by V. E. Schwab
“She got sick so fast. As fast as the wind sweeps through, and she was gone before she was gone, if that makes sense. All the color left her. She had this fever and she should have been hot, should have been red, but she was gray. Cold.” He swallows. “She was dying, her life bleeding out in front of us, and there was nothing we could do. Her husband turned to me. Really looked at me, maybe for the first time.”
Cole’s hands are balled into fists resting on his knees. He does not see them, does not see anything. I move toward him, but the wind urges me back.
“‘You speak to the moor,’ her husband said to me. ‘Tell it to save her.’ He was desperate. ‘If you love her, make it save her.’ That’s what he said.”
Cole’s stony eyes are glittering, tears cast in blue-white light, gathering in the corners.
“But it doesn’t work like that. I cannot control storms, and even if I could, the rain could not take itself back from her lungs, from her bones.”
The small circles of wind are growing, and my hands tighten on the lip of a rock for balance. Cole seems to exist in his own space now, where the wind does not even ruffle his hair or tug at his cloak.
“She died.” He pauses a moment, swallows. “That was the night the village caught fire.”
My breath catches in my throat. I don’t know what to say. The wind curves around him like a shell. Yet somehow his voice comes through.
“There was so much wind. I thought it couldn’t all be from me. It was too loud, too strong. Some of the torches got knocked over. I tried to calm down, but the storm just kept growing. A dry storm, just clouds and wind, and the fire kept growing, swallowing everything. I wanted it to swallow me too, but it didn’t. The town burned up like a piece of paper, curling in on itself until there was nothing left. But me. I didn’t mean to do it, Lexi,” he says, finally meeting my eyes. The guilt brims with the tears on his dark lashes.
I reach for him, but he pulls back.
“I couldn’t control it.”
The wind between us surges up again, but I force my way through it, until I am beside him. I kneel in front of him, put my hands over his. When Cole looks up at me, his face is wet. The pain in his eyes is so familiar it knocks the air from my lungs.
“Then it was over, and all that was left was ashes.”
I can’t stop seeing him, singed and gray, alone where a village once stood.
“I felt so… empty,” he says, shaking his head. “Gutted. Hollow. And it hurt. Worse than anything.”
“Calm down, it’s all right,” I say, my voice vanishing in the wind.
He blinks, looking around at whirlwinds tearing up earth and stones. He shakes his head and tries to pull away. “Get back.”
My fingers tighten over his, and the wind picks up.
“No.”
Small twisters, spirals of leaves and grass and pebbles, draw near to us, pulled to Cole by his strange gravity, the same way I’m drawn to him. They lace together, growing.
“Get back, please,” he says again, panic in his voice as he pushes himself unsteadily to his feet. I stand with him, refusing to let go. But then the wind wrenches me backward, tangling in my cloak. I tumble away from him as the air coils around me, dragging the loose weeds and dirt up with it. And it keeps growing. The wind howls louder as it spins into a single perfect cyclone, carving a circle in the moor around me.
“Cole!” I shout, but the word is instantly lost in the whirlwind, swallowed as soon as it leaves my lips. I manage to stand. The world beyond the cyclone begins to blur. The moor and the stones and Cole all run together, and then vanish entirely behind the wall of air. The tunnel reaches up and up toward the sky. But here in the center it’s so calm, so still, aside from the white noise. The wind tugs gently at my sleeves, the edges of my cloak, the loose tendrils of hair, but it’s almost gentle. I picture Cole within his own tunnel that night, his village burning down while the wind kept him safe. Alone. I feel alone here. I hold out my hand, let my fingers brush against the cyclone wall.
And then another set of fingers slices through the wind, touches mine, intertwines with mine. Cole steps through the wall of air and into the circle. The whirlwind parts for him, ruffling his dark hair before closing behind him seamlessly. He pulls me to him, wrapping his arms around me.
