Bones of the Witch

by A. L. Knorr

  Hinges squeaked and a door slammed in answer.

  I let out a groan and returned immediately to the tiny vine, possibly my only hope. Reaching for the slim green tendril, I bade it grow. It surged immediately in response, curling and stretching, its root thickening. Disturbed mortar dust sifted to the stone floor. The vine fattened. Buds poked out and grew into tight twists of leaves, which then burst open and spiraled outward.

  The stones embracing the little vine shifted and more mortar crumbled. A crack shot down the wall, zigzagging between the bricks. The vine grew, and with it, my hope—but hope soon fizzled out when I sensed an impassable barrier had been struck at the outer wall. I knew I could use the vine to break a hole through my prison, plants were capable of incredible things when given a boost of energy from me. I’d held up an entire crumbling building with a single tree once, but this felt different. The barrier on the other side of this wall was magical, and there was no way my little vine was going to get through it. I could have it grow inward, as there was nothing stopping it from coming into my cell to join my imprisonment, but that wasn’t helpful for escape.

  When it was thicker than my wrist and strong enough to take my weight, I had it loop under my elbows and lift me to the window. Peering over the ledge, I saw a horizon of soft black forest and a lightening sky with soft rays of sun penetrating the tops of the trees. Flickers of colored light danced in the trees, flashing like fireflies.

  Faeries.

  “Help me, little fae,” I whispered.

  The colored lights paused simultaneously, then bobbed and weaved over the grounds toward the castle. Relief flooded me when I saw they were coming, but it was short-lived. The lights came to a halt several yards from the window. They bounced back and forth there like bugs hitting a window, then hovered, fluttering and waiting. They’d hit the barrier. I let out a long sigh.

  “Thanks for trying. Got any ideas?”

  In my mind was a distant echo, a name. A familiar one.

  Fyfa, Fyfa, Fyfa. The little fae cries bounced around inside my skull. Then the colored lights drifted away. I hoped that meant they were going to get help.

  I had the vine let me down to the floor and rubbed my arms and ribcage where it had been supporting my weight. The dawn was silent again, except for the calls of insects and birds. There wasn’t even the sound of fae conversation; I guessed all the partiers had either gone home or fallen asleep.

  Sitting on the mattress, I put my head in my hands and closed my eyes. I lost track of time and eventually reclined, staring at but not seeing the ceiling of my cell. I must have drifted off because when next I came to, proper daylight spilled through the narrow window. The sound of that squeaky hinge came through the bars of the door. I sat up just in time to see a plate of food shoved through the sliding doorway near the base of the door. The plate hovered there, as if waiting for me to take it. If the deliverer shoved the plate all the way through, the food would splat onto the floor. The plate shoved forward another inch and I darted forward to catch it before it fell.

  “Thank you,” I called.

  No answer. Only the soft sounds of someone walking away.

  Taking the plate back to the bed, I inspected the meal. A small green salad with little orange petals throughout, a dry potato with a crack down the middle letting steam escape, a brown bun, and a silvery gray sack I couldn’t identify.

  Balancing the plate on my knees, I picked up the sack. Its soft sides depressed as liquid sloshed inside. Using my thumbnail, I punctured the bag. A clear, odorless liquid trickled out. Water. I sucked at the bag greedily.

  The meal was simple but it tasted good. I put the empty plate on the ground in front of the door and settled into wearing a circular track on the floor with thoughtful pacing.

  Whoever this Fyfa person was, the faeries seemed to think that she was a good idea. How interesting that they hadn’t recommended Laec, the one who’d gotten me into this bind in the first place.

  Hours passed and I heard voices chatting distantly in the castle gardens. No one else came to visit or deliver food. I watched the patch of light travel across the floor and go dim before another plate of similar food and water was delivered and the other plate taken.

  “Don’t I get a phone call?” I asked the guard through the slot.

  Not even a laugh. The guard left again on those light feet.

  I sighed and returned to the mattress to watch the light leak out of my cell.

  “Georjayna?”

