The Witching Elm (A Memento Mori Witch Novel, Book 1)

by C. N. Crawford

  “I get what you mean,” said Tobias.

  “Okay. Can we go now? We’re all on the same side. We all want to kill Rawhed and to get back to our families. I’ve been living without mine for most of my life. Everyone else gets to go home on Christmas or Thanksgiving.” Tears spilled down her cheeks and she wiped them off with the back of her hand, smudging dirt across her face. “And during the summers I never had anyone to talk to, and there’s no one at all now that Uncle Perkins is gone.”

  Alan awkwardly patted her back.

  “I had no idea how to get home,” she continued. “I never knew there was a tunnel here. I could have gone home as soon as you told me about it. But I didn’t, because I wanted to see this through. We’re a coven now, even if it means I’m in a coven led by a Tatter.” She sobbed.

  “Okay, okay.” Tobias rubbed her shoulder. Maybe he was only a Tatter, but he didn’t like sobbing. “We all want the same thing.”

  “Should we go then?” Celia sniffled.

  Tobias turned, and they trudged on in silence, funneling into a single file as the tunnel narrowed. In the cramped space, Tobias’s arms brushed the sludgy walls. Only a few inches separated the top of his head from the muddy ceiling. The dirt that pressed around them had a sulfurous smell.

  He took a deep breath, particles of earth catching in his throat. Maybe he wouldn’t be the one to die. Maybe the banshee had howled for the schoolmates he’d left behind.

  Behind him, Mariana coughed.

  “What are we heading into?” Thomas wheezed. “When we get to Maremount—you said it was dangerous. Is that because of the bone wardens?”

  Mud coated Tobias’s arms, and he held his elbows out to the side, trying to make more room as they shuffled through. “The wardens will come after us immediately if we use magic within the city walls. We should use Lady Cleo’s Cloak before we leave the tunnel. I’m hoping we’ll be near the south of the city. I want to find my old coven. But they might be outside the southern gates, in the wilderness. If so, hopefully the cloak will last long enough for us to get out of the city again.”

  He could see a stream of light ahead. “We’re almost there.” As he continued toward it, the tunnel came to an abrupt end. The blue morning sky shone through a hole the size of a dinner plate, just a couple of inches above Tobias’s head.

  “It’s a narrow exit,” he said. “Fiona, can you lead us in the cloaking spell? I can never remember that one.”

  When they finished chanting it together through Mariana’s coughs, he reached his hands up into the fresh air. Something scratched his arms as he pushed the earth apart above him and dug his fingers into the dirt. He pulled himself into the light, wriggling to free his shoulders and then his legs. He found himself in a large thicket of blackberry bushes. Thorns tore the bottom of his shirt. As he looked over the brambles, he found himself outside the city gates on one of the northern shores. They were outside Scorpiongate—not far from his home, but perhaps too far from the Ragmen’s new hideout.

  “Tobias!” Fiona’s voice called from below.

  He was confused for a moment, as he could see clods of dirt moving around on the ground, until he remembered that they were invisible. He felt around for Fiona’s arms and then pulled her out into the briary shrubs. She coughed, gasping for breath as she got her bearings above ground.

  One by one, each coven member slithered out of the narrow opening, bodies covered in sludge. Once everyone was birthed from earthy canal, Tobias led them out of the thicket and over the rocky ground toward the glistening Charles River. He caught a glimpse of an elegant figure slithering in the spumy brine, a flash of oily green and gold skin, white hair and blue eyes, before it disappeared again below the froth.

  “What was that?” asked Fiona.

  “A nippexie,” he said. “A water spirit.”

  She exhaled. “Amazing.”

  He inhaled the clean waterside air. He knew this water well, full of eels and mummichogs.

  Thomas’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “We need to find your friends, right, Tobias? I’ve got the preacher. Celia, you’ve got the skull?”

  “Got it,” she said.

  “We’ll have to pass all the way through the city to the other side,” said Tobias.

  Unable to see each other, they held onto hands and arms as they walked toward the city gate. As the large stone arch of the gate came into view, Tobias could see the golden cage that hung from a sculpted scorpion at the top of the gate.

