The Near Witch Read online

  “As you have heard,” says Master Tomas over the quieting crowd. He is a head taller than even Otto, and his voice, though withered, has a remarkable way of traveling. “We have a stranger in our midst…”

  I duck between two houses, picking up a path that leads east.

  Helena’s right: I do know where the stranger is.

  Almost everyone had already gathered in the square when we arrived. Except for two. Not that they like to put in appearances. But the presence of a stranger should have been enough to bring even the Thorne sisters into Near. Unless they’re the ones keeping him.

  I weave through the lanes, heading east, until the sounds of the village die away and the wind picks up.

  3

  My father taught me a lot about witches.

  Witches can call down rain or summon stones. They can make fire leap and dance. They can move the earth. They can control an element. The way Magda and Dreska Thorne can. I asked them once what they were, and they said old. Old as rocks. But that’s not the whole of it. The Thorne sisters are witches, through and through. And witches are not so welcome here.

  I make my way to the sisters’ house. The path beneath my shoes is faint and narrow, but never fully fades, despite the fact that so few walk it. The way has worn itself into the earth. The sisters’ cottage sits beyond a grove and atop a hill. I know how many steps it will take to reach their home, both from my own or from the center of Near, every kind of flower that grows on the way, every rise and fall of the ground.

  My father used to take me there.

  And even now that he’s gone, I come this way. I’ve been to their cottage many times, drawn to their odd charm, to watch them gather weeds or to toss out a question or a cheerful hello. Everyone else in the village turns their back on the sisters, pretends they are not here, and seems to do a decent job of forgetting. But to me they are like gravity, with their own strange pull, and whenever I have nowhere to go, my feet take me toward their house. It’s the same gravity I felt at the window last night, pulling me to the stranger on the moor, a kind of weight I’ve never fully understood. But my father taught me to trust it as much as my eyes, so I do.

  I remember the first time he took me to see the sisters. I must have been eight or so, older than Wren is now. The whole house smelled of dirt, rich and heavy and fresh at once. I remember Dreska’s sharp green eyes, and Magda’s crooked smile, crooked spine, crooked everything. They’ve never let me back inside, not since he died.

  The trees creep up around me as I enter the grove.

  I stop, knowing at once I’m not alone. Something is breathing, moving, just beyond my sight. I hold my breath, letting the breeze and the hush and the sighing moor slip away into ambient noise. I scan with my ears, waiting for a sound to emerge from the sea of whispers, scan with my eyes, waiting for something to move.

  My father taught me how to track, how to read the ground and the trees. He taught me that everything has a language, that if you knew the language, you could make the world talk. The grass and the dirt hold secrets, he’d say. The wind and the water carry stories and warnings. Everyone knows that witches are born, not made, but growing up I used to think he’d found some way to cheat, to coax the world to work for him.

  Something moves through the trees just to my right.

  I spin as a cluster of branches peels itself away from a trunk. Not branches, I realize. Horns. A deer slips between the trees on stiltlike legs. I sigh and turn back to the path, when a shadow twitches, deeper in the grove.

  A flash of dark fabric.

  I blink, and it is gone, but I would swear I saw it, a glimpse of a gray cloak between the trees.

  A sharp crack issues behind me, and I jump and spin to find Magda, small and hunched and staring at me. Her left eye is a cool blue, but her right eye is made of something dark and solid like rotted wood, and her two-toned gaze is inches from my face. I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding, as the old woman shakes her head, all silver hair and weathered skin. She chuckles, crooked fingers curving around her basket.

  “You might be good at tracking, dearie, but you startle like a rabbit.” She pokes me with a long bony finger. “No, not much for being tracked.”

  I glance back, but the shadow is gone.

  “Hello, Magda,” I say. “I was on my way to see you.”

  “I figured as much,” she says, winking her good eye. For a moment only her dark eye stares back at me, and I shiver.

  “Come on, then.” She sets off through the grove, toward the hill and her house. “We’ll have tea.”

