فصل 33

33.

In Which the Witch Encounters an Old Acquaintance

When Xan was a little girl, she lived in a village in the forest. Her father, as far as she could remember, was a carver. Of spoons, primarily. Animals, too. Her mother gathered the flowers of particular climbing vines and sapped them of their essences and combined them with honey that she pulled from the wild hives in the tallest trees. She would climb to the tops, as nimble as a spider, and then send the honeycombs down in baskets on ropes for Xan to catch. Xan was not allowed to taste. In theory. She would anyway. And her mother would climb down and kiss the honey from her little-­girl lips.

It was a thing she remembered with a stab in her heart. Industrious people, her parents. Fearless. She couldn’t recall their faces, but she remembered the feeling she had when she was near them. She remembered their smells of tree sap and sawdust and pollen. She remembered the curl of large fingers around her small shoulder and of her mother’s breath as she rested her mouth at the top of Xan’s head. And then they died. Or vanished. Or they didn’t love her and they left. Xan had no idea.

The scholars said they found her in the woods all alone.

Or, one of them did. The woman with the voice like cut glass. And a heart like a tiger. She was the one who brought Xan to the castle, all those years ago.

Xan rested her wings in the hollowed-­out nook of a tall tree. It would take her forever to make it to the Protectorate at this rate. What had she been thinking? An albatross would have been a much better choice. All she’d have had to do is lock her wings in place and let the wind do the rest.

“No matter now,” she chirped in her bird-­voice. “I’ll make it there as best I can. Then I’ll return to my Luna. I’ll be there when her magic opens up. I’ll show her how to use it. And who knows? Maybe I was wrong. Maybe her magic will never come. Maybe I won’t die. Maybe a lot of things.”

She helped herself to a portion of the ants swarming the outside of the tree, looking for something sweet. It wasn’t much, but it satisfied the edges of her hunger. Puffing her feathers out for warmth, Xan closed her eyes and fell asleep.

The moon rose, heavy and round as a ripe squash, over the tops of the trees. It fell on Xan, waking her up.

“Thank you,” she whispered, feeling the moonlight sink into her bones, easing her joints and soothing her pain.

“Who’s there?” a voice said. “I warn you! I’m armed!”

Xan couldn’t help herself. The voice sounded so frightened. So lost. And she could help. And here she was all full up with moonlight. Indeed, if she just paused a moment, she would be able to gather it in her wings and drink until she was full. She wouldn’t stay full, of course. She was too porous. But she felt wonderful for now. And down below her was a figure—it moved quickly from side to side; it hunched its shoulders; it looked from left to right to left again. It was terrified. And the moonlight billowed Xan up. It made her compassionate. She fluttered out of her hiding place and circled over the figure. A young man. He screamed, loosed the stone in his hand, and hit Xan on the left wing. She fell to the ground without so much as a peep.

Antain, realizing that it was not—as he had assumed—a fearsome Witch bearing down on him (possibly riding a dragon and holding a flaming staff), but was instead a tiny brown bird who probably just wanted a bit of food, felt an immediate stab of shame. As soon as the stone left his fingers, he wished he could take it back again. For all his bluster in front of the Council, he had never so much as wrung the neck of a chicken for a nice dinner. He wasn’t entirely certain he could kill the Witch.

(The Witch will take my son, he admonished himself. Still. Taking a life. With each moment he felt his resolve begin to weaken.)

The bird landed right in front of his feet. It didn’t make a sound. It hardly breathed. Antain thought for certain that it was dead. He swallowed a sob.

And then—a miracle!—the bird’s chest rose, then fell, then rose, then fell. Its wing angled outward sickeningly. Broken. That was certain.

Antain kneeled down. “I’m sorry,” he breathed. “I’m so, so sorry.” He scooped up the bird in his hands. It didn’t look healthy. How could it, in these cursed woods? Half the water was poisoned. The Witch. It all came back to the Witch. Curse her name forever. He brought the bird to his chest, trying to warm it from the heat of his body. “I’m so, so sorry,” he said again.

The bird opened its eyes. A swallow, he could see. Ethyne loved swallows. Just thinking of her made his heart slice in half. How he missed her! How he missed their son! What he wouldn’t do to see them again!

