The Year of the Witching(40)
“It’s rabid,” he said as he hopped from the cart. Gun raised, he stalked toward the hound. It snarled at his approach, pressing itself low to the ground.
The horse bucked, and Immanuelle yanked the reins so hard her palms chafed.
Ezra raised the rifle to his shoulder.
The hound lunged.
The crack of the bullet breaking from the barrel split the darkness. The hound staggered, tripping over its own paws, and fell dead to the dust.
Bile rose in Immanuelle’s throat, and she choked back the sick as Ezra returned to his seat, tilting the rifle against the bench. He took the reins from her shaking hands and snapped them twice, urging the horse past the hound’s bleeding corpse. Neither he nor Immanuelle said a word.
After a few more minutes, the cart rounded a bend and started down the long, jagged road that led to the Moore land. The light of the farmhouse appeared in the distance, glowing through the rolling waves of wheatgrass.
As they neared, Ezra said, “In the morning, then? At daybreak?”
Immanuelle muttered something less than holy under her breath, but conceded, knowing it was futile to argue. “Yes, and bring that rifle of yours. You may well need it.”
He snapped the reins, looking a little smug. “I’ll meet you by the well.”
Immanuelle nodded. Then something occurred to her. “Why did the Prophet want those names?”
“What?”
“In the Haven, your father asked you to compile all the names of the women and girls in Bethel. Why?”
Ezra’s answer was halting. “It’s said that a curse can only come from the mouth of a woman. From the mouth of a witch.”
A curse. There it was, then. The truth out in the open. “That’s what he thinks this is?”
“Well, it’s certainly not a blessing,” said Ezra. “What else could you call it?”
Immanuelle thought back to the cathedral, to the stained-glass window that depicted the Mother’s legions being burned and slain. She thought of the muzzled girl, chained to the market stocks. She thought of jeering crowds and flaming pyres. She thought of Leah lying prone on the altar, blood pooling in the hollows of her ears, a blade at her brow. She thought of young girls married off to men old enough to be their grandfathers. She thought of starved beggars from the Outskirts squatting by the roadside with their coin cups. She thought of the Prophet’s gaze and the way it moved over her, lingering where it shouldn’t.
Immanuelle answered Ezra’s question in a hoarse whisper: “A punishment.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When the forest is hungry, feed it.
—FROM THE UNHOLY FOUR: A COMPENDIUM
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Immanuelle woke before sunrise and went to Abram’s empty workshop to fetch supplies. She sorted through the tools before making her selections: a thick coil of rope long enough to run the length of the farmhouse with slack to spare, a clean roll of gauze, and Abram’s sharpest whittling knife. The rope was heavy enough to throw her off balance, but Immanuelle managed to sling it over her shoulder as she crossed through the fallow fields to the gated paddock where the sheep spent their nights. Hurriedly, she let them out to pasture, where they would remain under the watchful eye of the farmhand, Josiah, while she was away in the woods.
With the flock attended to, Immanuelle started toward the well on the eastern edge of the pastures, where she waited for Ezra to arrive. To pass the time, she flipped through the pages of her mother’s journal, revisiting the sketches of the witches in preparation for what she was about to do. If all went according to plan, she would locate the pond, go into the water, and make her sacrifice, and by the time she emerged from the Darkwood again, the blood plague would be over. She just prayed that the daylight was enough to keep Lilith’s coven at bay.
Several yards off, cresting a hill and crossing into the pasture, came Ezra. He wore work clothes and his hand was freshly bandaged with a few strips of clean white gauze. On a leather strap slung over his shoulder, his rifle.
Immanuelle frowned, peering up at the sun. It had already risen above the horizon. “You’re late.”
The sheep scattered as Ezra moved through the flock. He stopped just short of her. Up close he looked rather tired, perhaps from a night spent sorting through the census. “And you’re reading forbidden literature.”
Immanuelle snapped the journal shut and hastily shoved it into her knapsack. “How do you know it’s forbidden?”
“You look guilty. No one looks guilty reading a book Protocol allows.” He nodded toward the coil of rope by her side. “What’s that for?”
“Fishing,” she said, brushing the dirt off her skirts as she stood. “Shall we?”
Ezra started forward first, wading through the waves of high grass to the forest’s edge. She followed him into the brush, hating herself for the way her heart eased the moment the trees closed in around her. The woods were as beautiful as she’d ever seen them. Sunlight filtered through the trees, dappling the narrow path that wended through the forest thicket.
Never had the woods seemed so gentle and alive. In comparison to Bethel—where everything was withered and dying—it was a stark juxtaposition. There, in the Darkwood, it almost seemed like the blood plague was some vague and distant nightmare. If not for the glimpses of the red river threading through the trees, or the blood-filled ruts in the path, Immanuelle might have believed the blood plague had been contained to Bethel alone.