The Near Witch

by Victoria Schwab

  I am a good head taller than she is, but I imagine she is a good head shorter than she once was, so it seems unfair to compare our heights. She moves more like a windblown leaf than an old woman, bouncing along the ground and changing course as we make our way up the hill to the house she shares with her sister.

  Growing up in Near, I’ve heard a dozen stories about witches. My father hated those tales, told me they were made up by the Council to frighten people. “Fear is a strange thing,” he used to say. “It has the power to make people close their eyes, turn away. Nothing good grows out of fear.”

  The cottage sits waiting for us, as warped as the two women it was built to hold, the spine of the structure cocked halfway up, the roofing on another angle entirely. None of the stacked stones look comfortable or well-seated, like the ones in the town center. This house is as old as Near itself, sagging over the centuries. It sits on the eastern edge of the village, bordered on one side by a low stone wall, and on the other by a dilapidated shed. Between the stone wall and the house are two rectangular patches. One is a small bordered stretch of dirt that Magda calls her garden, and the other is nothing more than a swatch of bare ground where nothing seems to grow. It might be the only place in Near not overrun by weeds. I don’t like the second patch. It seems unnatural. Beyond the cottage, the moor takes hold, much the way it does to the north of my home, all rolling hills and stones and scattered trees.

  “Coming?” asks Magda, from the doorway.

  Overhead, the clouds have gathered and grown dark.

  My foot hovers on the threshold. But why? I have no reason to fear the Thorne sisters or their home.

  I take a deep breath and step across.

  It still smells like earth, rich and heavy and safe. That hasn’t changed. But the room seems darker now than it did when I was here with my father. It might be the gathering clouds and the coming fall, or the fact that he isn’t towering beside me, lighting the room with his smile. I fight back a chill as Magda sets her basket down on a long wooden table and lets out a heavy sigh.

  “Sit, dearie, sit,” she says with a wave to one of the chairs.

  I slide into it.

  Magda hobbles up to the hearth, where the wood is stacked and waiting. She casts a short glance back over her shoulder at me. And then she brings her fingers up, very slowly, inching through the air. I lean forward, waiting to see if she’ll actually let me see her craft, if she’ll coax twigs together, or somehow bubble flint up from the dirt hearth floor. The sisters don’t make a point of giving demonstrations, so all I have are a few stolen glances when the ground rippled or stones shifted, the strange gravity I feel when I’m close, and the villagers’ fear.

  Magda’s hand rises over the hearth and up to the mantel, where her fingers close around a long thin stick. Just a match. My heart sinks and I sag back into my seat as Magda strikes the match against the stone of the hearth and lights the fire. She turns back to me.

  “What’s wrong, dearie?” Something shimmers in her eyes. “You look disappointed.”

  “Nothing,” I say, sitting up straighter and intertwining my hands beneath the table. The fire crackles to life under the kettle, and Magda returns to the table and the basket atop it. From it she unpacks several clods of dirt, a few moor flowers, weeds, some seeds, a stone or two she’s found. Magda collects her pieces of the world daily. I imagine it’s all for charms. Small craft. Now and then a piece of the sisters’ work will find its way into a villager’s pocket, or around their neck, even if they claim to not believe in it. I swear I’ve seen a charm stitched into the skirt of Helena’s dress, most likely meant to attract Tyler Ward’s attention. She can have him.

  Aside from the odd collection on the table, the Thorne sisters’ house is remarkably normal. If I tell Wren I was here, inside a witch’s home, she’ll want to know how odd it was. It’ll be a shame to disappoint her.

  “Magda,” I say, “I came here because I wanted to ask you—”

  “Tea’s not boiled yet, and I’m too old to talk and stand at the same time. Give me a moment.”

  I bite my lip and wait as patiently as possible as Magda hobbles around, gathering cups. The breeze begins to scratch and hiss against the windowpanes. The congregation of clouds is thickening. The kettle boils.

