The Year of the Witching(12)
Immanuelle took one halting step into the trees, and then another, her legs suddenly leaden, her feet numb in her boots.
The wind flowed through the tree branches, beckoning her onward: Come hither. Come hither.
All at once, she was running, breaking between the elms and oak trees. The air smelled of rain and sap, loam and the sweet decay of forest rot. Thunder sounded and the wind picked up again. Brambles snagged her dress and caught on the straps of her knapsack as she tore through the woodland.
“Judas!” she shrieked, wading through the underbrush, tripping over tree roots and knots of tangled bramble. On and on she went, running through the forest as fast as her legs would carry her.
But the ram was gone.
And the sun was setting.
And Immanuelle soon realized she was lost.
Squinting through the rain, she turned, trying to retrace her footsteps. But the Darkwood seemed to shift as she moved, and she couldn’t find the path again. She was cold and alone and hungry. Her knees were weak and her knapsack felt heavy, as though it was weighted with stones. Ruefully she realized Martha had been right to warn her against the woods, and she had been foolish to disobey.
Gazing up to the treetops, Immanuelle saw that the last of the storm clouds were thinning. The wind still rattled the branches, but the pelting rain had died down to a drizzle, and the dull glow of the setting sun filtered through the pines. She followed its light, breaking west, running as fast as her numb feet would carry her. But the shadows were faster still, and night fell quick around her.
As the last rays of sunlight died into darkness, Immanuelle’s knees buckled beneath her. She staggered, collapsing into a muddy nook between an oak tree’s roots. There, cowering in the muck, she drew her knees to her chest and tried to catch her breath. As the wind howled through the trees, she clutched her mother’s pendant for good luck.
But she didn’t pray. She didn’t have the gall to do that.
Overhead, the last of the storm died away, leaving only a scattering of stars and a gibbous moon that hung, low-slung, in the evening sky. As Immanuelle peered up into the distant heavens, a calm settled over her like the soft folds of a blanket, and she began to feel less alone, less afraid. There was something gentle about the way the moonlight licked the leaves and wind moved through the treetops. It was as though the Darkwood was singing her a lullaby, one she’d heard before: Come hither, Immanuelle. Come hither.
As the wind’s voice seeped through the trees, the shadows blurred before her eyes, moonlight and darkness smearing together like paint. A kind of alertness came over her, and she tasted metal at the back of her throat. But somehow, she felt no fear. It had been stripped from her, as though she’d become a little less than whole, a half a girl existing between what is and isn’t.
She wasn’t just Immanuelle now. She was more. And she was less.
She was in the Darkwood. And the Darkwood was in her too.
Bracing a hand against the trunk of the oak tree, she rose, knees still weak beneath her, feet still numb. The whisper on the wind grew louder, and she stumbled blindly through the darkness after it, hoping it might lead her to the forest’s edge.
Gradually, the trees thinned, and for a moment, Immanuelle thought she’d found its end. But her hope faded as she crossed into a small clearing, a circle cut into the thick of the forest all aglow with the light of the moon. Around its perimeter grew a wide fairy ring of morel mushrooms, the biggest Immanuelle had ever seen.
And at the very center of that ring, two women lay twined and naked, their bare legs tangled together, lips split apart. The bigger of the two, a black-haired woman with the build of a spider, lay on top of the other, her spine contorted, shoulders tensed so tightly Immanuelle could see the corded muscles strain and spasm beneath her skin, which was as thin and gray as a corpse’s. The second woman writhed under her lover, moving her mouth to her neck.
Immanuelle’s knapsack slipped off her shoulder and struck the ground.
The women stopped, seized, and detangled themselves from each other, rising from the ground. One of them clawed for something in the shadows of the high grass, a dark object Immanuelle couldn’t see from where she stood. They turned to face her in unison.
Standing upright, the women were a foot taller than she. Both wore the same slack expression: mouths agape, lips red and slick, like the flaps of an open wound. Cut between their eyebrows was what appeared to be a bride’s seal, only the star in the middle was slightly different, less elaborate, perhaps. Though the women stood motionless, their bones seemed to shift and move, as though their skeletons were fighting to be free of them. Their eyes were dead white, the color of sun-bleached bone. No pupils, no irises, and yet, somehow, their gazes were fixed on Immanuelle.
CHAPTER FOUR
It is an odd love between the Father and the Mother, between the light and the darkness. Neither can exist without the other. And yet they can never be one.
—THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
THE BLOND WOMAN stepped forward first, her hand slithering free of her lover’s grasp. She crossed the glade in a few long strides and stopped just short of where Immanuelle stood. Up close, she could see that the woman’s features were mangled—her nose was badly broken, the bone at the bridge protruding into a sharp joint. Her lips were full, if a little swollen, and Immanuelle saw that the bottom one was split down the middle. Her breasts hung heavy and bare, and her head lolled to one side, as if her neck lacked the strength to hold her skull upright.