by Josh Kent
They snarled and lowered their heads and bristled their backs in the snow and wind and blackness. May could see their teeth and the little wisps of their breath like smoke puffing out.
Huck was fidgeting and trying to get his cold fingers to get the bullets in the chamber.
Then a black shadow fell on the wolves and their bodies twirled and spun and yipped. The black shadow spun with them and one of the wolves flew off into the brush. Another went suddenly limping and running wildly in the other direction.
The witch’s voice called to them, “Come on! The cave is just ahead.”
Huck managed to get his gun loaded.
They came into a place where she thought she could hear water, and she saw the shape of Violet move into a blackness and then return and wave them onward.
Jim and the doctor were able to clear away the wolves with gunfire quickly and head up toward the cave, but as the doctor turned and looked back at the clearing where they had been, he saw something that sent a freezing fear into his heart.
There was a huge wolf, at least twice the size of a normal one. It had come into the clearing with many, many other wolves. It was standing there nearly as if it was talking to them, giving orders of some kind.
“Falk! Look!” he said.
The clearing was filled with wolves now. Jim counted twenty before he stopped counting. They were not moving up the hill toward Jim and the group, though. They all started heading in the other direction, to Sparrow!
“They’re heading to Sparrow! Falk!”
“I can see that,” Jim said as the two men headed up the hill and into the cave. “Who knows how many more of them there are?”
The cave had a small entrance but a large den. Huck and May and the preacher got to work right away on making a fire.
“How did you do it, witch?” the preacher asked. “How did we escape the fire? Where were we? How did we get here?”
Wylene leaned against the wall of the cave and heaved a heavy sigh. “I saved us,” she groaned. “What does it matter?”
Jim said, “The people of Sparrow may be in grave danger. Those wolves are some way not natural and are heading back into the town.”
Violet was grumbling at Huck as they tended a small fire in the back of the cave. The doctor had come in and told them to move the fire, to put it out, and if they had to start it again to move it to the back of the cave. Then there was a lot of fussing around for a while between Huck and Violet. The preacher had started into talking about his daughter—his daughter and his wife. He was worried. He was worried about what would happen to his daughter if his wife had turned against him. There was no telling what was happening down in his town now. He told the group how much he loved everyone in the town—that they were all like children to him.
Violet said, “Bring those rocks back here, Preacher, and put them around the fire.”
The preacher stood. He looked at Huck Marbo and saw in Huck Marbo’s eyes a dead seriousness, but he saw too that Marbo’s eyes flickered back and forth from Wylene to May and then to Violet. He saw that when Marbo’s glance happened on Violet she could feel his glance, but Violet never took her eyes off the witch, who was crouched at the cave entrance. The preacher started getting some rocks to put around the fire.
May looked up when the witch groaned. This witch had saved her life. Witches were supposed to eat children. Just then the fire cracked and a big flame came up. She could see the witch leaning on the wall holding her side. She had been injured in the fight with the wolves.
The witch looked small. The witch looked skinny and helpless and her clothes looked like a black sack on her. May thought of a sudden that there was nothing scary at all about the witch. If she even was a witch. She was not like any witch that May had ever heard of. She did have weird fingers with sharp hooks on the end, like a bird’s claws, and those black, black eyes and sharp teeth, but the witch was more like some pretty animal than an old evil witch from a story.
“We’re needing to decide what to do here,” Jim said.
They all started talking around the fire, making plans and ideas about what had happened and what should be done about the wolves, but May wasn’t really listening to all that going on. She had wandered away, taking steps closer to the cave’s entrance where the figure of the witch leaned against the wall in the cave. Wylene wasn’t talking to the others either. She was fixed on something else and holding her stomach.
When she was just a girl in Sparrow, May heard that there was a witch in the woods. The witch was out there, the stories went, and once, long ago, she had come into Sparrow and taken children or a family, which, May supposed, is what most witches do. They take away children and innocents and do awful things in the name of the Evil One. That’s what witches do.
