The Near Witch

by V. E. Schwab

  “If you can find the children, do it fast,” Mrs. Thatcher says beneath her breath. And with that she slips back inside the house. But I’m already moving as fast as I can. My mind is racing and my heart is racing and my feet are catching up. I’m off toward Helena’s house.

  * * *

  Three people once knew where the witch was buried. That much I know.

  The sun is slipping slowly down the edge of the sky as I head for the Drake house.

  Three people. The members of the Council. When Dreska was fighting with Master Tomas, she called him a keeper of secrets and forgotten truths. Is the witch’s grave a secret that would have been passed down from Council to Council? I have to hope the knowledge has lasted this long. My only chance of finding the grave is to coax the answer from one of them.

  Master Tomas fought with Dreska, and I can tell by his tone that he won’t budge.

  Master Eli supposedly ordered Bo to plant the evidence, so he’s of no use either.

  But Master Matthew Drake. He has been strangely absent during all of this. And the loss of a grandchild might be enough to sway any foundation. If there’s a chance of learning where the witch was buried, it lies with him.

  I catch sight of Helena a field’s length before their home, and my feet drag to a halt. The guilt sits like stones in the pockets of my dress, like a bad taste in the back of my throat.

  She looks wasted away, even from here. I urge my feet forward. I should have come sooner. Not to interrogate her, but to see how she was faring. My cheeks are burning from the run and the cold air, and when I reach Helena I see that her face is red, too, but in different ways. Red-rimmed eyes and splotchy cheeks. Her cool blond hair is tied back against the wind, and she’s washing clothes in a stream.

  Helena has been transformed. Cheerful Helena, my Helena—who craved the eyes and ears of the village when she announced she’d seen the stranger, when she joked about how attractive he was—now looks gaunt, exhausted. She hums to herself, wandering through melodies like a ghost through rooms. Every now and then the melody strays into the Witch’s Rhyme. As I draw closer I can see her hands, red from the cold of the water. When she catches sight of me she tries to smile, a tug of her lips that is closer to a grimace. I slide down beside her in the grass, and wait. She continues rinsing something dark and blue. A boy’s shirt. I wrap my arms around her shoulders.

  “I want everything to be ready for when Edgar comes back,” she says, wringing her brother’s little blue shirt out over the water. “That way he’ll know we haven’t forgotten him.” Her fingers keep twisting the fabric. “I hope they find that stranger,” she says, and her voice doesn’t sound like her own. “I hope they kill him.”

  The words hurt, but I don’t let her see.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whisper against her cheek. It takes several moments before her hands stop making their small desperate motions over the clothing. I pull back enough to look at her, surprised at the sudden heat in her eyes. “We’ll find Edgar. I’ve been looking, too, every night.”

  “Where have you been?” Her voice is so low and strained, I can feel my own throat closing. “All the others have come to see us,” she says, her voice sliding even lower as she adds, “to see me.” She breaks the look, letting her gaze escape out over the river. I start to say I’m sorry again—such a useless phrase, but I have to say something—when Helena cuts me off.

  “Have you been tracking the stranger? That’s how you’ll find Edgar.”

  I shake my head. “The search party is spreading lies, Helena. They do not know who, or what, is taking the children, and they are accusing this poor stranger because they have no suspect. But it’s not him. I know it.” I take her hands from the water, where they are still working furiously, and pull them out, trying to warm them with my own.

  “What do you know?” she says, wrenching her hands from mine. “Would you be so sure if Wren was missing?” She doesn’t wait for an answer, doesn’t seem to care. “I just want my brother back.” Her voice is quiet again. “He must be so scared.”

  “I’m going to find Edgar,” I say. “But please don’t blame Cole.”

  She looks shocked that I know the stranger’s name.

  “He’s been helping me, Helena,” I whisper. “We’re getting closer to finding the real culprit. We all want answers,” I say, tucking a strand of stray blond hair behind her ear, and turning her face to mine. “But it’s not him.”

