The Year of the Witching(24)
IMMANUELLE WOKE SPRAWLED across the floor. It took her a few seconds to realize she was not in the deep of the Darkwood, but in her own house, in her own kitchen, lying facedown at the foot of the sink. Across the room, her wet and muddied cloak lay in a heap beside the back door, which was slightly ajar.
All at once, the memories of the night came flooding back to her. There was Delilah slithering through the reeds and shallows, Lilith slipping back into the shadows of the Darkwood as silently as she arrived, the branches closing in around her, the darkness falling. She remembered running through the woods, the pain in her belly, the bleeding, collapsing at the forest’s edge, the moon’s face peering down at her through the breaks between trees.
She might have thought it was all a dream, if not for the black sludge caked beneath her nails, her wet hair and muddy nightdress.
No, it had happened. All of it had happened.
From the blue light seeping in through the kitchen window, she knew it was nearing sunup, though as far as she could tell the rest of the household had yet to wake. She was grateful for that. She could only imagine the thrashing Martha would inflict if she knew Immanuelle had been in the forest again.
Immanuelle pushed the thought from her mind, tasting bile at the back of her throat. Dull pain split through her belly again and she winced. Squinting, she peered down between her legs to see that there was a small, cold puddle of blood beneath her. She was flowing freely, the red wet seeping through her underskirts and staining the floorboards.
Her first bleed.
* * *
IMMANUELLE SCRAMBLED TO clean the kitchen, sopping up the blood with an old dish towel, wiping the mud away. When the floor was scrubbed clean, she crept upstairs to the washroom, snatched a fistful of rags from the basket by the sink, and struggled to fit them into her bloomers, feeling less like a woman and more like a toddler trying to change its own soiling cloths. Her bleed should have been a moment of celebration, relief—against all odds, she was a woman at last—but all she felt was small and wounded and a little sick.
Immanuelle shared the news with Anna first, then Martha after her. There was a flurry of excitement, someone sat her down in a dining room chair, provided her with a steaming cup of raspberry-leaf tea and a plate of eggs and fry cake, which she felt far too ill to eat. But despite Anna’s insistence that she remain in bed, by sunup Immanuelle was on her way to the pastures, crook in hand. Herding the flock was a difficult task. She was slow and tired from her night in the woods, and her belly ached with the pains of bleeding. The flock seemed to sense her disquiet. The rams were restless, the ewes skittish. The lambs bleated at every passing breeze as if they feared the wind would snatch the meat off their bones. It took everything Immanuelle had to herd them to the western pastures, and when the deed was finally done, she collapsed into the high grass, spent, her stomach aching.
Just beyond the pasture’s edge, the Darkwood loomed, the forest’s shadow clawing across the plains as the sun shifted. A few vultures circled the pines, riding the wind, but there was no sign of the witches. No women of the wood. No writhing Lovers. Delilah didn’t lurk among the trees and she saw no sign of Lilith.
The woods were silent.
As the light of the rising sun shifted through the trees, Immanuelle’s thoughts went to the final entry in Miriam’s journal: Blood. Blight. Darkness. Slaughter. Father help them.
What had Miriam seen in the woods that inspired those writings? What did she know that Immanuelle didn’t? And perhaps most importantly, what was the carnal urge that compelled Immanuelle to return to the forest again and again despite the danger?
Why did the Darkwood call to her?
Immanuelle might have sat there all day, staring at the trees and struggling with the truth, if she hadn’t been distracted by the sound of someone calling her name.
She turned, squinting against the light of the rising sun, and saw Ezra coming toward her, a package in his hand. “Good morning,” he said.
With a pang, Immanuelle remembered seeing him the previous night, on the edge of the woods, wrapped in Judith’s embrace.
Immanuelle shifted her gaze back to her sheep. In the distance, their farmhand, Josiah, herded the flock away from the Darkwood. “May the Father will it so.”
Ezra stopped just short of her, but the breeze carried the scent of him—fresh-cut hay and cedar. A beat of silence. He slipped his hands into his pockets. “I’m here to apologize.”
Immanuelle faltered, unsure of what to say. Officials of the Church rarely offered apologies, on account of the fact that they rarely sinned. “Apologize for what?”
Ezra sat down in the grass beside her, so close their shoulders almost touched. He watched the pasture in silence, then turned to her. “For what you saw last night, after the feast. I didn’t behave in a way that was worthy of my name. It was low of me, and it was also selfish to make you privy to my sins.”
His sins weren’t her concern. Immanuelle’s gaze moved to the tree line. She hugged her knees to her chest and stayed silent. Without waiting for her reply, Ezra pushed the package he had been carrying into her hands.
Immanuelle was of a mind to refuse his gift, until she felt the weight and shape of it. It was a book.
“It’s the one you were reading in the market,” he said as she ripped the paper away. A little color came to his cheeks and he almost looked embarrassed, though she knew that wasn’t possible. There was no way someone like her could provoke that reaction from the likes of him. “The same exact, nearly.”