The Codex of the Witch: Fantasy Novel

by Federico Negri

  “I’m going to call out to her,” Kasia says. “I don’t think going up there to ask questions is the best way to try and be inconspicuous.”

  She heads toward the center of the square and positions herself near the edge of the fountain. Riger is less the twenty yards away; there’s no way she won’t hear her. Kasia leans against the lip of the basin and starts to control her breathing. After four long breaths, she extends her consciousness into the depth of her body and with an invisible hand touches the points laden with power. Then she opens her eyes wide, stares at her sister in the line and thinks, Riger!

  The other witch spins around as if pricked by a needle.

  Kasia motions her head a few degrees and then heads toward the street to reunite with Silla who is waiting for her, wrapped in her long black cape, at the edge of the square.

  Kasia and Silla walk along the road with slow steps. After about a hundred paces, their companion pulls up alongside them. Gray hair frames her long face with skin that is still soft notwithstanding the scars marking the right side of her visage. “Did you find her?” Riger asks, panting to keep pace.

  “No,” Kasia answers with a hiss. “The problem is the docks are blocked by xenophobic fanatics and we have very little time if we want to catch today’s wind. We can’t board the ship in order to try and see where Alina is, we might not be able to get out again, so we three need to do it, somewhere outside.”

  “Damned carrot-eaters, when will they realize the war is over?” Riger mumbles. “But who could have taken her?”

  “Someone who wants to extort us, but we don’t have the merchandise he’s interested in. Thus our only option is to find Alina and escape. We need to find someplace safe. Ideas?”

  “Not here, I don’t know the terrace,” Silla responds. “But we can climb down the other side, to the Fugitive’s Inn. They let out rooms there.”

  Kasia shoots her a sideways glance. Why would an honest witch be renting a room? It’s true voyages are tiring and a merchant’s work is hard, but they’ve sworn an oath. Is it possible they can no longer observe the Sabbath, as they have done for generations? If even a witch like Silla, who must have learned to dampen the fire of sex, starts to indulge in these weaknesses, what hope do young women like Alina have of following the traditions and Rule, which have kept them alive for centuries?

  “Hey!” Silla quickly retorts. “Of course I haven’t been there, Captain. Don’t look at me that way. These are things one learns on the docks.”

  “Right. But no all the same. Three women, English, looking the way we do. If we gather together in a room, in the middle of the day, how long will it take one of the inn’s customers to put the pieces together? And denounce us?”

  “The cocks’ well, in the Bottom,” Riger suggests, gesticulating. “During the day there’s almost no one there, the fights are only in the evening. There’s an area, a shed where they store the tools, the feed. They brought me there, before the war; a girl wanted advice about an herb. And it’s not far from the southern descent.”

  “I don’t know the place,” Kasia answers, turning into a back alley where a mask makers’ shop windows display their multi-colored wares, “but let’s go there. We don’t have time to discuss it and down there it will be easy to tell if we’re being followed.”

  They walk down the street toward the stairs leading down. The wells are found four levels below, where derelicts dwell; their only means of survival is gathering whatever falls from the strata above and hoping someone will come down every so often with a few coins, looking for entertainment or some service too sordid to be negotiated in the upper levels. They need to go to the Bottom.

  ***

  The way down to the docks and warehouse levels is an old staircase with wide stone steps, flanked by a worn ramp where carriage wheels have carved two deep grooves over years of transit. Those that lead to the Bottom however are hidden between two storehouses, rusty and overgrown with weeds, boasting heavy iron gates to be shut if the city authorities catch wind of some contagious disease or if word spreads of a band of hybrids on the prowl in the area around the city. Kasia has never been to the Frank Fort Bottom, but during years of trade, before the war, she learned to recognize the dark, pulsating zones attached to markets, like ticks on a beast’s flank.

  “Do we have knives?” she asks her sisters while she pulls open the gate leading down with a grave creak.

  The other two nod, given that a revolver was far too useful for it to be wise to bring down there. Luckily the sun still peeks out, cold, between the long cirrus clouds, reassuring them.