  “Don’t mind that, dearie, just the moor chatting away,” Magda says, noticing the way my eyes wander to the window. She pours the water through an old wire mesh that does little to catch the leaves, and into heavy cups. Finally, she takes a seat.

  “Does the moor really speak?” I ask, watching the tea in the cup grow dark.

  “Not in the way we do, you and I. Not with words. But it has its secrets, yes.” Secrets. That’s how my father used to put it, too.

  “What does it sound like? What does it feel like?” I ask, half to myself. “I imagine it must feel like more, rather than less. I wish I could—”

  “Lexi Harris, you could eat dirt every day and wear only weeds, and you’d be no closer to any of it than you already are.”

  The voice belongs to Dreska Thorne. One moment the gathering storm was locked outside, and the next the door had blown open from the force of it and left her on the threshold.

  Dreska is just as old as her sister, maybe even older. The fact that the Thorne sisters are still standing, or hobbling, is a sure sign of their craft. They’ve been around as long as the Council, and not just Tomas and Matthew and Eli, but their ancestors, the real Council. As long as the Near Witch. As long as Near itself. Hundreds of years. I imagine I see small pieces crumbling off them, but when I look again, they are still all there.

  Dreska is muttering to herself as she leans into the door, and finally succeeds in forcing it shut before turning to us. When her eyes land on me, I wince. Magda is round and Dreska is sharp, one a ball and the other a ball of points. Even Dreska’s cane is sharp. She looks as if she’s cut from rocks, and when she’s angry or annoyed, her corners actually seem to sharpen. Where one of Magda’s eyes is dark as rotted wood or stone, both of Dreska’s are a fierce green, the color of moss on stones. And they’re now leveled at me. I swallow hard.

  I sat here in this chair once as my father curled his fingers gently on my shoulder and spoke to the sisters, and Dreska looked at him with something like kindness, like softness. I remember it so clearly because I’ve never seen her look that way at anyone ever again.

  Beyond the house, the rain starts, thick drops tapping on the stones.

  “Dreska’s right, dearie.” Magda cuts through the silence as she spoons three lumps of a brownish sugar into her tea. She doesn’t stir, lets it sink to the bottom and form a grainy film. “Born is born. You were born the way you are.”

  Magda’s cracked hands find their way to my chin.

  “Just because you can’t coax water to run backward, or make trees uproot themselves—”

  “A skill most don’t look on fondly,” Dreska interjects.

  “—doesn’t mean you aren’t a part of this place,” finishes Magda. “All moor-born souls have the moor in them.” She gazes into the teacup, her good eye unfocusing over the darkening water. “It’s what makes the wind stir something in us when it blows. It’s what keeps us here, always close to home.”

  “Speaking of home, why are you in ours?” asks Dreska sternly.

  “She was on her way to see us,” says Magda, still staring into her tea. “I invited her in.”

  “Why,” asks Dreska, drawing out the word, “would you do that?”

  “It seemed a wise idea,” says Magda, giving her sister a heavy look.

  Neither speaks.

  I clear my throat.

  Both sisters look to me.

  “Well you’re here now,” says Dreska. “What brought you this way?”

  “I want to ask you,” I say at last, “about the stranger.”

  Dreska’s keen green eyes narrow, sharp in their nest of wrinkles. The house stones seem to grumble and grate against each other. The rain beats against the
windows as the sisters hold a conversation built entirely of nods, glances, and weighted breath. Some people say that siblings have their own language, and I think it’s true of Magda and Dreska. I only know English, and they know English and Sister and Moor, and goodness knows what else. A moment later, Magda sighs and pushes to her feet.

  “What of it?” asks Dreska, tapping her cane on the wooden floor. Outside, the rain comes down in waves, each one thinner than the last. It will be over soon. “We don’t know anything about him.”

  The rain turns to a drizzle.

  “You have not offered him shelter?” I ask.

  The sisters stand there, stiff and mute.

  “I don’t mean any harm,” I say quickly. “I just want to see him, to speak to him. I’ve never met a stranger. I just want to see that he’s real and ask him…” How can I explain? “Just tell me if you have him, please.”

