Old Father’s words beat in my mind, as the horses’ hooves drummed the road.

They sought a young witch with red hair. A warrior witch they called her.

A girl had been taken. But it should have been me.

‘Evey, look…’

Smoke in the sky, like the tail of a creature, curling lusty to the air.

‘The village is close, Anne…’

‘Then faster!’

Her horse raced away, dust flying from his loud heels. I urged Shadow in their wake, and we galloped towards that smoke, a dread welcome, beckoning.

We were on a muddy track from the road that led through fields, when we saw two plough horses. There was no driver to guide them, so they stood, watching the birds peck and hop.

‘Evey, why do they…?’

But Anne’s question held. Its answer lay ahead, as the track found a huddle of houses.

We urged our skittish steeds into smoke and stillness.

They were low houses as my own home had been. A room with a hearth and beds for a family. And like my own, they were empty. Each door splintered, where a musket and a boot had kicked it open and strewn what lay within. Broken bowls, bits of food, torn clothes. Things of no worth to a militia man, but everything to the folk who lived there. Then we saw the dead.

A man face down, stretched across a threshold, as if he crawled to leave, but was stuck in his blood pooling upon his step.

Outside, a woman sat staring, shocked by the hole in her heart.

A chicken scratched seed from a sack, its dry guts slashed to the ground.

‘Oh, my…’

Anne stepped to another home. At her touch, a shutter groaned its last and fell away. Four more houses cowered about a trough tumbled to vomit water and straw. Nothing moved but the smoke. Tall One’s pack had put the torch to all that they had found. Or didn’t find.

‘All this…’ Anne coughed. ‘For witches.’

‘Aye.’ My laugh was bitter. ‘Minds me of home, Greeneye.’

I tied Shadow, and she nosed through the leaking trough, when a goat stepped from a doorway, chewing a stolen crust. It bleated, then fled, bounding through the smoke beyond the turn of the house.

Yet still it cried, so strange, not like an animal, more like—

‘Evey!’

We ran to the sound. Fields stretched beyond the house, where a cart was turned upon its side, its wheels slowly turning. A broken chair. A row of shattered barrels. And the goat, chewing over the body of an old woman. But the body moved and cried,

‘Help… Help me…’

We rushed to her, and Anne turned her gentle. A great weal was across her eye.

‘Water…’ she gasped.

I brought a scoop from that sorry trough. The old woman shook to drink.

‘What is your name?’ Anne stroked her matted hair.

‘Ah…’ Pain writhed through her. ‘Tess, young ’un. Tess, I am.’

Anne looked to me. The old man’s Tess.

‘We met the others, your husband upon the road…’

‘John!’ She seized my hand, tears running. ‘Is he safe? Did they get away?’

I swallowed my ache as I watched her, for I was minded so strong of Mother, when they came and broke our lives apart like these blasted houses. The goat began to bleat.

‘Yes, Mother.’ I could not help her name escape me. ‘Your John is safe.’

Tess sighed, closing her eyes. Did she see him?

‘What happened?’ Anne said. ‘Your husband told us you were taken…’

Her eye flickered. ‘They had us both right enough, Jess and me… my sister…’ She coughed. ‘But I brought that chair across the back of one… he didn’t see me in the smoke.’ She chuckled, blood upon her old teeth. ‘I got him good.’

She moaned as pain seized her, brought her hands to her belly.

‘But another stuck me, and they took Jess… They took her from me, my twin, my sister dear.’

Anne moved to Tess’s belly. The old woman shrieked.

‘She has a deep wound, Evey…’

Blood on Anne’s fingers.

‘They betrayed us!’ Tess shuddered. ‘That Witchfinder… so keen he was for our help! And help him we did, if he swore to let us live free!’

Blood on her fists.

‘But he lied. For he is scared…’ Her eye grew wide as she gripped my arm. ‘He even has a child, a scrap he has taken along the way. Oh, he is a monster! A lying, scared fiend!’

‘Here now.’ Anne brought water to her white lips. ‘Evey, we must get her back to John, help me.’

But Tess pushed her away. ‘No! No! Leave me! I am dying!’

Anne shook me. ‘Evey, please…’

As I looked at my friend, full of worry, I thought of Mother, how she shouted at me to go. How in her last, we had fought.

‘Evey, listen to me, we must help her!’

And I remembered Mother’s eyes, black with fire, as she screamed.

For my blood…

Anne shook me.

Your blood…

Your sister’s blood.

So much blood.

‘Evey!’

And Mother rolled, dead in the mud. And I left her.

‘Evey! Wake up!’

A smack across my cheek. I felt it.

‘Evey, you were… I don’t… I am sorry I hit you, I need your help. I’m sorry.’

I watched Anne as she rocked Tess like a babe, small and still.

‘I’m sorry.’

As she stroked her, as she closed her old eyes.

‘I’m sorry.’