I smelled freshly cut hay strong in the air. Thomson stood erect before me, his head slumped to the side, his arms straight out from his shoulders like he was still propped on poles. A part of me wanted to poke him to see how solid he was. The rest of me wanted to hide and not ever have to look upon his hideousness again. But there was work to be done.
“Th…Thomson?” I called.
The scarecrow jerked his face in my direction, Thomson’s jagged yarn mouth curving into a smile, the stitches of his black-patched eyes fixing upon me as he awaited orders.
I glanced at Mander’s family’s tent. Gran had suggested bringing Mander out instead of sending Thomson in, but how would I do that? Shaking the tent was too brazen, and calling his name might send him running. The best idea I could come up with was to throw pebbles until someone came out to investigate. It was juvenile and unclever, but that didn’t stop me from finding a few good-sized stones and tossing them. At first no one stirred, but after the second toss I heard dull, sleepy voices. I darted behind a nearby vardo to hide, watching Mander’s door. I thought Thomson would follow me, but he stood in the same place where he’d been conjured, his head rotating all the way around on his shoulders to keep me in his sights.
“Here. To me,” I whispered, and the dream lumbered my way. His straw feet made his movements jerky and off-kilter, each step a lurching lunge propelling him forward. He was horrible to behold, and I forced my attention away so I wouldn’t be tempted to flee my own creation.
The voices rose inside Mander’s tent, people clearly awake. I hurled another stone. As fate would have it, Mander was the one to poke out his head. He looked exhausted, his hair standing on end as if he’d thrashed in his bed all night. He stifled a yawn and swiveled his head to investigate the disturbance. I lobbed more stones from behind the vardo, hoping he’d follow the sound back to find me.
At first he did nothing, and I thought maybe he expected a trap—a disturbance when there was still darkness to the sky on the heels of his friends’ troubles was rather blatant. But apparently he was dumber than I thought, or he was not quite awake, because he bumbled outside a minute later. I tracked his movements by the swishing of his trousers.
Mander paused at the edge of the vardo I hid behind. “Who’s there?” he demanded of the morning fog.
When the fog did not answer, he turned the corner. On a normal bright day, he’d have seen me there, crouching, my hand easing the hatchet from my apron, but it was dark and the mists were thick. There was a blanket between us. I pushed myself to my feet, my skirt rustling. He tensed, then stepped back—just one step—toward his tent.
He collided with a big, heavy body. I hadn’t commanded Thomson to flank Mander from the other side, yet there he was. Worse, when the fog cleared enough to allow me a glimpse of him, his gloved hand was raised and holding a scythe.
I’d never envisioned Thomson holding a weapon when I’d made the dream, but he was able and ready to strike Mander down if I wanted him to.
“A nightmare is never a static thing.”
This was what Gran had meant. He’d progressed on his own, without my commands, and that was scary.
Mander’s face was whiter than porcelain when he turned around. Finding himself face to chest with the scarecrow, he took a step back, his bottom lip quivering like a terrified child’s.
Thomson shifted his weight from one straw foot to the other, his stitched eyes rolling my way as if to ask “Now? May I hurt him now?”
Mander panted like an overheating dog. “How? How are you here?” he screeched, tripping over a stack of metal pails as he stumbled farther back.
Thomson tottered forward, closing the distance, holding the scythe’s rusty curved blade at the ready. Mander lifted his hand as if to ward off a blow. I crept up closer, hatchet poised, hoping he’d put his hand against the vardo side so I could whack at his fingers and take my due, but he didn’t comply.
“Thomson’s mine,” I said, emerging from the fog behind him. “He’s here to help me.”
Mander jerked his face my way, looking far more unnerved by my presence than that of the shambling scarecrow.
“You owe me, Mander. You owe the diddicoy. I watched you beat him to death,” I said.
