There was a feature on one of the Boston TV news stations speculating that buried tree stumps might have been the cause of this recent rash of disasters. “The stumps rot, and the earth caves in on the place where they used to be,” a geologist from the State Department of Environmental Protection explained. He didn’t mention why all the sinkholes would appear on the same day, but he did say it wasn’t at all surprising.
But the Meadow! That was not in the news. Wonderland, the new owner of the property, managed to keep all mention of a sinkhole on the site of its new store out of the media. Of course, a tarp cover and a few distracting signs (ELECTRICAL HAZARD, HIGH VOLTAGE, KEEP OUT! DANGER) weren’t enough to fool the witches. Too many Old Town residents had seen the hole before the tarp went over it.
Hattie’s Kitchen remained closed until further notice, along with most of the other businesses in Old Town. Attendance at school dropped. People boarded up their houses. They knew what was coming.
Maybe it was better to be cowen, I thought. Normal people never knew when the worst-case scenario was going to come true. Sometimes they didn’t even know when it was happening.
All I knew was that, if what was coming was going to be on a par with the Black Death, I wasn’t planning to sit on my thumbs and watch while it destroyed the world. Whatever the Darkness was, I was going to find out everything I could about it. And then, idiotic as it sounded, I was going to do my damndest to fight it.
I went to the only place I could think of to find answers. Peter’s room.
“I’m busy,” he said.
“No, you’re not.” I took a deep breath to steady myself. “Look,” I said, “I know you feel weird around me, but I need for you to tell me about the Darkness.”
He tried to push me out. “I don’t know any more about that than anyone else in Old Town. Ask them. Ask your family.”
“They don’t want me to know.”
“Then I don’t either.”
“What do you care? Just tell me what you know. Anything.”
His eyes scanned the corners of the room, searching for an excuse to get rid of me.
“Please, Peter,” I begged. “I’ll return the favor someday, I promise.”
He relented. “Come in, Katy,” he said, standing aside.
Call this Darkness 101, or Everything Peter Shaw Knows Or Is Willing To Tell About The Darkness.
First of all, the Darkness isn’t a name. It’s more of a description in place of a name. No one knows exactly what the Darkness is, which is what makes it so frightening. But though it is unknown, the Darkness did have an origin that people, my people, the witches of Whitfield, have remembered through hundreds of generations.
Peter says he pictures the source of the Darkness as a kind of black cloud the size of a basketball, fuzzy around the edges, from which leak a bunch of thin, snaking tendrils, like invisible wisps of smoke. Before humans came along, these wisps just dissipated into the air like gas bubbles from a tar pit, but with the advent of people—that is, weak, venal, greedy creatures who do not follow natural laws or respect the great forces—the wisps turned into something like tentacles, bigger, thicker, longer, and more powerful than ever. And with every evil brought forth by the humans, the tentacles grew until they slithered out of their hosts like branches of a tree, connecting and coalescing with one another to become even stronger, and darker, and more dangerous.
Now into this mix came the witches. They, too, were human beings, but from the beginning, witches were different. Fortunately for them, they were also useful to the others, the cowen. Some of them may have been clairvoyant, meaning they could see things that weren’t in front of their faces—say, a neighboring tribe heading toward the village wearing warpaint—or telekinetic, like Jonathan the teleporting carpenter or myself. Some may have been healers, people of great value in those days when most people didn’t live past thirty; or, in rare instances, even oracular (being able to foretell the future like my mother), which I’m told is extremely unusual, even though there have always been lots of fakes who claim they can. The witches were called all sorts of things—magicians, shamans, witch doctors, wise women, strega, inyanga, tsukimono-suji—whatever name they were given to distinguish them from ordinary people. But they all had one thing in common: They knew things the others didn’t.
In time, the story goes, the Darkness became dense enough for some of the witches to see it, but by that time it was already too late to stop it. It moved quickly from one person to another, feeding on human fear and anger, expanding in certain weaker personalities to take over their minds entirely. The witches saw this. Another thing they saw was that the Darkness, as opposed to other, lesser kinds of evil, seemed to know what it was doing. When an infected person died, the Darkness leapt out of that person and into the nearest human body. This meant that, under the right circumstances, perfectly good, strong, intelligent people could be infected as easily as those who were weak, foolish, or naturally prone toward vile behavior. It could, in fact, affect anyone.
Even witches.
Now this was a very bad thing, because witches have power. Picture someone—me, say—who can move objects with my mind, going all Gothic and running wild in a knife store. And that isn’t even a very powerful skill, as far as magic goes. That is why the twenty-seven families are, even today, so fanatical about keeping the No Cowen rule. Cowen get infected by the Darkness easily. They almost invite it, with their ego trips and lust for dominance. It’s not that witches are better people, really. But they have real power, so they don’t have to lord anything over anyone else, or act like money is what makes them important, or use sex to get what they want, or do any of the other crazy things that cowen do. It makes a difference. Witches don’t run scared.
That is, except around dead birds and sinkholes and fires and floods.
CHAPTER
•
SEVENTEEN
XENOGLOSSIA
“Historically, the Middle Ages was, for witches, anyway, the Hour of the Darkness,” Peter said.