  * * *

  In three years, I have not been invited in.

  Now Magda leads me back toward the cottage in silence as the clouds darken overhead. It is slow going because it takes three of her steps to match my one. The wind is up, and my hair is escaping its braid, curling defiantly around my face and neck as Magda totters along beside me.

  I am a good head taller than she is, but I imagine she is a good head shorter than she once was, so it seems unfair to compare our heights. She moves more like a windblown leaf than an old woman, bouncing along the ground and changing course as we make our way up the hill to the house she shares with her sister.

  Growing up in Near, I’ve heard a dozen stories about witches. My father hated those tales, told me they were made up by the Council to frighten people. “Fear is a strange thing,” he used to say. “It has the power to make people close their eyes, turn away. Nothing good grows out of fear.”

  The cottage sits waiting for us, as warped as the two women it was built to hold, the spine of the structure cocked halfway up, the roofing on another angle entirely. None of the stacked stones look comfortable or well-seated, like the ones in the town center. This house is as old as Near itself, sagging over the centuries. It sits on the eastern edge of the village, bordered on one side by a low stone wall, and on the other by a dilapidated shed. Between the stone wall and the house are two rectangular patches. One is a small bordered stretch of dirt that Magda calls her garden, and the other is nothing more than a swatch of bare ground where nothing seems to grow. It might be the only place in Near not overrun by weeds. I don’t like the second patch. It seems unnatural. Beyond the cottage, the moor takes hold, much the way it does to the north of my home, all rolling hills and stones and scattered trees.

  “Coming?” asks Magda, from the doorway.

  Overhead, the clouds have gathered and grown dark.

  My foot hovers on the threshold. But why? I have no reason to fear the Thorne sisters or their home.

  I take a deep breath and step across.

  It still smells like earth, rich and heavy and safe. That hasn’t changed. But the room seems darker now than it did when I was here with my father. It might be the gathering clouds and the coming fall, or the fact that he isn’t towering beside me, lighting the room with his smile. I fight back a chill as Magda sets her basket down on a long wooden table and lets out a heavy sigh.

  “Sit, dearie, sit,” she says with a wave to one of the chairs.

  I slide into it.

  Magda hobbles up to the hearth, where the wood is stacked and waiting. She casts a short glance back over her shoulder at me. And then she brings her fingers up, very slowly, inching through the air. I lean forward, waiting to see if she’ll actually let me see her craft, if she’ll coax twigs together, or somehow bubble flint up from the dirt hearth floor. The sisters don’t make a point of giving demonstrations, so all I have are a few stolen glances when the ground rippled or stones shifted, the strange gravity I feel when I’m close, and the villagers’ fear.

  Magda’s hand rises over the hearth and up to the mantel, where her fingers close around a long thin stick. Just a match. My heart sinks and I sag back into my seat as Magda strikes the match against the stone of the hearth and lights the fire. She turns back to me.

  “What’s wrong, dearie?” Something shimmers in her eyes. “You look disappointed.”

  “Nothing,” I sa
y, sitting up straighter and intertwining my hands beneath the table. The fire crackles to life under the kettle, and Magda returns to the table and the basket atop it. From it she unpacks several clods of dirt, a few moor flowers, weeds, some seeds, a stone or two she’s found. Magda collects her pieces of the world daily. I imagine it’s all for charms. Small craft. Now and then a piece of the sisters’ work will find its way into a villager’s pocket, or around their neck, even if they claim to not believe in it. I swear I’ve seen a charm stitched into the skirt of Helena’s dress, most likely meant to attract Tyler Ward’s attention. She can have him.

  Aside from the odd collection on the table, the Thorne sisters’ house is remarkably normal. If I tell Wren I was here, inside a witch’s home, she’ll want to know how odd it was. It’ll be a shame to disappoint her.

  “Magda,” I say, “I came here because I wanted to ask you—”

  “Tea’s not boiled yet, and I’m too old to talk and stand at the same time. Give me a moment.”

