The Near Witch

by V. E. Schwab

  “But we remember.”

  “Stop it,” says Otto, shaking his head. He straightens, squaring his shoulders. “I need to speak to him. The stranger.”

  The sky is darkening, threatening rain.

  “He is not here.”

  Magda’s gnarled hand flutters through the air. “Out on the moor.”

  “Somewhere out there. We do not know.”

  “It is a very large moor, after all.”

  Otto frowns. He does not believe a word of it.

  “I will ask you one last time—”

  “Or what, Otto Harris?” growls Dreska. I swear I can feel the earth rumble.

  Otto takes a breath before meeting her gaze. When he speaks, his words are slow and measured. “I do not fear you.”

  “Neither did your brother,” says Magda. The ground beneath us begins to shift, just a ripple, but enough to make the house stones groan. “But at least he respected us.”

  Several stray drops of rain splash down on us. The wind is bristling. I think I feel Cole’s hand slip away from mine, but when I look over he’s still there, his eyes staring straight ahead but unfocused.

  Otto mutters something I cannot hear, and then, louder, “But I will.” And with that, I hear his boots scuff the ground as he turns away. Cole shifts his weight beside me, leaning deeper against the shed. The boards creak. His eyes light up with panic, and I catch my breath. My uncle’s heavy footsteps grind to a halt. When he speaks again his voice is frighteningly close to the shed.

  “He’s here now, I know it.”

  The footsteps grow louder and louder, and Cole casts a troubled glance at me. He seems thinner in the growing wind. I have to do something. If Otto finds me, it will be bad. But if he finds Cole, it will be much worse. I mutter a curse beneath my breath, then release his hand and force my feet to carry me out from my shelter and into my uncle’s path. He staggers back to keep from barreling into me.

  “Uncle,” I say, trying not to wince as his look turns from shock to anger.

  “This is where you’ve run off to?” Otto’s hand encompasses my arm as he pulls me toward him. I don’t have a lie ready, so I opt for silence. Behind me, the boards give another loud groan.

  Otto shoves me out of his way as he rounds the corner of the shed, and I bite my tongue to keep from shouting NO! But the look he shoots me when he turns back is enough to tell me Cole isn’t there.

  Otto says nothing, only grabs me and spins me back past the sisters’ house and onto the path home. His sudden silence worries me more than any amount of shouting. He pushes me ahead of him like a prisoner, and it takes all my will to not look back.

  * * *

  He doesn’t speak. Not when we’re down the hill, or through the grove, or when our own homes have come into sight. By then the sun is setting, and my uncle is a black outline against it. The silence is too heavy.

  “I was just doing my—”

  He doesn’t let me finish. “Do you disregard everything I say?”

  I cannot contain the frustration bubbling up in me. “Only when you treat me like a child.”

  “I’m only trying to protect you.” Our voices climb over one another.

  “You should be protecting Wren instead of trying to lock me in the house.”

  “Enough, Lexi.”

  “You want me to just sit inside and wait, when I could be searching.” I storm across the threshold.

  “Because you should be here,” he says, following close behind, “with your mother and Wren.”

  “Because that’s what women do?”

  “Because it’s dangerous. The stranger could be dangerous. What if he hurt you? What would I—”

  “He’s not dangerous.” I head down the hall and into my bedroom, Otto on my heels.

  “How do you know? Do you know him so well?”

  I let out a strangled sigh and run my hands through my hair. “I just want to help, Uncle. However I can. And if that means searching for the stranger, if that means turning to the sisters, then how can I not? I just want to protect my family…” My voice trails off as I catch sight of a small white square tucked under the corner of the window frame, flapping gently in the evening breeze. A note.

  “As do I,” he says, so low I barely hear it.

  I pull my gaze from the note and turn to face him, trying to hold his eyes so they don’t wander to the window, where the slip of paper stands out like a splash of paint against the dark glass.

  “Lexi, I know I’m not your father,” he says. “But I promised him.”

