The Near Witch

by Victoria Schwab

“I’m trying,” he says.

  He leans back against the far side of the hall. His dark hair is flecked with gray, and it curls down into his eyes. His face is like my father’s, but rougher. When he turns his head certain ways, the resemblance is so striking my stomach hurts, but there’s a tension in his eyes, like a trapped animal, that my father’s never had.

  “Why are you looking for Co—for the stranger?” I ask. My uncle blinks, as if he was lost and is just now coming back to himself.

  He holds my eyes but says nothing, then pushes off the wall and heads into the kitchen. I follow. Wren is playing in a corner of the room, making a maze of smooth flat stones on the floor. I am sure she’d rather be outside. My mother slides to my uncle’s side, setting a mug within reach. He takes a couple of long sips and shakes his head.

  “It has to be him,” he says at last. “He shows up here, and then all this.” He moves to drain his cup again, finds it empty, and drops it to the table. My mother refills it with something strong and dark. “We have witnesses. He’s been seen in the village after dark. Eric Porter says he saw him last night, around the time Cecilia vanished.”

  “Uncle, fear can make people see strange things,” I say, trying to sound reasonable.

  “Lexi, I have to do something.”

  “But—”

  “I’m telling you, I intend to see him gone.”

  “It’s not Cole,” I say before I can stop myself.

  “Cole.” My uncle takes a deep drink, swishing it in his mouth along with the word. “Is that his name? And how would you know that?”

  Because I named him.

  “Dreska called him that,” I say with a tight shrug. “When I went there, to speak with them. And to look for him,” I admit. A little truth makes a lie stronger. “She said she hadn’t seen Cole that day, that he was out on the moor somewhere.”

  “And why are you so convinced it’s not him?” Otto’s voice, his body, all of it is tense, set.

  Because I’ve been sneaking out at night to search, and he’s been helping me.

  “Because being a stranger is not a crime.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter,” he mutters, knocking his mug on the old wooden table again for emphasis. “Come morning we will have our answers.”

  A prickle runs along my spine.

  “What do you mean?” I ask slowly.

  Otto looks at me long and hard before answering. “If the sisters won’t give the boy up freely, then we’ll take him.” And with that he storms from the kitchen. I follow him into the hall, but he’s already out the door, being swallowed up by the dark. A knot is growing in my chest, tangling everything up. I fight the urge to run after him, or better yet to run east until I hit the grove and the hill and the sisters’ house and Cole.

  “Come morning,” my uncle said. I try to slow my breath. Questions buzz around my head, making me dizzy, and I stand in the darkness trying to assure myself that I will find a way to set things right. Fingers settle on my arm, and I feel my mother’s touch, firm and welcome, urging me back inside.

  My mother floats into the kitchen to clean up after Wren. I turn toward the bedroom, wanting to free the slip of paper from the windowpane. The breeze flicks the note against the dark glass. In a breath I’m there, sliding the window up, begging it not to groan too loudly, and snatching the note before it blows off into the night. The small scrap has only two words, in thin wandering script.

  Meet me.

  I run my fingers over the hastily written letters. The words make my heart tug strangely in my chest, that same odd gravity that pulls me toward the fresh air. The feeling tells me, as much as the words, that the note is from Cole. When could he have left it? The weight presses the breath out of me, a mixture of excitement and concern. I tuck the slip of paper in my dress.

  I realize I’m still wearing my father’s boots, and I lean against the bed to pull them off, when I hear soft footsteps.

  “Lexi, it’s too cold,” comes the voice behind me. I glance back with a smile.

  “You’re right, Wren,” I say, pushing the wooden lip of the window down. “Let’s keep this one closed tight, all right?”

  She gives a twitch of a nod and holds out her hand. I take it and let her lead me into the kitchen.

  Night cannot fall fast enough.

  Cole’s note burns in my pocket as I pace the house until my mother’s room goes dark. And then I go to Wren, tucked in bed but still awake. I pull the frayed quilt up around her, ruffle her hair playfully. The old house lets out little clicks and thuds as the heat from the day seeps out.