  I bite my lip and wait as patiently as possible as Magda hobbles around, gathering cups. The breeze begins to scratch and hiss against the windowpanes. The congregation of clouds is thickening. The kettle boils.

  “Don’t mind that, dearie, just the moor chatting away,” Magda says, noticing the way my eyes wander to the window. She pours the water through an old wire mesh that does little to catch the leaves, and into heavy cups. Finally, she takes a seat.

  “Does the moor really speak?” I ask, watching the tea in the cup grow dark.

  “Not in the way we do, you and I. Not with words. But it has its secrets, yes.” Secrets. That’s how my father used to put it, too.

  “What does it sound like? What does it feel like?” I ask, half to myself. “I imagine it must feel like more, rather than less. I wish I could—”

  “Lexi Harris, you could eat dirt every day and wear only weeds, and you’d be no closer to any of it than you already are.”

  The voice belongs to Dreska Thorne. One moment the gathering storm was locked outside, and the next the door had blown open from the force of it and left her on the threshold.

  Dreska is just as old as her sister, maybe even older. The fact that the Thorne sisters are still standing, or hobbling, is a sure sign of their craft. They’ve been around as long as the Council, and not just Tomas and Matthew and Eli, but their ancestors, the real Council. As long as the Near Witch. As long as Near itself. Hundreds of years. I imagine I see small pieces crumbling off them, but when I look again, they are still all there.

  Dreska is muttering to herself as she leans into the door, and finally succeeds in forcing it shut before turning to us. When her eyes land on me, I wince. Magda is round and Dreska is sharp, one a ball and the other a ball of points. Even Dreska’s cane is sharp. She looks as if she’s cut from rocks, and when she’s angry or annoyed, her corners actually seem to sharpen. Where one of Magda’s eyes is dark as rotted wood or stone, both of Dreska’s are a fierce green, the color of moss on stones. And they’re now leveled at me. I swallow hard.

  I sat here in this chair once as my father curled his fingers gently on my shoulder and spoke to the sisters, and Dreska looked at him with something like kindness, like softness. I remember it so clearly because I’ve never seen her look that way at anyone ever again.

  Beyond the house, the rain starts, thick drops tapping on the stones.

  “Dreska’s right, dearie.” Magda cuts through the silence as she spoons three lumps of a brownish sugar into her tea. She doesn’t stir, lets it sink to the bottom and form a grainy film. “Born is born. You were born the way you are.”

  Magda’s cracked hands find their way to my chin.

  “Just because you can’t coax water to run backward, or make trees uproot themselves—”

  “A skill most don’t look on fondly,” Dreska interjects.

  “—doesn’t mean you aren’t a part of this place,” finishes Magda. “All moor-born souls have the moor in them.” She gazes into the teacup, her good eye unfocusing over the darkening water. “It’s what makes the wind stir something in us when it blows. It’s what keeps us here, always close to home.”

  “Speaking of home, why are you in ours?” asks Dreska sternly.

  “She was on her way to see us,” says Magda, still staring into her tea. “I invited her in.”

  “Why,” asks Dreska, drawing out the word, “would you do that?”

  “It seemed a wise idea,” says Magda, giving her sister a heavy look.

  Neither speaks.

  I clear my throat.

  Both sisters look to me.

  “Well you’re here now,” says Dreska. “What brought you this way?”

  “I want to ask you,” I say at last, “about the stranger.”

  Dreska’s keen green eyes narrow, sharp in their nest of wrinkles. The house stones seem to grumble and grate against each other. The rain beats against the windows as the sisters hold a conversation built entirely of nods, glances, and weighted breath. Some people say that siblings have their own language, and I think it’s true of Magda and Dreska. I only know English, and they know English and Sister and Moor, and goodness knows what else. A moment later, Magda sighs and pushes to her feet.

  “What of it?” asks Dreska, tapping her cane on the wooden floor. Outside, the rain comes down in waves, each one thinner than the last. It will be over soon. “We don’t know anything about him.”

  The rain turns to a drizzle.

