| |
I imagined I was somewhere faraway, and cool. Adrift on a boat, floating on the open water. Alone in the forest, the call of birds and wind song around me. Asleep in my bed.
I imagined, because I could not believe. I could not believe what was happening now.
“Grab her!”
A voice shouted above the crowd and I turned with everyone else, staring without comprehension, half-stunned to realize they were talking about me. Grab her. Like I was some kind of criminal. Like I was trying to run. Should I be trying to run? I hadn’t even considered it. I hadn’t done anything but stand there in horror, watching as my life shattered apart.
My arms were still raised in the air, trying to get Erik’s attention. The horse had landed by now, pawing anxiously at the dirt, but its violent outburst was already forgotten. The knife had vanished, and the crowd had turned. They were looking at me, now. The girl who’d given the warning. For a split second, I caught the flash of a pair of sky blue eyes.
Then a man the size of a tree knocked me to the ground.
Twisted hells!
I struck the ground with a gasp, unable to believe it was possible to feel so much pain. For a few seconds, I was unable to see anything past it. My spine had shattered and my body had cratered into the earth. There was an intense throbbing in my head and the picture kept sliding, dipping its corners into the shadowy edges of my vision. My fingers twitched, and my eyelids fluttered.
Then a pair of strong hand seized my shoulders.
In a second, I was airborne once again. Not flying, as my dizzied brain had imagined, but turning abruptly upright. The world blurred, then steadied. My legs buckled almost immediately, but it didn’t matter. Those hands were clamped down hard, and I wasn’t going anywhere. By the time I registered the change, a man’s face appeared just inches from mine, shouting the exact same thing.
“Don’t move, witch!”
I blinked slowly, coming back to life.
There it was, witch. I hadn’t imagined it. I hadn’t fallen asleep—dreamt the whole thing up in some over-excitable nightmare. This was real. After almost seventeen years, I had done the one thing a person in my position was never allowed to do: I had shown my true nature. I had lifted my arms before the crowd, and revealed to every single one of them what I really was.
Witch.
It was almost funny. Suddenly, it didn’t seem like such a terrible thing. So they knew, finally. I could stop hiding it, finally. This great secret that I’d wrapped around myself like so many chains had fallen away, and I was free to stand before the entire village. Entirely and utterly myself.
In hindsight, that sense of relief was probably a bit misguided. It was probably the concussion talking. At any rate, it faded once they brought out the torches.
Holy hell...they’re going to burn me.
A stunning unreality swept over me, along with a feeling of panic so sudden and sharp, it registered as temperature. In a flash, I was freezing—colder than I’d ever been in my life. My skin went pale, my teeth started chattering, and if whoever was standing behind me hadn’t been actively holding me up, I would have crumbled to the ground in a little puddle.
My eyes focused on the flickering lights. Closer, and closer they came until I could smell the smoke. Until I could feel the heat. At that point, even I thought something was strange. They were going to do it right here? In the middle of the crowd? With someone holding me?
Who is holding me?
It struck me as abruptly bizarre that I didn’t know. In what other circumstance would that possibly happen? With a choking gasp, I turned my head away from the fire, struggling against the hands and straining to see whoever might be standing behind me. I was kicked to the knees.
“Get down, witch,” a voice said gruffly.
My head bowed in submission as the torch swung suddenly lower, almost upside down, like it was still trying to catch the lines of my face. I cringed away from it, seeing nothing else besides a dozen pairs of muddy boots and the blurring bodies of the distant crowd. There was a commotion on the other side of the courtyard. Someone was trying to push through—
“Did you see what just happened?”
“It’s one of the serving girls!”
“She put a hex on the horse!”
“I didn’t,” I choked, vaguely aware no one could hear me. They were too busy listening to each other. Too busy pouring out of the taverns and clamoring around in excitement. They had found a witch in the courtyard, didn’t you hear? “I didn’t hex the—”
A sharp kick to the side, and I yelped in pain.
