by C. C. Finlay
A tingle shot through Proctor as he recognized the verse from Jeremiah. He looked up at the sky, expecting it to crack open at once. When he rose to walk over to her, his legs buckled and he fell into a kneeling position at her side.
She dropped her head and repeated the verse. The tears running down her cheeks made streaks through the mud.
The crack and thunder of the battle came close for a while and then moved away from them. Still they knelt there while Deborah repeated her spell. The wind changed first, from fitful to firm, growing colder as it whipped around them. The wind alone would keep the British ships from taking the Narrows and cutting off the Continental army’s escape.
In time the sky grew dark as the clouds rolled overhead, blotting out the sun. If the rain came, and if it poured hard enough, it would be impossible to keep the powder dry. The roads would bog down, preventing the movement of the gun carriages. Men would stop fighting, at least for a while.
Deborah sagged forward, barely able to stay upright. “Help me,” she whispered, holding out her hand.
Proctor reached out and took hold.
Something like lightning shot through him. Not affection, not the thrill he felt in her presence, not the tingle of ordinary magic. It started in the soles of his feet and vibrated through him, setting all his hair on edge and shooting out his hand. He’d felt it before.
When the widow tried to steal his life energy.
“Deborah?”
“I need you,” she said in a small, raw voice.
In fear, he tried to pull his hand away, to force her to talk to him. But she gripped him too tightly.
And then he was rooted to the spot while the lightning shot through him again and again, like thunderbolts falling from the sky on the same tree. His sense of time warped, like a piece of wood in the rain, bending back on itself. He saw the clouds roll in, until the whole sky was dark. He felt the sharp cold shock of raindrops as large as shillings splash across his face. The rain sluiced down like a waterfall: one moment his shoulders were damp, the next he was soaked to the skin, as if he’d been dropped, fully dressed, in a tub of water.
He was shivering, bitter cold, more hungry than he’d ever felt before. Somehow it had gone from noon to night. The sound of artillery boomed in his ears, but maybe it was only an echo from earlier in the day or perhaps it was the sound of thunder. In time, even that faded, replaced by the steady patter of raindrops on leaves mixed with the random splashes of water spilled off the leaves and into the puddles that filled every crack in the ground.
His head was lifted in wonder, and at the same moment he felt so dizzy he thought he might tip over. He reached out to steady himself, and his hand came to rest on a wet pile of clothes. It took him a second to realize the pile of clothes was a woman.
“Deborah?” he said, trying to find her heartbeat without taking liberties. He lifted her hand to his face. It was a limp, dead weight. “Deborah!”
She didn’t respond to his first gentle shake. His eyes had adjusted to the dark now, enough to see that she was curled up on her side, like a newborn baby. He shook her harder, calling her name, and she flopped over on her back. She was so cold and pale.
He tugged off his jacket, even though it was soaked, and wrapped her in it. Then he rubbed her arms and legs, trying to bring feeling back to them. He looked around, seeking shelter of some kind, a place to dry off, find food. But it was impossible to see far in the rain and darkness.
Gathering her up in his arms, he stood—and staggered sideways, almost falling. She tumbled out of his arms, sprawling across the wet ground.
Even that was not enough to bring a reaction from her. She lay there as motionless as she had been when he awoke.
Proctor knelt again and lifted her carefully this time, casting her arm around his shoulders and holding tight around her small waist. He peered into the dark rain until he thought he spied the direction of the road.
“Come on, Deborah, you have to try to walk.”
She didn’t respond, so he set off anyway. Light as she was compared with him, he carried her only a few yards. Her feet dragged, her arm slipped off his shoulder, and she sagged out of his grip.
He caught her and lowered her gently to the ground. He looked around for landmarks, but he still felt confused, disoriented. There was a tavern a mile or more back down the road—he didn’t think they could make it that far. Besides, it was probably overrun by the British and used as some kind of headquarters.