He opened his mouth to say something but then stopped, his tongue sweeping over his upper lip as he struggled with his words. Because I thought he was going to speak, I didn’t anticipate him darting off, but Mander dropped his head and sprinted toward the fence that separated Cotter’s Field from the road. I attempted to snag his shirt in my fist, but he was faster than me and twice as scared, and fear was a marvelous fuel. Thomson didn’t need me to tell him to follow—the scarecrow tore off after Mander so fast, he was a blur. I lifted the hem of my skirt to give chase. I’d witnessed Thomson’s ambling, jerky gait already, but he seemed to be skimming over the earth in his pursuit, as if the fog had become his personal ferry.
Mander vaulted the perimeter fencing, and I heard his boots skittering across the gravel road as he ran in the direction of Anwen’s Crossing. Thomson slashed at the boy’s back with his scythe, never quite making contact.
I wasn’t sure if Mander could be hurt by the scarecrow’s weapon. Thomson was made of ether and will, a creature born of fog, and though he looked dangerous, I didn’t know if he could actually affect the world around him or if he was limited to his illusion state.
Time would tell.
I approached the fence. I’d fallen behind and the gap was increasing by the second. There was no way I could catch Mander on the main road, so I cut through the wheat fields to intersect him at the curve. I slithered over the top rung and then ran for the fence on the opposite side. The wheat field was slippery with dew and the stalks were high, but I forced my way through the crop, my hatchet hacking at anything barring my path.
The sky had brightened to a silvery blue, and a stripe of gold kissed the rim of the world. There was enough light now that I was able to avoid most of the rocky, uneven dips marring the field. My legs grew sore from pushing them hard, but I knew if I kept going, I could head Mander off at the pass. Letting him escape into town wasn’t an option—I wouldn’t allow myself to fail so close to bringing Martyn back.
Not after what I’d been through. Not after what I’d done to my reputation with my clansmen.
I went deeper and deeper still into the field. I was nearing a farmhouse and could see its eaves against the skyline. I wondered if that was the Woodard homestead. Closer to the house, bales of hay lined the fencing, stacked neatly in twos, threes, and fours, and I had to search for a break in them to escape the property. It took a while, but with a little artful maneuvering, I was able to reach the road just in time for Mander to crest the curve ahead.
My breath came in short, cloudy gasps with the autumn chill. My body ached and my hair stuck to the sweat on my neck, but I’d beaten him. I saw Mander coming up the road, and I readied the hatchet and braced for confrontation. He was red-faced and scared, the veins in his temples and neck bulging with strain. Tears dripped down his cheeks and from his chin.
Thomson lunged at his back, scythe still slashing. I was unsettled to see that he’d morphed again in the minutes since I’d last seen him. Not only was he bigger in stature, but his yarn mouth had opened to reveal two rows of glinting fangs. And while before he’d been silent beyond the rustling of his hay, now he’d found his voice, and he crowed with insidious glee.
Mander glimpsed my looming shape against the fog, and his mouth opened in a silent scream.
He sees my true power.
I expected him to skid to a stop in the middle of the road, but with a single glance over his shoulder at the demonic scarecrow, Mander changed his course. He veered toward the wheat field through which I’d come. I ran after him, the hatchet held high above my head, Thomson mirroring my pose from the other side.
Mander climbed onto the top rung of the fence, crouching on his haunches to make a dive for one of the taller stacks of hay. “No!�
� I shouted, anger swelling in my gut at the possibility of him escaping. He shot me a quick glance, a smirk appearing, even now. He thought he’d outsmarted me, and his hubris overshadowed his fear for a tiny moment.
It would cost him.
He sailed toward the haystack. Thomson roared after him, still riding the fog, but then the strangest thing happened. Thomson stopped and took a step back, going as still as he’d been on the poles at the Woodards’ farm. One moment he was a hideous creature intent on murder and destruction, the next he looked docile, cocking his head as if listening to the birds singing their morning songs.
It took me a moment to hear Mander’s wet gurgles. He lay prone on top of the haystack, wheezy gasps sounding from his mouth like he was trying to breathe through water. His arms flapped and his eyelids fluttered. I eased toward the break in the wall of hay bales and slipped through to get a better look at him.
