’m trembling from cold and fear and loss of blood and a hundred other things I’m too weary to contemplate. But I need to tell them about the tablet. I need to tell them I have no idea how I’m going to destroy it. And I need to tell them about Blackwell.

  “The tablet,” I start.

  “Is it really at Blackwell’s?” George says.

  I nod.

  “That’s a very serious accusation.” Humbert frowns. “I’ve known Blackwell a long time. He’s capable of some unpleasant things, certainly. And he certainly has reason to get rid of Nicholas. But breaking his nephew’s rules to do it, the rules he himself created… are you absolutely sure?”

  “Yes.” I take a deep breath—hard to do without making my stitches hurt—and look at them each in turn. “There’s something else you should know about him, too.”

  “What?” It’s Fifer who speaks. “What is it?”

  “Blackwell is a wizard.”

  The words seem to change as they leave my mouth. They shift and grow into monsters of their own, a hybrid of fear and truth and horror and lies: reaching, grabbing, shaking, shrieking. The others, they don’t speak. They don’t move. They just stand there, allowing themselves to be devoured.

  “Nicholas… I think he suspected it for a while,” I continue. “And after what happened at Veda’s, after she told him what I was, after I told him all the things I’d done, the things I did…” I pause, swallowing back the lump in my throat. “He knew.”

  Then I tell them everything.

  I tell them about Caleb. About my training, about my final test at Blackwell’s. How they took us one by one into the darkness, maybe to live, maybe to die. How Guildford marched me into the woods and into the tomb, where Blackwell tried to bury me alive with my own fear.

  “After it was over, after the dirt receded and the tomb righted itself, it was already morning. I saw the light coming in through the edges of that door, and I remember thinking it looked different. That it didn’t look like the same door as before. It wasn’t wooden at all, but stone. But I didn’t think it mattered. All that mattered was getting out.” I take another breath. “Finally, Guildford came and got me. My eyes were shut. I was still singing. Still curled up in a ball. I wasn’t in my right mind.”

  “Just like at Veda’s,” George whispers at last. His eyes are as round as trenchers. Fifer’s face is vellum pale, and she goes a long time without blinking.

  I nod. “As we left, I opened my eyes to take one last look. I don’t know why. Maybe I wanted to see where I almost died, maybe I wanted proof I was still alive. But when I opened my eyes, I saw it. It was the Thirteenth Tablet.”

  Fifer sucks in a breath.

  “Of course, I didn’t realize it was the Thirteenth Tablet until we had the sword and I saw the Green Knight’s tomb. I didn’t know you could dispose of curse tablets in tombs, not until Fifer told me.…” I shiver. “But now I know. And if I’m going to destroy it, I have to go back into the tomb at Blackwell’s to get it.”

  “How are you going to do that?” George says. “Blackwell has more protection on his house than is on the king’s. Guards, gates, a moat, and that’s just to get to the main entrance. Inside, he’s got archers stationed in towers around the clock. They don’t fire warning shots.”

  Humbert sinks into a chair. He seems to deflate before my eyes: his face sagging, his posture sagging, the shock setting in.

  “I thought you were a witch,” he whispers. It’s a surprise to hear him speak in anything less than a shout. “Nicholas said you had herbs, and I just assumed…” He trails off, shaking his head.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “No one was supposed to know. Nicholas thought it was better that way.”

  Humbert considers it, then nods. “I understand the need for deception. I should; I live a life of it. Distasteful, perhaps. But necessary.”

  He motions to Bridget. She’s hovering in the doorway, watching us, eyes wide.

  “Please prepare a bath for Elizabeth, some food and clean clothing.” He turns back to me. “We need to get you on the mend. Then we can figure out how to get you inside Blackwell’s.”

  George helps me to sit, and Fifer wraps a blanket around my shoulders. We make our way down the hall, up the stairs, into my room. John is gone, nowhere to be seen. I saw the look on his face, when he realized what I am. He probably never wants to set eyes on me again.

  After Bridget finishes the bath, she and George excuse themselves. Fifer helps me undress and I slip into the hot, fragrant water. And immediately, embarrassingly, I start to cry.

  I’m weak. I’m tired. I’m injured. I’m confused. I’m ashamed of what I’ve done, afraid of what I’ve got to do. I am what I always feared I’d be: alone. I’m going into that tomb alone; I’m going to die alone. This is what Nicholas knew, what he didn’t want to tell me. He didn’t have to. Because deep down, I knew it, too.