  “I hope they don’t come back,” she says through a yawn. “I’m tired. I don’t want to play.” She settles in, but her eyes keep flicking to the window. I stroke her hair.

  “It will be all right.”

  “Do you promise?” she asks. She holds out her hands, the sisters’ charm still dangling from her wrist, the smell of moss and earth and wildflowers wafting from it. I take her hands in mine and bring them to my lips. I hesitate, trying to choose the right words.

  “I promise I will make it right,” I whisper into the space between her palms. Wren keeps her hands cupped around the words as she falls back against her pillow.

  “And Wren,” I add, sitting on the bed beside her, “no matter what happens, do not get out of bed tonight. And if you hear your friends again, ignore them. They can’t mean well in the middle of the night.”

  Wren twists deeper beneath the covers.

  “I mean it,” I say, as she all but vanishes under the blankets.

  I watch the candlelight dance, and wait.

  When I’m sure she’s asleep, I push myself to my feet and the room tips gently, or maybe I tip, swaying from lack of sleep. The walls and the floor eventually settle, and I tighten my father’s knife around my leg. I kiss the top of Wren’s head and coax the window open, dropping to the ground beyond. Then I pull the window closed and fasten the shutters before turning my eyes to the waiting night.

  THE MOON IS BRIGHT and the night is still, and the wind is humming in a far-off way.

  Gravity pulls me back to him, pulls my feet over a path they know, have always known, with a new urgency. I make my way through the moonlit world, between blue-gray shadows on a blue-gray ground, watching the blue-white circle in the blue-black sky. I remind myself every few steps why I am awake, and Otto’s threat helps to keep my eyes wide and my hearing sharp.

  Someone is close.

  There are footsteps in the dark that I cannot hear. I know they’re there, the way one knows when someone else is in a room even if they make no sound. The air around me prickles as I reach the grove. The cluster of trees is so dark it looks like one large shadow. And then a piece of it peels away.

  “Cole,” I say as he steps forward into a patch of moonlight. The frightened, drawn features of this afternoon are gone. His hands hang at his sides instead of wrapping around his ribs. The exhaustion in his face seems mildly diffused. His eyes are weary but calm.

  “Lexi,” he says. “You got my note?”

  I touch my pocket. “I did. But I would have come anyway. To warn you. My uncle—”

  “Wait,” he says, his voice louder than I think I’ve ever heard it. It cuts right through the wind instead of bleeding into it. “About earlier. I asked you to meet me so I could explain. I need to.”

  “You don’t have to explain to me, Cole, if you don’t want to.”

  “No, I don’t want to. But I need to.” His cloak flutters. “I just don’t know where to start.”

  “The fire? You said that your village burned down. That…you burned it down?”

  He shakes his head. “It’s not that simple.”

  “Then tell me what happened.” The grove behind him looks like a towering shadow. That, or a beast about to swallow him whole. “Cole?”

  He hesitates.

  “Go ahead. I’m listening,” I say.

  He casts one last glance up at the night. His eyes slip down again, and
by the time they reach mine, there’s a kind of abandon in them.

  “I’ll show you,” he says at last.

  Cole steps forward, his fingers reaching around my shoulders, and kisses me.

  It is sudden and smooth and soft as air against my lips. The wind whips around us, tugging at the fabric of our clothes, but not pulling us apart.

  And then it’s gone, the cool pressure against my lips, and my eyes are open and looking into two gray eyes like river rocks.

  “That’s what you wanted to show me?”

  “No,” he says, his fingers slipping down my arms as he leads me off the path and out, away from Near. “That was just in case.”

  Just in case what? I wonder, as the last signs of Near are hidden by the hills.

  “How far are we going?” I ask.

  There’s an urgency in Cole’s stride; I can almost hear his footsteps on the ground. Almost. And then he starts talking. Until now every utterance from him has had to be pried, coaxed. But now the words spill out.

  “My mother had eyes like rain-soaked stone, not so dark as mine, but close. And long dark hair that she always wore up, but couldn’t contain. It’s one of the first things I remember about her, how pale her face was, framed by the darkness of her hair. But she was perfect. And strong. You would have loved her, Lexi. I know it.”

