Rain sluiced down the window, rippling Miss Parcae’s face. Fern had escaped one trap, only to step into another.
We don’t want to break you, but we will.
RAP-RAP-RAP
Miss Parcae knocked on the window again and Fern moved. She slithered into the front seat of the cop car, ignoring the agony in her mouth, ignoring the agony between her legs as her stitches ripped. She grabbed the handle of the driver’s-side door and threw herself against it, pushing it open against the wind.
It was warm outside and hot rain soaked through her clothes. Miss Parcae straightened up on the other side of the car and called across its roof.
“It’s time.”
The wind had died enough for Fern to hear her voice over the crashing branches, and it sounded hard. Fern tried to make herself talk, but her swollen tongue wouldn’t move. She shook her head.
“It’s too late,” Miss Parcae said, and started around the trunk of the car.
She looked ridiculous in her floral-print jacket and skirt. Her hem guttered water, her jacket hung limp, her practical librarian’s shoes sank into the mud. Half her hair had escaped her bun and waved around her head like snakes. She looked like a harried librarian who’d been put through a car wash. But her eyes were fixed on Fern, and Fern saw nothing human in them.
“You must face your obligations,” Miss Parcae said.
Fern turned and ran. She ran out from behind the cop car, around the rear of Miss Wellwood’s crumpled station wagon, to Nurse Kent’s crushed Bug. She looked back and saw Miss Parcae deliberately picking her way across the front yard after her. She bent and tried to look through the shattered side windows of the Bug, but the interior was crushed flat and if Holly had been in there she was dead and Fern had killed her.
Fern looked frantically around the wreckage of the front yard. She saw the jumble of boards and beams that had been the porch roof, she saw the wet cops and Miss Wellwood huddled in the doorway of the Home. Miss Wellwood saw Fern and their eyes met and Miss Wellwood opened her mouth in a scream, standing, reaching for Fern, hands clawing the air, and one of the cops wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her down to keep her from running out into the storm.
Through the wet hair lashing her face, Fern saw Miss Parcae come around the wreckage of the station wagon. Fern looked down the side of the house: it was clear all the way to the backyard. Fern ran.
She squelched forward fast, sneakers as wet as the puddles she sloshed through. She passed the corner of the Home. She saw a heap of wet rags lying against its brick foundations up ahead. In two steps she realized it was a body. She prayed it wasn’t Holly’s.
Two more steps and she saw it was a man. She saw blond hair plastered to the back of his skull, his transparent white shirt and khaki pants, his shoulders hanging at the wrong angles. She stopped and looked down at Reverend Jerry.
Even she could tell his shoulders were broken. His eyes were closed, his face slack. Fern couldn’t see Holly’s baby. She prayed that she hadn’t killed her, too.
Reverend Jerry didn’t look like he was alive. Then he squirmed slightly in the mud and sucked in air. Half of it was muddy water from the puddle beside his face.
Here he was. They had learned witchcraft to save Holly from this man. He had all the power and they had none. Except right now she did. Right now, Fern could do anything she wanted.
What do you really want?
She stretched one foot out to nudge his head deeper into the puddle, and her toe touched his scalp, and she stopped.
Power without mercy is cruelty, and isn’t that what you’re subjected to now?
Fern yanked her foot away. She wasn’t Rose. She couldn’t do this. Not even to him.
Fern ran. She rounded the back of the Home and saw destruction: wet lumber piled against the wall of the Barn, the tin roof of the Smoke Shack tossed over its top like a galvanized scarf, trees sagging into the yard and standing pines showing bright gashes where their branches had been stripped away. Piles of fallen limbs littered the yard, clogged with clots of clothes and wet papers. Two soggy mattresses flopped out second-story windows like lazy tongues.
Fern looked across the wreckage but didn’t see Holly or Zinnia or the baby. Then she saw the kitchen doorway, a black hole in the wall, its screen door ripped away, and she squelched through the slackening rain toward it, tripping over Hagar’s blender lying in the middle of the yard.
Thunder rumbled overhead as Fern stepped into the kitchen. The refrigerator had been dragged to the center of the room and tipped against the counter, its door hanging open, food vomited onto the floor. Every single plate and glass and packet and box lay in piles. Every drawer and shelf and cabinet had been turned upside down.
Something clattered in the corner and Fern saw a hunched back down on the floor where the counters met, half buried in broken drawers. She kicked her way toward it, jolting her tongue painfully with every step, until she reached whoever it was and snatched away a drawer and saw the back of Zinnia’s head.
