Sightwitch

by Susan Dennard

  So I did.

  Three cards I plucked, as is my usual method when a question plagues. One card for my question; one card for the action I must take; and one card for the future.

  The Twins. Lady Fate. The Empress.

  “Ah,” I breathed as the meaning became instantly clear—and as Nadya clapped her hands, entirely too overjoyed.

  “Praise be to Sirmaya,” she declared, looking first to Cora, then to Lisbet, and finally to me. “It seems you three have been matched by the Sleeper herself—and as we know, Dysi dearest, there is no changing what is meant to be.”

  LATER

  After I resurfaced from the Crypts, the Rook pecked and pulled at my tunic. A sign he wanted me to follow him.

  I feared one of the Nubrevnans had somehow wandered through the glamour … Yet at the same time, I also hoped one of the Nubrevnans had somehow wandered through the glamour.

  Rule 37, the Rule of the Accidental Guest, is very clear, but I would have savored every moment of conversation before I carried it out.

  It wasn’t until the Rook led me directly to the ladder at the lookout’s nest that I realized who had come.

  A supplicant. Someone was at the Supplicant’s Sorrow.

  Never have I climbed that ladder so fast. I was panting by the time I reached the top, and not from exertion. From excitement. From hunger.

  A supplicant had come! Perhaps … perhaps it was someone I could speak to. Perhaps, even, it was someone who could stay!

  Several minutes I waited, staring at the tree line beyond the Sorrow’s pond, until at last, a Nomatsi woman and child appeared. They were both pale as the moon, their hair coal black. Huge, teardrop eyes on the girl. Deeper-set eyes on the woman, who walked with resolve, the yellow grass snapping beneath her feet. The girl had to half run, half walk to keep up.

  Once they reached the stone bridge, the old woman pointed toward the island. I couldn’t hear her, but I could guess she said something akin to what they always say: “Wait on the island beside the fountain. Someone will come for you.”

  She then knelt and embraced the girl.

  I confess, my throat went dry at the sight of it. I hadn’t been hugged … or touched … or spoken to in so long.

  Goddess, it had been so long.

  Quick. Efficient. The hug was over in a blink before the woman was standing once more and nudging the child onto the bridge.

  The girl crossed, her steps cautious but surprisingly unafraid. She carried a small rucksack on her back, presumably filled with some personal belongings. The woman watched her, waiting stiff as a mountain, and I watched her too.

  It occurred to me, as the girl took each of her forty-three steps across the bridge (if you have my legs, it takes only thirty-two), that I needed to clean the bridge again. I had scrubbed it fourteen days ago, yet already algae globbed up the south side.

  But then Tanzi’s voice niggled at me again. Why bother, Ry? There’s no one around to see.

  “I am the last Sightwitch Sister,” I murmured, “and if I don’t follow the Rules, Tanz, then what’s the point of being?” Yet even as I said it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was no here in being here.

  And I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should have gone deeper into the Crypts.

  When at last the child reached the island, the woman swiveled away and strode off into the pine trees. Not gone forever, I didn’t think. Since supplicants were not always welcomed inside.

  Normally, a Sister would scurry out to the island as soon as she’d spotted the supplicant, but sometimes that took hours. The Sorrow was not observed all day; duty in the nest was only a few hours in the afternoon. So oftentimes, supplicants had to wait.

  The day slid past.

  For almost eight hours, the girl waited on the island for “someone to come for her”—for me to come for her. I, in turn, waited to see what she would do.

  Yes, so lonely have I become that the prospect of company set my heart to racing with excitement.

  I am pathetic.

  But by the Sleeper, it was so much like that day nine years ago when Tanzi had been left by her grandmother. It was the first time Hilga let me go with her to the Sorrow, and I had been there to welcome little Tanzi into our ranks.

  Not that I was very nice. She still teases me for how stiff I was …

  Teases? Teased?

