Mist-Torn Witches 02:Witches in Red

by Barb Hendee

  Firewood proved a problem as well. For thirteen years, our men had not had to seek firewood in the winter. Much of what they managed to bring back was too wet and too green to burn, so we began piling it in the wagons where we could to try to dry it.

  It didn’t snow much in eastern Droevinka, but it did freeze, and we faced many cold nights huddled beneath blankets in the wagons. I think these nights were hardest on Great-Uncle Marten and his aging wife, Leticia.

  One of my own bleakest moments occurred when Mariah came to me and whispered, “What about my birthday?”

  I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. Mariah had been born in midwinter. Back at Belfleur Keep, Mother had always watched the moon and picked a day to celebrate Mariah’s birth. Lord Camden would order something special to be made for dinner, and he always gave Mariah a new gown as a gift, and she would dance for everyone—and be adored.

  But now . . . what could I do for her?

  With a smile, I hugged her thin shoulders. “I’ve not forgotten.” Even though I had.

  The next day, we camped near a dried-up cornfield. I slipped away and gathered up some husks. While I was there, I rejoiced at finding a small patch of onions that someone had neglected to dig up in the autumn harvest. I dug up every onion I could find. Then I went back to the wagon, found some scraps of cloth, made Mariah a corn-husk doll wearing a dress, and hid it.

  To my eternal gratitude, Marcus brought down a deer that night.

  So, for the following evening, I was able to produce a large pot of venison and onion stew for the family. I somehow turned this into a celebration for Mariah’s birthday, and I gave her the doll. A full stomach of meat and onions did everyone good, and Mikolai played his violin while Mariah danced for us around the fire.

  She went to bed happy that night and kissed me twice.

  A week later, our cow died, and although this meant there would be no more milk, the men butchered her and we lived on the meat.

  As spring came and the trees burst forth with green leaves, I welcomed the warmer air and marveled that we had somehow all managed to survive. The world looked brighter to us again, as it was now time to head southeast toward our late-spring and summer destination.

  And we all knew that no one would turn us away.

  The prince of the House of Yegor owned vast lands of apple orchards and berry fields, so many that he could not employ enough peasants to handle the harvest—and the strawberries began arriving in late spring. Years ago, he had let it be known that if any of the Móndyalítko were willing to work the harvest, they were welcome to camp in a large meadow about half a league from his castle.

  At least fourteen Móndyalítko caravans came every year, my own family among them.

  It was a pleasure for us to live among our own for the damp spring and warm southeast summers. We harvested strawberries first, then raspberries, then blueberries, and then apples in the early fall. We were asked to pay nothing in rent for our stay, and we were allowed to keep a portion of the berries and apples we picked—and also to fish in any of the area’s numerous streams and to set snares for rabbits.

  This entire yearly cycle had become a rhythm so comfortable to us that we’d forgotten anything else: late spring and summer in the southeast meadow of Yegor, the Autumn Fair in Kéonsk, and winter and early spring inside the safe walls of Belfleur Keep.

  Though now some of this rhythm had been lost to us, we could all at least look forward to our journey to Castle Yegor.

  However, as we arrived and rolled into the meadow, already filled with other wagons, I could feel a change in how we were observed. The line of Marentõr in general was not viewed as prosperous, but previously, my own family had commanded respect and even envy. My mother had seen to it that our horses were well fed and groomed and that our wagons were always in good repair, with freshly painted shutters. Our group was always well dressed, with enough supplies to help other families in need. In addition, we had Marcus, and there were other groups who longed for a shifter of their own.

  As we set up camp in our usual place that summer, I felt the first tinge of shame. Our horses were thin and unkempt. The harsh winter in the forests and fields had left our wagons dull and in need of repair, and we had no money for paint. We ourselves were thin and shabby, and we did not have enough to feed ourselves, much less to share.