  “What am I supposed to think, Lexi? Mr. Porter swore he saw him near Cecilia’s the night before last, when she vanished. And now Mr. Ward, he says he saw him outside our house the night Edgar disappeared.”

  The breeze picks up, and I fight back a shiver as the sun seems to slip lower before my eyes. Helena puts her hands back in the icy water, and doesn’t flinch.

  “It was the middle of the night,” I press. “How could they swear they saw anything besides darkness? I don’t want to argue with you, but think about it—why didn’t that other witness come forward sooner? Yesterday they claim someone saw him near Cecilia’s house, but no one said he was by yours. Today they suddenly add another, earlier sighting? And what was Tyler’s father even doing out this way at night? Any minute now someone will jump up and say they saw him by Emily’s window, too, when really they were all sleeping in their beds.”

  I wait for her to agree, to flick her hair or make a comment on the Council, on the strangeness of it, on anything.

  She just pushes another piece of clothing beneath the water.

  I stand and brush a few leaves from my skirt. This is a waste. Wherever Helena is, my Helena, she’s not here.

  “Where’s your grandfather?”

  She waves a raw hand in the direction of her house.

  “I’ll come back soon. I promise.” With that I turn and leave my friend by the icy stream.

  * * *

  There’s a porch on the house that wraps around three sides. At the corner, just before the narrow wood columns and the simple rail vanish, a shadow of a man stands, looking out.

  I approach the porch, trying to stand straighter, make my shoulders somehow broader, hold my head high. It’s odd to see Master Matthew so far from the action, tucked away in his old house, the one he has lived in since before he was named to the Council. I hear the flutter of pages and realize he has a book braced against the wooden rail, a dark shawl wrapped around his shoulders.

  “Lexi Harris,” he says, without turning. His voice is deep and strong for such an old man. “Your uncle seems to think you’ve taken up your own search at night. What brings you here in daylight? Some wasted hope for clues? I assure you we’ve looked… I’ve looked.” He keeps his back to me, turning a thin page. “Or are you here to clear that boy’s name, to convince me that it isn’t him? I fear that will not go well for you.”

  My legs weaken a fraction, but I only swallow and hold my head high.

  “I’m here to speak to you, sir.”

  At last he turns to look at me. Master Matthew’s eyes have a softness to them, a feature I don’t readily attribute to the Council. It must be from having a family, children, grandchildren. Those things that shape us, round our edges.

  He tips his face down and takes in the sight of me over his spectacles, standing there without a coat, trying not to shiver from cold and things that have nothing to do with weather.

  “You look just like your father, standing that way. Like you can challenge the world and the way of it if only you can hold your head high enough.” When I don’t answer, he adds, “Stop holding your breath, Lexi. It doesn’t matter how straight you stand.” He raises a hand, gesturing me to the porch beside him. I join him. The western sky is plunging into reds and oranges, and all I can think of is fire.

  “I need your help, Master Ma—”

  “Just Matthew.”

  “Matthew,” I whisper, “I need you to tell me a story.”

  He turns his head toward me, eyebrows arching. The setting sun lines his face with red-lit wrinkl
es. I can’t help but wonder how old he is. He must be at least eighty, but when he turns his head some ways he looks years younger.

  “I need you to tell me the story of the Near Witch. Just the ending.”

  In a heartbeat, his eyes change from curious to wary. I try not to fidget beneath his cold pale gaze.

  “The part where the Council dragged her out onto the moor and buried her.” What am I saying? “I really just need to know that part…”

  The frustration painted on his face has shifted back into surprise, but I don’t know whether it’s the question or my boldness. My father would smile. My uncle, on the other hand, would slaughter me if he heard me speaking this way.

  “I know nothing more than an old legend, child.” There’s no malice in his voice, but no kindness either. Each word is careful and measured.