Fern threw the drawers behind her, digging now, and Zinnia reared up, one eye swollen shut, wrapping her arms around Fern, hugging her too hard, mashing Fern’s jaw and sending searing veins of fire coursing through her face, but she hugged Zinnia back, pressing her cold wet clothes to her body. Zinnia moved in a way Fern couldn’t put together in her mind, then saw Holly sit up from under her, clutching her baby in her arms.
Zinnia had saved them. Fern had brought the storm and almost killed them, but Zinnia had kept them both alive.
Holly looked tiny inside her wet clothes, but she was safe. She streamed water and kept brushing it from her daughter’s face. Zinnia tried to stand but she couldn’t get her legs to work, and Fern knew neither of them were in any condition to run.
“Witch…” she managed in her thick voice, over the sound of the driving rain.
Speaking drove spikes through her tongue. Holly and Zinnia looked confused and she didn’t think they understood, so she tried again.
“Witch.”
She put the meaning into her face, and Zinnia understood.
“Run,” she told Fern. “Go!”
She pushed Fern away from them until Fern started moving. She picked her way out of the kitchen, then stood in the kitchen door and looked back.
“Go!” Zinnia shouted at her again over the hissing rain. “Don’t stop!”
Fern turned to face the debris-choked yard. Where could she go? All she could do was run. She aimed for the woods. She would hide there, wait for dawn, keep running, do whatever she could to stay ahead of the witches. Miss Parcae was sick. She couldn’t last for long.
Fern stepped her way through the scattered wreckage, picking up speed, trotting toward the tattered tree line. Every step jolted her wounded tongue. Her pain felt bigger than the world, but she’d had a baby and she could endure anything.
Fern moved faster and faster until she was running, and her tongue screamed with agony, and even the air brushing it made it burn, but she had to make it into the trees before Miss Parcae came around the corner.
As she got closer, she could see that fallen pines had opened a wide road between the trees. Fern passed the last downed branch and felt soft mulch beneath her feet, and she slipped between the dark, wet trunks, fallen limbs running fingers along her legs, and she entered the woods.
In the yard, the rain had almost stopped, but it dripped from the pines like it was still raining in the woods. The thick stink of fresh sap filled Fern’s head. She saw the road tracing a crooked course toward the river and she moved down it as fast as she dared. Then she stopped.
The witches were coming.
They came through the trees, emerging from between their trunks, skyclad. She recognized the skinny shape of the squirrel girl—Little Robin—and beside her the solid form of Journey, picking their way through the underbrush, eyes locked on her.
Fern turned, searching for another angle, and saw Mags, barely ten feet away, hair wet, toothless mouth hanging open in a hungry grin, stomach folded in wrinkles, slack breasts swaying. Fern looked to her other side. Periwinkle was there, moving light as a hunter on her bare feet, leaping fallen branches, making her way toward Fern.
Fern’s head swiveled as she backed away, trying to keep her eyes on all of them at once, terrified to let them out of her sight. Everything got lighter as she moved from beneath the dripping trees and stood in the ruined yard of Wellwood House.
Maybe she could loop around and escape through the trees on the other side? Or she could make it around the house and head for the road?
She looked quickly behind her to make sure the ground was clear, and when she turned back the witches were coming out of the woods, a long, ragged line of them, surrounding her. The two dogs anchored the ends of the line. The older ones advanced slow and confident; the younger ones picked their way through debris like long-legged deer, closing in on Fern. Then they slowed, and stopped, and watched.
Fern realized they were looking at something behind her, and she turned and saw Miss Parcae standing between her and the Home, hands clasped at her waist, handbag looped over one wrist, and for an absurd moment Fern thought she was about to address a meeting of her garden club.
“Enough,” Miss Parcae said. “It’s over.”
Fern shook her head, then thought maybe she couldn’t see it in the dark and she made herself speak around her mutilated tongue.
“No,” she managed.
It felt mushy and thick but it was all she had. Only one word.
No.
“That decision is out of your hands,” Miss Parcae called over the patter of dying rain. “The line will continue. You will carry the flame. Please, Fern, do it of your own free will.”
Fern said it again.
“No.”
She looked to make sure the witches weren’t coming up behind her, but they hadn’t moved. Then she turned back to Miss Parcae. The librarian looked pale and haggard and half drowned; she had dark bruises under her eyes, but her spine had iron in it.
“You think you can repeat yourself until sunrise?” Miss Parcae called. “You think we’ll fly away like ghosts at first light? It took the strength of the entire coven to put down that storm. You’ve done more damage here tonight than you know. Be grateful all we want is to make you honor your vow.”