  Teases. Because of course, Tanzi is still alive, and she’ll be back any day now. If I don’t find her first.

  Yet I could not greet this new child like I had Tanzi. I couldn’t welcome her into the Convent.

  Never.

  I might break the Order of Two—and perhaps even Rule 9—but I only risked myself then. To break Rule 12 about accepting new children … That put someone else’s life at stake.

  Not an option.

  Although that truth didn’t keep me from imagining what it would be like to go to the girl. A hundred times over the course of the day, I dreamed it out in great detail.

  She was clearly such a smart child—and fearless too. First, she explored the narrow spit of the island, even dipping her toes in the pond around it. Then she peered into the fountain, but there’s nothing to see. It was drained decades ago, and the carvings of the Twelve that once lined the granite floor have eroded into blank ovals of striated nothing.

  The girl dismissed it in a heartbeat and moved to the northern shore where the land slants up into a tiny stone cliff. Rocks rest there, and she quickly set to stacking them. Taller, taller. She spent hours assembling pile after pile, like some miniature architect using strategy and elegance to keep each rock afloat.

  I left several times throughout the day. The tomatoes needed picking, and the dill weed had, yet again, overtaken everything.

  Yet I never lasted more than an hour at my duties before I would scurry back to the southern forest, my heart pounding as I wondered, Will she still be there? Then I’d shimmy up the ladder and into the lookout’s nest.

  Each time, though, I would find the girl exactly as I had left her, with a few more rock piles towering around her.

  Some hovered so high that even with her arms stretched upward, I do not think the girl could have reached the top. I’ve no idea how she got the stones up there.

  Sixteen stacks she built, until the ground was barren. Eventually, she ate an apple from her rucksack. Then she napped amid the stone columns.

  By the time the sun set, I had decided to retrieve her. To take her into the Convent, though it would surely be a death sentence for us both.

  In fact, I had convinced myself that, No! Of course the woman would not return for the girl, and it would be more cruel to leave her here, where she would die of starvation, than to bring her in, where at least we could slowly rot away together.

  “Dirdra!”

  The voice, a cry from the forest, toppled my desperate day-dream and startled the child out of another nap.

  “Dirdra!” the woman called again, and this time, she coalesced from the forest’s frayed edge.

  The girl scrambled up, knocking into one of her piles. Somehow, though, it did not fall. It wobbled and swayed dangerously, yet remained upright. I might have wondered more at that had my heart not been splitting in two as I watched the girl scamper off.

  Over the bridge she went, and into the woman’s waiting arms. A quick embrace before she shooed the girl into the woods without her. She waited until the girl was out of sight before marching to the island, around the fountain, and finally to the northern shore.

  She looked directly at me.

  I immediately dropped to my knees.

  “Why will you not take her?” she shouted in accented Cartorran. “She is clever and she listens well! Please, Sightwitch, we have nowhere else to leave her.”

  She can see me, I thought, crawling away from the nest’s edge. She can see me and the glamour has failed and I am exposed. I half fell down the ladder trying to get away. I needed to check on the Standing Stones—somehow, they must have broken
and the glamour had fallen.

  SHE COULD SEE ME.

  “She will die out here,” the woman cried after me. “I am begging you to take her, Sightwitch. Please!”

  I paused then, my pulse hammering in my eardrums. If I didn’t answer, would she follow? If the glamour was down, there was nothing to keep her outside the Convent grounds.

  So I swiveled back and cupped my mouth. “And she will die here too! The Sightwitches are all gone, and there can be no home for her at the Convent.”

  With that, I spun on my heel and sprinted directly for the Standing Stones.

  It is only now, as I sit against the tallest monolith of the eight while the last of the day’s light fades, that I realize the woman must have been a Threadwitch.

  All the Standing Stones are intact, which means the glamour spell that is bound to them still holds. She must have seen my Threads—not me—through the magic.

  Which means she did not hear my answer.

  Which means she will never know why I couldn’t take in little Dirdra.

