Witch's Pyre

by Josephine Angelini

  Lily overheard the whisper of his thoughts. I did this, he said to himself. His mouth went slack and he stared at her as a memory slipped through his head, unbidden.

  . . . Tristan sits across from me, jealous and angry. Lily is still in my bed, and I know he thinks something happened between us. Something did happen. I let her claim me, and now I’ve given her willstones—the tools to become a true witch. I’m such an idiot. Why don’t I just start hanging people myself and get it over with?

  “Whatever happened to keeping her out of your head?” Tristan asks me.

  “I didn’t have any other choice,” I reply, glad that this conversation isn’t taking place in mindspeak. I did have another choice. I could have run and let her die. Why can’t I just let her go? “Believe me. I’m regretting it,” I say.

  “What even gave you the idea?” Tristan asks.

  He’s not angry anymore. He knows I’m sick. Afflicted. Addicted. Why is she the only woman I’ve ever been able to love? Something’s wrong with me.

  “I thought about how she’d healed her ankle,” I say. “It was a long shot, but I figured she’d already transmuted energy inside herself using my stone, and it was only one step farther to then pour it back into me.”

  “That’s one hell of a step, though.” Tristan looks scared. He should be. I am. His voice drops. “Do you think she could invade a stone? Take it over without permission . . .”

  The memory flash ended and Lily found herself looking at a leaner, longer-haired version of the Rowan in the memory. One thing was the same, though. He was still scared of her.

  “What does that mean—invade a stone?” she asked him. She could feel the rest of the coven’s confusion and curiosity.

  “It means you don’t have to touch a willstone to claim it,” Rowan replied, like there was no point in trying to avoid the inevitable anymore. “You can just take any willstone you want as long as another witch hasn’t already claimed it.” His brow furrowed in thought as something occurred to him. “And maybe you could even steal a willstone from another witch. You’d have to fight her, but I can’t imagine there are many witches who would have a shot at withstanding you.”

  “I can think of one,” Lily murmured, remembering the sensation she’d felt when she’d tried to touch the Queen’s willstone.

  “Grace?” Rowan guessed.

  “She’s been claiming the Woven remotely through the speaking stones for decades,” Lily said. “So she can invade a willstone, too. And she’s strong. If Grace has physically touched a willstone to claim it, I don’t think I can take it over. But if she hasn’t touched it, and she’s only used the speaking stones to claim, I know I can muscle her out.”

  “How do you know that?” Tristan asked.

  “Because I’ve done it.” Lily felt their stares, and she knew she had to tell them all of it no matter how disturbed some of them might become. “I’ve claimed a Woven I call Pale One. She used to belong to Grace, but I touched her willstone and now she’s mine.”

  “The coyote Woven who attacked you outside Baltimore?” Tristan said, knowing the answer. “So that’s why she followed us.”

  Lily nodded, an uncertain look on her face. “The other Tristan told you?”

  “He showed me that time you and he were sitting up against the tree, talking about how to study the Woven. You told him to leave her be. That she wasn’t going to harm us,” Tristan admitted. He looked down at the table and ran his hands over it as if he recognized it. “We showed each other pretty much everything during the crossing.”

  Seeing the shape of his hands and the cast of his features in the familiar light of home, Lily could almost imagine that this Tristan was her Tristan, but stopped herself. If she started allowing herself to think that they were the same, and that her Tristan lived on in him, then his death would mean nothing.

  “So, not only are you possessing us, you’re claiming Woven on top of it?” Caleb asked, the words sticking in his throat. “Are we expected to become stone kin with Pale One? Share our memories and mindspeak? Oh, sorry—what would you call it with a coyote? Mindbarking?” His mouth was pressed thin in disgust.

  Lily looked at Rowan and saw him watching her with a guarded expression. She realized that he was trying to keep his distaste in check.

  “See, this is why I didn’t tell you,” she said, throwing up her hands. “The Woven are intelligent—they have thoughts and feelings like we do. Did you know that Pale One saved us? She’s the one who jumped on Grace, giving Carrick enough time—”

  “All she has to do is jump on someone and that makes her intelligent?” Caleb fired back, rising to his feet. “I suppose we have to accept Carrick now, too, because he struck the match?”