“Quiet,” the same gruff voice commanded.
But another voice was louder.
“Let her go!”
This one was familiar. I lifted my head. There, in the glowing haze of the torches, I saw a lone figure elbowing his way through the crowd. Even if I hadn’t seen his ivory braids or the gilded sword at his side, I would have known who he was by the way they parted in front of him.
Their darling from the arena. He was shouting about the witch.
“Let her go!” he cried again, barreling through them. His cheeks were flushed with color and there was a wild look in his eyes; one that had started when the horse reared up, and had increased exponentially when he saw the torches. “She wasn’t...I mean, she didn’t...”
He reached other side of the courtyard at that precise moment, staggering to an uncertain stop, like he’d just woken up from a fever dream and realized where he was. There was dust on his cloak, and a smear on his cheek from when the horse had nearly knocked him over. His eyes locked on mine for the briefest of moments, before flicking to the man holding me. Then back to mine.
It was impossible to read them. I doubt he could read himself.
Witch.
The word rang suddenly different, and I felt a flare of shame. Not that I would have ever told him. How could I tell him? I’d known the man a few days. As if that wasn’t enough, he was one of the king’s own bannermen. Yet, we’d met beneath the stands outside the arena. We’d shared childhood stories and stood on the deck of a ship. He’d fixed the door to my house, wiped a smear of cream from my cheek. I thought of that moment in the dark, when he’d nearly kissed me.
My stomach panged with a kind of sinking.
I wish he had.
“Erik!”
I startled to attention as another man fought his way through the crowd, shoving blindly through the churn. Even kneeling with my chin to the ground, I could recognize the shaggy dark hair, the broad shoulders. Steffen pushed through the last of them, and came to an abrupt stop.
For a split second, it looked like he couldn’t quite register what he was seeing. The massive soldier, folding me over like a prisoner. His stricken nephew, standing just a few paces beyond. He took a few seconds, sifting through the characters. Then his eyes traveled slowly to mine.
I know what you did.
Looking back on it later, I could never say how I knew. But in that moment, I’d never been more certain of anything in my life. The crowd might have written it off as a hexing. His nephew, a silent tragedy. But Steffen and I knew better. I imagined the knife in his pocket, small and silver. I remembered the quick flick of his wrist, his impassive stare as the horse screamed and reared.
He ground his teeth together, made a compulsive movement with his hand. “Uncle!”
Erik spotted him at the same moment. It was perhaps the first time he’d ever been relieved to see the man. Most days, his uncle inspired nothing but a sense of abstract dread. But none of that seemed to matter. He actually reached for him, fingers curling childishly around his sleeve.
“You must do something,” he said quickly, urgently. His eyes flickered to the torch, held low to my face. “They’re going to...” Perhaps the words caught like rocks in his throat, perhaps he was merely too polite to say them. “She didn’t hex the horse. She was just trying to warn me.”
“That’s horseshit!” someone called from the crowd. “She shouted long before!”
Like clockwork, everyone behind him suddenly chimed in with some contribution. They had all suddenly been watching. Even those who’d been dancing inside. Suddenly everyone had a new angle, a new perspective. Or some innocuous moment in the past, that was somehow crucial now.
I brushed past her once, felt a kind of chill.
It’s her eyes. Ever notice how they’re neither brown nor green?
Unnatural, it is. An affront to the gods.
There it was, an affront to the gods. I was the girl who’d been mopping up behind them, filling their cups and dumping logs on their fire, yet with all the spare time it lent me, and all the inherent malice in my heart, by nothing more than my mere existence, I was simultaneously wreaking havoc upon everything good and divine. As if they had the words to define it.
Public trial by fire. This is what they meant.
I hadn’t thought the fire to be so literal.
My face cringed away from the licking flames, perhaps my guard was hoping to set my hair on alight and then blame my death on some shifting of the wind. It was the smallest of gestures, but Erik must have seen it. His fingers tightened with fresh urgency on his uncle’s sleeve.
