the exodus. the price.

the world of men

It is full dark now as the four witches depart the Ladies' clearing. The sky is clear, the stars dazzlingly bright. There is no moon; no extraneous light to give them away. It is a long way yet back to the village, but it is a far easier hike than it was on the way out, weighed down by skirts and aprons and coifs and fear.

They move swiftly now, bare calves and bare arms, Hannah boldly hiking her shift up and tying them, loincloth-like, as she goes. It's not a terribly fashionable look, but it's utilitarian. She winds her hair up too, but doesn't cover it. None of them cover their hair anymore. Or their wrists, or their ankles, or their sinful, sinful skin.

The night is cool, though the earth is warm. They cross a stream. They make their way through a valley. They skirt an open meadow -- too exposed, even though one doubts those fearful villagers would brave the woods by night. Now and then in the night Devon catches a flash of white, an enormous wolf pacing them from some twenty or thirty yards away, stalking with head at the level of the withers. Now and then his eyes meet hers, but he comes no closer. Slips no farther away.

--

Eventually, the first signs of the village: cut trees in the forest. Then cleared land, fallow and then worked, crops pushing out of the earth. They pass close to the Noyes farm, silent and still. It must be past midnight by now. The rutted roads, the bootprints of the men who came for her still clear in the mud. They keep to the shadows, keep to what trees they can find.

As they near the town commons, Assawetough moves ahead, leading them up a small bluff to a vantage point. While the others wait behind, she peers first, frowns at what she sees. Motions for them to join her, crouching low. The bluff is fifty feet high at best, and treeless, and barely a stone's throw from the nearest buildings -- hardly a safe spot. Still, it is enough to give them a view of the sleeping village, its river and its harbor, the ocean beyond; its church, its tradepost, its mill, its farrier, its town hall with the jail in the cellar.

And something more. A ramshackle structure set up on the town green. A gibbet. Four nooses. One body already swinging. A woman, darkskinned and darkhaired. Hannah gasps. Oiguina snarls something savage and low, and is instantly hushed by Assawetough. Even in the darkness, even from this distance, they can see she was beaten and brutalized before she was hung.

Assawetough points at the woman. She whispers to Devon, "Ulu."

witch

Devon carries a knife with her, the one handed to her by Oiguina. It is shale, sharp and thin at the edges, and she can't tell if it weighs more or less than steel: it feels heavier in one sense, lighter in another. Her hair is unbound now, thick around her shoulders, and there are scratches and splashes of mud on her shins. There is dirt under her nails. She still wears shoes, but her arms are bare and the air raises bumps on her skin. Her nipples are evident through her shift; she is scandalous and wild-looking. She is wild, full stop.

They keep close to the treeline, but stay out where they can earn the blessing of starlight. She occasionally catches sight and sense of Rafael; she doubts that Oiguina and Assawetough are unaware of him moving nearby, though she thinks Hannah is probably oblivious to it. She doesn't mention him. She doesn't acknowledge him except for once, when their eyes do meet, and then she looks away. She can't focus on anything else right now.

She can feel something building in her as she walks. The earth is still warm from the day's sunlight, and she feels a pulse of it up through the soles of her feet, even through the thin shoes she wears. It makes her heart thump heavily, almost unbearably, in her chest. She refuses to look at the Noyes farm; it will distract her. She'll search for Faith and Nicholas. She'll think of Rafael killing the men. And all she can focus on right now is what is building in her. What she is coming towards.

Being still while Assawetough scouts is hard for her; it is hard to be still. It is hard not to be walking. Devon, finding her breath shallow, reaches down and presses her palm into the earth; she tries to give it some of her excess energy, tries to take something steadying back from it. Perhaps it helps her; it usually does, back home. But back home, she can't say she's ever felt this much power filling her. It threatens to lock her jaw if it doesn't find expression soon.

She is shaking slightly when she is beckoned, approaches her sister, and looks.

The first noises they make since leaving the clearing: a gasp, a snarl.

