Henry Szabranski

by Witch of the Weave (html)

  The giantess lurched. The ground shook, and the tentacles holding Skink swung wildly. A mewling sound of frustration and fury emerged from Meghra’s mouth, as it twisted in new effort.

  Skink’s eyes gleamed with sudden triumph. I knew the look, same as the one when she had made the Motherman walk. The tendrils stretching from Meghra whipped and swayed, as if they were trying to retract but were unable to.

  The sound of whip-snapping tentacles and weave tearing filled the air. Meghra was trying desperately now to reverse away from Skink, to release her, but it didn’t seem she was totally in control of her extended body. Withies curled and swung and trembled. The old woman was crying out.

  “Stop it! Stop it!”

  Waves and ripples, the air cracked with sudden motion. Skink still hung suspended in midair, held by the surging weave, no longer captured so much as borne aloft. A mass of dark withies descended upon Meghra’s head, easily puncturing the fragile outer skin, crashing through to the frail human core.

  I could not look as the weave bunched and curled and squeezed . . . until the screaming stopped and the only sound that remained was Skink’s breathing.

  All around us Meghra’s mass of weave sagged to ground, as if in relief.

  * * *

  I couldn’t wait to escape the desolate canyon. But Skink kept rummaging amongst the listless weave, ignoring my questions about how she was, whether she was hurt. Briefly I approached Meghra’s crushed body, to check if she were alive or dead, but I quickly retreated when I glimpsed the mess of jutting bones. I kept looking at Skink. Was she damaged? Had Meghra changed her? Physically, apart from bruising that could just as well have been caused by the villagers, she appeared uninjured.

  But she kept avoiding my gaze.

  Creeper bounded amongst the collapsed withies like a crazed thing, spinning and biting off sections, curling and splaying its limbs as if in excitement. Eventually I lost it as it disappeared beneath the densest mass, its presence only visible as a disturbance on the surface layers.

  Confused by Skink’s behavior, fearing that the villagers could return at any moment and become vengeful that their feared witch had been defeated, I climbed back up to the pass.

  At the top of the ridge, a glimpse into the large, bowl-shaped valley beyond to the east. Just visible, I thought I spied distant spires and domes clustered on the far side. The view was fascinating, apart from the growing dizziness and sickness as the sky crowded down upon me again. I shielded my eyes, and tried to calm my breathing.

  I jumped as I heard Skink’s dragging footsteps behind me. She had finally emerged from Meghra’s wreckage. She squeezed my shoulder as she leaned for balance against me. I tensed and my stomach seemed to flip-flop as she touched me.

  “Thank you,” she said. “She had me. I would have been lost.”

  I hung my head and shrugged, not knowing what to say. Shoulder tingling. What had I done, really?

  “We have to go,” she said, pointing. “To the city. Find the patternmakers.”

  “Believe that story?”

  “Saw it in her mind, Percher. In her memories. She went there. Learned how to control the weave.”

  I frowned. Had a sudden memory of Skink in the brain of the Motherman, exultant as she first made the colossus move. Saw her lifted on Meghra’s weave tentacles, eyes turned back into her head as she probed a way to crush the opponent before her. Truth was, Skink frightened me sometimes. Actually, quite a lot.

  “Is that what you want? Control? Like Meghra had?”

  “She too hungry. Too . . . damaged.”

  I sighed. I didn’t understand her. Couldn’t. “Maybe we should go back to the village. Poison their wells.” My bitter words surprised even me.

  “Really?”

  “They betrayed us.”

  “Wouldn’t we have done the same?”

  “No.”

  But I remembered my brother Broc. How often he had called for Skink to be thrown into the mist as an offering to the gods. She was the slowest of us, the weakest, he said. Abandoned by her own tribe and not even a proper part of the family. Ma and Da had always resisted his call, but there had been more than a few of us who had looked at Skink with hard eyes.

  Perhaps she was right.

  She was still staring at the eastern horizon. “I saw books there, Percher. Many books. A . . . ” She struggled to find the word. “Library. That’s where Meghra went.”

  I eyed her twisted leg, her obvious state of exhaustion. As far as I could see, the land between us and the distant city was a flattened, grassy plain. There were only occasional odd struts or stalks of weave; no big hollowed-out tubes or interwoven corridors through which Skink could use her arms to hoist herself.

  “It’s a long walk.”

  She released her hold on my shoulder and stood alone, wobbly at first. I moved to support her but she pushed me away. “Don’t need to walk.”

  A shadow fell over my back, and I turned.

  Emerging out of the canyon, a giant, spiderlike creature. I fell back, immediately fearing a reassembled Meghra. Skink’s laughter barely reassured me.

  It was Creeper, grown giant, bigger than Skink and I put together.

  Skink quickly hoisted herself onto a saddlelike protrusion on the creature’s ridged back. When I hesitated, she stretched down her hand to me.

  “Space for two,” she said.