  “No, that’s not . . . I didn’t say that,” Lily stammered, breathless. “The Woven . . . Carrick . . . they’re not the same.”

  “Maybe not to you,” Caleb said with a deep scowl twisting his face. Tristan stood and placed a hand on his shoulder. Caleb shook him off. “Don’t tell me to be calm.” He looked at Rowan. “You know exactly why I’m so angry.”

  Rowan nodded and looked down at his hands as a frustrated silence spread out between them.

  “Lillian? Is everyone ready to go yet?” Samantha asked, interrupting the tension.

  They turned to see Samantha, dressed in street clothes for the first time in ages and carrying a packed suitcase. A hand fluttered up nervously to her bushy hair.

  “It’s just that some of the other versions of us have left already, so I figured this version of us would have to go soon, too,” Samantha said by way of explaining. She shifted from foot to foot like a child.

  “What do you mean, Mom?” Juliet asked patiently.

  “We’ve got to go back to that world, Juliet, because you and I are the only ones who can convince the other Lillian and that Alaric fellow to join forces with each other.” Samantha turned to Lily, squaring her shoulders and looking surprisingly sane. “You’ve got a lot of work to do, Lillian, so we’d better light you on fire and get to it.”

  Stunned, the coven forgot they were fighting with one another and stared at Samantha.

  “Can you, like, see the future?” Breakfast asked.

  “No,” Samantha said, and gave a breathy laugh. “In another universe you didn’t have that argument you just had, which saved a lot of time. A few versions of us are already on to the next thing, which is Lily convincing Juliet and me to come back with you.” She thought about it. “I wouldn’t really call that the future. Just a slightly different time line.”

  The stares only lasted a moment more, and then Rowan cleared his throat. “I think we should all eat and rest first. It’ll be dark soon. We’ll start building the pyre then,” he said.

  Caleb swung out of the room, still angry. Rowan stood to go after him, but Tristan stopped him.

  “I got this one,” Tristan said, and followed his stone kin outside.

  Una and Breakfast started pulling food and drinks out of the refrigerator. Juliet stood up from the table, looking nervous.

  “You really need me to go back with you?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Lily replied, sorry and scared for her sister. “It’s dangerous, but I wouldn’t ask unless I thought you could save thousands of lives.”

  “How can I say no to that?” Juliet asked, sighing. “You will explain this to me at some point, won’t you?”

  “Of course.” Lily and Juliet shared a smile. “And you could still say no.”

  “No I couldn’t. I’ll just assume that in another universe I heard all the reasons why and got properly convinced.” Juliet sighed. “Not like my life here is going great, anyway.” Juliet stood. “I’d better get a few things together.”

  “Pack light,” Rowan said. “We don’t know what kind of situation we’ll be entering when we worldjump. We may have to hit the ground running.”

  Juliet nodded and went to Samantha. “Come on, Mom. Let’s see what you put in there.” She took her mother’s bag
and shook it. It jingled. Juliet raised an eyebrow.

  “Just some toys for the cat,” Samantha said sheepishly.

  “We don’t have a cat,” Lily and Juliet said at the same time.

  “Oh, good!” Samantha said, relieved. “That would have been terrible.”

  Lily’s eyes followed her mother and Juliet as they went upstairs. “You know, in some universe we’ve got a cat,” she said, recalling that her mother had said something similar before. “And something really bad happens.”

  “But to you or to the cat—that’s the question,” Rowan said.

  Lily shrugged and looked at him. They were left relatively alone at the table while Una and Breakfast busied themselves making sandwiches for everyone at the counter.

  “Tell me all of what?” she asked. She hadn’t forgotten what her mother had said to him.

  Rowan buried a regretful smile and shook his head. “I can’t.” He cut Lily off before she could argue and took her hand to remove some of the sting from his words. “Just leave it alone, okay?”

