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I didn’t get any sleep that night, though perhaps I should have. I stayed awake for hours, staring at the links on the chain. It rattled when I moved; a heavy, dragging sound. The kind you’d expect to find in the most ancient of dungeons, covered in spiderwebs thick as a woolen shawl.
I was living in a dark nursery rhyme, trapped in a low-simmering horror. Certain stereotypes had begun to take hold. The shadows reached for me with actual fingers, I heard broken voices drifting through the walls. I had probably been lying there for about all of ten minutes, before I’d decided the place was haunted with memory of a thousand souls, and I would surely succumb to madness long before the executioner had his little show. Because they did that, I’d heard.
Come on, Liv. Where’s the girl who took care of the spiders?
I tried to steady myself, tried to make better use of the time. Scrolling through old faces, old memories. Not a moment wasted. I tried to do all that, but the attention alluded me. It was often enough to remain coherent. My thoughts wove together like ocean currents, carrying me out to sea.
Why did I do it?
So many times I’d said the words, they’d ceased to have any meaning. They’d become something more like breathing, my mind carrying the sound, my mouth carrying the shape. They’d taken a rhythm, and I was half-terrified it was going to be the last thing on this earth I ever heard.
The truth was almost embarrassing, considering the subsequent weight of that decision. It felt like I should have felt some moment of profound reckoning, a measure of my own existence.
The truth was, I hadn’t given it a thought.
He was about to die. I had the ability to save him. Who wouldn’t save him? The horse was about to rear, I’d seen it happen. Who wouldn’t shout? It wasn’t until people started to turn, I realized the obvious implication. They were turning the wrong way. Turning to me.
It was only then I realized, I’d traded his life for mine.
Without a thought.
There was a deep clanking in the distance, one I’d already recognized to have come from the gate of the barracks. With few exceptions, our settlement was made of wood. Metal was scarce and saved for the soldiers. It gave far better protection, but the sound traveled for ages, and you could hear someone coming from leagues away. I pushed myself upright, staring at the thatched rooftops.
Even now, I was able to track the progress of a soldier based on nothing but the ceaseless jangle of his armor as he paced the moonlit streets. At first it was only the softest of chimes, then it gathered and divided into individual footsteps. It was a wonder they still made the guards dress in full gear within the walls of the settlement. It had always struck me as rather counterintuitive.
It depends on who they’re fighting. Whether they’re worried about threats outside, or within.
Closer and closer the soldier came, until I was struck with the obvious realization that he must be coming to the tower. At that point, my pulse quickened and I pushed silently to my feet.
I hadn’t gotten any trouble yet from the men tasked with watching me. I had assumed this was because they didn’t want me to hex them into toads, but there was a chance they had just been waiting for the rest of the settlement to fall asleep so they could do as they pleased. I was certain it had happened to prisoners before. There was a reason we’d learned as children not to pass the tower on the street. There was always some terrible noise stirring within, shrieks and whimpers, muffled sounds of death. Sometimes, it was a man found beaten to death in his cell. As prisoners were generally disliked, the magistrate would look indulgently the other way. We rarely had women prisoners, but I assumed it was worse. Still, I couldn’t be certain how they’d treat the resident witch.
My mind drifted to a callous face, the lieutenant who’d offered a silver coin to enlist me as a spy. When that hadn’t worked, he’d tried taking something else he wanted. Just a few hours earlier, though it seemed another life. He might have actually succeeded, if Erik hadn’t thrown himself in between. A shiver rippled over my skin as I remembered the weight of his hands on my shoulders, the grip of his fingers. The shooting pain in my back as he’d kicked me to the ground.
His parting words echoed in my head.
“Until that day, sweetheart.”
My eyes flew to the window, and my blood ran cold.
Was that happening now?
In a flash, I was on my feet, staggering like some broken thing as far back as my six feet of chain would allow me. How I thought that might help? I’ll never know. I was no longer thinking clearly. My pulse was set in a free-wheeling panic, and my eyes gleamed out of the shadows, locked in silent concentration on the door. What was going to happen when it opened...? I couldn’t say.