  Nothing.

  I force myself straighter in my chair, keeping my head up.

  “I saw him last night. Outside my window. Bo Pike claims to have spotted him first, on the western edge, and we’re due north. The stranger seemed to know the line that marks the edge of the village. He would have rounded it, to the east.” I tap the table with my index finger. “Here.”

  The sisters would have given him shelter. It had to have been them. But still they say nothing. Their eyes say nothing. Their faces say nothing. It’s as if I’m speaking to statues.

  “You were the only ones absent this morning,” I say.

  Magda blinks. “We keep to ourselves.”

  “But you’re the only ones who could have hidden—”

  Dreska sparks to life.

  “You best be getting home, Lexi,” she snaps, “while there’s a break in the weather.”

  I look to the window. The storm has stopped, leaving the sky gray and drained. The air in the room feels heavy, as if the space is shrinking. The sisters’ looks are guarded, harder than before. Even Magda’s lips are drawn into a narrow line. I push myself to my feet. I haven’t touched my cup.

  “Thank you for the tea, Magda,” I say, heading for the door. “Sorry to bother you both.”

  The door closes firmly behind me.

  Outside, the world is mud and puddles, and I wish I’d been able to trade these silly slippers for my leather boots. I make it two steps before my feet are soaked. Overhead the sky is already beginning to break apart, the clouds retreating.

  I look to the west, to the village.

  When I was Wren’s age, I asked my father why the sisters lived all the way out here. He said that, for the people in Near, something was either all good or all bad. He told me witches were like people, that they came in all shapes and sizes, and they could be good or bad or foolish or clever. But after the Near Witch, the people in the village got it into their heads that all witches were bad.

  The sisters stay out here because the villagers are afraid. But the important part is that they stay. When I asked my father why, he smiled, one of those soft, private smiles, and said, “This is their home, Lexi. They won’t turn their backs on it, even though it turned its back on them.”

  I cast a last glance back at the sisters’ hill, and leave. They’re protecting the stranger. I know it.

  I head back for the worn path, passing the shed that sits just to the north of the cottage.

  If the sisters are hiding him, there must be a reason—

  I catch my breath.

  There is a dark gray cloak hanging from a nail on the shed, its hems darker than the rest, as if the fabric has been singed. The moor is unnaturally quiet in the post-rain afternoon, and I am suddenly very aware of my steps, of the sound they make on the wet earth as I approach the shed. The structure seems to be losing a very slow war with gravity. It is a cluster of wooden beams stuck into the soil, supporting a messy roof. Between the slats, the moor grows up, weeds taking hold, doing as much to keep the shed up as to tear it down. There is a door beside the cloak, but no handle. The strips of warping wood have gaps between them, and I lean in and press my eye to one of the narrow openings. The dim interior is empty.

  I step back, sigh, and bite my lip. And then, from the other side of the shed, I hear it—a soft exhale. I smile and slide silently toward the sound, bending my knees and begging the earth to absorb my steps without giving me away. I round the corner. And there is no one. Not even footprints in the grass.

  Letting out an exasperated breath, I stomp back around the shed. I know the sounds that people make just living, and I know that someone was here. I heard him breathing, and I saw the—

  But the nail is bare, and the cloak is gone.

  I QUICKEN MY PACE AS I HEAD HOME, frustrated and chilled from sloshing through the wet grass. My slippers are ruined. The path splits, one narrow line leading into town, the other arching up around Near to my house. I veer toward home, slipping off the soaked shoes and walking barefoot up the path, succumbing to the mud. It coats my feet, my ankles, climbing up my calves, and I think of Dreska’s sharp tongue, telling me I could eat dirt and grow no closer to the moor. I don’t suppose covering myself in mud will do much good, either.

