Witch Born

by Amber Argyle

  So Senna studied the trees of Haven. They never ceased to amaze her, especially their variety. For instance, some doors opened right onto the white gravel path. Others sat above curving steps made of woven roots or expanses of living wood. All the windows and doors were peaked and bubbled outward, though they varied in size.

  Arianis took down a map from the wall and placed it on an easel. “We begin studying a new nation today. Can anyone tell me what country this is?”

  Silence echoed through the room.

  “Senna, care to enlighten us?”

  She suppressed a groan. The Heads had insisted she take some Witchling classes to fill in her somewhat-spotty education. Unfortunately, some of those classes were taught by Apprentices. This one was taught by Arianis, who had been trained from infancy to defeat the Dark Witch, and whose exceptionally powerful song had ensured a clear path to the highest level of Haven’s hierarchy.

  And then Senna had come along. She’d defeated the Dark Witch. And there were whispers among the Keepers of her strength—whispers that Senna’s song was even stronger than the Dark Witch’s.

  No one spoke of the astonishing strength of Arianis’ song anymore.

  Senna tore her gaze from the window and glanced at the map before turning back to her vigil. “It’s Harshen.”

  Arianis crossed her arms. “And what can you tell us of Harshen?”

  Senna sighed. Sometimes Arianis gave up at this point. Apparently, today wasn’t one of those days. “It’s far to the south—a land of deserts and scrubby mountains. The people live in large pavilions and have dark skin. Rivers run high and furious once a year, before dwindling to barren puddles by midsummer. Harshen is isolated by deserts in the interior and horrible storms along the coast.”

  Arianis grunted. “Almost word for word from Desert Countries, by Jennalee Odd. Do you have any original ideas in your head?” Senna didn’t respond. It was clear Arianis hadn’t really expected her to. “And what do the Harshens think of Witches?”

  “They blame us for their country’s lack of water,” said Nilly, an Apprentice with enormous ears and pretty brown eyes.

  “They hate us. The whole world hates us. By destroying Tarten, the Heads only make that perception worse.” The words darted from Senna’s mouth like a flock of startled birds.

  Arianis gaped at Senna. “This is a geography class, not a political debate.”

  Senna didn’t regret what she’d said. After all, it was true. “You asked what the Harshens think of us. I told you.”

  Arianis answered, her voice dripping with scorn, but Senna had stopped listening. Outside, someone was calling her name.

  “Senna! Senna!”

  She knew that voice. She shot from her chair.

  Arianis startled. “Sit down. Class isn’t dismissed yet.”

  “Senna!” the shout came again.

  Senna lifted her skirt and ran from the tree house. In the sharp sunlight of midday, she caught her first sight of Joshen in two months. His brown hair hung over his forehead in waves. His gray eyes—the color of snow in the shade—stood out on his tanned face. The skin around his eyes was creased, as if he never stopped smiling long enough for the lines to smooth out. With an involuntary shriek, she launched herself into his arms.

  He caught her and swung her around. She molded her body to his. This was where she fit. It was where she would always fit. Joshen released her and ran his fingers lightly over the bump on the back of her head, his body tense. “Are you all right?”

  She winced. “I’ll be fine. When did you arrive?” He’d been in their home country, Nefalie, on a recruiting assignment to find more Guardians.

  He inspected her bandaged hand with a frown. “A few hours ago. We had to meet with the Heads first.”

  “Do you know why someone would attack you?” Senna started at Reden’s Tarten accent. She hadn’t even noticed him coming up the path behind Joshen.

  The Leader of the Guardians wasn’t a tall man, but he was well built. His eyes and hair were nearly black, his skin a creamy brown. His face had a certain ageless quality. He could be anywhere from twenty to forty, but Senna had learned over the last few months he was only twenty-four. He’d become Leader of all Tarten’s armies at sixteen. His brilliance as a soldier and a tactician had assured his rise to the Leader of the Guardians mere days after he’d rebelled from Tarten, leading the Witches safely away from the armies he’d once commanded.