  “I think the Near Witch is back, and she’s the one taking the children. If I can find where she was buried, then I think I can find them. How can you not help, if there’s any way, any way at all to find your grandson? Blaming the stranger won’t bring Edgar back. What happens when they get rid of him and the children keep disappearing? Even if you don’t believe it’s the witch’s doing, it’s a possibility, and that’s more than my uncle and his men have.”

  I feel like I’ve used all the air in my lungs.

  After a painful silence, he says, “The Near Witch is dead.

  Chasing ghosts does no one any good.”

  “But what if—”

  “Child, she’s dead.” He slams the book to the porch floor. “Hundreds of years dead.” He looks down at his hands, fingers white from gripping the railing. “She’s long gone. Long enough to be a story. Long enough that some days I doubt she ever lived.”

  “But if there’s any chance,” I say in a small voice. “Even if it’s just a silly theory. A theory is better than nothing.” I place my hands over his, both of ours cold as the last light bleeds out of the sky. He just stares at my fingers. “My sister, Wren, is friends with Edgar. They’re almost the same age. I can’t…” I tighten my hands over his. “I can’t sit and wait for her to disappear. Please, Matthew.” I don’t realize I’m near tears until my voice hitches in my throat.

  Master Matthew won’t meet my eyes. He’s looking at the dregs of light, which have lost their color, casting the world in shades of gray.

  “Five hills due east, in a small forest.” The words spill out of him in an exhale, barely above a whisper.

  “The founding Council took her east, out past the house, what was left of it, out five hills until they reached a group of trees. According to the stories, it was barely a grove, but that was a long time ago, and things grow fast out on the moor, if they choose to grow at all.”

  Funny how when we start to tell a secret, we can’t stop. Something falls open in us, and the sheer momentum of letting go pushes us on.

  “I choose to believe, Miss Harris, that the Council did what they thought was—not right; right is the wrong word. What they thought was necessary.”

  “She didn’t kill the boy.”

  He finally looks at me. “I doubt it mattered.” And in that moment, I realize how much danger Cole is in. My hands slide off of Master Matthew’s.

  “Thank you.”

  He gives a small tired nod. “You really are like him, your father.”

  “I can’t tell whether you think that’s good or bad.”

  “What does it matter? It’s simply true.”

  I step off the porch when he adds, almost too quietly to hear, “Good luck.”

  I smile and press north, toward home, to wait for night.

  * * *

  There is a wooden crow nailed to our door.

  The center stick is almost as gnarled and knobbed as Magda’s fingers. Two long nails have been driven through, one pinning the stick to the door, and the other splitting the wood as it breaks through the front, like a rusted beak. A few black feathers dangle to the sides, bound to the stick with rope, and they flutter in the evening air. And there, just above the sharp nail of a beak, two river rocks, as smooth and polished as mirrors, glisten for eyes. I push the door open, and the wooden crow rattles against it. What was it Magda said?

  Watchful eyes turned out at night, keep the evils out of sight.

  20

  Inside, the house is too quiet.

  I wait for Otto’s grumbling to pour out of the kitchen, for the sound of his cup hitting the table, but there’s nothing. Wren is sitting cross-legged in one of the kitchen chairs, spinning a makeshift top on the old wooden table and looking painfully bored, while my mother clumsily mends the hem of a dress. Even the sounds of the fabric and the top are dulled, as though the air has been sucked out of the room. I hover in the doorway, my earlier argument with my uncle replaying in my head.

  “Where’s Otto?” I ask, and my voice breaks the strange quiet, sends the moment crashing down. The wooden top falters and bounces off the table with a harsh tap tap tap tap. Wren hops down and hurries after it. My mother looks up from her work.

  “The men were meeting. In town.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why, Lexi,” she says.

  I want to scream from frustration. Instead I clench my fist until my nails dig into my palm, and say only, “Cole is innocent.”

  Her eyes sharpen. “The sisters trust him, don’t they?”

  I nod.

  Her brow knits ever so slightly, and she says, “Then he can be trusted.”

  She reaches out, and her fingers come to rest on my arm. “Near might not look after the sisters, Lexi, but they look after Near.” She offers a sad smile. “You know that.”