  Eventually Otto’s house comes into sight, and just beyond it, ours. The moor takes over beyond our yard, fluttering out like a cape. A wood stack sits to one side of our house, a small vegetable garden to the other, clumps of green interwoven with orange and red. The garden belongs to Wren more than me. Few things flourish in moor soil, but Wren loves our little plot, and shows an odd streak of gentleness whenever she tends it. Sure enough, that’s where she is now, perched on a stone just outside the marked-off patch, gingerly plucking a weed from the dirt.

  “You’re back,” she calls as I draw near.

  “Of course. Where is everyone?” My exit from the town square wasn’t my most subtle departure, and my uncle will have words for me, I’m sure.

  “Wren.” My mother’s voice wanders like smoke from the house, and a moment later she’s standing in the doorway, her fine dark hair curling in wisps around her face. Wren hops down from the stone and skips over to her. My mother’s eyes find mine.

  “Lexi,” she says, “where did you run off to?” Her down-turned mouth confirms it. Otto will indeed want words with me.

  “Helena had forgotten something for me at her house,” I say, the lie building in my mouth only a moment after I think it. “She was so swamped by her audience, she asked me to go get it myself.” I feel around in my dress pockets for proof, but they’re empty, so I pray my mother doesn’t ask for evidence. She doesn’t, only blows out a small breath and floats back inside the house.

  I miss my mother. I miss the woman she was before my father died, the one who stood straight and proud and looked out at the world with fierce blue eyes. But there are rare moments when it helps that she’s become a shell, a ghost of her former self. Ghosts ask fewer questions.

  I turn away from the house. I’m losing my lead. Soon Otto will figure out where the stranger is, if he doesn’t know already. If I’m going to find him, I clearly need to catch him off guard. But how? I smooth my hair back and peer up at the sky. The sun is still high and the wood stack by the house is low, and I feel the need to move. I set aside my ruined slippers, take the boots from the side of the house, and trudge off in search of kindling.

  The ax comes down on the wood with a crack. My dress is dirty and my boots are caked with mud from stomping through the fields after the rain. They were my father’s—dark brown leather with old buckles, soft and strong and warm, the insides worn to fit his feet. I have to stuff the toes with socks so they won’t fall off, but it’s worth it. I feel better wearing them. And they look better this way, freshly stained. I cannot imagine them clean and in the cupboard.

  Sitting still is not a skill I have. I never could stop moving, but it’s gotten even worse these last three years.

  A bead of sweat runs down my face, instantly cooling in the late afternoon air. I put another piece of wood on an old tree stump that sits b
etween Otto’s house and ours, lift the ax, and bring it down again.

  This feels right.

  My father taught me to chop firewood. I asked him once if he wished he had a son, and he said, “Why? I’ve got a daughter just as strong.” And you wouldn’t guess it by my narrow frame, but I am.

  The ax comes down.

  “Lexi!” bellows a deep voice behind me. I set the ax on the stump and begin picking up the split wood.

  “Yes, Uncle Otto?”

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Chopping wood,” I say, my voice on the narrow line between matter-of-fact and rude.

  “You know to leave it. Tyler can come around and do it for you.”

  “The stack was low, and my mother needs it to bake. I’m only doing what you wanted, Uncle. Helping.” I turn and head for the wood stack. Otto follows.

  “There are other ways for you to help.”

  Otto is still wearing his Protector face; his voice stern, edged with power. It may be his face and his voice, but it’s not his title. It was my father’s first.

  “And where are your shoes?” he asks, looking down at the mud-caked boots.

  I drop the wood into the middle of the stack, and turn. “You wouldn’t want me to ruin them, would you?”

  “What I want is for you to listen to me when I tell you to do something. And more importantly, when I tell you not to do something.”

  He crosses his arms, and I resist the urge to mimic him.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Lexi, I told you I didn’t want you to go off today. Don’t try to tell me you didn’t.”

  I test out the lie a moment on my tongue, but it won’t get past Otto as easily as it did my mother.

  “You’re right, Uncle,” I say with a patient smile. One of his eyebrows peaks, as if he suspects a trap, but I go on. “I did go in search of the stranger, and look what I came back with.” I hold my hands wide. “Nothing.”