  “And your father?”

  “Gone.” The word is so sharp and short. “I never met him,” he adds. “And I know nothing of him. Not his name, or what he looked like. I only know one thing. One very important thing.”

  We reach the top of the slope, and a stretch of flat field waits before giving way to the next valley. The countryside beyond this hill seems so vast. It’s impossible to tell the scope of the world beyond Near, actually, because you can almost never see past more than a hill or two at a time. The world could possibly end, come to a sudden stop, just beyond the next rise. Cole pauses to look out at it, and I can’t help but wonder why we’ve come all the way out here.

  “And what is that?” I ask.

  And then he holds out his hand. Not to me but to the night.

  The air around us seems to shiver, and the wind brushes cool against my skin. I take in a sharp breath as the wind coils around his outstretched hand. It spins faster until it looks like his fingers are bleeding into it. Then they grow thinner until I can see right through them, until there is no difference between the swirling wind and his skin.

  “You’re a witch,” I whisper. I should feel shock, but I must have known in my bones since the moment I saw him, because all I feel is a sweeping sense of calm.

  He turns his hand over like he’s cradling something. And then his fingers curl in against his palm, and the wind breaks apart, vanishes.

  “And so was he.” Cole’s eyes harden.

  “When I was young,” he goes on, “I thought it was wonderful. Other children had imaginary friends, but I had something much better. Something vast, powerful—but intimate, too. I was never alone.

  “When I felt angry, the wind bristled, blew harder. There were these invisible threads binding me to it. The wind took hold of whatever I felt, and ran away with it. My mother was afraid. Not of me, I don’t think, but for me. She told me people didn’t understand witches, and so they feared them, and she didn’t want them to be afraid of me. She was such a strong woman, but I think those worries ate at her.”

  My chest tightens. She sounds like my father, the mixture of pride and worry in his eyes even as he taught me to hunt, to track, to chop wood.

  “But her husband was another matter.”

  “Her husband? I thought you said—”

  “She remarried, before I was even born. But I never saw him as a father. And he, I’m certain, never saw me as a son.”

  Around us the wind is blustering. “I tried so hard for her, my mother. To stay calm. I thought that if I could be empty, if I could never feel anything too strongly, then it would be all right. And for a short time it was. People even seemed to forget what I was.”

  Cole does not seem to notice, but the wind around us is growing angry and thick. It tears at the ground, ripping leaves and grass into small circles. His tone is changing, too.

  “But not everyone forgot. My mother’s husband. He never did.” Cole looks up, but his eyes are unfocused, and I wonder where he is, what he sees. He’s even paler than usual, and a muscle on the side of his face twitches as he clenches his jaw.

  “The wind on the moors is a tricky thing. Isn’t that how you put it, Lexi?” He lets out a short, joyless laugh. There’s a rock nearby and he crosses to it, sliding down onto it as if his legs won’t hold. It’s such a sad, effortless grace he has. “Well, you were right. The wind is a tricky thing. As is the rain and the sun and the moor itself. These things, they don’t always act kindly, or reasonably. The wind can creep into a person’s lungs, make itself heard when they breathe out. The rain can leave a chill in a person’s bones.”

  I can see him shaking, but resist the urge to reach out and touch him. I’m afraid he’ll stop talking. I’m afraid he’ll blink and be that silent stranger again, holding his ribs to keep it all in. He’ll melt away, right into the dark.

  “She got sick so fast. As fast as the wind sweeps through, and she was gone before she was gone, if that makes sense. All the color left her. She had this fever and she should have been hot, should have been red, but she was gray. Cold.” He swallows. “She was dying, her life bleeding out in front of us, and there was nothing we could do. Her husband turned to me. Really looked at me, maybe for the first time.”

  Cole’s hands are balled into fists resting on his knees. He does not see them, does not see anything. I move toward him, but the wind urges me back.