“In those days, a witch was anyone who was different from them. Eventually, it also came to mean anyone who the person in charge didn’t like. In 1484, the most powerful person in the western world, Pope Innocent VIII, declared open season on witches, sending out large teams of hit men to burn old ladies and grab their property. The sad thing was, most of the women they tortured weren’t even witches.”
“Cowen wouldn’t even know what those creeps were up to,” I said. “At least witches had the harbingers to warn them.” I looked at him. “Or did they?”
“Of course. At least they did after Serenity Ainsworth pointed them out.”
“Serenity . . . Hey, wait a second,” I said before running out of the room.
Actually, it takes a lot longer than a second to run from Peter’s dorm to mine and back again. By the time I returned, panting and wheezing from my Olympic-level sprint, he was lying stretched out on his bed, his notebook propped on his knees.
“Hey, Peter, can you—”
“Hold it,” he said, shooting five fingers at me. That is when you put your thumb over your four fingernails and then flick all your fingers in the direction of someone or something. It helps to concentrate your energy. Anyway, Peter shot five fingers in what I guessed was supposed to be a binding spell, but it only produced a lot of sticky filaments.
“Ewww.” I felt as if I’d walked into a giant spiderweb.
“Oh, sorry,” he said, jumping out of bed to help clear away the gooey strings. “I meant to immobilize you.”
“Well, you got as far as grossing me out,” I complained.
“I see. Would you call that a start?”
I laughed. “I should have pretended it worked,” I said.
“But of course. Isn’t that what girls are supposed to do?”
“I’ll remember next time.”
“Seriously, though, I’m getting better,” he said.
“Seriously, you are.”
“I’ve
just never been able to get to the level I reached when you were with me.” He blushed. “I guess that was you.”
“It was the Meadow,” I said quietly. “Magic happens easily there.” I looked away. Some things were better forgotten. I only wished I could forget them.
When I looked back, his eyes, deep and gray and troubled as the winter sea, met mine. I wanted to ask him what he was thinking, what he was feeling, why, why, why . . . But instead, I fished the little plastic-coated cameo out of my pocket. It was what I’d gone to retrieve, after all.
“This was Serenity’s,” I said. “My great-grandmother gave it to me for Christmas.”
He picked it up. “Why is it sealed like that?”
“Because of what I might pick up.”
He looked puzzled for a moment, then understood. “Oh, her . . . vibes.”
“I just did it the once. But if you’re willing to stay with me, I could open this now.”
He pulled back slightly. “Are you going to start screaming again?”
“Well . . .” Suddenly it didn’t seem like such a great idea. “I don’t know. I guess I might.” I started to put the thing back in my pocket, but Peter put his hand over mine.
“What I meant was, if you’re willing to trust me, I’ll look out for you,” he said. “I’ll try to make sure you don’t . . .”
“. . . act stupid,” I finished.
“I was going to say, ‘get hurt.’”
“Oh.” There was such a tenderness in his eyes. And a sadness . . .
“Katy . . .”
I broke away from him. “Got scissors?” I asked, tearing at the plastic with my teeth. Anything to avoid the I-really-like-you-as-a-friend talk.
Peter fumbled in his desk drawer, but it was too late. The cameo was free. Its smooth edges felt cool, then warm. Suddenly the room was spinning. I felt a rush in my head. Then the room was gone. Peter was gone. Katy was gone. And Serenity was there. I felt light and floaty, as if I was hovering above her. There was this powerful draw, like her mind was absorbing me. This time, though, I wasn’t surprised by the pull. I was prepared. I could feel my namesake drawing me into her secrets until I knew everything . . .
I was thirty-two years old when I came to Massachusetts aboard the Valiant Marie with my husband Venerable Dalton-Ainsworth and our twin daughters Zenobia and Zethinia. I had known some of the twenty-seven families on board before we’d set sail. A number of them had been witches in London. Others were from Suffolk or Surrey, and some from as far away as Edinburgh and Cardiff. We had planned for years to come across the sea together and start a community of our own kind in a place where we hoped we might be safe from the legacy of the Papal Bull.
But one of the families, the Lyttels, was not meant to enjoy that future, for they had boarded the Valiant Marie already infected by the Darkness.
It had come through an adolescent son who had celebrated his last night in London by lying with a Cheapside tart who died of pox in his arms an hour after their assignation. Sorely fearful, the boy left her in the hay-strewn stall in the alleyway where she’d brought him, and ran home to his family without speaking a word.
Now, those of us who have seen the Darkness know that it is released through death; and upon the death of its host, it will spring into the next closest body, whether that body be willing to receive it or no. Thus the boy, who had been christened Charles Carter Matthew Lyttel, brought the Darkness with him, along with the pox, to the New World.
Young Charles Lyttel was dead before the Valiant Marie ever made landfall, and the rest of the family lay in a state of vile sickness of mind and body, until such a time as it became evident to some among us that the mother, my friend Dorothea Stanton Lyttel, was herself the current host of the Darkness.