One night, when her ma was still alive, the men were drinking and talking and May heard about it. She heard about a lot of things that way.
The men were all sitting around at the bar and they were talking about the old days.
“Back then, there was a lot of strange folk in the woods,” Walter Chimley said and scratched his fuzzy red beard and took a big drink of his beer. Walter would come down from time to time, down from the Ridges, to help out with building things. He was one of the very few people who ever came down from the Ridges and back to Sparrow. “There was always the River People, sure, but there was some strange folk on top of that. Them River People been around here since before God, but them weird folk, them that live in the hollers and in the dark places of the woods . . .” He started coughing a lot and couldn’t finish.
Benjamin Straddler looked at Walter Chimley. Benjamin poured more whisky into his own cup and drank it down quick and licked his lips. “You go on talkin’ that way as long as you want. Them legends and tales is legends and tales. People just tell ’em. People remember ’em on account of they’re memorable. Just ’cause they’re memorable don’t make ’em true.”
Arthur McKee said, “Yeah, old Benji’s got a tale of his own that’s memorable.”
Hattie Jones said, “McKee! You be quiet now!”
Benjamin Straddler didn’t smile a bit, but he liked it that old Hattie seemed to be trying to come to his rescue. Arthur McKee didn’t smile either. What was between McKee and Straddler in those days was more than legends and tales; it was a woman named Lane McKee that was between them.
They both were about to say something more on the subject when Hattie broke in, “I’ll tell you both! I’ll tell all of you! Chimley tells the truth! Strange folk in the woods. River People, sure, but these were even against the River People. The River People had to fight against ’em as well as we had to. We were together with the River People from around here. Fightin’ against these weird folk. Many of us even saw that there was a witch still in the woods who, a few years, not long ago, came down and into Sparrow. Some say she came to take the kids, and that’s why there’s not many has kids in Sparrow anymore—for fear that she’ll come back to take ’em. But what we saw, what we saw, we couldn’t see what her purpose was. Movin’ from house to house in some strange way.”
Benjamin Straddler smiled. “You fought against these weird folk, old man? Back in the times?” He laughed a little and looked around to see if anyone else was understanding. “Things happen,” Benjamin Straddler said. “Some folks die, move away, get sick, dead babies, disappeared kids, and they tell stories is all. Some folks get swept up by rivers or eaten by wolves. That don’t mean witches come and steal ’em away or that the woods is haunted by spooks.”
Huck Marbo said, “Spooks.”
But that was all in May’s memory and this was in the here and the now. May stopped just short of Wylene.
The witch turned and looked at May. May didn’t say anything, but her mouth came open a little bit. The witch was looking at May from behind the veil that still covered the white face and black eyes. May’s face was so different from the witch’s—round, flat nose, square teeth. From under the veil, the witch’s eyes glittered a
nd caught some firelight.
The witch thought about May’s round face and her big eyes and flat nose. May’s father may be a pale-skinned man with red hair from across the sea, but Wylene could see deeper than that. Wylene could see the faces of the Old People in May’s face.
May squinted to try to see through the veil.
The witch lifted her veil and gave May a little close-mouthed smile. “You should not be afraid of me, young one.”
May looked down at the witch’s sharp fingers. One of her hands was clutching her side.
“You’re hurt?”
“Yes,” the witch said, “I am.”
May looked away from where the wound was and up at the witch’s face. The witch blinked her black eyes. May couldn’t help but gasp.
“Yes,” the witch said, “I came into the world this way. Like a cat, I suppose. My eyes. My teeth.” She chomped them neatly behind her lips. Wylene lifted her other hand and spread out her fingers. “You can touch them,” the witch said, and tilted her head, looking at her own hands.
May’s eyes went wide and then she turned quick around to see what her pa was doing. He was crouched down with the preacher; they were drawing something in the dirt around the fire, talking and pointing and serious. Violet was pacing with her arms crossed.