The coven lined the yard. There were so many of them and Fern stood alone, soaking wet, blood down her chin and chest. They could crush her. They could destroy her. They could shatter her self forever. But there was one thing they could never do.
“No,” Fern repeated.
They could not make her say yes.
“Fern.” Miss Parcae sighed, and shook her head sadly. Then she lifted her voice. “Since you insist on acting like a child, we call one who can force you to honor your obligations. You will not survive the Triple-Faced Goddess. In her eyes you are less than a speck.”
She lowered her voice.
“Change your mind,” Miss Parcae said. “Don’t make me hurt you.”
Fern shook her head again. Miss Parcae closed her eyes, and in that moment she looked so tired. Then she called out in words that were slippery and hard to hear. The witches around Fern began to hum while Miss Parcae chanted louder, chanted stronger. The whisper of the witches picked up her words and amplified them, made them vibrate inside Fern’s skull. Fern saw the back wall of Wellwood House glow, and she turned to face the forest.
A sickly lunar light had been kindled deep within the trees and it oozed out of the woods. Far away, Fern heard the canopy tremble as something electrified the air and shook water from the treetops. The pressure dropped. Fern’s ears popped. She was coming.
Fear hollowed out everything behind Fern’s breastbone, and then a bright blaze of anger replaced it. How dare they. How dare they think she was a little kid they could yell at. Now they had to bring some three-faced freak to do their dirty work? They thought she’d cower like a child? She would be gone—she didn’t care. They could do what they wanted, they could erase her and replace her, they could turn her into someone else, but they could never make her say yes.
Fern shouted to be heard over their chanting and her tongue felt like it was splitting in two, and she didn’t know if her words were more than garbled nonsense but she didn’t care.
“Bring her!” Fern screamed, and her tongue tore and blood flowed down her chin again but she wouldn’t be using it after this. This was the end. “Bring her! Bring everyone! Bring Hell! You think I’m scared? I’m scared of NOTHING!”
Blood slabbered down her chest as Fern stood and laughed at the witches. After everything she’d been through, after she’d created life, after they had taken her child, did they really think she was scared of something as small as their God?
An enormous moan came through the trees, shaking pine needles from branches. The sick silver light got brighter, making Fern’s eyeballs ache like rotten teeth being drilled, and she heard the moan throbbing inside herself, inside everything, a hurricane of sound.
Fern felt caught in the presence of something vast, something rising over the horizon like a moon, a planet ascending endlessly and filling the sky, bearing down on Fern like a falling bomb, a vastation blotting out the stars. And Fern realized this monstrosity was only Her eye.
She was Leviathan.
The force of the Goddess’s attention drove the air from Fern’s lungs. She was nothing in the face of this. Fern’s consciousness shredded before Her. She came unraveled and undone. She felt herself flicker and fade. She wished she’d been able to tell everyone goodbye. She wished…
Faintly, far away, someone screamed.
The world cramped and the silver light flickered and let go of Fern. Her legs turned to water and she fell to her knees, face throbbing with fresh pain, staring at the muddy grass, trying to breathe as white dots crawled across her vision.
Something vast pulled away, slipped below the horizon, retreated into the crack between worlds. A book as large as the sky slammed shut and Fern became aware of a commotion nearby. The chanting had stopped. She raised her head and her vision swayed, then steadied, and she saw Holly with her teeth sunk into Miss Parcae’s hand, jaws clamped down hard, clinging to her arm.
Miss Parcae screamed in pain but she couldn’t pull away. Her legs tangled in Holly’s, and she stumbled and fell, taking them both down to the wet ground. Naked witches ran to them and Dolores reached Holly first, grabbing her by the waist, trying to pull her off Miss Parcae, but Holly held fast. The dogs charged and barked, dashing in and out between bare legs. Miss Parcae shrieked, beating Holly’s skull with her fist, pushing backward against her face until Holly came free and Dolores staggered back, clutching the struggling girl in her arms. Witches clustered around Miss Parcae, helping her to her feet. She shoved them away.
“Stop it!” Holly screamed at her. “Stop hurting Fern!”
Rubbing her hand, Miss Parcae scanned the yard.
“Take me instead!” Holly shouted.
Miss Parcae found Fern. She set her face and started across the grass again. Holly saw where she was going. She saw Fern struggling to get up.
“I want to go!” Holly yelled. “Take me!”
Fern tried to stand, she tried to face Miss Parcae, but she couldn’t get her legs to move.
“You cannot carry the flame,” Miss Parcae said as she passed Holly.