I could kill him.
It was the first thought that leapt into my mind. I was ashamed by how fast it came to me. In spite of popular opinion, I actually didn’t need the use of my hands in order to cast magic. If the door swung open and that man burst inside intending to do me harm...I could technically stop him.
I’d just confirm every horror story about every witch along the way.
There was a clang in the depths of the tower, the sound of murmured voices and a clink of coin passing between hands. I pressed my back to the wall, listening like the night’s watchman, my ears pricked up like a hound. There were footsteps now, coming up the winding stairwell.
It was a sound I’d heard not long before, when a slat in the door yanked open and a wooden tray was shoved inside. Upon it was a dinner roll, and a bowl of water. A bowl of water. As if I were meant to lap it like a dog. It clattered across the floor, half the contents splashing over the side.
But that had been hours earlier, well before the guard change.
These footsteps were different, quieter. Or at least, they were trying to be. But there was a special volume given to those attempting stealth, and no more than three steps could pass before there would be a frantic scuffling sound, followed by a breath of profanity.
Closer and closer they came as I followed their slow progression. They paused a brief moment at the top of the stairs, like they were getting their bearings, before crossing to the door.
I gritted my teeth, staring at the other side.
Should I be calling for someone? Screaming for help? What good would that do? The person had come directly from the barracks. Who would they send to help me?
With my luck, they’d welcome the reinforcements.
There was a shuffling of boots, a metallic jangle.
Then the door swung open and a lovely woman stepped inside.
Trina!
I flew across the room before I could stop myself, all the blood rushing back into my palsied limbs. She rushed towards me at the same time, and we crashed together in the center, arms tangling into arms, hair weaving together. We swayed a little for balance, at the furthest edge of my chain.
“What are you doing here?” I gasped, feeling like some part of me had awoken. She was flushed from the journey, yet chilled with the evening wind. Her hair smelled like strawberries. “I don’t understand...” I trailed away, pulling back to look at her. “Why are you still here?”
The words sank through me, pulling me towards the ground.
It had been my only solace, the solitary comfort I’d had since the iron clasp on the door had locked behind me. Trina would not pay the price for my foolishness. Trina would hear the news of my imprisonment and escape the settlement. It was the only thing that had made the rest bearable.
And now she’s here.
I drew back in horror, keeping both hands gripped on the tops of her arms. As usual, it was impossible to tell anything from her face. She was lovely and inscrutable. And brisk.
I could not, for the life of me, fathom how she was so brisk.
“Well, they’re about to kill you, Livy. I had to come and say goodbye.”
I stared at her in the dim light, blinkingly stupidly, as another quiet clang echoed from the base of the tower. She had not come there alone, I realized. She had taken someone with her.
A client, no doubt. A regular from the brothel.
“You...you bribed a guard—”
“I asked a guard,” she interrupted, eyes sweeping back to my face. Since setting foot inside, she’d had a difficult time looking. But every few seconds, something would hook her. “In spite of your best efforts, I still hold some sway in these parts.” Her eyes softened as I cringed before her, finding the old stains when my cheeks had run with tears. “We have until sunrise.”
My eyes flew to the window, it was hours until dawn.
“Until sunrise,” I repeated, barely a breath.
Her hand reached for mine. “Let’s not waste it.”
* * *
I couldn’t tell you more than half a dozen things that passed in the next few hours. We didn’t waste them, not by any stretch. But they didn’t pass how I’d have expected. Most of the time, we just sat there, heads tilted together, staring out the window. Every now and then, we’d hear a sound that would prompt a story. Or catch the salt-sea breeze with a vacant smile.
Our fingers stayed wrapped together the entire time. Even when it was difficult, shifting places with the chain. Not a single moment since slipping into my prison cell, did she stop touching me. But her face, that remained neutral. Her voice? Careless and light.