  “What is that?” said Alan.

  “It’s a gibbet. A punishment.”

  The criminal’s grimacing face became clear as they drew closer. Within the cage, glass encased her, filled with a pale gold liquid. Red hair undulated around her face, and pain contorted her features. Two pale scorpions speared her neck on either side. Everything was deathly still within the cage, except her eyes, which shifted from the sky to the ground and back again.

  “Is she alive?” Mariana whispered.

  “Yes. She’ll stay like that for the remainder of her sentence,” said Tobias in a hushed tone.

  “What did she do?” asked Alan.

  “Probably treason,” said Celia. “Maybe treason against Rawhed and not the proper sovereign.”

  “Sounds about right.” Before they entered the gate, Tobias gripped Fiona’s hand on one side and Alan’s on the other. “No one can speak when we enter the city. The bone wardens stand on either side. We don’t want them to sense us.”

  They walked through the entrance into the narrow city streets. Tobias glanced back after they entered. High on the wall hung the hollow-eyed bone wardens, frozen in guard over Maremount. He’d always avoided Scorpiongate; a glimpse of the wardens’ large antlers from a distance had satisfied his curiosity. Up close, he could see they were shaped like men but with longer arms and legs. A thin, almost translucent layer of skin covered their skeletons and tendons. For a moment, he was almost certain they’d be able to hear his blood rushing as he stared at them, but they remained still. Under each warden lay a large pile of bones, like scraps in the roost of a large carnivorous bird.

  Turning his back on the wardens, he continued into the city. They were in his neighborhood—Crutched Square. After living in Boston, he’d forgotten how cramped the city streets were, and how the uneven buildings always looked like they might topple onto the cobblestones. He’d also forgotten about the sludgy sewage that ran down the centers of the alleys in his neighborhood.

  On the lower levels were the shops, and crammed into the bulging upper stories were tiny homes, with chimneys poking out of the roofs at odd angles. The city looked even worse than when he’d left, and as they walked down Loblolly Row, he saw that many of the buildings were abandoned. Where Anequs’s Pudding Shop had once stood lay a burnt shell of blackened stone and wood. Broken glass littered the floor throughout the Sign of Golden Crucible, and two dead cats lay in the rubble across the street. It would have been nice if he could’ve shown Fiona his neighborhood before it had been torched.

  He quickened his pace as they neared his home, and they rounded the corner to Black Bread Lane. In place of his narrow house and the bakery below it, he found only a pile of char and twisted metal. He broke free from the group and kicked over a burnt plank of wood, hoping to find a remnant of his former life—maybe part of a book or at least one of his father’s pie tins. But there was only ash.

  He couldn’t picture what had happened after he’d left. The fire must have spread quickly. Maybe Oswald and Eden had become lost in the smoke. His father must have fled south, into the wilderness outside the city. The raven had said they were still alive, hadn’t he?

  Fiona’s voice whispered, “Tobias!”

  He swallowed and walked back toward the center of the street, groping around in the air until he found her hand again. They climbed the steep slope of Curtzan Hill. Planks of wood were nailed over the windows of the Swan Ladies’ Tavern.

  Hurrying down the other side of the hill, they approached
the center of the city, passing only one shop front that remained intact: the Worshipful Company of Theurgeons. The velvet-robed philosophers had set up shops in the Tatter neighborhoods, charging the poor to divine changes in their fortunes.

  Though most of the city had been silent, a crowd roared as they approached Lullaby Square at the bottom of the hill. When they turned the corner to the large open marketplace, the first thing Tobias saw was a throng of people milling around in the square in agitated swirls. The towering Throcknell Fortress and the watchtower loomed over the crowd, casting them in shadow.

  In front of the fortress stood the Lilitu Fountain, a stone structure about six feet high and twelve feet wide. From the side of the fountain, the petrified head of the last succubus killed in Maremount spewed the town’s drinking water.