  She watched him tentatively run his thumb around the whorls of her knuckle, up the side of her finger, and back down again. He was waiting for her to stop him, and she knew eventually she would, but for just a moment she let herself pretend she didn’t understand what it meant. She heard his breath deepen and felt the air between them spark with electricity. She noticed the table again, the same table where she and Tristan had sat together so many times, and thought that if Rowan had been there when they fought the Hive, Tristan would be sitting at it right now. She took her hand from his. If he was hurt, he didn’t show it. They were both starting to get used to this stumbling back and forth as they danced around what they felt and tripped over things that couldn’t be undone.

  “Your mother is going to need a willstone to worldjump,” Rowan said.

  “Right,” Lily gasped, remembering. “What do we do?”

  “I grew far more than we needed when we were last here, and I stored them,” he said. He stood and briefly ran the back of his fingers across her cheek. “I’ll take care of it.” He went upstairs after Samantha and Juliet.

  Lily heard the dull thunk of an ax hitting wood and looked out the window. It wasn’t quite dark yet, but Caleb had already started cutting down a tree for Lily’s pyre. Tristan came back inside, shrugging at Lily and following Rowan upstairs.

  “Eat,” Una said, putting a container of hummus and a bag of pita chips in front of her.

  “Yeah, don’t worry about Caleb,” Breakfast added, sliding a jar of pickles across the table to join the hummus. “He just needs to blow off some steam.”

  Lily knew it was more than that. “Do you two have anything you want to say to me?” she asked as she started in on her food.

  They shared a look, and Breakfast decided to go first. “It would have been nice for you to tell us what you were doing, rather than letting us find out this way,” he said, keeping the reproach in his voice to a minimum.

  “We understand that you did it to protect us,” Una began.

  “I didn’t even know I was doing it against the Hive,” Lily interjected. “I swear, it just sort of happened.”

  “And we appreciate that,” Una continued, “but you still should have said something once you did know.”

  Lily stirred her hummus with a chip, watching the swirl pattern rather than meet their eyes. She thought of what it meant to make a mind mosaic, and how Rowan had said that witches did it all the time. “You guys are making a big deal out of nothing. It’s not like I’m using you for fun, or rifling through your minds, looking for secrets,” she said. “There are so many thing witches do to their claimed that are way worse than what I did to protect you.”

  “Yeah, but we’d never stay the claimed of that kind of witch,” Breakfast said, giving her the subtlest of warnings.

  “Are you saying you don’t want me to do it again?” Lily said. She watched them share another look, and this one was more troubled.

  “You’re asking us to choose between our freedom and our safety, but there’s a middle ground here,” Una said. “Ask our consent first.”

  “I was busy saving your lives. I didn’t have time to stop and ask if that was okay with you,” Lily snapped acidly.

  “Lily, there are a lot of things that you can justify when you say you’re doing it to save lives,” Breakfast replied in an uncharacteristically harsh tone. “It starts with the little stuff. Going through emails— the people don’t even notice, right? Like we didn’t notice when you possessed us. But that’s the start of a long and slippery slope. Are you sure you want to go down it?”

  Given a moral equivalent from her world, Lily couldn’t maintain the illusion that she was right anymore. She shook her head and dropped her chip. “Do you think Caleb will forgive me?”

  “I don’t know,” Una answered. “You haven’t lost him yet, but you might if you don’t knock it off. Got it?”

  “I got it,” Lily said.

  “Good.” Una relaxed and smiled at Lily. “And thanks for saving our lives.”

  Lily smiled back, a lump forming in her throat. “I can’t lose anyone else,” she said. “I can’t. That’s why I did it.” Her voice was high and thin. “I’m sorry.”

  “Let us deal with Caleb,” Breakfast said.

  Lily agreed and finally tucked into her food. After eating she went upstairs for a long shower and a change of clothes. Her bedroom smelled like other people. The police had searched her things and most of her stuff was in boxes. Lily stood in her towel and looked around like a guest, wondering if she could sit down on the bedspread. She wasn’t angry or upset that some faceless stranger had read through her eighth grade homework, or touched her collection of snipped hospital wristbands from her sickly childhood. She was too numb to be insulted and she’d been through too much to mourn any one particular loss properly. And she knew there was more loss to come.