I could not fathom it at the beginning. Near the end, I considered it a gift.
“Why did you not come to the settlement?” I asked abruptly, tilting my head for a better view of her face. It was difficult, resting on her shoulder, and I straightened up a little. “It was the king’s birthday. A massive spectacle. And the man’s ancient, he won’t have many others. You had your fill of soldiers?” I quoted with a sarcastic grin. “That was truly your reason?”
Strange, how I was already speaking in the past tense.
I expected her to grin with me. We’d been trading them back and forth. Trading squeezes, trading smiles. At no point had the conversation ever strayed anywhere towards the dark.
I expected her to grin, but she didn’t. She looked out the window instead.
“He was a soldier, your father. I told you the other night I wouldn’t be baited, but he was a soldier. And not just a member of the guard, he was one of the king’s own bannermen. One of his favorites, in fact. A great lord, with land and titles. Your father was a soldier, and a catch.”
She sat there a moment, then flashed a look at my stunned face.
All my life, I had begged her to answer that precise question. Demanded it, pleaded it. She had dodged any of number of ways; putting me off until I was older, eventually shouting that I must not ask her to do things ‘beyond her place.’ This was the banner she sometimes hid behind, on the rare occasions her enlistment into parenthood took her places beyond what she had foreseen.
It had always worked, what could I do? The stories were hers to tell if she wanted.
I simply couldn’t believe she would tell me now.
And why not? What better time?
“And what happened?” I asked bracingly, staring at her in the dark.
She kept her eyes forward, gazing steadily ahead. “Your mother caught his eye. She was very beautiful, your mother. She couldn’t help grabbing people’s attention, it happened everywhere she went. And then one day, she met your father.” She drew in a slow breath, like she could put off whatever was coming next. “She fell in love with him,” she finished shortly. “And that is never the beginning of a happy tale.”
There were tears in my eyes I didn’t notice. I’d cried so often since being dragged off the streets, it was becoming my normal state. They pooled beneath my chin, dripping onto my legs.
“They loved each other?” I asked shakily.
Oddly enough, this prospect had never occurred to me. I had assumed it had been an inconvenience; I had been born out of wedlock, quite possibly to a whore. It had never occurred to me that my parents might have been together, that they might have shared some mutual affection.
To be honest, it made things worse.
That’s probably why she never told you.
Trina nodded mutely, staring into the sky. The clouds were still swirls of shadow, but it was beginning to lighten a bit around the edges. We were both pretending not to see.
“Yes, he loved her as well. I think, that’s what he would have told you. That’s what I would have told you myself,” she added wryly. Something in her eyes went hard. “You could say, they had a perfect summer together. All of us did. And then...? Everything went so terribly wrong.”
There was a tone in her voice I’d never heard before. One that would have knocked me backwards, if we weren’t already sitting on the floor in a prison cell. As it was, I merely stared at the side of her face, struck suddenly by how close the two of us seemed in age. I could easily imagine her a few seasons earlier, in a settlement not unlike this one, watching the same kind of festivities.
From the other side of the fence.
“I said she caught his eye, but he ended up catching her instead,” she finished flatly. “He saw her doing magic, that’s the best I ever learned of it. He caught her doing magic, and turned her over to the guards. Broke his heart to do it,” she continued dryly, a tension in her lower jaw, “that’s what everyone always said. They said it spoke well of him, because it broke his heart to do it. I always thought of your mother.” She flashed a humorless smile. “Look what it did to her.”
It took a few seconds to recover from this, for her and for me. It was clear from the look on her face, she hadn’t expected to mention it. I hadn’t been expecting to see her within twenty miles of my cell. We had yet to discuss that. Things felt suddenly pressed for time.
“Trina, you don’t need to—”
“The second I heard what happened, I ran to your grandmother’s house,” she continued swiftly, eyes elsewhere, “took the back roads to get there before the soldiers arrived. I knocked on the door, introduced myself. Told her what happened. We decided to kill you.”