  “You have not offered him shelter?” I ask.

  The sisters stand there, stiff and mute.

  “I don’t mean any harm,” I say quickly. “I just want to see him, to speak to him. I’ve never met a stranger. I just want to see that he’s real and ask him…” How can I explain? “Just tell me if you have him, please.”

  Nothing.

  I force myself straighter in my chair, keeping my head up.

  “I saw him last night. Outside my window. Bo Pike claims to have spotted him first, on the western edge, and we’re due north. The stranger seemed to know the line that marks the edge of the village. He would have rounded it, to the east.” I tap the table with my index finger. “Here.”

  The sisters would have given him shelter. It had to have been them. But still they say nothing. Their eyes say nothing. Their faces say nothing. It’s as if I’m speaking to statues.

  “You were the only ones absent this morning,” I say.

  Magda blinks. “We keep to ourselves.”

  “But you’re the only ones who could have hidden—”

  Dreska sparks to life.

  “You best be getting home, Lexi,” she snaps, “while there’s a break in the weather.”

  I look to the window. The storm has stopped, leaving the sky gray and drained. The air in the room feels heavy, as if the space is shrinking. The sisters’ looks are guarded, harder than before. Even Magda’s lips are drawn into a narrow line. I push myself to my feet. I haven’t touched my cup.

  “Thank you for the tea, Magda,” I say, heading for the door. “Sorry to bother you both.”

  The door closes firmly behind me.

  Outside, the world is mud and puddles, and I wish I’d been able to trade these silly slippers for my leather boots. I make it two steps before my feet are soaked. Overhead the sky is already beginning to break apart, the clouds retreating.

  I look to the west, to the village.

  When I was Wren’s age, I asked my father why the sisters lived all the way out here. He said that, for the people in Near, something was either all good or all bad. He told me witches were like people, that they came in all shapes and sizes, and they could be good or bad or foolish or clever. But after the Near Witch, the people in the village got it into their heads that all witches were bad.

  The sisters stay out here because the villagers are afraid. But the important part is that they stay. When I asked my father why, he smiled, one of those soft, private smiles, and said, “This is their home, Lexi. They won’t tu
rn their backs on it, even though it turned its back on them.”

  I cast a last glance back at the sisters’ hill, and leave. They’re protecting the stranger. I know it.

  I head back for the worn path, passing the shed that sits just to the north of the cottage.

  If the sisters are hiding him, there must be a reason—

  I catch my breath.

  There is a dark gray cloak hanging from a nail on the shed, its hems darker than the rest, as if the fabric has been singed. The moor is unnaturally quiet in the post-rain afternoon, and I am suddenly very aware of my steps, of the sound they make on the wet earth as I approach the shed. The structure seems to be losing a very slow war with gravity. It is a cluster of wooden beams stuck into the soil, supporting a messy roof. Between the slats, the moor grows up, weeds taking hold, doing as much to keep the shed up as to tear it down. There is a door beside the cloak, but no handle. The strips of warping wood have gaps between them, and I lean in and press my eye to one of the narrow openings. The dim interior is empty.

  I step back, sigh, and bite my lip. And then, from the other side of the shed, I hear it—a soft exhale. I smile and slide silently toward the sound, bending my knees and begging the earth to absorb my steps without giving me away. I round the corner. And there is no one. Not even footprints in the grass.

  Letting out an exasperated breath, I stomp back around the shed. I know the sounds that people make just living, and I know that someone was here. I heard him breathing, and I saw the—

  But the nail is bare, and the cloak is gone.

  4

  I quicken my pace as I head home, frustrated and chilled from sloshing through the wet grass. My slippers are ruined. The path splits, one narrow line leading into town, the other arching up around Near to my house. I veer toward home, slipping off the soaked shoes and walking barefoot up the path, succumbing to the mud. It coats my feet, my ankles, climbing up my calves, and I think of Dreska’s sharp tongue, telling me I could eat dirt and grow no closer to the moor. I don’t suppose covering myself in mud will do much good, either.