  The room goes cold, but Otto doesn’t seem to notice. “I promised I’d keep you from harm, remember? I know you were listening that day,” he continues. “I’m doing the best I can, Lexi, but it doesn’t make my job easier if I’m battling you and trying to find the children.”

  My uncle sighs, the fight bleeding out of him before my eyes, leaving a stiff and tired quiet in its wake.

  “I’m trying,” he says.

  He leans back against the far side of the hall. His dark hair is flecked with gray, and it curls down into his eyes. His face is like my father’s, but rougher. When he turns his head certain ways, the resemblance is so striking my stomach hurts, but there’s a tension in his eyes, like a trapped animal, that my father’s never had.

  “Why are you looking for Co—for the stranger?” I ask. My uncle blinks, as if he was lost and is just now coming back to himself.

  He holds my eyes but says nothing, then pushes off the wall and heads into the kitchen. I follow. Wren is playing in a corner of the room, making a maze of smooth flat stones on the floor. I am sure she’d rather be outside. My mother slides to my uncle’s side, setting a mug within reach. He takes a couple of long sips and shakes his head.

  “It has to be him,” he says at last. “He shows up here, and then all this.” He moves to drain his cup again, finds it empty, and drops it to the table. My mother refills it with something strong and dark. “We have witnesses. He’s been seen in the village after dark. Eric Porter says he saw him last night, around the time Cecilia vanished.”

  “Uncle, fear can make people see strange things,” I say, trying to sound reasonable.

  “Lexi, I have to do something.”

  “But—”

  “I’m telling you, I intend to see him gone.”

  “It’s not Cole,” I say before I can stop myself.

  “Cole.” My uncle takes a deep drink, swishing it in his mouth along with the word. “Is that his name? And how would you know that?”

  Because I named him.

  “Dreska called him that,” I say with a tight shrug. “When I went there, to speak with them. And to look for him,” I admit. A little truth makes a lie stronger. “She said she hadn’t seen Cole that day, that he was out on the moor somewhere.”

  “And why are you so convinced it’s not him?” Otto’s voice, his body, all of it is tense, set.

  Because I’ve been sneaking out at night to search, and he’s been helping me.

  “Because being a stranger is not a crime.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter,” he mutters, knocking his mug on the old wooden table again for emphasis. “Come morning we will have our answers.”

  A prickle runs along my spine.

  “What do you mean?” I ask slowly.

  Otto looks at me long and hard before answering. “If the sisters won’t give the boy up freely, then we’ll take him.” And with that he storms from the kitchen. I follow him into the hall, but he’s already out the door, being swallowed up by the dark. A knot is growing in my chest, tangling everything up. I fight the urge to run after him, or better yet to run east until I hit the grove and the hill and the sisters’ house and Cole.

  “Come morning,” my uncle said. I try to slow my breath. Questions buzz around my head, making me dizzy, and I stand in the darkness trying to assure myself that I will find a way to set things right. Fingers settle on my arm, and I feel my mother’s touch, firm and welcome, urging me back
inside.

  My mother floats into the kitchen to clean up after Wren. I turn toward the bedroom, wanting to free the slip of paper from the windowpane. The breeze flicks the note against the dark glass. In a breath I’m there, sliding the window up, begging it not to groan too loudly, and snatching the note before it blows off into the night. The small scrap has only two words, in thin wandering script.

  Meet me.

  I run my fingers over the hastily written letters. The words make my heart tug strangely in my chest, that same odd gravity that pulls me toward the fresh air. The feeling tells me, as much as the words, that the note is from Cole. When could he have left it? The weight presses the breath out of me, a mixture of excitement and concern. I tuck the slip of paper in my dress.

  I realize I’m still wearing my father’s boots, and I lean against the bed to pull them off, when I hear soft footsteps.

  “Lexi, it’s too cold,” comes the voice behind me. I glance back with a smile.

  “You’re right, Wren,” I say, pushing the wooden lip of the window down. “Let’s keep this one closed tight, all right?”