  Some of the families who had envied us in the past now snubbed us and pretended we didn’t exist. But others were kind—especially those to whom we had once been kind—and they brought us oats and honey and eggs. Mariah seemed to become more herself again at the prospect of being among a larger number of our people, and I got a campfire going and made her some scrambled eggs.

  Things improved from there. Our men caught trout in the streams, and soon the strawberry harvest began. We worked hard, but in my spare time, I washed and mended clothes; my father, Mikolai, and Marcus did what they could to repair the wagons; and Shawn and his boys cared for the horses.

  Shawn’s two oldest sons, Orlando and Payton, soon became my main concern. They were eighteen and nineteen, and I had observed them more than once looking into other wagons at food and silver trinkets. I spoke to Aunt Miriam and asked her to give them a stern warning about the dangers of stealing from our own people. We could be banned from the meadow for life. Thankfully, the young men only looked and did not touch, and in the end, they caused us no trouble.

  The summer weather was warm, and the harvest was plentiful, and by autumn, Mariah was running and laughing with the other girls and no longer hiding inside herself so much. I was glad to see this, for I remembered that at her age, I’d fostered great curiosity about the other families, especially the line of Fawe, who came every year. They were among the most prosperous of the Móndyalítko, as they tended to give birth to an unusual number of Mist-Torn seers. Some of their people had wheat gold hair, and their seers were always born with lavender eyes.

  I was sorry when the harvest ended.

  But for the last month of autumn, we headed back to Kéonsk.

  By this time, my father and Aunt Miriam had no illusions regarding how far we’d fallen, and they didn’t argue or complain with Master Deandre when he placed us way at the back of the fair again.

  We earned what money we could, and fool that I was, I assumed that now that my father and Aunt Miriam and the other elders had finally grasped our situation, they would be busy making a plan for winter.

  We certainly couldn’t wander from place to place as we had last year.

  But that’s exactly what we did, and the winter became a blur of cold and hunger. Although none of our people died, we arrived in the meadow of Yegor the following spring looking every inch the “filthy gypsies” we were so often called. Mariah had completely retreated inside herself and did not come out. She didn’t run or play with the other girls. Only one family took pity on us and brought us a few oats and eggs.

  The strawberry harvest began, and we all did our best to work, but we were in a weakened state. Marcus and Mikolai both fished and set out snares instead of picking berries, and I thought that as with last summer, a bit of sunshine and decent food would put us all to rights soon.

  Then one night, just as the raspberry harvest began, Orlando and Payton were caught red-handed stealing from the wagon of a Mist-Torn seer from the line of Renéive.

  My father and Aunt Miriam begged, but the rules of the families were clear and no exceptions could be made. We were told to leave and not to come back.

  I was numb. We had lost our last place of true safety.

  Worse, I experienced a moment of irrational fear that Marcus might leave us. Any of the groups would have taken him. But of course he didn’t, and I don’t know where that fear came from.

  We wandered again until the last month of autumn and then headed back to Kéonsk. At end of that year’s fair, my father and Aunt Miriam announced that somethi
ng drastic must change and that they had come to a decision. I felt a single moment of hope that they’d found us someplace safe to spend the winter. Then, when I heard their decision, I bit the inside of my mouth. Their plan was . . . uncertain at best.

  “We’ve heard that the House of Äntes is more accepting of our people,” Aunt Miriam announced, “so we will travel north and west, to Enêmûsk. We can find a place inside the city to set up and put on our shows. We should at least be able to earn enough to feed ourselves and the horses.”

  While this sounded far better than the hardships of last winter, I wondered where they’d heard of this tolerance of the Äntes. I’d never heard such a thing. Also, the winters in the northwest provinces were much colder than those in the east, and should this plan fail, I feared we would be wintering in ice and snow.

  Marcus caught my eye, and I knew he was thinking the same thing.

  But neither he nor I had a voice in these decisions, and so we headed west first and then north, arriving at Enêmûsk just as the weather began to turn.

  To this day, I don’t know who had given my aunt and father such foolish advice, but the Äntes soldiers guarding the front entrance to Enêmûsk looked at us with such disgust that I put my hands over Mariah’s ears to stop her from hearing whatever was about to come from their mouths.