He squinted into the rain, making out the dark outline of the heights. The lingering smell of black powder was damp and stale. The earth itself smelled churned up, freshly plowed. If the battle was that way, that’s where he’d find their fellow Americans.
Soaked as he was, his throat felt dry and cottony. He licked his lips, lapping up the rain that streamed down his face. After a moment, he lifted his head to the sky, squeezed his eyes shut, and opened his mouth. Fat drops rolled down his tongue, slaking his thirst.
He sighed, lowered his head, and summoned all his strength and will. Then he knelt down beside Deborah, rolled her up into a tight bundle, and held her close to his chest. Though she weighed less than he expected, he was weak and struggled to his feet. He came to a road and proceeded slowly, making sure of his footing with each step, not daring to fall or stumble.
He saw no campfires, no sign of either army. Was the battle already over? Had Deborah’s storm made any difference?
Off in the trees, he thought he spied the outline of a woodcutter’s shed. He left the road and headed for it. He had gone only a dozen yards when the air prickled on the back of his neck and he froze as still as a boulder.
A human figure in a broad-brimmed hat moved quickly along the road, as if he were impervious to the mud sucking at his shoes. He made no noise as he passed, and Proctor could not tell if he was British or American. Although it was August, Proctor began to shiver.
The figure disappeared around a bend and was gone.
The hair settled on Proctor’s skin, and he took a deep breath that stilled his shaking. He looked down at Deborah—she still hadn’t moved.
He thrust aside any thought he had of weakness or rest. The path across the hillside required all his concentration just to keep his balance.
His head was up, trying to pierce the gray shroud of the landscape to find the cottage again, when Deborah’s weight shifted. For a split second he panicked as he thought they both might spill, tumbling down the slope. But she was only stirring. She took a shallow breath and burrowed her face against his chest.
Relief flooded through him—she was alive! Until that moment, he had been acting as if she were, but he had been so afraid she wasn’t. A laugh of joy popped from his mouth at the same instant his feet slipped out from under him. He cradled Deborah to himself, taking the brunt of the fall on his shoulder, and losing her as he rolled down the rest of the hill, cracking his arm on a rock, clipping his head against a tree. He came to rest in a puddle at the bottom of the slope, with Deborah rolling down on top of him a second later.
“Who goes there?”
The voice that shouted the challenge was unmistakably English, and not above ten yards away.
“Proctor …,” Deborah whispered. He clamped his hand over her mouth and pulled her close to him.
“Show yourself, you bloody rebel, or we’ll shoot!”
The voice was half the distance closer. Proctor could see the man’s silhouette now, and the gleam of the bayonet at the end of his musket. Deborah was conscious enough to see it also, and she nested closer in his arms.
“They won’t believe that threat,” a second voice said. He walked up beside the first man, his dark overcoat open in front to reveal the white cross of the straps against his uniform. “Not if their powder’s as wet as ours.”
“They’re bound to attack us again,” the first man said. “They’re trapped between here and the Narrows—they’ve no place else to go.”
“Exactly,” the second said. “Th
at’s why we’ll march on them in the morning and accept their surrender. Then this bloody war will be over and we’ll all go home.”
“Or off to the next spot where there’s fighting,” the first man said. He lowered his musket and tilted his head to the sky. Proctor realized he was looking to the east for a sign of sunrise.
“There’s no one out here,” the second man said. “Come back to camp.”
The two sentries left. Deborah reached up and peeled Proctor’s fingers away from her mouth.
“Not so tight,” she whispered. The whites of her eyes seemed even larger because her face was so dark and sunken around them. What had the magic done to her? “Where are we?”
“West of the British lines, I think,” Proctor whispered back. “We haven’t surrendered yet.” By we he meant the American army, but he could see that Deborah understood. “What did you do?”
She pushed away from his chest, sitting upright. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But I had to make a circle with you. If I stopped to explain, it would have broken my focus.”