My forehead creased with a sudden frown. This seemed a stretch.
She smiled dryly, flicking my cheek. “We decided to make it seem as though we’d killed you,” she amended, “so the guards would press the matter no farther. Your mother and Karmen were not related. She was nothing more than a midwife’s ward.”
I’d turned towards her by then, anxious for the rest. It seemed somehow vital, though I couldn’t imagine why. It seemed the grand conclusion of something, if only the turning of a page.
“What did you do?” I asked in a breath, almost morbidly consumed. “Did you...” I paused, waiting for her to fill the rest in. When she didn’t, I continued with a bit of reluctance, “You know, were the two of you forced to steal the—”
“—the body of a baby?” she interrupted impatiently. “Is that really what you were going to ask? No, you twit.” She flicked my forehead this time. “We stole a piglet from the house next door. Slaughtered it and chopped off the feet, wrapped it in a blanket. We tossed the blanket in the fire.” She paused for a breath, eyes glowing like she could still see the embers. “When the soldiers came, it was still burning. We were sobbing, both of us covered in blood. That seemed to satisfy them.”
Her head jerked strangely, like she’d been slapped. I’d often seen her make such a gesture, proceeded always by a sudden clenching of the jaw. My fingers wrapped around my ankles.
“Once things settled down, Karmen took you south. I followed a while after, once they’d settled down some more. Took up with a merchant who was heading down the coast, grabbed a wagon in the caravan. I jumped ship in the first village they promised it wouldn’t ever snow.”
It was quiet a few moments, as she stared wistfully through the window.
“Trina, it snows everywhere.”
“A girl can dream.”
I smiled in spite of myself, reaching again for her hand. It had felt strange to release it, after we’d gripped each other so long. The grey was tinting pink along the horizon. She would soon have to depart. I hadn’t even gotten a reason. I didn’t even know why she’d stayed—
“Why did you come?” I asked instead, unwilling to part with the story. With an encroaching dawn rising over her left shoulder, it seemed the last normal conversation we might ever have. “You were nothing more than a friend of my mother’s. There was no implication. You might have stayed where you were. Why risk the journey? Why bind yourself to an old woman and her child?”
For a suspended moment, her face went still. Then it warmed with the most peculiar expression. It was caught somewhere between a smile and a sob, between the present and the past.
“You have no idea,” she murmured, “how many times I asked myself that same question. In a tavern, after a night of dreaming. Pacing the banks of the river, ranting at my reflection. Ranting at your mother,” she corrected suddenly, letting out a dry laugh, “because it was her face that haunted me. Her haunting, pleading face, every time I decided it might just be easier to leave.”
So that’s why she did it, the guilt.
I had always wondered.
I gripped my free hand around my ankles, nodding silently and trying to swallow with a perfectly dry mouth. It wasn’t until she cleared her throat, I saw that she was looking at me.
“That’s why I came,” she said quietly. “Now ask me why I stayed.”
We came back together in sudden motion, wrapping around each other as much as the lengths on my chain would allow. After a few awkward moments, she cursed the entire endeavor and simply tangled us together, clasping me fiercely, as I buried my face in her neck.
I can’t believe this is happening! I don’t know how to do this!
“I’m so sorry,” I sobbed, tears streaking down my face. “I’m so sorry, Trin! I never meant to do it. I just saw he was in trouble, and I shouted. I didn’t think—”
“Quiet,” she commanded softly.
“I just reacted, I didn’t even realize what had happened.” I drew in a splintering breath, feeling as though my very blood had turned to ice. “And now I’ve ruined everything—”
“Quiet,” she said again, gripping the back of my head, “we don’t need to talk about that now.” She held me there for a moment, rocking gently, as the sky turned pink. “You just need to breathe, Livy. Just breathe. Everything’s going to be all right, I promise.”
...all right?
I froze in her arms, pulled slightly back. “How?” I asked shakily. “How is it...?