  Above the crowd’s din, a clopping noise echoed off the stone walls. With a lurch of his stomach, Tobias recognized the sound. An execution would take place here today. He looked back at his friends to find that their outlines had already begun to appear. His mouth went dry.

  “We need to go,” he whispered.

  Celia replied, “I want to see what’s happening.”

  “There’s not much time left,” Tobias said. “The spell is wearing off, and we’re only halfway through the city.”

  “No. I want to see what’s happening.”

  His breathing quickened and he could feel his face flush with irritation. “You said you were on our side. Stay here if you want, but give me the skull.”

  “I can see you now.” Fiona stared at Tobias. Her body was now translucent, and her amber eyes hovered in the air.

  “We have to leave.” He started walking, pulling Fiona with him, and the others followed.

  But Celia remained rooted in place with the skull. He turned for her, and as he did, the towering Tricephalus came into view. The crowd fell silent. The three-headed monster was Maremount’s living gallows. A flat triangle, parallel to the ground, formed its gray body. A grotesque and vaguely equine head jutted from each of the triangle’s corners, and black nooses hung from the sides. Three spindly legs propped up the corners and moved the creature into the town square with a jerky gait.

  The Tricephelus halted its march behind the Lilitu Fountain. One of the heads grimaced and snorted, lashing the air with a pallid tongue.

  “Celia! We need to go now!” In his panic, Tobias shouted.

  Their bodies had become fully visible now, and Celia stood on her tiptoes, clutching the handbag with the skull. She strained to see over the crowd as a Harvester guard in an embroidered red and blue outfit ascended the fountain’s platform.

  “We bring before you today a man convicted of the most heinous crime of treason against the Champion. Today, the Champion shall be avenged!” His palm thrust into the air, the guard smiled, looking from one side to another as though expecting applause. The crowd remained silent. He nodded to someone on the platform below him. “Bring him up.”

  The Champion. Tobias had forgotten that was what the Harvesters called Rawhed.

  Two more guards hauled up a young man, no older than Tobias. But the man wasn’t a Tatter like he was. He wore a ripped jacket, and his shoes were muddied, but his clothes were laced with pearls and ribbons. He trembled as a guard fixed a noose around his neck.

  A scream pierced the air. “Stop! Stop!”

  It was Celia. The grim-faced crowd turned to stare at her, murmuring. She rushed forward into the throng, clinging to the handbag. Panicking, Tobias rushed after her.

  Her voice echoed off the stones of the watchtower. “I’m Lady Celestine Throcknell, daughter of King Balthazar. You must release my cousin! I have something the Champion will want.”

  Tobias was right behind her now, and he grabbed the back of her sweater. As she spun around, he tore the bag from her grasp and turned to sprint back to the rest of the group.

  “Run!”

  With Thomas leading the way, they left Celia in the square and fled toward a long and narrow alley that led south. Tobias gripped the bag as he sprinted. Behind them, the guards’ ceremonial swords clanked. Their best chance at this point was to go invisible and hope the bone wardens wouldn’t find them.

  Tobias gasped, “Fiona, can you say the cloaking spell again?”

  As they ran, Fiona led them in the spell, and their bodies faded to invisibility. But when they finished intoning the words, the sonorous bells of the watchtower began to toll, calling forth the bone wardens.

  “Where are we going?” said Thomas.

  “We’re coming to a canal at the end of this alley,” yelled Tobias. “Take a right at the water, and it will take us out of the southern gate.”

  He tried to run faster, but he bumped into someone in front of him, nearly tripping over a pair of legs. The end of the alley came into view, and the putrid scent of the Shoremuck Canal hung in the air. As he neared the alley’s mouth, he heard a scream, and an invisible body stopped short in front of him.

  “There’s a bone warden coming!” Mariana shrieked. “Go back!”

  He was pushed backward as his friends crammed back into the alley. He stumbled, falling onto someone. Fiona yelped beneath him and pushed him up, and his heart pounded as he scrambled to stand again. They would need a spell to get out of this, but his magical knowledge was useless against bone wardens. They could perhaps transform and escape, but Thomas didn’t know how, and Mariana’s turtle wouldn’t get very far.

