by Scott Hale
“Get out of my way,” she told them. “I have to get home.”
Two days, three sprains, and sixteen thorns later, Vrana reached Caldera. Her lungs clamored for oxygen; her legs begged for a chair, a bed, or a new body entirely. The sky over the village was caught between day and night, a soft pink fading into frosted gray through which the lights of a hundred dead stars shone. Vrana drank the green potion, the last of what her mother had given her, to dull the pain and heighten her senses. She made sure the cylinder was secure before she crossed the fields. There were no harvesters behind the rows of crops to be seen, and save for the rustling of branches from the forest, there were no sounds to be heard either.
Vrana proceeded on shaking legs into the sweltering heat of Caldera. A wave of embers slid over her body as the wind blew through the blackened buildings before her. Oh no. She peered through open doors and windows, searching for friends and finding only smoke. Please let her be all right. She followed large gouges in the earth to Bjørn’s anvil, where the Bear was missing from his station. She trembled at the thought of finding her mother strewn across the basement, a handful of tonics by her side. She made for home.
Vrana pushed farther into Caldera, coughing as she went, and found her house and those around it untouched by the fire. She hurried to the front door, reached for the handle. She jumped as something collided against her neck. She spun around, rending the air with her ax, just missing Blix as he dove out of harm’s way.
“Take me to them, Blix.”
The small crow, full of renewed energy and purpose, led Vrana to the Archive, where small fires burned atop boiling pools of blood. Vrana ascended the steps, pushed open the double doors, and then put her hands to her mouth when she saw what suffered beyond. The large tables that once held books were now cleared and covered in the contorted bodies of men, women, and children; their twisted hands calling for or clinging to their teary loved ones nearby. Vrana chased after Blix as he darted through the Archive, ducking under the gory sheets that hung between the aisles.
“Where is she, Blix?” Vrana pleaded. Her feet slipped on a strip of flesh that was laid out across the soiled floor. She nodded at a family huddled around a small boy whose chest was charred, a poor form of apology. “Where is she?”
Ahead, at the center of it all, Vrana’s mother stood in a bloodstained apron, tending to the writhing with potions that had once been held in reserve. A dim light surrounded her as she moved from body to body with knife, rag, and vial.
Blix stole Adelyn’s attention away from a small child with streaks of rot down her neck. “Vrana,” she said, placing her hand on the child’s sweating forehead. “Vrana, I’m so glad you’re okay.”
Knowing that her mother would never leave the child’s side, Vrana stepped closer and produced the cylinder for her to see. “What’s happened?”
Adelyn looked down and stepped away from the girl, who had fallen unconscious. She dipped her hands in a bowl of murky water, her own mixture of a mild anesthetic and an antibacterial, and then dried them.
“It was the Witch of your nightmares, Vrana. She came for you.”
CHAPTER VII
When the moment presented itself, Adelyn pulled her daughter aside, down onto a chair, and told her everything.
“The morning after you left, Mara returned from the east. It’s been so many years since I’ve seen her. You’ve never met her, no, but I knew if anyone could tell us anything about your nightmares, it would be her. And I was right. She’d heard stories of men and women who had been twisted and disfigured and left to die in the wilds. Like that creature you saw in the lake. She even found one once, on a bridge: two twin boys stitched together at the chest, black eyes, no arms, their mouths stretched all the way down, down to the ground.
“Mara killed the twins. She’s always had sympathy for the Corrupted. Later, Mara found out those same boys had been haunting that bridge for months.” Adelyn paused for a moment, shaking her head. “Why did this have to happen to you? I…”
Vrana reached out and held her mother’s hand.
“Mara couldn’t let what she’d seen go. She’s not like that. The uglier the issue, the more she wants to know about it, so she did what she does best—investigated. But she didn’t find much at first, only a few anecdotes about a woman, a Witch, who lived in the sea, in a field— a Void.