  Despite what she’d said to Una and Breakfast about not being able to lose anyone else, she knew that if she faced the Hive, the chances of them all surviving were slim. And yet she was still going back and taking them with her.

  Lily opened her dresser and pulled out a stack of her T-shirts that implored anyone who crossed her path to save the children, save the whales, save the world. She used to think she was a crusader—the good guy in the white hat. She had no idea what that meant anymore. Lily put the T-shirts back and closed the drawer.

  She heard someone tap lightly on her door.

  “Yes?”

  “Lily, do you have a second to talk?” Tristan pushed the door open and saw that she was only wearing a towel. He dropped his eyes. “Sorry, I’ll come back.”

  “Seriously?” she said, brows raised. “You see me stark naked practically every other day for some kind of ritual. What is it?”

  He wavered in the doorway, half in and half out of her room. “It’s Rowan. There’s something—” He broke of f and turned.

  “Samantha’s getting anxious,” Rowan said, appearing at Tristan’s side. “She says you should claim her quickly so we can leave right away.”

  “Did she say why?” Lily asked. Rowan shook his head. He waited for Tristan to leave first, and then closed the door so Lily could get dressed.

  She came downstairs in a gauzy dress that lay open at the throat to display all three of her willstones. Her mother was dithering about, wringing her hands, and unable to focus her eyes on anything for more than a moment.

  “We should really go, Lillian,” she said.

  “Why? What’s going on?” Lily asked, trying not to sound too frustrated. Usually when her mother acted like this Lily couldn’t get a decipherable answer out of her, but this time was different.

  “She’s coming,” Samantha said. “Or is she here?”

  “Who? Who’s here?”

  “Simms.”

  Rowan ran to the window and looked out. “Everyone outside,” he rasped. “Quick, get Lily on the pyre!”

  Lily felt
Tristan’s hand on the small of her back, urging her forward. “Come on, Mom!” Lily yelled, worried that she would get left behind. She saw that Juliet grabbed Samantha’s hand and pulled, when something occurred to her. She hadn’t claimed her mother yet.

  They scrambled outside to see cars had already surrounded the house silently in the dark. Floodlights burst on, blinding them, but Lily could still hear feet pounding against the ground and the huffs and gasps of men running. Caleb made it to the pyre first and threw a lighter on it. Flames exploded up and out of the wood and the dizzy smell of gasoline hit Lily in a wave with the heat.

  “Rowan!” yelled a voice that made Lily’s skin crawl. She didn’t mean to stop running, she just froze when she heard Carrick.

  He said something to Rowan and Rowan growled something back. It was so strange to hear Rowan speaking in his native tongue that it took a moment for it to register in Lily’s mind. Carrick spoke again, and Rowan attacked him.

  Rowan wasn’t being fueled by Lily yet, but his hands flew to the silver knives on his belt so fast it was difficult to see them. He dropped down on a knee, wove past Carrick’s block, and slashed back to hamstring his half brother. Carrick did something like a handspring, narrowly avoided losing his leg, and bounded forward again with a knife in one hand and an ax in the other.

  Carrick spoke again and swung at Rowan with a weaving, flowing motion, and then they started to exchange blows in earnest. They stabbed and blocked, darting in and out, trying to get inside the other’s guard.

  Lily felt herself being lifted up and saw Tristan’s hands circling her waist. “Get us out of here, Lily!” he screamed.

  The lawn was filling with officers. Three helicopters appeared in the sky around the house, one spotlight on the pyre and another on the knife fight. Tristan threw Lily on the pyre and ran to help Rowan.

  Lily tumbled inside the fire as the glowing logs slipped under her hands. She finally righted herself as the heat started to eat into her skin. She pulled herself onto her knees and threw her arms out wide while screams tore from her throat. She saw Simms’s shocked, chalky face as she ran to the pyre. She saw her mother looking at her and she had no idea how to get to her. She was burning, but she wouldn’t transmute the energy and worldjump her coven without her mother. She couldn’t leave Samantha behind.