  “‘You speak to the moor,’ her husband said to me. ‘Tell it to save her.’ He was desperate. ‘If you love her, make it save her.’That’s what he said.”

  Cole’s stony eyes are glittering, tears cast in blue-white light, gathering in the corners.

  “But it doesn’t work like that. I cannot control storms, and even if I could, the rain could not take itself back from her lungs, from her bones.”

  The small circles of wind are growing, and my hands tighten on the lip of a rock for balance. Cole seems to exist in his own space now, where the wind does not even ruffle his hair or tug at his cloak.

  “She died.” He pauses a moment, swallows. “That was the night the village caught fire.”

  My breath catches in my throat. I don’t know what to say. The wind curves around him like a shell. Yet somehow his voice comes through.

  “There was so much wind. I thought it couldn’t all be from me. It was too loud, too strong. Some of the torches got knocked over. I tried to calm down, but the storm just kept growing. A dry storm, just clouds and wind, and the fire kept growing, swallowing everything. I wanted it to swallow me too, but it didn’t. The town burned up like a piece of paper, curling in on itself until there was nothing left. But me. I didn’t mean to do it, Lexi,” he says, finally meeting my eyes. The guilt brims with the tears on his dark lashes.

  I reach for him, but he pulls back.

  “I couldn’t control it.”

  The wind between us surges up again, but I force my way through it, until I am beside him. I kneel in front of him, put my hands over his. When Cole looks up at me, his face is wet. The pain in his eyes is so familiar it knocks the air from my lungs.

  “Then it was over, and all that was left was ashes.”

  I can’t stop seeing him, singed and gray, alone where a village once stood.

  “I felt so…empty,” he says, shaking his head. “Gutted. Hollow. And it hurt. Worse than anything.”

  “Calm down, it’s all right,” I say, my voice vanishing in the wind.

  He blinks, looking around at whirlwinds tearing up earth and stones. He shakes his head and tries to pull away. “Get back.”

  My fingers tighten over his, and the wind picks up.

  “No.”

 
Small twisters, spirals of leaves and grass and pebbles, draw near to us, pulled to Cole by his strange gravity, the same way I’m drawn to him. They lace together, growing.

  “Get back, please,” he says again, panic in his voice as he pushes himself unsteadily to his feet. I stand with him, refusing to let go. But then the wind wrenches me backward, tangling in my cloak. I tumble away from him as the air coils around me, dragging the loose weeds and dirt up with it. And it keeps growing. The wind howls louder as it spins into a single perfect cyclone, carving a circle in the moor around me.

  “Cole!” I shout, but the word is instantly lost in the whirlwind, swallowed as soon as it leaves my lips. I manage to stand. The world beyond the cyclone begins to blur. The moor and the stones and Cole all run together, and then vanish entirely behind the wall of air. The tunnel reaches up and up toward the sky. But here in the center it’s so calm, so still, aside from the white noise. The wind tugs gently at my sleeves, the edges of my cloak, the loose tendrils of hair, but it’s almost gentle. I picture Cole within his own tunnel that night, his village burning down while the wind kept him safe. Alone. I feel alone here. I hold out my hand, let my fingers brush against the cyclone wall.

  And then another set of fingers slices through the wind, touches mine, intertwines with mine. Cole steps through the wall of air and into the circle. The whirlwind parts for him, ruffling his dark hair before closing behind him seamlessly. He pulls me to him, wrapping his arms around me.

  “I’m here,” I whisper. And his lips move too, but there is no voice but the wind now, as Cole pulls me closer and tips his forehead against mine. There is nothing here but us. Beyond the whirlwind, the world tears itself apart, whistles and blows and pushes and pulls. But just for a moment, impossibly, we two go still.

  The whirlwind loses focus, begins to wobble. He pulls me tighter to him as it breaks apart and rushes past us, for one fleeting second strong and violent. And then the whirlwind is gone, and all that’s left is a soft wandering breeze as the hills come back into sight and the grass settles. Cole searches my face. He looks as though he is expecting fear, disgust, something strained, but I have never felt so alive. He lets go of me, steps back, shaking.