Dark and Deepest Red(67)

Briar Meadow stirred around us, flickering with the moment of this season’s strange magic leaving us.

We knew, by now, that we had to let go of any magic that got caught in the boughs of our trees. We had watched crescent moons that burned as bright as full ones dim again, like candle wicks catching and then settling. We had waited for grandfathers to stop consulting crows on the morning weather report, and the crows to stop answering back. We saw mothers and daughters who’d spent nights on roofs trying to count every star climb down and back into upstairs windows.

Briar Meadow had spent years learning to let go. If you tried to hold on to something past its season, it turned on you. Coywolf pups bit. A reservoir that had been warm enough to swim in froze over. Fireflies caught in jars blew the glass apart with their heat.

I thought of Aubrey in her butter-yellow coat; she would leave her sister’s pair of red shoes at the edge of her front yard as she interlaced her fingers with Graham’s. I thought of Sylvie, in her pewter-gray A-line, setting her pair at the end of her family’s brick-paved driveway. A woman who’d rediscovered her love for bread would leave hers on an outside windowsill. Another who’d started feeding peanut brittle to the raccoons she’d once feared would carefully place hers in the park’s rose beds. A boy would whisper thank you to a cardinal-bright pair before letting them go; on his feet now would be a pair of ballet flats he’d never dared to wear out before this year, those red shoes giving him the nerve.

We would give up the red shoes, like we gave up everything else, and the glimmer would leave us.

I looked at Emil, his hands still on my upper arms, his face still wearing the distraction of five centuries ago.

If I’d had to live in these red shoes, if I’d had to let them almost dance me to death so Emil could see what we’d seen, so he could know, it was enough. It was worth them taking me into their fever.

Now it was time to let them go.

But when I reached to take them off, they held to me.

Mud stains dulled the bittersweet-berry fabric. The lace of dried salt patterned the satin. But they still sealed to me.

The air around us grew an edge, the sharp lemon-pith smell of magic overstaying its welcome. It sounded less like the wings of a hummingbird and more like electricity through overhead lines.

I tried again to rip them away.

This time, my own touch felt like the point of a hundred knives.





Strasbourg, 1518


The priest holds her a second longer, to show he does not fear her, and then releases her.

She cries out with relief, holding her hand as though it might wither before her.

A few who were part of the act make a show of returning to their senses, as though they do not know how they came to stand where they are. They stumble, dazed, returning from a trance. Their families, either in true fear or in their own performances, weep to have them return. They take their faces in their hands and thank God the demons have left them.

The priest nods to the sergeants, his holy work done.

A single glance is all Lala can risk to offer him her last gratitude.

The sergeants take hold of her and Alifair, driving them toward the city gate.

With each step, a crowd gathers behind them, shouting at their backs, rushing them toward the edge of the city. They shout that they will drive the demons out, on pain of the angels. They rush and overtake even the sergeants, who vanish into their numbers as though swallowed.

Lala hisses and shrieks back at them, as though resisting their justice. They will find it all the sweeter for being harder won.

Lala and Alifair keep their speed to stop from being pushed or thrown to the ground. Alifair follows her as if in a dream, a boy taken by an enchantment.

The crowd shoves them to the city gate, the sergeants nodding permission to the guards. They send Lala and Alifair stumbling through.

The crowd stops at the gate, shouting their insults that would drive them into the countryside.

Demon.

Whore

Devil’s wife.

Witch.

Zigeuner.

What would have wounded her days before now breathes fortitude into her, like wind spinning rain into a storm.

She has set lies before them, and they have taken up every one.

So much that the crowd does not dare pass the gate.

Lala and Alifair leave behind them the cathedral spire, with its rose window and blush-stone.

They leave behind the Pfalz, and the mint with its gold coins.

They turn their backs on the cannon foundries, and the barrels of grain loaded onto boats and taken from a city that needs them but cannot pay for them.

With each step, they place greater distance between themselves and the magistrate, and the councils, and all others who can see nothing for the glint of the sun off their own gold.

They leave this city of such weight, built on such weak ground that wood and iron had to be driven into the earth just to hold it up.

Then Lala hears the grinding of footsteps, a smaller crowd, behind them. They follow to the gasps and whispers of the greater crowd, a few of their names called, a scattered chorus of horrified cries. Dear God, no, or, Come back, please, or a crumbling sob.

Still, these few stream away from the greater crowd. They do not rush or storm. They follow in purposeful strides, a rhythm Lala can hear without turning.

Lala draws close enough to Alifair to reach his wrists. She pulls at the rope binding him, staying near enough for her body to shield her hands. A witch, powerful enough to curse with no more than a look, should be able to bid the rope unwind with less than a breath or a word. Those following her, those who have let her go, cannot see her working at the knot.