Fern saw Zinnia behind Miss Parcae, standing on the other side of the witches, holding Holly’s baby, and then Holly elbowed Dolores hard and tore herself away, stumbling to Zinnia, taking her daughter, and then she was falling, walking, swerving forward, putting herself between Miss Parcae and Fern, holding out her daughter, showing Miss Parcae her child.
“You have to take us,” she said. “Fern won’t do it! I will! We can’t go back. I’ll kill us both before we go back with him!”
Sick or not, Miss Parcae was an adult and Holly was only a child—she shoved her easily out of the way, then Dolores had her again, and there was nothing to keep Miss Parcae from Fern. Through blurry eyes, Fern saw the skull beneath her skin. Her lips stretched back over a death’s-head grin, and Miss Parcae looked hungry, like a spider advancing on a trapped fly.
Whatever she was going to do, it was going to hurt.
A pair of ankles stepped in front of Fern, blocking Miss Parcae from view, and Fern heard Mags say, “No.”
Fern’s arms gave out and she sank down into the mud and she saw Miss Parcae standing still, just a few feet away, and between them stood Mags.
“Move,” Miss Parcae commanded.
Mags didn’t move.
“I have no time!” Miss Parcae snapped.
“Not another,” Mags croaked.
“Someone!” Miss Parcae looked around at the other witches. “Get Mags. I need the girl.”
“Not another broken bottle,” Mags rasped.
No one moved.
Miss Parcae stepped toward Mags, lifting her hands to put them on her shoulders and shift her aside, and Mags hissed, dropping lower, her teeth bared, protecting Fern. Miss Parcae stopped in midstep.
“What are you doing?” she said. “That girl must carry the flame. We have no time!”
Mags raised an arm, pointing back at Wellwood House.
“That one,” she said.
She was pointing at Holly. Miss Parcae shook her head.
“That one isn’t ready,” she said. “This girl has been chosen. She must carry the line or it dies—”
“Then let it die,” a voice said.
Periwinkle stepped out of the witches and stood beside Mags.
“Out of my way!” Miss Parcae yelled.
“I’d rather save two live women,” Periwinkle said, “than a hundred dead ones.”
“The line must be preserved!” Miss Parcae said.
“No!” Mags screeched.
The witches shifted, and then Joy stood beside Periwinkle and Mags. Dolores looked stricken. She opened her mouth to speak but Joy was already talking.
“You’ll break three women to save your line?” she asked Miss Parcae. “The price is too high.”
“She is a library of our mothers,” Dolores called to her daughter.
“I’d rather burn the library,” Periwinkle said, “than build it on bodies.”
Little Robin stepped up beside Joy.
“The flame will be extinguished!” Miss Parcae shouted. “Our existence! Our reason! Everything will die!”
“Or change,” Little Robin said.
“We cannot—” Miss Parcae began.
“We can,” Periwinkle said.
Miss Parcae stopped. The witches stopped. The world held its breath.
Periwinkle brushed past Miss Parcae, and placed one hand on Holly’s head.
“She says you aren’t ready,” she said, looking deep into Holly’s eyes. “Is this what you want? Are you strong enough to live free?”
“There’s nothing left for me here,” Holly said, meeting her gaze. “Take us away from this world.”
Periwinkle turned to the witches.
“So mote it be,” she said.
Mags spoke next.
“So mote it be,” she croaked.
“Holly…” Fern tried to say, pushing herself up onto rubbery legs, swaying toward Holly, grabbing her shoulder.
Holly pulled away.
“I’d rather be a monster than go back,” she said, before Fern could speak. “This is my choice. We have to be free. My daughter and I have to be free.”
Fern’s face twisted. She tried to say no, no to this, no to all of this. No to where the book had brought them. They shouldn’t have to make these choices; they were too much, they were too hard.
But if they didn’t, who would?
“Move fast,” Periwinkle said. “Time is short. We’ll have to see if you can carry the flame.”
For the first time, Miss Parcae spoke.
“And if not?” she asked, her words bitter.
“Then at least we saved their lives,” Periwinkle said.
Fern tried to say something to Holly, but opening her mouth made her legs go weak and she swayed and almost fell. Little Robin caught her. Mags stepped past Fern to Holly and took her daughter from her, cradling her in her arms like she must have cradled a child before. And Holly turned to Periwinkle and asked her the question they had all asked for so long.
“Will it hurt?”
Periwinkle looked down at Holly.
“Yes,” she said. “But it will be worth it.”
The young witch put a hand on Holly’s back and they began to walk, Holly limping, headed for the trees, the witches filtering into the shattered forest. The last to pass Fern was Miss Parcae, supported by Dolores. Then Zinnia was there, calling after them.