  She gives a twitch of a nod and holds out her hand. I take it and let her lead me into the kitchen.

  * * *

  Night cannot fall fast enough.

  Cole’s note burns in my pocket as I pace the house until my mother’s room goes dark. And then I go to Wren, tucked in bed but still awake. I pull the frayed quilt up around her, ruffle her hair playfully. The old house lets out little clicks and thuds as the heat from the day seeps out.

  “I hope they don’t come back,” she says through a yawn. “I’m tired. I don’t want to play.” She settles in, but her eyes keep flicking to the window. I stroke her hair.

  “It will be all right.”

  “Do you promise?” she asks. She holds out her hands, the sisters’ charm still dangling from her wrist, the smell of moss and earth and wildflowers wafting from it. I take her hands in mine and bring them to my lips. I hesitate, trying to choose the right words.

  “I promise I will make it right,” I whisper into the space between her palms. Wren keeps her hands cupped around the words as she falls back against her pillow.

  “And Wren,” I add, sitting on the bed beside her, “no matter what happens, do not get out of bed tonight. And if you hear your friends again, ignore them. They can’t mean well in the middle of the night.”

  Wren twists deeper beneath the covers.

  “I mean it,” I say, as she all but vanishes under the blankets. I watch the candlelight dance, and wait.

  When I’m sure she’s asleep, I push myself to my feet and the room tips gently, or maybe I tip, swaying from lack of sleep. The walls and the floor eventually settle, and I tighten my father’s knife around my leg. I kiss the top of Wren’s head and coax the window open, dropping to the ground beyond. Then I pull the window closed and fasten the shutters before turning my eyes to the waiting night.

  14

  The moon is bright and the night is still, and the wind is humming in a far-off way.

  Gravity pulls me back to him, pulls my feet over a path they know, have always known, with a new urgency. I make my way through the moonlit world, between blue-gray shadows on a blue-gray ground, watching the blue-white circle in the blue-black sky. I remind myself every few steps why I am awake, and Otto’s threat helps to keep my eyes wide and my hearing sharp.

  Someone is close.

  There are footsteps in the dark that I cannot hear. I know they’re there, the way one knows when someone else is in a room even if they make no sound. The air around me prickles as I reach the grove. The cluster of trees is so dark it looks like one large shadow. And then a piece of it peels away.

  “Cole,” I say as he steps forward into a patch of moonlight. The frightened, drawn features of this afternoon are gone. His hands hang at his sides instead of wrapping around his ribs. The exhaustion in his face seems mildly diffused. His eyes are weary but calm.

  “Lexi,” he says. “You got my note?”

  I touch my pocket. “I did. But I would have come anyway. To warn you. My uncle—”

  “Wait,” he says, his voice louder than I think I’ve ever heard it. It cuts right through the wind instead of bleeding into it. “About earlier. I asked you to meet me so I could explain. I need to.”

  “You don’t have to explain to me, Cole, if you don’t want to.”

  “No, I don’t want to. But I need to.” His cloak flutters. “I just don’t know where to start.”

  “The fire? You said that your village burned down. That… you burned it down?”

  He shakes his head. “It’s not that simple.”

  “Then tell me what happened.” The grove behind him looks like a towering shadow. That, or a beast about to swallow him whole. “Cole?”

  He hesitates.

  “Go ahead. I’m listening,” I say.

  He casts one last glance up at the night. His eyes slip down again, and by the time they reach mine, there’s a kind of abandon in them.

  “I’ll show you,” he says at last.

  Cole steps forward, his fingers reaching around my shoulders, and kisses me.

  It is sudden and smooth and soft as air against my lips. The wind whips around us, tugging at the fabric of our clothes, but not pulling us apart.

  And then it’s gone, the cool pressure against my lips, and my eyes are open and looking into two gray eyes, like river rocks.

  “That’s what you wanted to show me?”

  “No,” he says, his fingers slipping down my arms as he leads me off the path and out, away from Near. “That was just in case.”