  His keen eyes seemed to bore into Senna. And he wasn’t the only one staring. Senna became aware of dozens of eyes watching them. Clearly reluctant to obey Arianis’ attempts to shoo them back to their seats, Witchlings peeked out the window and door of the tree. Senna felt the weight of their stares like stones in her pockets.

  “I need to borrow your student, Apprentice.” Reden gripped Senna’s arm and steered her away.

  Arianis’ eyes narrowed to slits, and Senna could see her trying to come up with some reason to deny his request. But Reden only answered to Chavis and the other Heads. Not to upstart Apprentices.

  “Fine, but I want an oral report on Harshen mountains and trade routes, due tomorrow,” Arianis said.

  She no doubt knew how much Senna loathed public speaking. But it was a small price, one she’d gladly pay for the chance to be with Joshen again.

  Before either Guardian pelted her with a barrage of questions, she told them of feeling like someone was watching her the night of her attack. The secrets whispered in an abandoned tree house. Being attacked by the two men. Her narrow escape. The terrifying trip back into the darkness with the Heads. “I took them back the next morning. All we found was broken vegetation and some bloody soil to go with the slingshot.”

  Reden pursed his lips. “You realize they were after you? You’re the captive.”

  Senna’s head spun. “No—that’s not possible.”

  Joshen raked his hands through his hair. “How do we know they didn’t simply attack her because she overheard them?”

  Reden scanned the trees around them. “If that were the case, she’d be dead. Instead, they tried to subdue her. That means they wanted to take her alive. The question is why.”

  “Maybe they just didn’t want to kill anyone,” she murmured.

  Reden’s expression hardened. “You don’t come on a mission like this unprepared to kill someone.”

  Joshen nodded westward. “The Tartens? But why would they want Senna?”

  Reden shook his head. “We don’t know it was the Tartens. As for why someone wants her, we don’t know that, either.”

  She stared in the distance without seeing anything. “Their accents didn’t sound Tarten.”

  “What did they sound like?” Reden asked.

  Shuddering, she tried to match the accents to anything else she’d heard. She was usually good with all kinds of inflection, but she was pretty sure she hadn’t heard this one before. “I don’t know.”

  Reden ground his teeth. “Is your Witch song as strong as they say it is?”

  Senna lowered her gaze. Her song had always been exceedingly strong, but since the Creators had gifted her with the Dark Witch’s song, the power of her voice had shot up like a summer weed. “Yes.”

  Reden hesitated. “The Heads have searched the island. They believe whoever attacked you is gone. I’m not so sure.”

  Joshen grunted in agreement. “This place has more burrows than a field full of gophers.”

  Senna pressed her hands into her stomach, just over the crescent-moon tattoo that circled her navel and marked her as a Witch.

  Reden eyed the foliage between the trees. Senna tried to see it as he would—cover for anyone sneaking around the island instead of a beautiful byproduct of hundreds of daily songs.

  “I tried to convince them to move the island,” he said. “They refused, claiming the Witches’ numbers are too low to attempt it. Nor do they believe they are in any real danger.”

  Senna halted. “But the man said—”

  Reden held out a fore
stalling hand. “I know. But the Heads trust in their walls and their songs to protect them.”

  Senna’s wounded hand pounded in rhythm with her racing heart. “So they won’t do anything?”

  Reden gestured to Joshen. “I convinced them to bring Guardians onto the island to watch the entrance and send out patrols. That way there will be no more men sneaking inside.”

  Senna’s mouth fell open. Men had never been allowed on the island for longer than a few days. That the Heads had agreed to let the Guardians stay spoke volumes of their fear.

  Reden started off again, and Senna fell into step beside Joshen. She didn’t know where the two were going, and she didn’t care, as long as she was with Joshen.

  “Will they let you Guard me now?” she asked him.

  His jaw was tight. “No. They say safeguarding the entrance should be enough to keep you safe, and my presence would only distract you from your studies. Besides, it’s against the rules.”