I dropped down into the field and turned the corner, only to stop dead. My eyes traveled over the twitching arms. The skewed legs. The lolling head. Some feet before me, beside the looming shape of the dream scarecrow, Mander was impaled on a pitchfork. Two of the prongs pierced his upper chest and arms, the tips thrust through and glinting ruby red.
Mander wasn’t going anywhere, impaled as he was, and by the labored rattle of his breaths and the gray-tinged pallor of his skin, I knew he was in peril of bleeding out if I didn’t get him help. Gran always said fortune aimed to surprise us when we least expected it—I’d worked myself into a dither about having to capture him, and he’d captured himself in a most terrible way.
I left Mander gurgling on the prongs of the pitchfork and turned back to my monster. Thomson stood off to the side, his head at that odd angle, the scythe clenched in his fist. His unnatural gaze was fixed upon me, and his yarn mouth opened and closed as if he were smacking his straw lips together.
I lifted the bundle of dwayberry by its yarn. My earlier reluctance to touch Mander’s spit seemed stupid in the face of hacking off his fingers. I gave the dream thread a tug to loosen it. Thomson rustled and sagged in response, his head dipping like he didn’t want to watch what I was about to do. It made me inexplicably sad—I’d been scared of him not two minutes ago, yet there I was feeling guilty over a nightmare’s ruin while a human boy writhed in pain nearby. I supposed it was because there’d be nothing left of Thomson when I was through. People you still had to account for.
“I’ll have Martyn remake you. I promise.” It was odd to talk to him. Odder still for him to nod as if he understood. Gran said Thomson would grow out of my control if I didn’t finish him. And he’d transformed thrice over in a short time. I took a deep breath and destroyed the bundle.
The last bit of straw was caught in the rippling breeze. It was gentle and warm and more suited to August than October. I could smell hay and apples and freshly turned earth as it ushered the fog away, removing the creeping gray blanket from the ground. There was poetry to it in a way—Thomson was a thing of dreams and he had to end, so the fog ought to end with him. The scarecrow gave one last shimmer before he fell apart, his straw blades scattering like dandelion seeds.
I dropped the shredded cantrip and approached Mander’s side. He was limp and quiet, his eyes imploring. Blood drenched the straw beneath him, a dribble of it spilling from the side of his mouth to run down his chin. His arms dangled uselessly at his sides. Most of his body was strewn across the top of the haystack, but the upper third was propped up by the pitchfork’s metal prongs. I wasn’t sure if pulling it out would do more harm than good, so I left it as it was for the moment.
I retrieved the cat fetish from my pocket, nicking my thumb on the hatchet’s edge so I’d bleed. A small slice, barely deep enough to break the skin, but it was enough to smear the gold-painted eyes of my focus.
My blood to Gran’s.
Blood calling to blood.
“Gran,” I said to the wind, willing it to carry my voice home. “Send someone to the wheat field, near the farmhouse. Mander’s had an accident. He’ll need attention.”
A heartbeat passed before her voice drifted to me on a gust, low and deep and musical. “They will come. Do as you must before they arrive.”
I eyed Mander. Though I loathed him for what he’d done to Martyn, the fear on his face was pitiable. He looked young and scared, especially as I wielded the hatchet and reached for his hand.
“This is what you owe me and then it is done. Gran will see you righted, and you will go from the family. You won’t come back,” I said.
For the first time, I wondered if those words would be said to me one day for the things I’d done to right Silas’s wrongs. Gran protected me, but she was old, and would not be around forever.
Are you and Mander so very different?
Do you even know anymore?
My resolve was wavering. As I pressed Mander’s limp hand to the side of the hay bale, him too weak to fight, I started to feel sick with guilt. I lifted the hatchet, but self-reproach bubbled up inside me, threatening to shut me down before I harvested what I needed. Strangely, it was Mander’s expression that gave me the strength to swing the small ax down.
It was pleading, wide-eyed innocence. The same expression that had been on Martyn’s face the night of his beating. Mander had been the one to deliver that beating. It hadn’t stirred Mander. Why would it stir me?