  “Come on,” Riger says since she knows the way.

  They climb down the narrow metal steps, using their hands to pull away the tree foliage besieging the stepladder. A mix of wet, muddy earth welcomes them to the level below. A path winds between the branches, surrounded by shanties made of wood and aluminum plate. A steam-powered machine corroded by the elements blocks passage between two fences, a skeleton of rusted metal stripped of everything that could be resold or reused. They’ve climbed down to a seemingly uninhabited area, but even though she hears no noise and sees no columns of smoke rising from those hovels, Kasia feels several pairs of eyes on her, watching from the shadows.

  Riger walks quickly, lengthening her stride as much as possible without running, something they all have a strong desire to do. An old rule learned on the docks across half of Europe: never run, never scream, never let them see how frightened you are.

  After several hundred yards, the old witch enters a dark wooden gate, on whose jamb generations of gamblers have carved subversive witticisms against the Palatinate. A rooster whose colors have faded camps out on the lintel. The space is deserted and in the back one can make out the sloped earth where spectators position themselves during the fights.

  The three women look around trying to discern whether some curiosity seeker has decided to spend the morning there, but the place seems empty. Kasia keeps an ear out, but the only sound she hears is the rustle of their clothing and the wind stirring the leaves.

  Riger advances once more taking a narrow trail, invisible at first glance, hidden between thorny acacias. After a few hundred feet, the woods open into a small clearing amidst tall grasses; at its center stands a wooden shed largely stripped of its white paint. The witch walks assuredly toward the door of the hut, attached to its frame by just one hinge. There’s no one inside, just a pile of old tools and long tubes with rope tied to the far end, used to guide the animals into the well. Feathers and filth are stuck everywhere and the odor of chicken shit is almost unbearable.

  “How elegant,” Silla comments, twisting her mouth.

  “This place is dangerous,” Kasia says. “There’s no escape route and once we shut ourselves inside we can’t see anyone who might draw near.”

  “Captain,” Riger responds, hands on her hips. “The alternative is the inn.”

  “We’ve no more time, dammit. Alina is in enemy hands.”

  Kasia aims one last glance at the surrounding wood and then decisively closes the door, casting the shed in darkness. “We’ll do it here.”

  A ray of light filters in from a narrow opening near the roof and they can just make out each other’s profiles. They form a circle and for a moment look each other in the eyes. Kasia leans against Riger’s shoulder and takes off her boots and heavy wool stockings. She rests her bare feet on the cold ground, the mud worming its way between her toes.

  Then she stretches out her hands, quickly finding the warm, soft grip belonging to Silla on her right and Riger’s rough calloused one on her left.

  It would be an incredible stroke of luck if no one saw them since they first set foot down here. And a merchant who trusts in luck doesn’t live long on the docks, but they have to risk it.

  She begins to control her breath, trying to expand her awareness. If they were on the airship with a bit of jimson weed it would have been much easier.

  Kasia chases away that last, distracted
thought and concentrates on her body. She starts with the soles of her feet, climbing up the back to her ankle. She repeats the exercise until she senses the earth’s strength beneath her extending up her slender legs. Then she focuses on her pelvis wherein resides the generative power of nature. With her mind, she touches the inside of her thighs, lingering until she feels lubrication. She then pushes the force inside her, slowly and relentlessly, unconsciously bending forward until she can touch the opening of her uterus with her imaginary hand. A sigh escapes through her teeth and she tightly squeezes her sisters’ hands.

  Now she leaves the loins and climbs up to her heart, scanning with her thoughts its deep, regular pumping. Every beat is the respiration of a dark dragon. The old and powerful demon that lives in her heart, with cavernous lungs and deadly, fiery breath. She soon feels the flames burning in her chest and her proud blood heating up her body and soul with every heartbeat. An intense heat permeates her, quickening her breath and stimulating her senses. She lets it flow along her arms and, through her hands, joining with that of her sisters.

  The dragon raises his head and fixes her with his black gaze, ever wrathful.