  I came awake with my muscles tense, my head lifted from the burlap, hovering as I listened. The cell was dark now save for a sliver of moonlight. Had I been dreaming?

  “Georjie?”

  A woman’s voice drifted in through the window at the door.

  Rolling off the mattress, I crossed the floor and peered into the dark hall. Light was blotted out by a face I couldn’t make out well; only a set of eyes gleamed there.

  “Fyfa?”

  “Yes, I’ve come to get you out of here.”

  My heart gave a leap and my shoulders straightened as adrenalin flooded my system. “How?”

  There was a jingle of metal and the sound of a key in a lock. “The old-fashioned way,” she whispered as the door swung open.

  I slipped into the hall beside my savior. A cool hand grasped mine and, without bothering to close the cell door, she pulled me down the hall. I wanted to ask her where the guards were and how she’d managed to get a set of keys, but saved the questions for later.

  The hallway was too black even for shadows, but Fyfa led me through the passageway as confidently as a cat in dark.

  Up ahead, a flickering yellow light came in the from the left. Turning through an arch, Fyfa led me up a spiral stairwell lit by torchlight. Through the doorway at the top of the steps––left open a crack––we were on a wooden landing where multiple hallways converged. A few more torchlit corridors with not a soul moving along them, and we slipped out through another door and into the fresh night air.

  The moon drifted on flimsy clouds, skimming low over the trees.

  I felt a grin crack my face as Fyfa dropped my hand but kept moving, through the gardens and into the line of trees not far from where Laec and I had emerged.

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” I whispered.

  Fyfa turned to face me, still a nondescript fae woman in the shadows of the trees where the moonlight was dim. She took my hand and I felt something small and cold pressed into it.

  “How bad is your friend?”

  “She’s comatose.”

  “But she still looks like herself? She’s still…beautiful?” Her eyes were urgent in the dark, her body tense.

  “Yes, she’s still beautiful.” What a strange thing to ask. “Why?”

  Fyfa closed her eyes and nodded with what I thought might be relief. “Listen well, because there’s still time. But you have to act fast.” She closed her hands around mine, enveloping what felt like a vial. “Take your friend far from civilization, as far as you can reasonably get. You’ll need help for this, I know, but do it with no more than one other person if you can, two at most. Lay her on the ground under a hawthorn tree and pour half of this into her mouth. Then wait. If nothing happens, give her the rest.”

  “Wait for how long?” My hands were trembling.

  “Just listen!” This was hissed impatiently, and I clamped my mouth shut. “Awakening her might attract the ithe.”

  “The ithe? Is that what you call the creature that burns like a black flame?”

  She nodded.

  “What is it?”

  “If I ever see you again, I’ll explain, but now there’s no time.” Fyfa’s hands squeezed mine tightly, the corners of the vial almost cutting into my skin. “As soon as your friend is awake, return home as quickly as you can. Don’t linger. If the ithe doesn’t appear, the spell is broken and you’ve won.”

  “And if it does?”

  Fyfa looked pained. “Don’t speak to it, don’t acknowledge it, d
on’t tell it your name. It won’t hurt you if it doesn’t know what you are. You’re not the target here; your friend is. Don’t give it a reason to want you.” She paused and looked down and back up. “Keep the dress.”

  I was shoved backward, almost violently. I tripped over a root and nearly stumbled. Of course by the time I’d recovered, Fyfa was gone.

  I stood there blinking in the moonlight, then I realized the smell was different. It smelled like Scotland. And it was freezing. The sound of a car horn in the distance jolted me and I realized that Fyfa hadn’t disappeared, she had shoved me back into my own reality––what Laec had called the without.

  As I emerged from the forest, the lights of Blackmouth Castle as I knew it came glimmering through the darkness. Looking down in my hand, I saw the angular vial with the crystalline liquid inside.

  Take your friend far away from civilization, she’d said.

  But Evie was still in the hospital, and they weren’t just going to let me take her. Like shuffling a deck, my mind flitted over my options.