May looked back around then at Wylene. May’s right hand started to come up from where it had been near her waist, but she didn’t look at Wylene’s dangling hand, she kept looking into the witch’s eyes—something there, a shadowy light, the little fire in the cave reflected in there, in the witch’s eyes like black mirrors shining. They were wet and they glimmered, but there was too a kind of shyness in the pointed little lashes. May could see crinkles at the corners in the white skin. Then May started to see colors in those eyes, dragonfly wings and oil, dark rainbows turning.
When May touched her hand to the witch’s hand she felt a heat. The witch’s hand was soft and smooth, but May felt something warm like water move from the witch’s hand and down into her own finger bones and then up her arm, spreading a sleepy warmth. Like a drink of her pa’s whisky, it spread deep through her body.
And then May thought her eyes must have closed, because she felt of a sudden that she was waking up in bright daylight and there was the witch, Wylene—seated on a flat rock in brightest sunlight and around her, big, flat stones, bigger than May and bigger than her pa, covered in green mosses and long, twirling vines.
Wylene wasn’t dressed in her dark veil or cloak; in fact, her skin was more bare than not and white and shining in the sun where it wasn’t painted with swirls of black and red. Wylene’s face was painted gold and red with almonds of bright yellow around her black eyes. Her hands were covered in symbols. May could see now that Wylene had been painted to look like a fierce cat. The teeth, so sharp and white in the sunlight, looked almost blue, glowing strangely from the witch’s face over the rocks and leaves, outshining the yellow sun.
She heard a voice, and then the light disappeared and the mute darkness of the cave swirled over her. “May! Come away from her!”
It was her pa.
“Get over here! You come away from that witch! Witch! You stay away from my daughter!” But Huck’s eyes darted this way and that when he spoke to the witch, and then he kind of nodded to Wylene after he’d hollered at her and blew out a sigh as May came back to his side. Even though the witch had come through the darkness and fought off the wolves to save May, he didn’t feel right trusting her. It just didn’t feel like the right thing to do to trust a witch.
May came toward him and he looked over at the preacher. Huck didn’t know what to say to the preacher either, but the two of them had passed looks and it seemed to Huck that the preacher had understood in some way, maybe even more than Huck understood, how it would be that they would come to trust a witch. The other thing was that there was another strange kind of look in the preacher’s eye when Huck looked at him, a look almost as if the preacher was sorry, that the preacher understood and that he was sorry. Not sorry that his brother died, but sorry that somehow he’d caused his brother to die. The preacher looked as if he was about to say something, but then he would just wipe his eyes with his thumb and fingers. Jim didn’t like watching the preacher cry.
Violet crossed her arms and looked at the witch with a squinted eye, but she moved around the fire toward Huck a little, keeping her eyes on Wylene.
“She’s hurt,” May said.
The doctor looked over at the witch, who was now bent in some kind of pain, but her face was turned away from all of them.
“What, you can catch bullets and make magical tunnels through the earth to escape fire, but you can’t get bit by a wolf?”
The witch turned to the doctor. “That’s exactly right, Doctor. The wolf tore into my side with its teeth. It’s not a wound I can bear very easily. I am sure you would have difficulty too.”
The doctor’s eyebrows rose and his mouth slowly closed up as he watched her reveal the jagged bite. In the firelight, it looked more black than red. He suddenly wondered at the creature he had just seen in the clearing, the huge wolf who had seemed as though it were giving orders to the others. He wondered if the medicine and treatment that he’d given Jim Falk hadn’t warded off the same greater evil from Jim’s blood after all—an evil that could turn men to beasts. If this witch, or creature, or whatever it was that Wylene was, could be harmed by the bite of this wolf . . .
Jim said, “Doc, are you able to help her?”
“What about the town?” the preacher almost shouted. “What about our homes? Who will save my wife and my daughter from those animals?”