  Kasia tears away her attention, concentrating on her sisters. Now she can feel Silla’s fire on her right, light blue and shining, like a distant star wickedly enjoying the way it scarcely warms its frozen world. On her left she recognizes Riger’s red fire, a forest in flames, the animals fleeing, the blind fury of the elements.

  “Alina,” she utters. By now her body is ravaged by the flames gushing from her heart and coming from her sisters, but Kasia manages to keep her head above that heat, as if she were submerged up to her neck in an ocean of lava.

  “Alina,” Riger and Silla murmur in turn. The image of Alina forms in her head, baby Alina running from the dogs her old master had sicced on her. Wounded Alina, a girl just eight years old, her legs and arms devastated by sharp teeth, her gray eyes wide with shock and astonishment she’s still alive. “He’s dead now, he can no longer hurt you. I will take care of you now,” Kasia had told her and she’d smiled, weakly. Alina twirling around, years later, in the kitchen of their house among the rushes in Gothland, with the sun filtering through her yellow hair. Shouting, arms raised to the sky, “The war is over! Auntie, the war is over!”

  A pin wheedles its way into Kasia’s mind. She feels its touch and keeps concentrating on her picture of Alina. The pin grows slightly, it moves by degrees, opening a hairline split. Kasia waits patiently, regulating her breath and driving away tension. The split now becomes a crack, then, suddenly, a fissure. Kasia quickly jumps into the opening, trying to glimpse something between the clouds of darkness. An image comes into focus. A small room. A knife held in front of her. Alina’s fair hand pointing it, hair clinging to her face, over her eyes. The taste of blood in her mouth. In front of her two people, one tall and bone thin, with a light-colored vest and something in his hand, and another plumper snickering and mocking her. Their surroundings are hazy as in a dream; Kasia can’t make out any details or words. If she could hold her concentration for a few minutes longer she could definitely attain a better focus, but there isn’t time. Kasia gathers all her strength and sends a pulse toward Alina’s body, to the earth beneath the young woman’s feet. In an instant, she receives from the mud beneath her bare feet the return of that energy, transmitted by the old Earth’s ley-lines.

  “I have it!” she shouts opening her eyes wide, interrupting the flow. The shed door is ajar and a man is watching them. Kasia lets go of her sisters’ hands, who in turn awake from the trance. Riger’s eyes are almost normal, but Silla’s leave no room for doubt. Her irises are black as wells and her sclera still dark blue, as they slowly grow lighter.

  Kasia is sure her own eyes are still murky, especially as out of the three she went the furthest.

  The man stares at her with his mouth agape, his blue eyes open wide like two saucers. He’s short in stature and seems young in age, his dirty-blonde hair is cut stylishly, but his white shirt is covered in brown stains and all wrinkled.

  Kasia observes his hands. Small and delicate with smooth fingernails.

  “Young man,” Kasia says with a wide smile, using her vocal cords’ sweetest tone, “what are you doing here?”

  “You all are…” he says taking a step back from the door.

  “Listen,” Kasia enjoins him, stretching out her hand, but without moving forward, so as not to frighten him.

  “You’re… witches? English witches?” he yelps, moving another step backward.

  “Calm down, we don’t mean you any harm. You may think it strange, but we weren’t doing anything criminal. Our friend is in danger and we were trying to find her. That’s all.”

  “I heard you whispering earlier and… your mouths were closed,” he stammers.

  “Just an illusion. What’s your name?” Kasia asks, placing a hand against her heart. She’d like to run off to where Alina is fighting for her life, and where in a few minutes it might be too late. But if she lets this boy get away, they’ll be hauled before the prosecutor in less than an hour. And on the Continent the penalty for witchcraft is the stake.”

  “I won’t tell you,” he says, taking another step back. “As soon as you know my name you’ll throw a curse at me!”

  “We were looking for a girl—young, like you—who’s been kidnapped. She’s in trouble and I need your help. I need to know you won’t tell anyone about this. At least for a few hours, then we’ll take to the wind and fly away.”