“Do something,” he pleaded under his breath, “they are hurting her.”
The crowd was swelling behind them, pressing against the back ring of those fortunate enough to have been closest like an impatient tide. Those who hadn’t been gifted such proximity were either straining forward, or had been sent as quick messengers to gather the others. The death of a witch was a town spectacle. Even the great nobles were being drawn by the sound, venturing onto the porches of houses and taverns, sending their servants forward in the crowd.
Steffen paused a moment, eyes flicking to the hand on his sleeve. “The girl is a witch,” he said quietly.
The word electrified the crowd, sparking them anew. In the sparse moments that had passed, they seemed to have doubled in size, tripled. There were people of every age and rank, elbowing and whispering. Amidst the rising hum, individual voices echoed above the crowd.
“If there’s one, there might be more!”
“The horse didn’t spook for nothing!”
“Knew it the second I saw her!”
“Eyes were like liquid gold!”
So one of them had seen me, then. Actually seen what had happened for themselves. They must have been gold, that was what always happened. It was one of the reasons I was so careful, not because I mistrusted my precision or aim. It was those damn eyes; they always gave me away.
“We should kill her now and be done,” the soldier said gruffly, tightening his grip in the process. My eyes watered with smoke and pain. “The king will soon arrive, and—”
“The king is leaving on a hunt,” Erik interrupted, almost frantically. He moved like he was about to take a step forward, but stayed where he was. There was nothing about him that was settled. If he hadn’t still been holding onto his uncle like a tether, he might well have lifted off the ground. Still, he strained forward. “You must raise the torch. It’s nearly touching her face—”
“And what does that matter?” the soldier interrupted impatiently, angling ever so slightly to get a better look at the boy’s face. They had heard of him, in the barracks. The applause from the arena traveled far. “She will burn anyway, and it’s bad luck to suffer a witch to live. It’s even worse to deny the crowd a spectacle,” he added, drawing a few random cheers.
I lifted my eyes only briefly, before dropping them to the ground.
They were excited for it, this was something I hadn’t expected. The same women who’d laughed beside me as we did the washing in the kitchen. The same men I’d been serving ale. They were excited to see me die. It would become just another part of the festival, a brief interlude between breakfast and the midday meal, that crazy time they butchered that girl with the golden eyes. The tale would be exaggerated, then forgotten. Gone before the last of the summer rains.
Erik stared at me a lingering moment, like he was thinking the same thing. Or maybe he was thinking of something different. A different version of the summer that would never come to pass.
I thought he might say something.
He turned to his uncle instead. “She saved my life.”
It was quiet, simple. But said in a voice that was impossible to ignore.
At that point, the great lord tore his eyes suddenly away from mine, latching instead upon his nephew. It was a face he’d seen a thousand times, yet it had never looked quite like this. There was something different about him. The unflinching depth of his expression, the fevered hue to his eyes.
Even now, he was staring without fail, waiting for a reply.
“But that’s what they do, boy!”
It wasn’t Steffen who answered, but an old man, peeling himself out of the crowd. He had less teeth than fingers, and was draped in so many layers, it was a miracle he didn’t lift away in a strong wind. The clothes were tattered, his face was lined. This man was a beggar. Yet he stood with strange prominence before the crowd, like all his life, he’d been waiting for a chance to perform.
“They draw you in with honeyed words, flutter those pretty lashes. Perhaps if you’re lucky, she gave you a bit more than that.” He paused indulgently as a spattering of laughter ran through the crowd. Erik was rigid, like a bow drawn too tight. “She looks like a flower, but she is a snake. They are all snakes,” the man continued, almost thoughtfully. He turned away from his audience, glancing at my face by his feet. “And they will strike the moment your back is turned.”