  One: let the hospital in on what had happened to me tonight and beg someone to help me try what Fyfa had recommended? And end up in the psychiatric ward myself. Two: wake up Jasher and ask him to help me break Evie out. He’d be more than up to the task, and he had the keys to Gavin’s work trucks. We could figure out how to get Evie out of the hospital en route.

  I looked up at Blackmouth Castle and aimed for the back door at a run, dress held up in my fists.

  Chapter 22

  The moment I opened the door to Jasher’s bedroom, I realized that he wasn’t going to be the help I needed. The sound of heavy snoring was overshadowed only by the yeasty smell of stale beer. Frowning, I tiptoed into his room and opened the window to bring in some fresh air.

  Jasher was a lump under his coverlet, dark hair poking out, pillow thrown on the floor, both feet sticking out. Given the smell, I thought I might find a few empty beer cans, but the room was relatively clean. So the smell was Jasher himself, then. My heart ached for him. He’d been so concerned about Evelyn and he’d been spending so much time at the hospital that I could only assume his present state was an effort to drown his sorrows.

  I slipped from his room without waking him, changed rapidly into warm clothes, and headed out into the damp night in search of the only other person I might have a chance of recruiting.

  A warm yellow glow through one of the small windows in Lachlan’s living room lifted my heart a little.

  He ushered me inside, pleased to see me. “Where have you been? Is everything okay?”

  I took a bracing inhale. “I need to tell you something important, but there’s a chance you won’t believe me. Will you listen?”

  Taking my coat, he hooked it on one of the pegs behind the door. “Of course I’ll listen, Georjie.” He took my hand and led me to his living room where books and magazines lay scattered about.

  I wanted to ask him why he’d been up, but we didn’t have time for chit chat. Sitting next to him on the couch where we’d been not so long ago, I faced him and began to talk. Everything came pouring out. I touched briefly on what had happened to me in Ireland before launching into more detail about Laec, his suggestion, and what it had led to.

  Lachlan listened without saying anything. If I thought he was listening in disbelief I might have stopped talking altogether, my tongue in knots, but he gave no clue that he thought I was crazy. When I finished, I fell silent, my heart throbbing in the anticipation.

  “I knew it,” Lachlan whispered. His hand still held mine but his gaze was leveled at the hardwood floor, his expression muted.

  “You knew it?” Relief flooded my limbs.

  He looked up and I saw the light in his eyes, the excitement, the worry. “I knew it. It’s the stuff I used to talk about as a kid until my father told me he didn’t want to hear anything else about any fairytales. He couldn’t abide anything that sounded remotely like nonsense.”

  “Did something happen to make you believe?” I searched his face.

  “No, I never experienced anything myself, but this Queen Elphame you described, she’s famous. Here.” He released my hand and went to his library. Pulling down three books, he returned to the couch and laid them out on the table at our knees. I skimmed the titles.

  “Scottish Fairy Belief: A History,” I read aloud, pulling the velvet jacketed book toward me. “I know this book.” I had skimmed through it while looking for any mention of Wise. I must have come across Queen Elphame’s name and that was why she was familiar.

  “She’s mentioned in all of these books.” Lachlan grabbed one and flipped open to the index where he ran a finger down the entries. “She’s actually more of a lowland myth, but the fables rarely get it exactly right. Queen Elphame is also known as Queen of Elfland.”

  He flipped open to a page that included an illustration of a kneeling man in the woods, before him a blond woman in a billowy green dress. The caption read:

  ''I'm not the Queen of Heaven, Thomas,

  That name does not belong to me;

  I am but the Queen of fair Elphame

  Come out to hunt in my follie.''

  “She doesn’t look anything like that,” I said.

  “That’s just an artist’s idea of her, but she’s recorded in witch trial transcripts as having met with the accused.” He braced the book on his knee and read aloud.