  For some reason, this makes me cry.

  And cry and cry and cry and cry.

  The grass tickles my ankles. The Rook preens atop a smaller stone nearby.

  I miss Tanzi.

  Tanzi Lamanaya

  Y14 D27

  NOTES ON RULE 12: ACCEPTING CHILDREN TO THE CONVENT

  Long ago, the Sightwitch Sister Convent was vast place, spanning half the mountain, and the Sisters took in every girl who was ever left at the Sorrow.

  “But that was centuries ago,” Hilga explained in our meeting today. “In the days of the Twelve, when we Sightwitches were top advisers to queens and kings. When the wealthy and the poor alike sent their corpses here so we could record their memories.

  “We had food, we had wealth, and we had space. The Standing Stones had not yet been erected, so no glamour hid us from the world.”

  “Why was the spell made?” Ry asked. “Why did we hide?”

  “Because six Paladins turned on the other six, and we were no longer safe.” Hilga lifted a flat-palmed hand before Ryber could inevitably demand more explanation. “That’s a lesson for another time. All you need to know now is that the day the spell was cast was the day the Rules of the Convent grew stricter. Including Rule 12.

  “So you must harden your hearts, girls, for more children will always be left than we can safely keep. And always, always their parents will beg or scream, or curse you when you ignore them. And always, always they will say, ‘This child will die if you do not take her!’

  “But you must not listen, and you must not believe. Look to the Rules to guide you, and remember to trust Sirmaya.”

  When the sky splits and the mountain quakes,

  Make time for good-byes,

  For the Sleeper soon breaks.

  —Sightwitch Sister skipping song

  Ryber Fortiza

  Y18 D216 — 42 days since I became the last Sightwitch Sister

  DREAMS

  The same dream came to me, except this time, Hilga was there too. “Find us! Please, Ryber, before it is too late!”`

  Two Sisters trapped behind a wall of water.

  Two Sisters I could not save.

  MEMORIES

  I don’t know where to start. The day feels so long and disjointed. So much has happened since I wrote my dreams.

  So much has changed.

  But “there is no such thing as coincidence” and “there is no changing what is meant to be.” So I must accept this.

  “The beginning,” Tanzi would say if she were here. “Start your tale at the beginning.”

  Morning prayers it is, then.

  I recited them as I always do, and no spirit swifts came for me. As soon as I’d uttered the final word, I scurried up to the telescope.

  The Nubrevnans have made such progress, and their wooden scaffolding looks more and more like a proper tower.

  They scuttled about even more industriously today, though their pale-haired captain was nowhere in sight. I couldn’t help but wonder where he’d gone.

  The storm clouds gathering above the mountains must have spurred the workers on. Black thunderheads were not unusual for this time of year, except that these rolled in from the Northwest.

  I’ve never seen a storm come from Arithuania before.

  Eventually my eyes burned from the all the squinting, and lightning had begun to flicker. I needed to check on the sheep, not to mention cover the weaker vegetables and fruits.

  Ever the dutiful Serving Sister.

  That was when it happened. As I turned away from the telescope and toward the stairs, movement caught my eye.

  Movement in the scrying pool.

  Nothing unusual. I see flickers atop the water all the time. Ripples of sunlight or the Rook’s reflection as he coasts past. I’d already dismissed this particular distraction before my gaze had even locked upon it.

  I was wrong, though. For once, it was not sunlight, it was not a reflection.

  Shapes were forming on the water. One after the other, elongated figures that grew clearer and larger with each passing boom of my heart. It was as if they walked toward me, people trapped in a rainstorm and reaching for my help.

  Before the image had crystallized, I found myself stumbling down the stairs, grasping, clawing for them as desperately as they clawed for me.

  Then I was at the pool’s rim and falling to my knees as every single Sightwitch Sister stared at me. There was Trina, there was Birgit, there were Gaellan and Ute and Lachmi.