The bird gave him a hard look. It sneezed. He couldn’t blame it.

“Listen, I am so sorry about your wing. And, alas, I have no skills to heal it. But my wife. Ethyne.” His voice cracked saying her name. “She is clever and kind. People bring her their injured animals all the time. She can help you. I know it.”

He tied the top section of his jerkin and made a small pouch, closing the bird safely inside. The bird made a warbling sound. It’s not happy with me, he thought. And to drive the point home, the bird nipped him on his index finger when he let it linger too close. Blood bloomed on his fingertip.

A night moth fluttered into Antain’s face, probably attracted by the moonlight shining on his skin. Thinking fast, he grabbed it, and offered it to the bird.

“Here,” he said. “To show you that I mean no harm.”

The bird gave him another hard look. And then reluctantly snatched the moth from his fingers, swallowing it in three jerking bites.

“There. You see?” He looked up at the moon, and then at his map. “Come. I just want to make it to the top of that rise. And then we can rest.”

And Antain and the Witch went deeper into the wood.

Sister Ignatia felt herself growing weaker by the minute. She had done her best to swallow all the sorrow she could—she couldn’t believe how much sorrow hung about the town! Great, delicious clouds of it, as persistent as fog. She really had outdone herself, and she had never, she realized now, given herself the proper admiration that was her due. An entire city transformed into a veritable well of sorrow. An ever-­filling goblet. All for her. No one in the history of the Seven Ages had ever before managed such a feat. There should be songs written about her. Books, at the very least.

But now, two days without access to sorrow, and she was already weak and worn. Shivery. Her wellsprings of magic depleting by the second. She would need to find that boy. And fast.

She paused and knelt beside a small stream, scanning the nearby forest for signs of life. There were fish in the stream, but fish are accustomed to their lot in life and don’t experience sorrow as a general rule. There was a nest of starlings overhead, the hatchlings not two days old. She could crush the baby birds one by one, and eat the mother’s sorrow—of course she could. But the sorrow of birds was not as potent as mammalian sorrow. There wasn’t a mammal for miles. Sister Ignatia sighed. She gathered what she needed to build a makeshift scrying device—a bit of volcanic glass from her pocket, the bones of a recently killed rabbit, and an extra bootlace, because it was helpful to include the most useful thing on hand. And nothing is more useful than a bootlace. She couldn’t build it with the same level of detail as the large mechanical scryers she had in the Tower, but she wasn’t looking for very much.

She couldn’t see Antain. She had an idea of where he was. She was fairly certain she could see a blur where she thought he might be, but something was blocking her view.

“Magic?” she muttered. “Surely not.” All the magicians on earth—at least everyone who knew what they were doing—had perished five hundred years earlier when the volcano erupted. Or nearly erupted. The fools! Sending her with her Seven League Boots to rescue the people in the forest villages. Oh, she certainly had. She’d gathered them all safe and sound into the Protectorate. All their endless sorrows, clouding together in one place. All according to plan.

She licked her lips. She was so hungry. She needed to survey her surroundings.

The Head Sister held her scrying device up to her right eye and scanned the rest of the forest. Another blur. What is the matter with this thing? she wondered. She tightened the knots. Still a blur. Hunger, she decided. Even basic spells are difficult when one is not operating at full strength.

Sister Ignatia eyed the starling nest.

She scanned the mountain. Then she gasped.

“No!” she shouted. She looked again. “How are you still alive, you ugly thing?”

She rubbed her eyes and looked a third time. “I thought I killed you, Glerk,” she whispered. “Well. I guess I shall have to try again. Troublesome creature. You almost foiled me once, but you failed. And you shall fail again.”

First, she thought, a snack. Shoving her scrying device into her pocket, Sister Ignatia climbed up to the branch with the starling nest. She reached in and grabbed a tiny, wriggling nestling. She crushed it in one fist as the horrified mother looked on. The mother sparrow’s sorrow was thin. But it was enough. Sister Ignatia licked her lips and crushed another nestling.

And now, she thought, I must remember where I hid those Seven League Boots.