  * * *

  Just in case what? I wonder, as the last signs of Near are hidden by the hills.

  “How far are we going?” I ask.

  There’s an urgency in Cole’s stride; I can almost hear his footsteps on the ground. Almost. And then he starts talking. Until now every utterance from him has had to be pried, coaxed. But now the words spill out.

  “My mother had eyes like rain-soaked stone, not so dark as mine, but close. And long dark hair that she always wore up, but couldn’t contain. It’s one of the first things I remember about her, how pale her face was, framed by the darkness of her hair. But she was perfect. And strong. You would have loved her, Lexi. I know it.”

  “And your father?”

  “Gone.” The word is so sharp and short. “I never met him,” he adds. “And I know nothing of him. Not his name, or what he looked like. I only know one thing. One very important thing.”

  We reach the top of the slope, and a stretch of flat field waits before giving way to the next valley. The countryside beyond this hill seems so vast. It’s impossible to tell the scope of the world beyond Near, actually, because you can almost never see past more than a hill or two at a time. The world could possibly end, come to a sudden stop, just beyond the next rise. Cole pauses to look out at it, and I can’t help but wonder why we’ve come all the way out here.

  “And what is that?” I ask.

  And then he holds out his hand. Not to me but to the night.

  The air around us seems to shiver, and the wind brushes cool against my skin. I take in a sharp breath as the wind coils around his outstretched hand. It spins faster until it looks like his fingers are bleeding into it. Then they grow thinner until I can see right through them, until there is no difference between the swirling wind and his skin.

  “You’re a witch,” I whisper. I should feel shock, but I must have known in my bones since the moment I saw him, because all I feel is a sweeping sense of calm.

  He turns his hand over like he’s cradling something. And then his fingers curl in against his palm, and the wind breaks apart, vanishes.

  “And so was he.” Cole’s eyes harden.

  “When I was young,” he goes on, “I thought it was wonderful. Other children had imaginary friends, but I had something much better. Something vast, powerful—but intimate, too. I was never alone.

/>   “When I felt angry, the wind bristled, blew harder. There were these invisible threads binding me to it. The wind took hold of whatever I felt, and ran away with it. My mother was afraid. Not of me, I don’t think, but for me. She told me people didn’t understand witches, and so they feared them, and she didn’t want them to be afraid of me. She was such a strong woman, but I think those worries ate at her.”

  My chest tightens. She sounds like my father, the mixture of pride and worry in his eyes even as he taught me to hunt, to track, to chop wood.

  “But her husband was another matter.”

  “Her husband? I thought you said—”

  “She remarried, before I was even born. But I never saw him as a father. And he, I’m certain, never saw me as a son.”

  Around us the wind is blustering. “I tried so hard for her, my mother. To stay calm. I thought that if I could be empty, if I could never feel anything too strongly, then it would be all right. And for a short time it was. People even seemed to forget what I was.”

  Cole does not seem to notice, but the wind around us is growing angry and thick. It tears at the ground, ripping leaves and grass into small circles. His tone is changing, too.

  “But not everyone forgot. My mother’s husband. He never did.” Cole looks up, but his eyes are unfocused, and I wonder where he is, what he sees. He’s even paler than usual, and a muscle on the side of his face twitches as he clenches his jaw.

  “The wind on the moors is a tricky thing. Isn’t that how you put it, Lexi?” He lets out a short, joyless laugh. There’s a rock nearby and he crosses to it, sliding down onto it as if his legs won’t hold. It’s such a sad, effortless grace he has. “Well, you were right. The wind is a tricky thing. As is the rain and the sun and the moor itself. These things, they don’t always act kindly, or reasonably. The wind can creep into a person’s lungs, make itself heard when they breathe out. The rain can leave a chill in a person’s bones.”

  I can see him shaking, but resist the urge to reach out and touch him. I’m afraid he’ll stop talking. I’m afraid he’ll blink and be that silent stranger again, holding his ribs to keep it all in. He’ll melt away, right into the dark.