“No, I understand why you did that,” he said, glimpsing over his shoulder to make sure the British sentries hadn’t returned. “Though it near scared the life out of me. What did you do to call this storm?”
She shrugged, looked away over the hill. “You remember the storm forming out over the ocean? I nudged it westward.”
Proctor wanted to laugh. “What, you just whistle for it like a dog and it comes?”
“This is not the time,” she whispered.
The sentries stirred again, their shadows moving just past a fencerow of trees. The damp lumps of tents, their shoulders hunched against the drizzle, were visible just beyond the sentries. It was too wet to keep any fires.
Deborah was right. This wasn’t the time, not when they were caught in the middle of the British lines instead of beyond them. But she would have to explain to him later how she had moved the clouds across the sky like pulling a blanket across a bed.
“Can you walk?” he whispered.
“Yes,” she said. She attempted to rise to her feet, and stumbled, dizzy. “Just give me a moment.”
He reached out to help her up. After a long hesitation, she accepted his hand. He flinched when she touched him, but no lightning shot through his body this time. He pulled her to her feet. Proctor bent to retrieve his coat, and then, with Deborah leaning on his arm, they climbed back up the hill. In a dense copse of trees, where Proctor had spied it once before, they found the woodcutter’s small cottage.
The door had no latch. Proctor pushed it open and they went inside. There was a chair and a little bench, and an empty jug that still smelled like rum.
Deborah collapsed into the far corner. “This is as far as I can go,” she said.
He set his shoulder bag on the table and brought out the food they had packed. He handed the cheese to Deborah, who broke off a piece and chewed it greedily. The bread was soaked through and fell apart in his fingers, but he still shoveled it into his mouth. His canteen was empty so he thrust the rum jug out the door where the rain was running off the roof until it was full. He took a sip, then passed it to Deborah.
She hadn’t answered his question the first time, so he asked it again. “Deborah, what did you do?”
She fumbled in her pocket for her cap, and covered her head with it. Dark hair spilled out, framing her exhausted face. Then she wiped her muddy cheeks on her sleeve. “I did what I had to do,” she said. “I always do what I have to do.”
“Did you know this would happen to you?”
She looked away. “I knew you would be drained with me. I didn’t know how badly. I knew it wouldn’t be as bad as me. Does it matter?”
“It matters to me,” he said. He moved the chair in front of the door and sat down on the dirt floor across from her. They divided up the rest of the food—cooked sausage, dried berries, wet crackers. “I’m frightened for you.”
“I’ll recover, if I have time and rest.”
“Can I do a healing spell—”
“No.” She laughed. “I doubt that either of us could do much of a spell at the moment. In any case, you can’t heal magic with magic, not that way.”
He stared at her until she shifted uncomfortably.
“Using magic is like riding a ferry,” she said. “You cross from this side of the world to the shores of spirit. Someone has to pay a toll.”
“I know that,” he said. “When I lifted the boulder in the field with magic, I felt exhausted, like I had lifted a heavy weight. But no one throws a rope around a cloud and drags it across the bay. How do you pay the toll for that?”
“I’ve paid it!” she shouted back. She stared at him until he looked out the door to make sure no one approached. “Look at me. Can’t you see the price I’ve paid? I’m emptied, to the bottom of my bowl.”
“You’re lucky to be alive.”
“Don’t you think that’s the price I paid?”
She was surprised to wake up, he realized. She was so appalled by the sheer amount of death and carnage taking place that she would have sacrificed her own life to prevent it.
He didn’t know whether to slap her or kiss her hand. “Don’t you ever do that again,” he said.
She broke their gaze first, shifting her position to curl up on the floor. “I need some sleep.”
He knew that he should stay awake to keep watch, but in a few minutes when she was as still as death, he realized he was too drained to stay awake either. He curled up opposite her, with the legs of the table between them, and fell asleep.