His tone had changed by the end, and the crowd changed with it. Instead of pressing eagerly forward, feral smiles stretched across every face, they were leaning back. Wanting to be close, but not too close. Wanting to feel the heat of it, wanting to smell the smoke. The soldiers were restless, finger itching to grab the timber. I bowed my head, wilting under the weight of their eyes.
A shadow fell over me, casting sudden shade.
“...please.”
Erik spoke so quietly, I could scarcely hear it. I never would have, if I hadn’t been lying at his feet. He wasn’t pleading before the crowd, or bargaining with the soldiers, his eyes were locked upon his uncle—staring with such blazing intensity, it was like the rest of the world had fallen away.
Steffen wrenched his eyes from mine, returning his gaze with a look of shock.
Perhaps it was the nature of the request, or that Erik had been the one to make it. Perhaps that particular word had never passed between them. For a split second, he merely stood there, like he was weighing his options. The beggar grinned behind them. He seemed to decide.
“It is not for you to make such a decision,” he declared authoritatively, his voice ringing over the crowd. They quieted immediately as he turned to gaze at the soldier whose knee was digging into my back. “Nor do you have the right to execute a girl in the courtyard and claim death in the king’s name. You will take her to the dungeon, to await his majesty’s judgement.”
I let out a silent breath, staring at a fixed point on the ground.
The crowd was shouting, and there was a movement somewhere above me, but I didn’t dare to lift my eyes. The hands on me tightened, sending another blinding jolt of pain up my arms.
Please...please let them listen.
“And you accuse us of taking liberties in the king’s absence.” The soldier holding me glanced to either side of him, like he was trying to shore up support. “We should at least break her hands—”
Steffen let out a bark of laughter, silencing the rest. “Should we now?” he quipped. “That is your verdict, is it?” He took a step closer, seemingly oblivious to the girl scraped and bleeding at his feet. “Before you would hand down a royal sentence, the girl has to be tried. Or do you act as both judge and executioner?” His eyes flickered in a quick rotation as he raised his voice to the crowd. “Besides, this is a feast day. To butcher someone on such an occasion risks the anger of the gods. Put her in the tower, wait until the moon turns.”
Every part of me was visibly shaking. Erik was coiled like a viper ready to strike.
There was a profound hesitation as the soldier considered his words. The crowd had erupted in whispers, his own men were grumbling just behind. I could feel the reluctance in him, the slight strain of his muscles as they gripped onto mine. But this man outranked him, by leagues, by lifetimes. A bannerman didn’t make suggestions, he issued commands.
“Take her to the tower,” he said gruffly, shoving me forward into the dirt. Before I could catch myself, a pair of new hands latched onto each arm, yanking me upright. “Put a guard at the bottom of the stairs, another at the end of the hall. The king will return soon enough.”
It wasn’t until that precise moment that he turned enough so I could see his face. My heart almost stopped. It was the same man who’d offered me coin to spy, the first day of the festival. The same man who’d tried dragging me to the barracks, before Erik had interceded and pried me away.
He caught my eyes, offering the faintest of smiles. “Until that day, sweetheart.”
He vanished before I could say anything in return. Truth be told, I was sure that I was no longer permitted to speak. Who knew what spells a witch could cast? They’d already considered the notion of breaking my hands. As if to dispel any doubts, a strip of cloth emerged from nowhere—looping suddenly over my head, before shoving between my teeth. I gagged, trying to breathe around it.
It was only then, I saw Erik standing in front of me. The same place where he’d planted himself, trembling and scarcely able to speak. Our eyes locked for a split second, holding fast, before a crush of people stepped in between. He glanced again at his uncle, slowly releasing his sleeve.
“Thank you,” he murmured, still shaking.
Steffen regarded him a moment before nodding curtly. “A stay of execution only,” he cautioned, watching as the soldiers fell into formation and began dragging me away. “She saved your life, because she fancies you. But she is a witch, Erik.”
The words he didn’t say rang loud and true.
What do we do with witches?
We burn them.