“Benjamin Straddler is there. There are other men of the town,” the doctor said, looking back in the direction of the witch and fumbling around in his bag.
“Not many,” Violet said. “And not enough. Not with courage. They’ll run. Sparrow is full of cowards and hermits shut up in their houses to come out on Sunday and sit silent in the pews, their cold eyes on the back of each other’s heads.” Violet had a sudden thought that the spook and these killers might be agents come to rid out just these kinds of people. She twirled her red hair around her finger and wondered what would become of all those quiet, frowning folk. She pulled the strand of hair hard and thought about the powder.
“Yes,” the doctor said. “Yes, the people are scared. But they’ll fight.”
“Will they?” Violet asked. “And what if we were to help? Will they come to our aid, Doctor, or will we all find ourselves tied to a post in the middle of another fire? Will they be brave and fight against the monsters or will they be cowards who burn women?”
Jim walked over to them and, looking at each of them in the eyes before he spoke, he said, “This isn’t just another town. Violet, this is your town. This is Huck’s town. These things, the killers, Old Bendy’s Men, they’ve woken up.”
The preacher stood up. “Yes, that’s right. They’ve woken up to find something.” He looked toward the witch. “It’s what she told me!”
The doctor was at the witch’s side now. He gave her a drink from a green bottle and then a drink from a brown one. She sat down.
“They’re not going to stop with Sparrow,” Wylene said and choked a little on the medicine. “They will ruin every town that has a good preacher and has good people. People who follow the teachings of the Way.” She pointed at Jim Falk and said, “And people who know the Waycraft.”
Jim Falk couldn’t help but to draw in a breath. He looked at Wylene’s face. How could she know?
“Where do you know that word from?” Jim asked her, stepping forward.
“I am old,” said Wylene, and a sputtering laugh came from her.
The doctor said, “May Marbo, I need you to come here and help me.”
Huck said, “Help you what?”
“I need her to help me help this woman. She has a wound and I need May’s help.”
Violet nearly stopped May from going over, but Huck made a quick glance at V
iolet. She could hear the doctor’s desperation, and he pointed where the wound was and the area was bleeding heavily now.
May jumped up and soon they had moved the witch closer to the entrance where it was cool and away from the fire. The doctor gave May a rag and told her to fill it with snow and wipe her forehead and talk to her. He tore open the witch’s shirt below her breast where the wound was weeping and giving off a strange smell. The witch also had some bad punctures on the right arm that had a similar quality. Her blood was very dark and gave off an oily shimmer in the firelight.
The doctor said, “I’m going to make a guess at something.” He took out several metal tools from his bag and placed them on a rock.
“That doesn’t comfort me,” Wylene said and looked at the tools.
May went out of the cave in the dark night and grabbed up some snow. Branches in the trees around them crackled as a wind blew, and then the woods dimmed and a heavy snow came filtering down through the trees. In the distance she heard the howling and barking. The trees were shaking in the wind.
She came back and saw the doctor crouched there beside the witch.
“Press that cold rag with the snow inside to her forehead,” the doctor instructed and picked up some tools and went off to heat them in the fire.
Jim said, “We need to go back. We don’t have food or proper trappings for us all to stay anyway. The witch . . .”—Jim corrected himself—“Wylene is right. They will not stop at Sparrow. They will come for us whether we save Sparrow or not.”
“Also, I could use a bath,” Huck said.
May put the cold rag to the witch’s head. She was sure that, underneath her veil, she saw the witch’s lips curl into a smile at Huck’s comment or maybe at the cool rag.
The doctor returned and said, “I am guessing that, for some reason I can’t really say, you are not hurt by lead bullets, but you are hurt by the organic bite of a wolf. In my book that means that your makeup is quite special, but not completely unknown to medicine. Especially to my medicine. Drink this,” he said and gave her a bottle. She did so. “Open your mouth,” he told the witch.