  It was vile.

  In the midst of their insults, they made it understood that we would not even be allowed to roll our wagons inside the city. They informed us that the Äntes did not suffer any vagabonds or beggars and that we’d best be on our way if we knew what was good for us.

  I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face. Some of the life went out of him that day, but I was beyond pity, and for the first time I felt anger toward my mother. Had Great-Uncle Marten been right? Had she intentionally made the rest of us dependent upon her? Had she enjoyed feeling so necessary? Why had she never tried to teach Aunt Miriam or me how to read palms? I had no answers.

  That winter almost cannot be described.

  We were driven away from every place we tried to make camp, and Marcus found it difficult to hunt in the snow. By midwinter, four of the horses had died. The men managed to butcher a bit of stringy meat from one of them, but we were driven off in the morning by a group of soldiers, forced to leave the other three lying in the snow. This was hard on Shawn’s younger sons, as they loved our horses.

  Mariah did not mention her birthday. She was too cold and hungry to remember it.

  About a moon later, poor old Leticia died, and I think Great-Uncle Marten was too hungry to mourn her. Within a few days, Micah and Katlyn’s youngest child died.

  Mariah had become a shadow, and I feared she was next.

  Then one night, we managed to make camp outside a village, and my father and Uncle Landrien went in to see what the prospects might be for us putting on a show. I found this rather a stretch, since few of us were capable of performing, and we looked like the walking dead. I wondered if the men simply planned to find a tavern and perhaps beg a mug of ale.

  But when they came back, they gathered us together and delivered unexpected news.

  “We were just told of an encampment called Ryazan, to the north, up above Enêmûsk,” my father said. “A prince of the House of Pählen owns a collection of silver mines, and there is a shortage of workers. The soldiers overseeing the mines have a large a provisions tent, and they are willing to sell food to anyone who mines for them. We could offer to work and buy food and at least have a place to spend the remainder of the winter.”

  A chance at work and food sat well with the rest of us, and so we headed farther north and then slightly west. The going was slow, as only one horse now pulled each wagon. We rolled into the Ryazan encampment on the last dregs of our strength and spirit.

  From the top of our wagon, I took my first look at what struck me as a sea of tents and men in brown tabards.

  The Camp

  At the time of our arrival in Ryazan, Aunt Miriam no longer even pretended to be our leader. She was barely able to rise from her bunk.

  So it was my father, Uncle Landrien, and Mikolai who first spoke with Captain Garrett of the House of Pählen. He came out to meet us, and I stood in the doorway of our wagon, peering out and listening.

  Captain Garrett was a wide-shouldered man, with silver hair and a proud bearing. But he was in need of workers, and he spoke to our men with respect. Unfortunately, the bargain he offered was a disappointment.

  “Our miners sign a one-year contract,” he said, “and they get paid at the end when the contract is fulfilled. We just had a new round of contracts signed in the autumn, but I can sign you on at a slightly reduced wage, and you can work out the rest of the year.” He went on to explain that through the year, while working out their contracts, the men could take out vouchers to be exchanged for food from the provisions tent. These vouchers would later be counted against their wages. I could see this for what it was—a way to reduce monetary wages by preying on the miners’ need to feed their families. But at the time, I didn’t care. It sounded as if our men would be able to get food for us right away.

  “However,” Captain Garrett continued, “no one is allowed to trade vouchers for provisions until they’ve worked in the mines for at least a month. We’ve had a few workers load up on food, work one day, and then disappear.”

  My father’s face fell. We needed food now. We could not last a month.

  The captain seemed to understand this—although I’d been watching him count the number of men in our group, along with the boys old enough to work. I knew he wanted us to stay. He looked at our horses, which were all thin and weakened like us, but these last four were otherwise sound.

  “I’ll buy your horses from you, and you can use the money to purchase provisions to feed your people.” He pointed north. “The miners’ camp is through those trees. You can get your wagons settled and then bring the horses to me.”