  She managed a tight smile. It wasn’t enough, but that Joshen was here at all was a miracle. “They’re probably right—you would distract me.”

  They arrived at the tree house Reden had used during his last stay on the island. He unlocked the door and pushed on it, but it stuck fast. He dropped his shoulder and rammed the door. It flew open and banged into the opposite wall, making Senna jump.

  Reden’s desk was just to the left of the entrance. He brushed the dust from his chair before collapsing onto it. “You need to tell me the truth about what you were really doing in the uninhabited part of the island in the middle of the night. None of this, ‘I couldn’t sleep’ business you gave the Heads.”

  How had he known? She closed her eyes.

  “Senna?” Joshen prodded.

  Despite how many times she had told her story, she’d always left this part out. “I’ve begged the Heads to release the curse on Tarten. They’ve refused me time and again. I would lift it myself, but it takes an entire choir…so I do what I can.”

  Joshen brushed her hair over her shoulder. “Oh, Senna.”

  She met his gaze. “They saved our lives, Joshen, at risk to their own. How can we just forget that?”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” Reden said, his voice thick.

  Her face burning with shame, Senna stared at the perfectly smooth floor. Of course Reden hadn’t forgotten. He was Tarten. And he’d sacrificed his country for the world. Senna wondered if she had that kind of strength. She measured herself and came up dreadfully short. “I’m sorry.”

  Somehow, this was her fault. After all, she had agreed to curse Tarten. Had asked Reden to betray his people. Had helped sing that curse into being.

  “I’m where I should be.” Reden’s voice had softened.

  Senna nodded.

  The Leader started searching his desk. “How did you know to hide from your attacker in the first place?”

  Her breath caught in her throat. Haltingly, she told him she’d heard music nearly every night—the song of the Four Sisters. And that the night she was attacked she’d heard music all around her, warning her.

  “Has it happened since?” Reden asked.

  “Not like that.”

  He opened his mouth to say something but hesitated, as if measuring his words carefully. “Senna, sometimes a lie is better than the truth—if that truth does more harm than good. I think it best that your singing for Tarten stay among us. Do you understand?”

  Senna stared at him in disbelief. She thought she knew Reden, just like she knew Joshen. Reden was a career soldier, a man of honor, a man who saw the world in terms of defensibility and tactics. She’d never expected him to encourage her to lie. Especially not to the Heads. But then, he’d betrayed his country and his men to save the world. Some might not call him honorable at all.

  As if uncomfortable under her scrutiny, Reden waved them toward the door. “Joshen, see that she gets to her next class.”

  His hand on the small of her back, Joshen held open the door. They stepped out of the tree and moved down the steps made of the tree’s roots. Senna eyed the horizon expectantly. She sensed a storm would be rolling over the cliffs soon—after all, she had helped sing it into being this morning.

  As she listened, it seemed the wind’s fingers strummed branches like strings; the sound resonated in hollows and crevices. She could almost taste the mineral rain, see the color melt away into shades of gray, and feel the cool damp.

  “Senna?”

  She realized Joshen had been speaking to her for a while and she hadn’t heard any of it.

  She forced a bright smile. “How are you?”

  He shrugged. “I missed you. And I’m starving! Are you sure you can’t sing a steer to swim to the island? I could use a steak.”

  She laughed for real this time. “You know Witch song doesn’t work on animals. If it did, I’d have sung you here weeks ago.”

  Grinning, he glanced up and down the trail as if making sure no one was watching before pulling her off the path. They ended up hidden by the plants, cradled in the buttressed roots of an enormous tree.

  Turning suddenly serious, Joshen studied her, his gaze seeming to unearth everything she wanted so desperately to keep hidden. “Now, tell me why you’re so sad.”

  She let out a bitter laugh. How could he so easily see the darkness she was desperately trying to hide? “I thought being with all the other Witches would mean I’d finally find a place I belonged, but I’m more alone here than anywhere I’ve ever been.” It was true. Even when her mother had left her, she’d had her dog Bruke, and later Joshen. Now Bruke was dead, and they’d taken Joshen away.