“Very good at pretending to be human, Mara is. For a while, we all thought she’d pack her bags and live with the Corrupted. She’s spent more time with them than our own people. I found it strange then, we all did, but I’m thankful now, for you, because she did find something: two books in a barn outside the town where the twins were from.
“Aeson has the books with him now. He filed them away years ago when Mara lost interest. He said he must have been busy, but I suspect he was distracted more than anything else.” She tilted her head at her daughter.
Vrana’s face went red. “What about here? What did she do? I don’t care about all that right now. Whatever else there is can wait.”
One of her mother’s patients began to cough up chunks of phlegm, causing the entire table they were lying on to shake.
“I’m sorry, Vrana. My mind is elsewhere. I… just if I don’t tell it as it happened, I’ll forget something.” She sighed. “You’ve got your father’s eyes, intelligence. His stubborn determination. I cherish those qualities in the both of you, I truly do, but I’ll be damned if I don’t wish you hadn’t inherited his bad luck, too.”
“Mom,” Vrana said, redirecting her.
“Everything was the same, and then it wasn’t. I couldn’t tell you when it started, but it had to have only been a few days after you left. People reported feeling ill, the wind carried a foul odor and warmth. Bjørn…”
Vrana moved to interrupt, to ask where he was and if he was okay, but she remained silent.
“Bjørn said he saw flickering images on our doorstep of a woman in a dress with long, matted hair. The children started having nightmares; they kept complaining about a deafening drone that none of us adults could hear. From these problems alone, my supplies dwindled fast. After a while, even I felt her strange effects, a horrible unease like when your father… The elders thought it was an infection, so we treated it like one, but then the Witch appeared, and we knew.
“She was awful, Vrana. Looked like a rotted corpse pulled out of water, yet somehow, there was a heat about her, the kind of heat that makes you dizzy and sick. She was so… angry—slashing and burning anything, everything. She had no… I don’t know. It was just killing for the sake of killing. One of the spellweavers tried to paralyze the Witch—” Adelyn paused, realizing what she had said and that it was far too late to take it back. “—but she gutted him.”
“I hurried home because I saw Kistvaen from afar,” Vrana said. “I thought they’d all died out, the spellweavers. No one said they were still alive. I don’t understand… that’s how the mountain…”
“Yes. Without the third spellweaver, the other two cannot make the mountain disappear. Until help comes from Eld or Alluvia, it’ll stay that way; the humans will get curious, and eventually their curiosity will bring them here, again.”
Vrana looked at her mother with a feeling of emptiness in her stomach. Suddenly, she was very aware of how close to death the ones she cared for had come because of her meddling with the young boy. She was afraid to ask the next question, but before she could stop herself, the words spilled out. “How many?”
“Twenty-two. I can heal those you see here and those farther back, but I couldn’t save the others. She had done things to their bodies. Melted them from the inside. At least Bjørn gave her a good punch—a small victory, if nothing else.” Adelyn laughed weakly and looked away. “Your mom wasn’t always this soft, Vrana, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen such…”
“I’m so sorry,” Vrana said, throwing her arms around her mother. “I’m sorry I brought this to our village. I didn’t know.”
Adelyn
pushed Vrana back and gripped her shoulders. “You are not to blame. Self-pity is for the Corrupted, not for us, okay?”
Vrana nodded.
“This is one of the most important days in your life.” She stared through the raven mask, into her daughter’s watering eyes. “In my life, despite the circumstances. Go to Aeson and finish your trial. We endured the Trauma. We can endure this.”
Vrana considered her mother for a moment and then turned away.
“Vrana,” her mother added, “words fail to express just how proud I am of you.”
In the Archive’s doorway, Vrana and Adelyn hugged once more. Then the clouds of confusion cleared, and Vrana’s mind opened itself to her. “If she knew where the village was, then she had to have known I would be gone; otherwise, why not attack it sooner? There is an entire day I can’t account for, when I made camp in a ravine just west of the hospital. I don’t think the Witch meant to kill me by coming here.”
