The Near Witch (6 page)

“Do you have any evidence?” I ask, careful to sound neutral. “Do you even know where he is?”

Tyler nods. “Got a good idea. Only so many places a person can hide in Near, Lexi. If he’s still here.”

I hope he is.
The thought slips in, and I’m suddenly thankful for the thickening dark.

“What happens now?” I ask.

“Lexi!” a heavy voice calls from the door. I turn to see Otto waiting, outlined against the light from inside. Tyler gestures toward the house, his hand coming to rest against my back, urging me toward the door. Otto fades back inside.

“Now,” Tyler says quietly, “we get the witches to give up the stranger.” His nose wrinkles when he says
witches
.

“Assuming he’s still here,” I say as we reach the door. “And assuming the sisters have him, and assuming Dreska doesn’t curse you for making that face. That’s assuming a lot, Tyler.”

He shrugs. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“You need a lot more than luck.”

He cocks his head to one side, sending blond hair into his eyes.

“How about a kiss, then,” he says, leaning over me with a smirk. “For good measure?”

I smile back, stretching onto my toes. And then I step back and shut the door on Tyler.

I swear I can hear him kiss the wood on the other side.

“Good night, cruel girl,” he calls through the door.

“Good night, silly boy,” I call back, standing at the door until his footsteps fade into nothing.

W
REN IS SKIPPING UP AND
down the hall in her nightgown, playing games with the wooden floorboards. Her bare feet land with light thuds like rain on stones. Wren knows a thousand games for times between. Between meals and bed. Between people paying attention to her. Games with words and rules, and games without.
Thud, thud, thud
on the wooden floor.

The floorboards in our house seem to have their own tunes, so Wren makes a kind of music by landing on the different planks. She’s even found a way to pound out the Witch’s Rhyme, a bit clumsily. She is hitting the final bits of the song when I hop into her path, and she just giggles and bounces around me without even missing a note.

I slip into our bedroom and put my father’s book back on its shelf beside the three candles. Beyond the window the darkness slides in heavy and tired and thick.

I cannot stop thinking about Tyler’s words.
Everyone leaves marks.

I slide a soft blue apron from the drawer and tie it around my waist, making my way to the kitchen. Otto is sitting at the table, a thick yellow band on each of his arms, talking with my mother. His voice is at the level adults use when they think they’re being secretive, but that’s loud enough to catch any child’s ear. My mother is wiping crumbs and flour from the table, and nodding. I catch the word “sisters” before Otto sees me and changes his tone and his subject.

“You and Tyler have a good chat?” he asks, too interested.

“Good enough,” I say.

“And how was your day, Lexi?” I can feel his eyes on me, and there’s a challenge in his voice. I swallow and try to pick my lie when—

“She delivered bread with me,” offers my mother, almost absently. “A child might be missing, but folks still need to eat.” I bite the inside of my mouth to keep the shock from my face at my mother’s lie. The image of her and Wren returning home with the empty basket flits into my mind, her sudden stern look as she told me she was trying to help.

I nod, cutting up the last of a loaf and setting it on the table with some cheese. My uncle grunts but says no more. My mother wraps a few extra loaves of bread in cloth, and slides her apron from her dress. It is the last thing she discards each night, when she must put the baking aside.

“And you, Uncle?” I ask. “Any signs of Edgar?”

His eyebrows knit, and he takes a long sip from his mug.

“Not today, no,” he says into his cup. “We’ll go back out in the morning.”

“Perhaps tomorrow I could help.”

Otto hesitates, then says, “We’ll see.” Which almost certainly means no, but he’s too tired to argue. He pushes himself up, the chair grating against the floor as it slides back. “I’m on first patrol.”

“Patrol?” I ask.

“We’ve got men all over the village, just to be safe.” He taps the yellow bands. “To mark my men. Only a fool would be caught out tonight. I’ve given them all orders to shoot on sight.”

Wonderful.