“I’m here,” I whisper. And his lips move too, but there is no voice but the wind now, as Cole pulls me closer and tips his forehead against mine. There is nothing here but us. Beyond the whirlwind, the world tears itself apart, whistles and blows and pushes and pulls. But just for a moment, impossibly, we two go still.
The whirlwind loses focus, begins to wobble. He pulls me tighter to him as it breaks apart and rushes past us, for one fleeting second strong and violent. And then the whirlwind is gone, and all that’s left is a soft wandering breeze as the hills come back into sight and the grass settles. Cole searches my face. He looks as though he is expecting fear, disgust, something strained, but I have never felt so alive. He lets go of me, steps back, shaking.
“Lexi,” he exhales, drawing large deep breaths, as if the wind stole the air right from his lungs. The wind has dried the wet streaks on his cheeks and woven soft patterns through his hair. “Now you know. That’s what I am. I’m sorry.”
He seems to crumble, sliding toward the ground, but I catch his arm. His breath is ragged, and for a moment I think he’ll faint.
“Don’t be.”
“I understand,” he says, swaying on his feet, “if you don’t want to—”
I cut him off. “Is that what you meant before, when you kissed me, ‘just in case’?”
He looks out over my head to the east, eyes shining, but I can see the edge of his mouth quirk.
“Look at me,” I say, running my fingers along his jaw and turning his face back to mine. “I’m still here.”
Cole kisses me once, a quiet, desperate kiss. I can taste the pain on his lips, the hint of salt. Then he pulls away and looks east again. I follow his gaze. The very corners of the sky are changing. If we do not make our way back toward Near, dawn will sneak in and catch us unprepared.
“Come on.”
He lets me lead him, my fingertips pressed against his arm, reassuring my skin with his that he’s still there. I walk slowly, not wanting Near to come into view too soon. The cyclone may be gone, but it still feels like we are alone in the world.
It’s Cole who breaks the silence as we walk. “I wanted to show you. But not like that. I promised myself,” he murmurs, “to never let it happen again, to never lose control.”
“But you can control it. I just saw you…” My fingers give a small squeeze. “You coiled that wind around your hand before you started to get upset. And when you forgot your anger for a moment it all broke apart. I’m sure if you just—”
“It’s too dangerous,” he says, his eyes sliding shut as we walk, his feet gliding over the tangled earth. “All it takes is one slip.”
“But Cole…”
“Why do you think I led you all the way out here? It’s been more than a year since that night, and I have told myself every day, with every breath, to stay calm, to be empty.” He meets my gaze. “Why do you think I stay out of the village? Why do you think I tried not to get close to you?” I remember the way he pulled away, avoided even brushing his hand against mine. The strange expression, concern and something else, when he found my fingers intertwined with his.
“I never intended to stop here,” he says. “I was just passing through.”
“Where were you going?”
He shakes his head, and the effort of it seems exhausting. “I don’t know. Ever since that night, I couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t bear to stop moving.”
“But you stopped here. Why?”
He stops walking, and I turn back toward him.
“I heard something,” he says, his hands coming to rest, weightless, on my shoulders. “Something terrible is happening in Near, Lexi. This place, it’s as if it’s possessed. The wind is
possessed. By songs. And voices.”
I frown.
“My sister, Wren,” I say. “She said the strangest thing this morning. She said the missing children came to her window, asked her to play. She said she heard them.”
Cole tenses down to his fingertips. “The voices I’ve heard couldn’t have belonged to those children. Not exactly. It was a woman’s voice. She wasn’t shaping the wind. Not the way I shape it. It was as if her voice was the wind. And it wasn’t just the wind, either. It felt like everything was moving under a spell. At first I just stopped to listen, to see if there was another witch here.”
His hands begin to slip from my shoulders, but I bring mine up and keep them there.
“So is there a witch? Luring the children from their beds?”
He nods. “The voice had this singsong quality to it. I was circling the village when I heard it. I didn’t understand what was happening, but I knew something was wrong.”