Vrana turned to look at the village, the burned buildings and scarred earth. “I think it was revenge for killing her creature, for seeing her in my dreams and knowing she exists.”
Adelyn shuddered as the cries of one of the children echoed through the Archive. “You may be right, Vrana. She’s an ancient power, a ghost from the Old World. I can’t imagine the connection between you two was on purpose… unless she wanted to be found, wanted to be known.”
“Did Mara give any suggestions? Where is she?”
“No. She left the very same day she arrived, back east. Aeson’s locked away in the Inner Sanctum. I’m sure he’s found something by now.” Another child joined the weeping chorus. “I’m sorry. I have to go.” She touched her daughter’s mask. “I love you.”
There were no archivists to provide Vrana with the daily hint to enter the tunnels, and when she reached the three statues, she found there was no need for one, for the plate had already been pulled back. As she descended into darkness, she heard heavy footfalls from above, many in number, and remained very still against the ladder. Vrana imagined it was an army of the Witch’s conjurations, returning to lay waste to those who had survived.
But it was something far worse.
Climbing the ladder, Vrana saw that it was the people of her village returning from their Witch hunt. Their presence alone told of their misery: effortless movements punctuated by moments of pain; a vow of silence for fear that their words would give way to screams. Hawks, Bears, and Goats; Foxes, Deer, and Toads; Spiders, Swans, and Owls; Alligators and a Beetle, and many others all passed over Vrana, disappearing into their homes to be greeted by loved ones or no one at all.
Vrana swallowed her guilt and continued down the ladder.
Aeson was already waiting for her in the tunnel, at the location where Vrana most often heard whispers and chanting, where the walls fell away to an underground lake that seemed to stretch on forever. He was sitting on the edge of the tunnel, legs dangling over the side, lost in thought. The glowing stones cast his skull mask in an eerie light. He had dirt on his arms and legs, or was it blood? It was too dim to tell.
“Hey,” Vrana said quietly.
Aeson lowered his head and removed his mask. His dark hair fell to his neck. “Hey,” he said, setting the skull aside.
Vrana reached for her raven mask, faltered, and then lifted it off her head. She took a seat beside Aeson, their masks on opposite sides of one another, and briefly forgot about everything that had happened. They smiled at one another awkwardly.
Vrana swung her legs over the glassy pit and reached for the cylinder. “Here,” she said, handing it to Aeson. “What’s in it?”
“You didn’t look?”
Vrana shook her head, gesturing towards the warning labels written on the cylinder’s side.
“Fair enough,” he said, laughing. “It’s a preserved form of a virus from the Old World. AIDS. It’s spread through sex, bodily fluids, what have you. It killed a lot of humans by shutting down their immune system. They eventually developed a cure; we’ve had that in the Sanctum for years.”
“Oh.” Vrana looked at the cylinder and remembered the multiple times she had dropped it. “And you knew it was in the hospital because of a journal you read?”
“I didn’t know for certain.” Aeson set the silver canister on his lap. “But it seemed that way, yes. I’m really sorry about that. The world as it is right now can’t afford to have a virus like this spreading through it again, and we’ve been searching so long for it. I’m avoiding the subject, I know. I’m sorry, Vrana. I’m still not sure what happened.”
Vrana shook her head, knowing Aeson was referring to the events that had occurred only hours ago with the Witch. “My mother filled me in,” she said, “in her own comprehensive way.”
Vrana proceeded to tell Aeson about the third trial, producing the notes on the homunculi to verify her story. His eyes darted back and forth across the page. Vrana took out the Skeleton’s key and the silver necklace and told their stories, too. Her travels with the young boy, however, remained unspoken.
“Things are never easy for you, are they?” Aeson held the silver necklace up against one of the glowing rocks. The light refracted through the gem onto the wall.