My uncle excuses himself. I sag into the vacated chair and try to remember if I own any yellow. From the hall come creaks and thuds;Wren is still playing her game. My mother meets my eyes but doesn’t say anything, and I wonder if she knows what I plan to do. She yawns and kisses my forehead, her lips barely a breath against my skin, and then goes to tuck Wren in. The
thud, thud, thud
stops in the hall as my sister is led away to bed.

I sit there in the kitchen, waiting as the hearthstones grow cold. I think my mother bakes all day long, until her bones and muscles ache, so that when she collapses into bed each night there is no risk of lying awake, no risk of remembering. My father used to sit up with her, tell her stories until dawn, because he knew she loved the sound of his voice, thick as sleep around her.

I sit until the house is dark and still, until the quiet becomes heavy, as if everything is holding its breath. Then I push myself up and retreat to the bedroom.

The candles are already burning steadily on the shelf, casting pools of dancing light on the walls. I sit on top of the covers, fully clothed, and wait until Wren’s breaths are the low and steady ones of deep sleep. She seems so small in her nest of blankets. My chest tightens as I picture Edgar climbing through his window and vanishing onto the moor. I shiver and ball my hands into fists. And then I remember. My palm still smells faintly of wet stones and herbs and earth where Dreska placed the charm and curled my fingers over it. How could I have forgotten it? I search through my pockets and exhale when I feel my fingers brush against the earthy pouch. I pull it out and hold it, and it feels odd in my hands—at once too heavy and too light. A pouch of grass and dirt and pebbles. How much power can it hold? I stifle a yawn and tie it around my sister’s wrist. She stirs beneath my fingertips, eyes floating open.

“What’s this?” mumbles Wren, looking down at the charm.

“It’s a present from the sisters,” I whisper.

“What does it do?” Wren asks, squirming into a seated position. She sniffs it. “Do you smell heather?” she asks, lifting it up to me. “And dirt? There shouldn’t be dirt inside there.”

“It’s just a charm,” I say, touching my fingertips to it. “I’m sorry I woke you. I forgot to give it to you earlier. Now,” I say, holding the covers for her, “go back to sleep.”

Wren falls back against the pillow with a nod. I tuck the blankets in around her, and she folds herself into a ball.

I sit on the edge of the bed and wait until Wren’s breathing grows even again. Soon enough she is wrapped in sleep, fingers clutching the charm.

It’s time to get to work.

I rummage through the low drawers and come up with a pale yellow scarf, a present from Helena two years back. I kiss it, say a silent thank-you to my friend and her love of knitting, and tie the scarf around my arm.

I take my father’s knife and my green cloak, and pry the window gently up, holding my breath as it squeaks. Wren does not move. I slip through and hop to the ground beyond, sliding the window shut behind me and latching the shutters.

The lamps are lit in Otto’s house, and he must be off patrol rotation, because through the window I can make out his form, leaning over a table. Bo sits near him, his hair hanging down between his eyebrows, and the two men grumble and drink, exchanging a word or two between sips. Uncle Otto has the kind of voice that goes through wood and glass and stone, and I slip near enough to hear him speak.

“As if he disappeared, out of his bed and into”—Otto waves his hand—“nothingness.”

That’s not possible, though. I’m sure there are marks, even if they’re faint. Would Otto know what to look for? Grown men can certainly act like little boys, but can they think like them?

“Strange as strange,” says Bo. “What do you think of it?”

“I think I best find the boy, and fast.”

“You can’t make something appear from nothing,” offers Bo with a shrug.

“I have to,” says Otto, taking a long drink. “It’s my job.”

The two men fall into silence, staring down into their cups, and I slip away. I pull the dark green cloak close around my shoulders and leave the men to their drinking, turning my attention toward the village. Edgar’s house sits in a cluster of three or four to the west, a flat rim of field between that group of homes and the next. If there’s a clue as to who took Edgar, and where, and how, then I’ll find it.

I set out, the wind pushing me gently on.

In the moonlight the moor is a vast ghost of a place. Thin lines of fog leave the wild grass shimmering, and the breeze blows over the hills in slow waves. As the first cluster of homes comes into sight across the field, I wonder if the search party even bothered to look for the little boy’s footprints. They wouldn’t have been as deep as deer tracks. But there would have been something, a trace of life and movement. The ground around the house should be disturbed, should give some indication of which way Edgar went.
Everyone leaves a mark.