“Promise she’ll be safe?” she shouted.
The witches kept walking, but Miss Parcae stopped at the edge of the yard.
“Will you?” she asked, nodding toward Wellwood House and the world beyond.
Then she turned and disappeared into the trees.
Fern’s legs gave out and Zinnia caught her before she hit the grass. She eased the two of them down until they leaned against each other. In a nearby pile of rubble, Fern saw one of the ruined portraits of Dr. Wellwood glowering at them. They had lived in this house bearing his name for months. He had watched them come and go and suffer, and his daughter had given them the names of girls who’d lived in his house before them, and girls had left, and girls had arrived, marching through his home in an endless circle. Trapped here forever.
Now, maybe, they were finally free.
A jumble of flashlight beams exploded around the corner of the collapsed Home, followed by men. Their lights scanned piles of garbage and fallen trees, then found Fern and Zinnia collapsed against each other and pinned them to the center of the backyard.
They approached, lights blinding Fern, telling them not to move, telling them help was on the way, asking if they were all right, and Fern knew that the witches had shown her what no one else in her life had ever shown her before. Always, she had been loved, she had been protected, she had been given so many things, but the witches had shown her something different in the backyard of Wellwood House that night. The witches had shown her mercy.
“Where’s the other one?” the cop with the kind voice asked, squatting down. His flashlight shone directly into their eyes. “The one with the baby?”
And if Fern could speak she would have told him they were too late. Holly had slipped through their fingers. She and her baby were gone. They were with the witches now.
They had gotten away.
They stitched her tongue in the hospital downtown. The freak storm was all anyone could talk about, and the damage was bad, but Wellwood House had gotten it the worst: it was completely destroyed. They heard Miss Wellwood had a breakdown, but they all heard a lot of things over the next few days. Fern didn’t know what to believe.
The girls got out okay, except Iris, who went into labor early. All of Fern’s luggage and clothes had been lost in the storm, but when her dad arrived he told her he’d take her to Sears to buy a new outfit.
“It’s a fresh start,” he said, and Fern nodded because the doctors had told her to take a few days before she started talking again.
Saying goodbye to Zinnia was hard, and she held her as long as she could. She had a lot to say, but she couldn’t say a word.
“I’m never going to see you again,” Zinnia said, pulling back.
Fern nodded and put one hand on Zinnia’s stomach. Zinnia put her hand over hers. Fern felt her baby shift a little. This was what was supposed to happen. They came here, had their babies, and then they went home. And they never saw each other again.
Fern went home.
The Florida sky felt cleaner and brighter after the storm. The highway looked freshly washed. They drove for a while, her dad talking on and on about that night, asking if she was scared, asking how she got out, asking how she bit through her tongue, asking if she knew the little girl and her baby who disappeared. But she still couldn’t speak, so after a while he turned on the radio and found a ball game and turned up the volume. They drove up the highway under the bright blue dome of the sky as the radio unspooled the plays.
“…bottom of the second and there is no score. Nolan Ryan will just be trying to get the bat on the ball…”
“I’m glad you’re feeling better now,” her dad said. “I’m glad all this is behind us.”
Static washed over the game and a jolly old man came through the speaker.
“…yesterday’s bombing of the Army Math Research Center at the University of Wisconsin. One death was reported and authorities say…”
Fern’s dad fiddled with the tuner, trying to find the ball game, then he clicked off the radio. After a moment of silence, he started talking again. He told her about Midge going to Girl Scout sleepaway camp that summer and Chip going to Cub Scout nature camp and how grown up the two of them looked in their uniforms. He told her about all the movies she’d missed and how he’d seen Beneath the Planet of the Apes and she was right, they sure had messed up the rockets. He told her how happy her mom was going to be to see her.
She wanted to tell him to stop. She wanted to tell him to let her breathe. She wanted to tell him to please stop filling the space. Then she realized he was nervous. All this chatter, all this talk, it was because he wanted her to reassure him. He wanted her to tell him that everything could go back to the way it was. He wanted her to tell him that nothing had changed.
In that moment, she understood: he was scared. He was scared because she’d had a baby. She looked at him, his eyes on the road, a desperate smile on his face as he talked on about a new rocket they were building and how she’d have to come up to his office and see it, and she realized that, like Miss Wellwood, he wasn’t evil. He wasn’t cruel. He was just frightened. He was frightened of what she could do.
Up ahead of them Neva saw the sign.
Welcome to Alabama, it said. Y’all come.
They went home.