  The boy stops and studies them from a few yards’ distance. To her left, Kasia reads the tension in Silla’s arms. He’s young though and might get away. And even if they did catch him? They’d have to tie him up and leave him in that shed. A death sentence in this ghetto.

  “You’re leaving today?” he asks, uncertain.

  “Yes. We’ll be leaving in less than an hour. As soon as we manage to save our friend who’s in grave danger. If you keep your mouth shut, we’ll pay you for it. One hundred pieces, what do you say?”

  “No. I don’t want any money. But… Take me away from here!”

  In the corner of her eye Kasia sees Silla bring her hand to her belt, near the hilt of her knife.

  “We can’t take you on board. We already have a full crew; we’re not a passenger airship.”

  “I need to get away from Frank Fort, today,” he says and he moves another step toward the trail. “Maybe someone will grant me passage. Someone who hates witches.”

  “Wait! Infernal powers! Okay. We’ll take you with us. But just one trip,” Kasia exclaims, and she stretches out her hand to stop her sister. She doesn’t want Silla throwing that knife. She’s good with weapons and might even hit him, although the shed’s opening is narrow. If she wounded him, she’d have to slaughter him like a pig and the thought repulsed her.

  “You’ll take me with you?” the young man shrieks, perhaps even more frightened than before. “Swear it! And swear you won’t hurt me and you’ll let me go when we reach the destination. And—”

  “Listen,” Kasia says, bending down to gather her boots. “We’re in a devil of a hurry. So if you want to come with us, first and foremost you need to stick close behind. If we don’t lose you before we reach the airship, you can come aboard. And when we reach our destination you can get off safe and sound. In fact you’ll need to get off, but right now we have a matter to attend to. It’s very urgent.”

  Her shoes on, Kasia takes a step toward the boy standing in the hut’s door. He stretches an open hand out to her and stutters “Sw… sw… swear.”

  Kasia grabs him by the hand and pulls him toward her until he’s six inches from her nose. His blue eyes widen with terror, his lip trembles.

  “You have my word. What’s your name?” Kasia hisses in his face.

  “Hansi. And yours?”

  “Captain. That’s what you can call me. And only that. Now let’s move.”

  She lets go of his hand and starts to run toward the trail. W
ith each step she feels the direction of Alina’s signal, guided by an internal compass. They leave the woods behind them. With the branches lashing against their arms, they pass the clearing in front of the cock-fighting arena and catapult themselves onto the main path. They need to go up a level, thus they retrace their way between the shanties. Kasia’s boots sink into the mud and it seems to her she’s unable to gain any speed, although she’s propelling her legs like a woman possessed. Her heart hammers in her chest like some mad drum. I’m too old for this, she thinks.

  Hidden behind a pile of lumber, four young boys in tatters and bare legs, caked in mud, sit around a scrawny cat. They watch them walk by; someone hurls insults, the more daring throw a couple of rocks. But luckily none of them seem inclined to follow them. Having reached the iron stepladder, Kasia turns to her companions: Silla is on her tail while Riger and the boy, Hansi, are a few yards behind.

  In Silla’s inquiring eye Kasia reads all the unspoken questions? A passenger on board, Captain? A male? Should we keep an eye on him? How will we get past customs if he doesn’t have papers?

  She nods slightly to reassure her, between one huff and another owing to the run. But now is not the time to speak, Riger and young Hansi have caught up to them.

  “Let us away,” says Kasia and she hurls herself up the steps, the damp iron sliding under the soles of her boots.

  PART TWO: IN THE DAMP AND DARK

  The Warehouse level presents itself as a monotonous assembly of depots lined up one after another, interrupted solely by the odd kiosk, from which rises the omnipresent stench of grilled pig meat.

  Kasia resumes her march, this time without running, because there’s a lot of foot traffic and she doesn’t want to arouse too much curiosity. As she draws closer, she feels the signal from the ground become ever more distinct until she stops in front of a dark wooden doorway, surrounded by a bronze frame. The door itself is reinforced with metal rivets and a shiny plaque bears the inscription “Pendulum Company, Rare Goods,” in elegant gothic letters.