  There was Hilga.

  There was Tanzi.

  Their mouths worked in unison, saying the same phrase again and again. I couldn’t hear them, but I didn’t need to. I’d heard the words often enough in my dreams.

  “Find us,” they said. “Please, Ryber, before it is too late!”

  “Where?” I cried. My fingers ached to grab at the water; my legs itched to jump in. “Where are you? How do I find you? How, how, how? Please, Tanz,” I begged, staring at her. Then at Hilga. “Please, tell me how to find you!”

  But the Sisters gave me no answers, and in moments, the entire vision had melted away.

  I stared, too scared to exhale. Too scared to do anything that might break this moment and keep a second vision from coming.

  Surely another vision would come.

  Minutes slid past; no second vision showed.

  I touched the water then. I punched my fist into the pool and screamed at the stained-glass ceiling overhead. I screamed at Sirmaya, I screamed at the Sisters, and I screamed at myself.

  For never had I felt this truth more sharply than in that moment.

  A LONE SISTER IS LOST.

  Eventually, my throat was too raw to keep shouting. My soul too tired to care. I sank to the stones, curled onto my side, and wept.

  Only the storm prompted me to move.

  Not the Rook, who tried for an hour to nudge me off the observatory floor. Not my bladder, which had long since moved past discomfort and into misery. Not even my bloodied knees—the result of falling to the stone floor—could wrest me off my spot beside the scrying pool.

  The storm, though, was not to be ignored. So bright was the lightning that it seared through my closed eyelids, and so strong was the thunder that it shook through my body with each crash.

  This storm was not confined to the sky. The mountain herself was moving.

  I pushed myself upright. Stars dotted my vision. Everything hurt. It was in this moment, as the Rook cooed happily that I was finally moving, that a second vision appeared.

  Hilga. Alone. Her lips forming new words.

  I did not move. I did not breathe. I can’t even gauge how long I sat like that, my gaze fixed on her face—on her mouth, silently working with words I could not discern.

  Until she wasn’t silent anymore.

  “Twelve turns,” she said, her voice a mere sliver of muted sound. “Twelve turns. Then it will be too late.”

  Twelve turns. She meant
the hourglass in her office. Each flip sent quicksilver dripping down for exactly one hour.

  Which meant I had twelve hours until it would be too late to save my Sisters.

  Between one heartbeat and the next, I was on my feet, swaying and almost tripping as I bolted for the door.

  The Rules of the Convent could be damned. The Sisters needed me to enter the mountain.

  Now all I had to do was figure out how.

  LATER

  I went about my descent with methodical precision. Tanzi could tease me for it all she wanted after I found her. But I was not going to enter the mountain un-Summoned without having prepared for every possibility.

  True, I still did not know how to enter the mountain, but there was a certainty brewing in my gut. Ever since leaving the observatory, I felt sure. I felt alive. I felt right.

  This was the path that was meant for me, and I would not go astray.

  Though the storm soaked me through as I raced from one place to the next—from the observatory to the Convent to the Crypts and back to the Convent—I had too much to do to care. Icy rain could not slow me. Wind and falling branches could not deter me.

  First things first, I found the hourglass in Hilga’s office and flipped it. Quicksilver dripped.

  I estimated I’d already lost a quarter of an hour, so I had eleven more flips to get to Tanzi and the others.

  I would not waste a moment, but I also would not leave without preparation. The other Sisters might survive a day or two in the mountain, but they had been Summoned.

  I was bashing my way in.

  With the ghosts’ help, I found records on cave exploration in the upper levels of the Crypts. From these, I learned that warm and waterproof layers were key to my survival. I also read records on travel, so I could estimate how much food (and the best types) to pack. I found Sister Rose’s healer kit under her cot, and then I used a hammer to chip off a Waterwitched purifying stone from the well. Firewitched matches, a lantern, and a cooking pot—everything went into my quickly expanding satchel.