Her eyes flashed, and all at once, I knew. All at once, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t put it together sooner. Another obvious truth, that had somehow escaped my sight.
“It’s going to be all right,” she answered, with just the slightest edge, “because I know you’re not going to be an idiot. I know you’re going to use the brain the gods gave you”—she jabbed me in the chest—“and the gift the gods gave you, and get yourself the hell out of this place.”
My breath caught where she touched. She had never called it a gift before.
“Trina—”
“Do not start, Liv,” she commanded. “Do not start.”
I will not start.
The burning of witches hadn’t always been a fringe sport. There was a time, it was a main highlight of the entire kingdom. People came out in spades, never had you seen so many pointed fingers, so many undersized coffins. When individual murder was no longer enough, people would rile themselves into a frenzy and undertake the cleansing of entire villages. The purge, they called it.
We didn’t have a single purge. We had many.
The only reason they stopped, and it took nearly a hundred years, was that we started to die quietly. There was no longer a community to help us, if any would have dared. There was no longer any sport in the kill. Our heads bowed in silent acceptance. We died quietly, and we died alone. Our screams were usually forgotten by the time our smoke cleared into the night.
Eventually, the crowd began to tire. The generations aged, and began to feel the lack of daughters. Eventually, like a bear prowling the remains of too shredded a carcass, they lumbered on.
But a witch who fought back? If only to escape?
That was a different story. Another player in the arena, a living enemy to defeat. Girls would be roused from their homes in droves, accusations and fingers would fly in a panic.
Anywhere to shift the attention, anyone who had ever said an angry word.
The part that was truly frightening, was there was essentially no limit to it. The burning only stopped when the prey ceased to fight back, and when the hunger for such spectacle faded. In terms of the delights of bloodlust, you were dealing with a tough crowd. If the raids came up short, or the harvest was poor, you could find yourself triggering the realm’s entertainment for another season.
Witches died quiet. We didn’t fight back. It was a silent tenant of the community, a pledge of honor. It was also one of the few things upon which Trina and I could never agree.
I gave her a tender smile, eyes shining in the dim light. “I will not start,” I promised.
She shook her head slowly. “You’re not going to do it.”
“Trina—”
“They’re going to kill you, Liv.” She threw up her hands, exasperated past words. “How is it possible, you’re not going to do it? Have I taught you nothing?”
You’ve taught me plenty.
“I’ll do it,” I lied easily. “I just need to figure out how.”
She shook her head again, a stray tear spilling down her cheek.
“You perfect and foolish girl.” She placed both hands on my cheeks, looking directly into my eyes. “You must not let them do it. You must not let them take one more good woman from the world. You must fight back, Livy. The ones who make a difference are the ones who fight back.”
I nodded silently, offering a wistful smile.
I cannot fight back. Someone else must make a difference.
A bell started clanging in the distance; the village tower, calling in the shepherds. Soon the fishermen would be setting out for the harbor. People would be setting up for the games.
My eyes flew to hers, wide with sudden panic.
“Are you going to be okay?” I blurted, regretting it immediately after.
Never had my cheeks flamed so violently. Never had she withered to such a bloodless stare.
“Liv, this is going to shock you”—she leveled our gaze—“but I work at the brothel.” She paused as I dipped my head—tear-stained and smiling. “In doing so, I’ve amassed a small fortune. I’m going to be absolutely fine. Half that fortune is yours,” she added, pushing to her feet.
I stood up beside her, still clinging to her hands. “Perhaps I’ll leave it somewhere in your honor.” Her lips twisted with a little smile. “Bury it, in a smuggler’s cave. Not that I’ll need to,” she added sharply, waiting until she caught my eyes. “Because I’ll meet you after, right? You know where to find me.”
I sucked in a breath, and nodded. “I promise.”
She caught my eyes a moment, embraced me a final time. My eyes closed and I felt her arms tighten, as she whispered into my hair. “Liv...take your hands out of your pockets.”
By the time my eyes opened, she was gone.
I am never going to see you again.