In fact, that’s what worries me. Everyone leaves a mark, and now a dozen bodies have been stomping through and around the house, crushing clues underfoot. I doubt I will ever be able to uncover them without the light of day, and bringing a candle or a lamp would have been too risky, especially with a night patrol. I can’t afford for Otto’s men to discover me. Even if they don’t shoot me, my own private search will be at an end, and I’ll likely find myself under house arrest.
For my own safety, my own good
, I scoff. Lot of good it did Edgar, tucked sleeping in his bed.

No, here darkness must be my ally. My father used to say that the night could tell secrets just as well as the day, and I’ll have to hope he’s right.

I make my way down the path that winds like a vein toward the heart of town, doing my best to avoid tripping on loose stones.

A crow floats overhead like a smudge on the night sky. The houses sit closer now, small yards separating them, and I slow my pace, making sure to spread my weight out through my stride, trying to make less noise than the wind around me. Someone coughs, and a moment later a man steps forward from one of the houses, a shadow against the dim light within. I freeze on the path, fingers twining around the edges of my cloak to keep it from billowing. The man leans in his doorway, smoking a pipe, a rifle in the crook of his arm just below a yellow band. I remember my uncle’s words.
Shoot on sight.
I swallow hard. Another voice murmurs from inside the house, and the man glances back. In that moment, I slip from the path, darting for the darkness between two unlit cottages. Pressing myself against the wall of one, just beside a woodpile, I can see the fourth house, the farthest west. Edgar’s house.

There is a light on inside, deep enough within that only a faint glow reaches the windows. I approach and kneel at the base of each one, letting my fingers and eyes linger on the ground beneath, searching for disturbance, for any sign of a foot or a hand landing. I reach Helena’s window (I used to be jealous that she had her own room, but it seems impossible to envy her right now) and pause as I consider knocking gently on the glass. Given that a boy just vanished from this house, this seems a very bad idea. I touch my fingers to the pane and hope that my friend is well asleep within, then continue around the house. I linger at the last window, the one I know belongs to Edgar. This would have been the one they say was found open. I crouch on the ground, squinting in the faint light.

It’s just as I thought. The surface is a web of prints: adult shoes, boots, slippers, old steps that slide, and younger ones that stomp. A battleground for feet. Still muddy from the rains, the earth has held on to many marks, but none of them small or boyish.

I stand up, fighting back frustration.
Think, think.
Maybe farther out the stomping of men will subside and give way to traces of smaller feet.

I lean back against the house, my head resting on the wall just beside the window frame, and let my eyes follow the line of sight outward from the window. In this direction lies a field, a stretch of wild grass and heather and rocks between this cluster of homes and the next, nested like eggs in the distance. Silvery moonlight spills out over the field, and I walk into it, taking slow steps, my eyes flicking from the tall grass brushing my legs to the hill ahead. The wind picks up enough to make the weeds rustle and sway.

A body exhales behind me.

I spin, but no one’s there. The cluster of homes sits quietly half a field away, dark except for one or two dim lights. It might have been the wind, but it is high, and the sound was low. I resume my search when I hear it again. Someone is here, too close.

My eyes strain to make out the deeper shadows near the cut stone cottages, under the thatch eaves where the moonlight cannot reach. I wait, frozen, holding my breath. And then I see it. Something slips across the gap between the houses, caught for a moment by the fractured moonlight. The ghostly form is gone in a blink, vanishing behind a corner.

I sprint across the grass after the shadow, half tripping, and doing a very poor job of keeping the sound of my presence minimal as I run. I can hear my father’s scolding voice as the twigs snap beneath my feet, and my shoes kick at stones, but I’m so close. I launch into the space between the homes. I catch sight of the figure just before it turns another corner. It pauses and twists as if seeing me, then cuts between the houses, heading north toward the shadow of a hill, vast and black. If it gets there before me, I know the form will vanish, a shadow inside a shadow.