  “You’re not going to die,” Fifer says quietly. She’s kneeling next to the bathtub, her hands gripping the edges. Watching me. “I know that’s what you think. But you aren’t. I’ve read the prophecy a thousand times. It sounds bad—I know that. But you aren’t going to die.”

  “Why do you care?” I say, my voice cracking. “As long as I find the tablet, what does it matter to you if I die? You said I’d be better off dead. You said it’s what I deserved.”

  “I don’t—I didn’t mean that,” she says. “Well, yes, I did. But I don’t anymore. I don’t think you deserve that.” She goes silent for a moment. “I understand what it’s like, you know,” she says, finally. “To have your life torn apart by magic.”

  I jerk my head up to look at her. “What?”

  She sighs. “I started studying with Nicholas when I was six. Everyone—well, everyone outside this house—thinks it’s because I’m so exceptional. A prodigy. For him to take on someone so young, I’d have to be, right?” She looks down, tapping her pale fingers against the tub. “Do you want to know the real reason?”

  I nod, but she doesn’t see me. “Yes.”

  “It’s because my mother gave me to him. She wasn’t a witch herself, and she was scared of me. Of the things I could do. My father had just died; she thought somehow I killed him. I don’t know if I did. To this day, I still don’t. All I know is she somehow found Nicholas, gave me away, and never came back.”

  I wince at the familiar tale of yet another broken family. “I’m sorry.”

  Fifer shrugs. “What could I do? I cried, I screamed, I ran away. But it didn’t bring her back. I hated being a witch. I hated magic. Hated that it turned my family against me. If Nicholas hadn’t taken me in, hadn’t raised me as his own, things might have turned out very differently for me. I might still hate magic, as you do.”

  “I don’t hate it,” I say. “Not anymore. I’ve seen the worst it can do, but I’ve seen the good it can do, too. What Nicholas does, what John does—” I stop. “I guess I don’t know what to think anymore.”

  Fifer nods. “Nicholas says that magic isn’t inherently good or bad; it’s what people do with it that makes it that way. It took me a long time to understand that. Once I did, I realized it isn’t magic that separates us from them, or you from me. It’s misunderstanding.”

  She holds up a finger, then plunges it into the tepid water. At once it becomes deliciously hot.

  “Besides, magic does come in handy sometimes—I can’t lie.” She grins at me. “I guess the tree downstairs was right about you after all.”

  “Wha
t do you mean?”

  “It’s a tree of life. Didn’t John tell you?”

  I shake my head.

  “Your making those leaves appear like that means… well, it means a couple of things,” Fifer says. “It’s mainly a sign of strength and power. But it also signifies change. New beginnings, I guess you could say.”

  “Oh.” Maybe I should be pleased by this, by the chance to start over—whatever that means. Instead, I’m left wondering how much it even matters anymore. Then I remember something else. “What did the bird mean?”

  Fifer raises her eyebrows, the tiniest smile crossing her face. “I think John should be the one to tell you about that.”

  I shake my head, a sudden ache filling my chest. I don’t think John is going to be telling me about anything anymore.

  Fifer helps me out of the bath and into a clean nightgown. I look at her and feel a twinge of guilt. She’s a mess, still dressed in her clothes from the party, her hair matted and dirty, her eye a brilliant shade of purple. She’s so tired she’s swaying on her feet.

  “You should go sleep,” I say.

  “Okay.” She yawns and walks to the door. “You should, too. You look terrible. You can’t expect to destroy the tablet in this condition.” She shuts the door behind her.

  The tablet. It’s the last thing on my mind as I fall into a fitful sleep, tossing and turning throughout the day and night, and the first thing on my mind when I wake up.

  I ease myself out of bed—the pain in my side considerably less than it was yesterday—go to the window and throw open the curtains. Outside, the ground is covered in a thick, fog-like mist. Another cold winter day in Anglia. I consider crawling back into bed when there’s a knock on the door.

  “It’s me,” Fifer says. “Let me in.”

  I open the door and let out a yelp. Fifer is standing in the hallway holding a goblet, wearing a black glittery mask with a plume of bright pink feathers shooting from the top.