  “The Queen of Elphame appeared in many witchcraft trials. For example, she was linked to one in 1597 when Andro Man was accused of practicing magic. During his confession, he claimed to have had an intimate relationship with the Queen of Elphame. According to his testimony, for more than thirty years he had been making love to and learning from the leader of the fairies. Andro Man said that he had several children with the queen and she had granted him with gifts of knowledge and healing. Moreover, according to a legend based on the previously described ballad of Thomas the Rhymer, he claimed that he was also kidnapped by the queen to have a sexual affair with her.

  “This figure reportedly used to meet with women as well. It is said, for example, that she appeared in front of two women who were believed to be witches—Bessie Dunlap and Isobel Gowdie. Bessie claimed that the Queen of Elphame came to her for the first time when she was in labor. According to both women, the queen visited them many times. She reportedly taught them how to heal people and animals.” He stopped and looked up. “I guess that’s what she’s doing for Evie.”

  “It wasn’t Queen Elphame that gave me the vial, it was Fyfa. The queen was no help at all.”

  “Do you really think that Fyfa could have taken the vial and given it to you without the queen knowing?”

  That gave me pause. “I don’t know.”

  I realized then that an enormous weight had lifted from my shoulders. My eyes filmed over and Lachlan went blurry.

  “Georjie?” I felt his hand on my knee.

  A tear slipped down my cheek and I brushed at my eyes. “I never thought you’d react this way. It’s such a relief to have told you everything and not to have been called crazy or thrown into the street.”

  He closed the space between us and pulled me into a hug. I let his warmth envelop me.

  “I wish you’d told me sooner,” he said gently. “I hate the idea of you going through this all alone, or worse, with some fae man who doesn’t care what happens to you.”

  I drew back. “We don’t have much time, Lachlan. We need to get Evie out of the hospital without alerting anyone.”

  “We’ll need a distraction.” He looked down at me, his face close to mine, his expression serious. “This is a big deal, Georjie. A big risk. We’re planning to essentially break a sick woman out of the hospital without her parents’ or her doctors’ permission, then take her far from civilization in the dead of night during the middle of winter, lay her on the frozen ground and give her some unknown substance that’s supposed to heal her.”

  When he outlined it like that, my gut began to shrivel.

>   “What if it kills her? Or what if the journey kills her before we even get a chance to administer the potion to her? Do you trust these fae?” he asked.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed the palms of my hands into them, my mind and stomach churning.

  I blinked up at him. “What’s wrong with her is supernatural. What would Fyfa, Laec, or Queen Elphame gain from hurting Evie further? As far as I can see, this is our only hope.”

  Lachlan hesitated. “Fair enough, I mean, even the history books say that she was teaching people how to heal, but what if Evelyn isn’t strong enough to make such a journey?”

  “I think I can help a little, at least. When I found her, I used my own abilities to try and wake her up. Her heart got stronger and her color came back, I just couldn’t rouse her. I’ll bolster her until we can get her far enough from civilization to give the vial to her.”

  “Did she tell you why we had to take her out into the middle of nowhere?”

  I shook my head. “There wasn’t even time for me to ask anything, she just told me what to do and shoved me back into our world with this.” I pulled the vial out of my pocket and held it on my open palm for Lachlan to see.

  He gave a sharp intake of breath and stared at the vial, his complexion paling. He reached for it and I thought he was going to take it, but he only curled my own fingers around it.

  “If I was more like my father, I would encourage you to call the authorities and tell them everything. Maybe they’d be willing to try—”

  “You know they’d never believe it. It’s not even worth discussing.”

  Lachlan let out a long sigh, his shoulders slumping. “No, you’re right. But I wish there was another way.”

  I waited as he sat there stewing, his fingers working over one another.

  He finally looked up and nodded. “Okay, let’s do this, before Evie gets any weaker. God help us.”

  Lachlan parked in the small hospital parking lot and turned off the car. We sat in the dark for a minute, staring at the double doors. The Blackmouth hospital was not a big building, thankfully. There was a rear entrance near Evelyn’s room, surely monitored by cameras. The front doors would be open and we could walk right in, but there would be a receptionist working, as well as…