At first we did nought but keep them all at a distance, a condition to which the Lyttels themselves agreed readily, as they knew well what contamination this pox could spread over all the twenty-seven families in Salem as well as through all the cowen already established there. But when it became known to all that the Darkness was at work as well, some insisted on the fire.
I cautioned against it, as I am loathe to take the life of any human person, most particularly those of my own persuasion, but within days we saw the sea birds lying dead in a line along the shore.
Then came the sinking of the earth in more than twenty places within our settlement alone, and then the fire, caused by lightning during a storm, that made the whole forest to burn day after day, despite the rain which did not cease to fall. Then at last appeared the fourth omen, and no one could deny its import: ’Twas flood, the wild tide that did engulf our roadways and drowned our animals that we had need of for milk and meat.
Four tragedies of earth, air, fire, and water. All saw it, all knew, for these were the Harbingers, the Four Evils of the Darkness, come to claim us as prey. I could protest no longer, for now we were all in danger from the narrow-eyed cowen.
On a cold night in November, long past the rites of Samhain, the killing fire was lit in a clearing made deep into the dense wood. We did not wish for our act to be known to the populace of Salem; as it was, we knew we could not ourselves remain under any conditions after this dread event.
Under cloak of night, Dorothea Lyttel was led to the stake. The course in this matter is clear: The one who harbors the Darkness must die by fire, as fire is at the heart of the Darkness. This is known to us from the earliest teachings.
Alas, it was pitiable indeed to see Mr. Lyttel lead his children away to some place unknown, to live amongst cowen. Not one in that family accused us in anger, though the small children wept, for even Dorothea knew what must be done. As to the rest, we repaired each of us as far from that horror as we could, so as to be distant from the Darkness when it passed out of the expiring body. It was thus that brave Dorothea Lyttel herself lit the fire that would take her life, and uttered not a cry. But around her, hidden in the wood, the families wept one and all, small child or aged crone, for we all knew how most dreadful our lot had become, to give up one of our own to the Darknesss in order to save our community.
This was indeed a day of woe. Soon afterward, the cowen of Salem found the burned remains of Dorothea Lyttel and took sport in tormenting all manner of women, threatening them also with the stake and the fire, for the Darkness had found its way deep into their hearts long before we had ever come.
As for our community, we all walked the distance to a far meadow, which years later we would name White Field, and there we would one day hide from the Darkness and the evil it had brought.
“Katy.” Peter was wiping my face with something soft. “Katy, it’s time to come back.”
I came to slowly. He was cradling me in his arms like a baby. “Where . . . what . . .” I was beginning to remember what I was doing there. “The Darkness.” Tears began to course down my face. Peter sopped them up with what I realized was a wet handkerchief. “Do you always carry those?” I asked, so tired I was barely able to move my lips.
He looked at the white square. “Yes,” he said with a gentle smile.
“Did I scream?”
“No, but you were speaking in a strange way. Were you Serenity Ainsworth?”
“I think I was,” I said. “Where’s the brooch?”
He picked it up off the table behind him. “I’ll give it back to your family, if you’d like,” he said.
“No. I want to keep it. This was easier than the last time. Not so shocking. Although . . .” My eyes were streaming again.
“I know what you saw, Katy,” he said. “You were talking the whole time.”
“They burned their own kind,” I said, wanting to disbelieve it. But I couldn’t. I’d seen it with my own—well, with Serenity’s—eyes.
“They thought it was the only way to destroy the Darkness.”
“But once the cowen got the idea, they just used it to propagate the Darkness, not to dispel it. Do you see? The Darkness used it. So it couldn’t be the solution. The burning
was just another part of the problem.”
He shook his head. “But what else could they have done? Let the Darkness infect everyone in Salem?”
“Didn’t it anyway?” I said. That was why Serenity and the others left for Whitfield. Even though the American colonists didn’t burn their witches, Serenity knew that Salem was already a lost cause. “I wonder what happened to the Lyttels,” I mused.
“Their descendents are probably still around, either living as solitary witches or thinking they’re crazy. There are a lot of people like that out there among the cowen,” he said.
“But who replaced them? To maintain the twenty-seven families?”
Peter smiled. “The Shaws,” he said. “Zenobia Ainsworth married Henry Shaw. . .”
“. . . who didn’t change his name,” I said.
“You got it.”
I stood up slowly, groaning with the effort. I felt as if I’d just been through ten rounds of mud wrestling. “I have to go,” I said. “Thanks for helping me . . . with everything.” I was too tired to be articulate.
I picked up the brooch, gasped, dropped it, then picked it up again. Images of Dorothea Lyttel with her hair on fire came to mind. I forced the image out of my thoughts.
“Leave it,” Peter said. “I’ll wrap it up for you so you won’t have to touch it.”
“No, I need to get used to it.” I fingered the brooch. Random images. I shut them out one at a time. “This is a new skill for me. If I’m going to use it, I’ve got to learn to control it.” I held it to my forehead. No images, I commanded silently, and whatever was inside me obeyed. It was just a brooch again.
I stumbled on my way to the door. Peter caught me. “I’ll walk you back to your room,” he offered.
With my arm slung around his shoulders like a drunk, we meandered around the maze of hallways until we reached my dorm.
Legacy Page 11