  But he was back now. It would get better.

  “What about your mother?”

  Senna fought to keep her emotions from overwhelming her. “The only words that ever pass between us are angry. So we keep silent.” She didn’t say her mother wanted them to leave Haven forever. Nothing good could come of his knowing that. She gripped his shirt and buried her face in his chest. “And there’s the nightmares. Nearly every night.”

  His arms tightened around her. She wet her lips. Dare she tell him the next part? “Something’s happening to me, Joshen. It’s not just that my song’s getting stronger. My senses are, too. I truly hear the pain of the Four Sisters in Tarten. It haunts me.”

  With the tip of his thumb, he traced the tattoo on her stomach—his touch unerringly accurate. “What can I do to make it better?”

  By the Creators, she’d missed the smell of him—horses and the sea. “Make me forget, for just a little while.”

  He tipped her chin up and kissed her. He was always soft and gentle, but today she felt an undeniable hunger somewhere deep inside him. He was trying to suppress it. But she didn’t want that. She wanted him to banish the lingering foulness of the curse and the fear that had never released her from its sweaty grasp, replacing all of that with the sweet taste of his mouth.

  Gripping fistfuls of his dark hair, she pulled him down and deepened the kiss. His lips crushed against hers, Joshen responded, kissing her like he’d never kissed her before. The stubble along his jaw was rough against her chin. She felt herself melting, going soft inside.

  Breathless, she pulled away before things grew more heated. “Mother will call out the Heads if I’m not home for supper.” She wanted to invite him, but she feared his presence would upset the fragile silence in her home. “And after, I have another class.”

  With a groan that sounded like half frustration and half pain, Joshen rested his forehead against hers. “This late?”

  “Three of the Four Sisters are more awake at night. On the next dark phase of the moon, the chesli harvest will begin. That lasts until dawn every night until the moon starts to outshine the flowers.” Senna let herself linger next to him. “Drenelle says communing with the earth works best at night during a rainstorm.”

  “Mmm hmm.” She could tell he wasn’t really listening. He ran his fingers along the edges of her face. “How much longer until I can marr
y you?”

  Senna licked her swollen lips, savoring the taste of him. “Apprentices aren’t allowed to marry. You know that. ”

  He cradled her face in his hands. “Well then, how much longer until they graduate you to a Keeper?”

  She tried to imagine their future, but she couldn’t picture spending the rest of their lives on this tiny little island, hidden away from the rest of the world. Joshen would never have his horses. She would never have the freedom she longed for.

  Putting a little distance between them, she pulled her necklace out from under her dress. From it hung her pendant—a circular amber piece that had been cut into a waxing crescent and a waning gibbous.

  She tried to unclasp it, but her injured hand wouldn’t cooperate. Joshen brushed her hair to the front of her shoulder and fumbled with the catch until he had it free.

  With a click, she detached the waning gibbous and slipped it from the cord before settling the crescent back in the hollow of her throat. The gibbous felt warm and familiar in her palm. “I meant to give this to you earlier.”

  Taking Joshen’s hand, she placed it inside. “The moon is the sign of the Witches. Each phase represents our power as individuals. The full moon is the combined power of all of us. This pendant was cut to represent that. You and I, we’re stronger together than apart. And if you ever need to find me, just tap the pendant against a piece of metal. It will vibrate and lift, pointing in my direction. I’ll be able to do the same for you.”

  Joshen stared at the pendant. “I don’t know what to say.”

  She smiled. “Say you’ll always be there. No matter what.”

  “Always.”

  She fingered her necklace. Next to the pendant was the ring Joshen had given her over two months ago. It was a simple thing, made of willow branches that Coyel had sung to wrap around a pearl.

  Senna’s mother and the other Heads had had a fit over it. Apprentices weren’t allowed to have contact with men, let alone be betrothed to one. So Senna had quietly moved it from her hand to her neck. For her, the meaning was still the same, regardless of its location.