He awoke shivering and cold. It was day, but the clouds were thick and icy rain drizzled out of the sky, months out of season.
Deborah was curled up on the floor, but she must have been up. His jacket hung over the chair to dry, and most of the food was gone. He ate the rest, and then was too tired to stay awake. Bootzamon haunted his dreams, coming through the trees, looking for him. Proctor snapped awake in total darkness, reaching for a weapon, sweating despite the cold. The rain poured in torrents again, lashing the sides of the cabin.
“Proctor?” Deborah whispered.
“Yes,” he whispered back.
“I can’t get warm.”
He reached out his hand and found her. Wrapped his arms around her and held her close in the dark and the driving rain. “I’m glad you didn’t choose a verse about Noah for your spell,” he said.
“Wait another thirty-seven days,” she said. When he pulled back, she almost laughed. Instead she swallowed it and snuggled back against him. “We can’t stay here.”
“Because we have no heat, or because we have no food?”
“Because someone’s been out in the woods, searching. I don’t know if it’s for us, but—”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Because I’m still weak, and we’ll need your strength to get to the American lines.”
“I wasn’t sleeping that well,” he admitted.
“I know. Are you all right, Proctor? Ever since you came back from Virginia—”
“I’m all right.” He didn’t want to talk about it any more than he had. “We can leave whenever you’re ready.”
She pressed up against him. “I’m not quite ready yet.”
He kissed the top of her head, and she pressed back against his lips. He kissed her again and again, until she pulled away, saying, “We mustn’t.” But she didn’t rise. They sat that way until day brightened the blackness into dismal gray. He fell asleep again with her in his arms, waking only when she finally stood. He helped her slip his jacket on again for warmth, and they stepped outside the cabin.
Somewhere nearby, drums tapped out orders. More than likely, the British camps hadn’t moved since the rain started. He and Deborah set out west, avoiding barking dogs and anything that looked like a camp or a residence.
Deborah’s strength began to flag. She staggered often, leaning more and more on Proctor, until, with his arm about her waist, he practically carr
ied her along. As they passed one small farm, a rooster crowed in the yard, his voice cracking the still shell of the morning.
The sound froze them, and in the same instant they saw two shadows leaving the farmhouse. One of them wore a broad-brimmed hat. Both of them carried the bobbing coals of lit pipes.
Deborah shuddered and pressed closer to Proctor, who shifted his body to shield her. He wanted to whisper something reassuring to her, but his tongue felt bolted to the roof of his mouth. In a moment the figures reached the road and disappeared. Proctor felt the fear flow out of him; in his arms, Deborah relaxed at the same instant.
“We have to cross this road,” Proctor whispered.
“Not yet,” Deborah answered. “I’m not ready yet.”
While they waited in a hollow behind a fallen tree, the two figures returned. They were shadows in the twilight who could be anyone, but the man in the hat reminded Proctor of Bootzamon. The second looked like a woman.
It was a long time after they passed before Proctor felt ready to continue. They dashed from the tree, across the road, and down the other slope. Although they waited in hiding, they didn’t see the strangers return.
The path west was slow and arduous, with frequent long breaks in improvised shelters during the worst of the driving rain. During the course of the day, they descended from the heights, crossed a road guarded by British sentries, and passed a range of low hills. Proctor didn’t think it was more than five or six miles as the crow flew, but they went back and forth, over the most difficult terrain, just to avoid the soldiers. They were soaked and plastered with mud. Proctor’s shoes squished with every step, and his toes were wet and itchy.
Deborah’s strength was fading when Proctor finally spied a rise in the land ahead, a dark bump on the horizon set against the dark sky. “There it is,” he told her. “That’s the American line.”
“How do you know?” she asked.
“Because we’ve gone far enough that we either run into the Continental army or we fall off the edge of the island into the bay,” he said. The air smelled like mudflats, so if that wasn’t the American position, falling off the island seemed like a very real possibility.