“What do you mean, wrong?”
“I’ve never met another witch before coming here,” he says. “But what I do, I can only do it with the wind, and only the surface, the shape. This witch was using the wind in a way I never knew possible. That’s what I mean. Wrong.”
“And you stayed?”
“The next night the children started disappearing. I knew it had to be connected. Nothing can make up for what happened in my village, but I thought if I could do something to help, then I needed to.”
“That’s why you were out on the moors last night, near Edgar’s home.”
He nods again, his breath slowing, coming easier. We start moving again, over the hills toward the sisters’ house. “Then I met you. The sisters didn’t want to talk to me about what was happening. But they said I should ask you about the story.”
The pieces click into place. The way the wind sings the Witch’s Rhyme. The lack of clues, the eerie path running on top of the heather and tall grass. Dreska’s fight with Master Tomas. “You think it’s the Near Witch?”
“You sound so disbelieving,” he says as we crest a small hill and the grove comes back into sight. We make our way to the nest of trees.
“It is hard to believe.”
“Why?”
“Because she died, Cole. Calling rain or flowers forth is one thing. Rising up from the dead is another.”
Cole frowns, the crease between his eyes deepening. We reach the far side of the grove, not the place where he pulled me from the path and onto the moor, but the side that looks up at the sisters’ house. My eyes sweep up the hill to the old stone cottage. Beside it the low stone wall shimmers like a slice of moon, or water, and all I can think is how badly I want to reach it and lie down. That’s how tired I am: I could sleep happily on rocks. My head is cottony thick with questions as I step from the grove, and that’s when three things happen.
Cole’s hand tightens around my wrist.
The wind picks up, burying our breaths.
The metal barrel of a gun glints in the moonlight.
15
Cole pulls me back into the shadow of the grove just as Otto and Bo climb into sight on the moonlit moor. They’re by the shed; my uncle hoists his gun and disappears around the corner of the slanting structure while Bo limps back and forth, hands in his pockets, and looks out at the moor. Otto appears again from the other side of the shed, and I can hear his muttered curses from here.
“Where is he?” My uncle’s voice rumbles down the hill toward us.
“Are you sure he’s here?” asks Bo, toeing a patch of dirt with his boot. He gestures to the sprawling countryside. “Come on, Otto. Let’s head back,” he says, yawning. “I haven’t seen my bed in days.”
“He’s got to be here. I know they’re hiding him.” He sounds tense, tired. “Dammit.” He looks out past the shed at the night-soaked world. I can imagine him squinting, hoping something comes to life.
“I thought you said we were doing this in the morning, anyway. Now you’re pulling me out here in the middle of the night.”
“I changed my mind. I thought we’d have a better shot now. Before the village is up.”
He means before I’m up, before I can get here to warn Cole. He knows. Or at least suspects.
Behind Otto, Bo sighs and pulls a few things from his pockets. He strides over to the shed and kneels as best he can with his bad leg, dropping a small object to the ground. Then he shoves a swatch of cloth beneath the edge of one of the rotting boards of the shed, when my uncle finally turns and notices him.
“What are you doing?”
“Speeding things up,” says Bo, kicking some dirt over the piece of cloth. “What’s your plan? Pull up a chair and wait for the boy to show? Or wait around for the sisters to find you and throw you in the hearth?”
I swear beneath my breath as I realize what’s going on. He’s planting evidence.
“I don’t like this at all, Bo,” my uncle says, his tone a mixture of shock and anger.
“Look, Otto, something has to be done.” Bo brings a hand down hard on my uncle’s shoulder. “We know it’s him. This way we can help the others realize it too.”
“The Council put you up to this, didn’t they?”
Bo pauses, seems to weigh his words. “Master Eli says it’s for the best.”
“He told you and not me?”
A grim smile creeps over Bo’s face. “You’ve been preoccupied. But this needs to be taken care of.”
“And what about the children?” growls Otto. “How does this get us any closer to finding them?”