“That’s not true,” Vrana said, pointing to the raven’s head. “I took that easily enough. School was more or less uneventful. You and my mother are setting me up for some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Aeson traded the necklace for the Skeleton’s key. “Do you remember that time your mother was showing you how to make a potion to help with memory recall?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s because some of the ingredients had fallen into the wrong vial, and you ended up getting a face full of Forgetfulness. You sure this is from the Black Hour? You might still be feeling the residual effects of—”
Vrana punched Aeson hard on the leg, and Aeson almost dropped the key into the waters below. As he rubbed the spreading redness, Vrana took the Skeleton’s key and the cylinder and secured them in her bag.
“I feel guilty,” she said, unable to ignore the issue any longer. “I know I shouldn’t, but I do. I fucking do. And I realized it’s not because of what happened, because horrible things do happen. Just—I couldn’t at least be here to face the Witch, like the rest of you.”
Aeson scratched at his arms and legs, breaking up the dried dirt along them. “So what you’re telling me is that you don’t necessarily feel responsible for those who died; rather, you feel guilty because you weren’t here to have the chance to die alongside them? You know, you don’t have to be cold and callous like the elders. No one is going to blame you for this. No one else besides me, your mother, Mara, and a few watchers even know about your dreams. Why should you feel guilty for the choices someone else made? Don’t turn Corrupted on me now.” He took a breath. “You really stabbed someone in the eye with your beak?”
Aeson helped Vrana to her feet. They put their masks back on. They said little to one another as they traveled the length of the tunnel. Vrana asked if he knew more about the homunculi, and he said that he did, but thought it to be more important that she receive and read the two books on the Witch instead.
“I have an idea,” he told her as they entered the Inner Sanctum, which looked as though it had been ransacked, “on how to find the Witch. I need a few days to think it over, so don’t ask until then. I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.” He walked over to his bed, which was swamped with books, and picked up two coverless, hardbound novels. “Here,” he said, holding them out for Vrana to take.
“Did you see her?” Vrana asked, stuffing the books into her leather bag.
“I did. I knew something was wrong, even down here. It took me awhile, too long, to convince myself to leave the Sanctum.” He sighed. “There wasn’t much I could do. No one could do anything. I don’t even know why I left.
“When I saw her, she was standing at the village center, wrapping that spellweaver’s intestines around his neck. I couldn’t
stop shivering, even though I was covered in sweat. I’d never seen Caldera like that—torn apart and crimson, like Corruption.” He laughed and shook his head. “What would I know about how the village looks anyways?”
Aeson took off his mask again, this time dropping it onto the bed; signs of trauma were etched into his face. “She laughed at me when she saw me, said something I couldn’t understand, then floated away, like a wisp, into the woods. Half the village went after her, while the other half stayed behind to do what they could for everyone else. The strange thing is—” he looked toward Vrana but was really looking inward at the terrible memory eating away his mind, “—it felt like it had happened so quickly, but it had to have been going on for hours. Days, maybe? I don’t know where we go from here.”
There was little left of the night when Vrana decided to make her way home. She considered staying with Aeson as she had done many times in the past; however, the warmth of her bed and the quiet of her room held an allure too great to ignore. To say she was tired would be an understatement so severe that Vrana would deem it punishable by death. The mere act of having a thought alone threatened to collapse her entire system. Now more than ever, she hoped for the Witch to invade her dreams, or for her to invade the Witch’s, but what she would do to the woman was something she had yet to decide.
There would be a lot of blood, though. Of that she could be certain.
Vrana could hear the grumblers grumbling in the fields as she walked through the rows of battered houses, but it was possible that it may have been her stomach begging for a well-cooked meal. An eerie blue mist swirled around her feet and washed against the foundations of the buildings like ethereal waves. They would recover, she knew, for her people seldom dwelled on the past, lest something could be learned from it. There had always been attacks prior to the Witch’s, from desperate and deranged humans, to starving animals and sadistic specters. The worst had been a charge led by a band of zealots under the impression Vrana’s kind were not only servants of death but evil incarnate—the former being true, the latter more a matter of opinion.