  For traveling Móndyalítko, the idea of selling our horses was almost unthinkable. They were our lifeblood, our method of moving from one place to the next in the rhythm of the year. But we had lost our yearly rhythm, and the desperate state of the men drove them to agree with the captain’s offer. Later, I learned that none of the other miners had ever been told they had to work a month before taking advantage of the vouchers. Although Captain Garrett was a fair man in most ways, I thought he might have put us in a position of having to sell our horses so that we could not leave.

  At the time, however, I didn’t know this.

  By that afternoon, we’d settled our wagons in the miners’ camp. Our horses had been sold, and we’d been given a good price. Our larders were filled with supplies from the soldiers’ provision tent, including oats, lentils, dried tomatoes, onions, tea, wheels of cheese, and a few pails of milk with cream floating on the surface. How cheaply we’d been bought.

  Then all the men except Marcus signed contracts to work for Captain Garrett. Marcus didn’t wish to sign, and he was excused because we would still need our hunter. I am ashamed at how relieved we all felt simply to have food and a place to camp and the promise of work, even if the men would not be paid in actual coin for nearly a year.

  We lit a campfire, and Katlyn and I got to work making a large pot of lentil stew with onions and dried tomatoes. That night, Mariah sat by the fire with a blanket around her shoulders, and I brought her a warm bowl of lentils. She was too hungry to even wolf it down, so she took small bites.

  “We can stay here?” she whispered. “We won’t have to leave tomorrow?”

  I don’t think she understood that our horses were gone.

  “No,” I whispered back, sitting beside her. “We don’t have to leave, and I’ll make you soft oats with cream for breakfast.”

  She leaned into me and pressed her face in my shoulder. Maybe we were not bought so cheaply after all.

  The ne
xt day, the men went to the mines to work, all except for Marcus and Great-Uncle Marten, who was too old. Only one of Shawn’s boys had not turned twelve yet, and apparently, any male over twelve was considered old enough to work in the silver mines. So in one fell swoop, Captain Garrett had gained my father, Uncle Landrien, Mikolai, Micah, Shawn, and four of Shawn’s sons.

  I let Mariah rest that day, and I set about the task of getting a more permanent camp set up. Then I made supper. Katlyn helped me, and she also minded her two remaining children and Shawn’s youngest.

  Aunt Miriam did not rise from her bunk, and I began to worry that she was more than simply weary. I brought her tea and food, but she couldn’t eat.

  When the men came back that evening, I had my first inkling that we’d made a horrible mistake.

  The Móndyalítko were not born to spend their days underground in the darkness. They need light and air. Though our men had been drawn to the promise of work, they’d not fully considered the type of work for which they were signing on—hard labor in the darkness underground.

  I saw fear and desperation in the eyes of my father.

  Mariah saw it, too, but her reaction offered no pity. Catching me alone, she asked, “We’re not leaving, are we? Father won’t give up and make us leave?”

  “No,” I assured her. “We will not leave.”

  I fed the men dinner and did what I could to make their evening pleasant with food and a warm campfire.

  The following morning, they went back to the mines.

  Two days later, Aunt Miriam died in her sleep. Uncle Landrien, Mikolai, and Marcus mourned her. So did Father and I. Poor Mariah was beyond mourning and barely seemed aware that her aunt was gone. The girl was too driven by fear of being back out on the road again.

  As that first year passed, I made friends with the wives of the miners who lived in shacks and huts in our encampment, and a few of them taught me to use the food vouchers wisely. The soldiers placed a high price on luxuries like tea, so if I wished for our men to have more real money coming in at the end of their contracts, I learned to purchase only what was absolutely necessary. Of course, the problem with this was that I often ended up making the same things for supper—such as lentil stew. Marcus supplemented our meals with game and venison when he could. But the men were denied even small pleasures like tea. This troubled me, and yet, when I expressed my worries to my father, he told me to continue with my thrifty methods.