  “What are we doing?” Fiona shouted.

  The only danger wrought by Wormock’s spell book was the accidental collision of Fiona’s wind spell with Alan’s fire spell. Just as a kernel of an idea formed in Tobias’s mind, the pale form of a bone warden appeared at the entrance to the alley. A nauseating howl rose from its cavernous mouth. Tobias’s stomach fell as the sharp tips of its antlers barred their way.

  He turned to run, knocking into Fiona again, but another bone warden dropped down behind them, blocking the rear exit. Even as the blood pounded in his ears, he worked out a possible plan.

  “Fiona, do you remember the spell for growth?”

  Her response came out as a shriek. “What?”

  “Just trust me. Say it when I count to three.”

  The bone warden near the canal stroked its long fingers along Thomas’s chest. Thomas became visible at its touch.

  “Alan, I need you to say the fire spell on the count of three,” yelled Tobias.

  The warden clutched Thomas, raising him into the air. Howling, the creature opened its jaws. Thomas’s eyes bulged in horror.

  “One, two three,” Tobias said. As his friends chanted the spells for fire and growth, he began to chant the spell for wind.

  A fist-sized ball of flame blossomed above Tobias, hovering between the plaster alley walls. Fiona’s spell for growth expanded it until it was two feet across. As Tobias finished the wind spell, he sent the fireball hurtling through the alleyway toward the canal. It struck the bone warden’s shoulder.

  Unfortunately, it also hit Thomas’s back.

  Roaring as fire enveloped its arm, the warden dropped the historian. Thomas landed hard on his hands and knees as flames burst from his shirt. He scrambled to get up, flailing forward toward the canal. He plunged in.

  “Again!” shouted Tobias.

  They called up another fireball, hurling it toward the warden. This time, they ignited its face. Its ivory features began to melt, and it shrieked toward the sky with a deafening caterwaul. It stumbled backward.

  “Turn the other way, Fiona,” said Tobias.

  With their third recitation of the spells, a fireball hurled in the other direction, striking the second bone warden. It emitted a piercing roar, and then, with a catlike movement, it propelled itself onto the alley wall, its talons finding easy purchase in the soft plaster. With flames blazing from its head, it charged toward them. Dust sprayed from its claws where they stabbed the walls.

  “Run to the canal!” Tobias shouted. “Transform!”

  He
heard splashes as someone jumped into the canal, and then as he reached the mouth of the alley, Fiona screamed behind him. He turned to see that the bone warden held her in its grasp above its head. Its claws pierced her neck. Blood soaked her shirt, and she let out a cry. He tried to think clearly, but the only thought that came to him was that this must have been why the banshee had screamed at him. His heart raced as the blood drained from his head—he was going to watch Fiona die.

  The warden’s scalp blazed, and its features melted like a candle while it screeched into Fiona’s face. Thin lips curled up, revealing sharp teeth, but then it went silent, seemingly distracted. The creature pointed a sinewy finger at her neck.

  “Transform!” Tobias shouted again.

  Though fire deformed its face, the warden continued to point at her throat. He could see Fiona’s lips move as she recited the spell, and he chanted the words along with her. His bones and skin condensed. His face protruded into a beak, and feathers sprouted from his skin. Within moments, he flew in the air with Fiona.

  42

  Tobias

  Tobias circled over the canal, and he could see Thomas swimming toward the southern gate followed by a wolverine, a turtle, and a duck that he could only assume was an actual duck. In her bat form, Fiona swerved above him, and a trickle of blood flowed from the cut in her neck.

  He climbed higher into the air, taking the lead. He directed their flight past the southern gate and lower over the marsh, but he saw no sign of the Ragmen’s camp. They glided among the river birch and maple trees until they glided through the Great Swamp—the Cwag, as it was known here.

  After they landed on the banks below a black locust tree, he transformed back into his human form, feeling the pain rip through his bones and muscles. He hunched over on his knees and looked up to see Fiona shift back into a girl again. She bent over, clutching her stomach and retching. Blood ran down to her waist, and there were deep gashes in her neck and shoulder.