  They are my father’s words coming from her lips. I want to throw my arms around her.

  At that moment, Wren bobs back into the kitchen, Otto in tow. His dark gaze immediately falls on me.

  I remember Matthew’s words. Your uncle seems to think you’ve taken up your own search at night.

  “Otto…”

  I brace myself for another fight, but none comes. No loud accusations or threats.

  “Don’t you see, Lexi?” he says, his voice barely above a whisper. “You’ve betrayed me and my wishes. That I can forgive. But you’ve betrayed Near by helping that boy. The Council, they are not forced to forgive. They can banish you, if they see fit.”

  “Banish?” I ask. The word feels odd in my mouth.

  “There would be nothing I could do to protect you from it.”

  Otto slides into his chair, and my mother peels away from me, fetching him a mug. My uncle puts his head in his hands. The image of the wild moor, rippling to every side, flickers in my mind. No signs of Near. Only space. Freedom. Would it be so bad? As if reading my mind, Otto says, “No home. No family. No Wren. Ever again.” The image in my mind begins to darken and transform until the endless space feels too small. Terrifying. I swallow and shake my head. It will not come to that. I cannot let it.

  It will be over soon. I will fix things.

  I don’t know how the town meeting went. I don’t know the Council’s plans, or those of Otto and his men. But I do know this: They might have a plan for the morning, but I intend to settle this tonight.

  * * *

  Deep in the house my mother is humming.

  It’s something old and slow and sweet, and the sheer fact that it is not the Witch’s Rhyme makes my shoulders loosen and my body sigh against the dresser by the window. The candles are already lit. The pouch still dangles from Wren’s wrist. Outside the light is gone and the moon is low. My mother’s song fades away, and moments later I see her through the weathered glass, leading Otto home. She brushes the tension from his shoulders and ushers him toward his cottage, waiting by the door until he vanishes within. Moments later a dull glow fills the space inside, and she turns back home.

  Behind me, Wren fidgets with the bracelet, legs swinging back and forth from the edge of the bed.

  “Listen, Wren,” I say, turning to her. “Do you remember the
way Father used to tell the Near Witch stories? What he said about the way she would sing the hills to sleep at night?”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t remember him,” she says, and my heart sinks.

  “Father was…” How will I ever recreate our father for her? Not just his stories, but the way he smelled like firewood and fresh air, and his smiles, impossibly warm and gentle for such a large man. They’d be just images, pretty pictures with no weight.

  “Well,” I say, clearing my throat, “Father used to say that the Near Witch loved children very much. And, well, she…” I cannot find the words, cannot seem to reconcile these stories with the idea that the witch is real and somehow back and stealing children from their beds instead of singing to them in her garden. It is all knotted, like the time between sleep and waking, where dreams and real life get tangled, confused. I try to mimic my father’s stories.

  “What if it’s not your friends calling, Wren? What if it’s the Near Witch coming to call you out onto the moors?”

  “Because children taste better in moonlight,” Wren recites, clearly not amused. “Don’t try to scare me,” she adds, wriggling beneath the covers.

  “I’m not,” I insist. “I’m very serious.” But she’s right. I cannot make it sound real. These are the stories we grew up with. I smooth the covers over her small form, and touch the charm around her wrist. “Magda and Dreska are witches, Wren, that much is true. And they made this to keep you safe. No matter what happens, you’ve got to keep it on.”

  “More and more are going to play,” she pouts, “and I haven’t gone yet. They all try to call me out.” Wren lets out a heavy sigh and curls up beneath the covers.

  “They’ll all stop playing this game soon.” I stroke her hair and whisper stories, the soft, sweet kind my father told. Not of witches or wind songs, but hills that rolled and rolled until they slipped right into the sea. Of clouds that grew tired and sank from the sky, and stretched out on the moor in tendrils of fog. Of a little girl’s shadow that grew and grew until it covered the sky and became the night, and under it, all things slept, safe beneath their covers.