My ax connected with the knuckles on his pinky and ring finger and sliced straight through. Mander gurgled in pain as the digits fell from his hand to drop to the ground, into a nest of bloodied hay.
My apron was oddly clean despite the grim scene around me. I slipped it from my neck and wrapped Mander’s bleeding stumps with the sash, trying to stifle the flow with a tight tourniquet. I was as Gran had been with Tomašis the night of his eye removal: the butcher, but also the savior.
Can I live with that?
Gran would have looked at Mander with a sense of accomplishment, knowing she’d save Martyn later, but was I enough like her? All I felt looking at him was disgust.
Not at the blood, but at my own actions.
My stomach roiled and clenched, my knees knocked together. What I’d done to Mander was not the act of a good person. What I’d done to Brishen, and the way I’d desecrated Cam’s corpse—these were no better. Even if the victims were murderous wastes of human life, my deeds were hideous and punishable before my people. Before God.
For the first time since the attack in the field, I erupted into sobs. Standing in that same field now, holding Mander’s limp, bloody hand, tears poured out of me. Every ounce of sadness and anger, every frustration and hurt pummeled me. I mourned Martyn; I mourned my loss of innocence; I mourned having to become the type of person I’d become. I was a catastrophic jumble of emotion. My world crashed around me, and I cried until I was blind and light-headed with the need to breathe. Openly weeping, I collapsed to the ground.
I’d pushed away emotion for so long, now I felt it all.
A wind ripped through the field, not gentle like Thomson’s summer breeze, but ferocious and angry and holding the bite of winter. I lifted my face to it, letting its strong gusts dry the tears on my cheeks. “Come home, Bethan,” it commanded. “The men will collect him.”
After I’d composed myself enough to gather Mander’s severed fingers in my shawl for transport, I eyed the suffering young man. His breathing was shallow, his skin clammy-looking. I reached out to cup his cheek, patting it as gently as I could, and his eyes flew open. His pupils were enormous inside his irises.
“They’re coming for you, to bring you back for healing,” I said. It was likely no comfort at all, but it was the best I could offer. I left him there and ambled toward home, keeping to the wheat so I wouldn’t encounter any of the Romani. As tired and achy as I was, the field seemed to go on for days, but I pressed on until I came to the fence railing on the other side of Cotter’s Field. I passed camp, not pausing to look at the fire to see who might be milling about. My only concern was getting back
to Gran and delivering my fleshy burdens.
Arriving at our vardo, I pulled open our ill-fitting door. Inside, Gran had an array of mystical oddities spread out on the table. On one side was the cauldron awaiting Mander’s parts. Next to it was the mirror with Martyn’s breath trapped inside, and next to that was a black basin filled to the brim with water. Gran sat in her chair on the opposite side of the table, her fingers kneading and pinching at a white blob of wax. She must have collected the drippings from the candles on the table that morning.
“I am sorry to summon you home, but we are short on time. Put the fingers in the pot. I will take care of them when I am done with this.” She paused her kneading to look up at me. “Are you faring any better than you were?”
“Barely, but yes.” I dropped Mander’s digits into the iron cauldron before approaching the washbasins. Lye took care of most of the blood, though my nail beds were stained rusty red. I threw the pink water out the window and changed out the bowl.
When I turned back to Gran, she lifted what she’d been working on from the table so I could see. It was another fetish—this time a skeletal structure of twigs fleshed out by layer upon layer of molded wax. Two legs, two arms, a head—there was even a dangling part to signify maleness, which made me blush. The only incomplete portion was a gap in the middle of its chest where there should have been a heart.
“That’s for Silas?” I asked.
“Yes,” Gran said. “With it, you can control his body—bring him harm. But we need to get his essence as quickly as possible.”
“Why?”
Gran gestured at the black bowl of water, where a faint image danced across the surface. I could see the inside of a vardo, and a young man’s back as he hunched over a bed. He was stuffing clothes into a bag, and someone standing behind him was handing him his personal effects. Silas, I thought, recognizing his lean, muscular build, though I couldn’t discern his face. Which meant the helpful hands were those of his father.
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