“Once we have the stranger,” he says, gesturing back toward the shed, “we can get him to tell us where they are. Until then…”
My uncle’s shoulders have crept up to his ears. I’m leaning forward, hoping he’ll say, No, enough, this is wrong.
But he doesn’t.
He just runs his fingers through his hair, tugs his beard, and follows Bo down the hill. I shrink back against Cole. Bo and Otto are coming along the path toward the grove.
Toward us.
My pulse quickens, and Cole must sense it, because he tightens his arms around me and breathes into my hair, something between a kiss and a shushing sound.
Then he slips backward through the trees, impossibly silent over twigs and dead leaves, taking me with him. Inch by inch we slide back from the path, into the shelter of the thicker trunks. The wind picks up just enough to make the branches and the clinging leaves hum as the two men enter the grove.
My uncle passes, inches from my face.
But he doesn’t see me. His eyes never leave the back of Bo’s head.
And then they’re gone, out of the grove and back toward Near. And there we are, Cole and me pressed against a tree in the thickening night. He lets out a long breath. It wanders down the back of my neck, and I shiver.
“That was close,” Cole whispers. I peel myself away, and we slip back onto the path.
“Cole, they’re going to frame you.”
“Then I’ll remove the evidence.”
“Don’t you see? That’s not the point.” I lean back against a tree. “They don’t care if you did it or not. How can we prove you’re innocent?”
“We can’t. They don’t care about innocence.”
“We’ve got to find the one who’s really doing this,” I say. “If it is the Near Witch, if she’s somehow come back, then how do we find her? How do we stop her?” My head is pounding. I feel ragged.
“Lexi,” he says, with a strange calm that might just be exhaustion, “you said yourself the children’s voices weren’t made by children. And that wind path wasn’t made by feet. This is craft. How many witches in the town of Near?”
“The sisters, and the Near Witch—who’s dead, last time I checked—and you.”
“Do you trust the sisters?”
“I do.”
“And do you trust me?” he asks.
I take a step toward him. “I do.”
“Then it has to be the Near Witch.”
I nod, warily. My gut tells me that it’s true, or at least possible, and my father taught me to trust my gut. But what is it that she’s doing, exactly, and how do you stop a witch who is supposed to be dead? My head spins. Sleep, just a little, my body pleads.
“We’ll figure this out, Lexi.” He closes the gap between us, and his fingers wander down my jaw. “What happens to the Near Witch in the story?”
“She was banished. Cast out of Near. She died alone among the weeds hundreds of years ago.”
“How did your father tell it? Maybe there are clues.”
I lean my head against his chest and close my eyes. My thoughts drag, but I try to pick up where I left off, try to remember my father’s ending. The thing about reciting a story is that it’s hard to start again when you stop in the middle. I remember things in wholes, not pieces.
“Let’s see,” I whisper, feeling as though I could float away. “The Near Witch was a part of everything and nothing. And she loved the village, and the children, very much. Some days, when she was feeling patient, she would do tricks for them. Only small ones, like making the flowers bloom in a blink, or making the wind whisper things that were almost words. The children were starved for craft of any kind and eager to see it everywhere, and they loved her for it.”
I pause, because my father always paused at this point. My father only told me the next part once or twice, and it’s hard for me to find the words. “Until one day. One day a boy died in the garden, and the world changed. The three hunters who protected the village banished the witch. The night she was cast out, her cottage sank into the grass, and her garden grew back into the soil. And she was never seen again. But she was heard, out on the moor, singing her hills to sleep. Over the years and years the singing softened, until it was little more than the wind. And then it died away entirely. And that was the last of the Near Witch.” I sigh. “Not terribly useful, but that’s how my father told it, anyway.”
Cole leans back a little to look at me. “You say that like there’s another version.”
“I think so.” I shake my head, dazed. “Magda has never told it, but I know she doesn’t believe this ending. I told it to her once and she scrunched up her face and shook her head.”