And Devon, hissing.

She doesn't know where the fuck the sound comes from, more like a snake than a cat. Knows only that it's anger, and hatred, and disapproval, and threat. She doesn't know what words she would say if she were saying words right now. She doesn't want to know what those words would be.

--

Quieting, all their bodies low, she looks at Assawetough and points at the moon. She flattens her hand and draws it down across her own eyes. Darkness falling. "Then we go down," she murmurs, "and then it's Hannah's turn." She looks briefly at the other girl. "We'll protect you. Will you be ready?"

the world of men

There is a terrible wild power growing in her. Gathering like a storm. Perhaps it was passed into her with that eerie kiss from the Mother. Perhaps it was planted in her when she came back into this younger world. Perhaps it has been inside her all along, slumbering and now awakened. Perhaps,

terrifying,

it will stay with her now, pulsing and untameable. She doesn't know. She can't know. All she knows is that it is within her, and it is almost unbearable, and when she touches palm to earth it helps only a little bit. It grounds her. It does not at all diminish her power, her outrage, her wrath.

--

Assawetough, stonefaced, sucks a breath that flares her nostrils. Then she exhales, and as she does, the entire world seems to dim. All the stars. The few burning lanterns in the town. The distant and subtle shimmer of the sea.

Even the shine of tears on Hannah's cheeks. Her eyes are wet and she doesn't bother to dry them. Devon can hardly see her at all before long, but what Devon can and does see is not grief but anger.

"I am ready. Let us end this, Mercy." A beat of pause. Then: "Devon."

It is what the Ladies called her. Hannah does not question it, but the name, in and of itself, is an acknowledgment.

witch

The change is not like the lights going out. They dim instantly but gradually, and it's disorienting. Devon waits for her eyes to adjust. What she can see, for now, is just enough to make out Hannah's rage, expressed in a way that is just... Hannah.

She touches the girl on the head, cupping her with her palm thoughtlessly. Awkwardly, to be sure, but unhesitating. Her eyes widen slightly when Hannah calls her Devon, as none of the sisters mentioned it at all after their visit with the Ladies. But she nods. She slides her hand away and then,

reaching backward and down,

removes her shoes. She will want to feel the earth against her skin as she walks. She thinks she needs to.

--

As the world around them grows darker, Devon gets up and leads them -- less slowly, but not less carefully -- into the town below. They keep to the shadows, Devon at least trying not to look at Ulu again. She might snap if she does. They head for the jail, and she discovers she is holding Hannah's hand, as though that might make her stronger. Hannah herself said she's never done anything quite like this. She can walk in dreams, sometimes hear thoughts, but entering the minds of several men tonight to push them deeper into the darkness is a lot to ask of her.

If there is strength she can give, she gives what she can. A little. A drop.

Somehow, given how she feels right now, she thinks that will be enough.

the world of men

Together they go down, no less careful but perhaps less cautious. Less like prey; more like predators. As they move, they fan out -- Devon holding Hannah's hand, but Assawetough ranging silent to their left, Oiguina stalking to the right.

They pass the town gates. There are no walls yet around Newbury; the gate stands alone, a simple bracket of wood. Oiguina puts her hand against the frame as she passes, and there is the sudden acrid smell of woodsmoke. A smoking palmprint scorched in her wake.

--

Devon does not look at Ulu, but Assawetough breaks from them as they cross the green. Agile and swift, she climbs the gibbet, shimmies across the cross-bar, cuts the rope. They all hear the terrible thud when Ulu's body falls, and the softer sound as Assawetough leaps down. Hannah turns her head to look. Perhaps Devon does not; perhaps she does not see Assawetough arranging Ulu's body carefully, straightening her limbs, laying her hands over her belly, scattering a handful of grass over her face. There is no time for anything else. Soon enough she rejoins them, jogging to catch up.

Soon enough they stand before the town hall. The desecrated church behind them. The meeting room, which has doubled as a court, before them. Oiguina's hands are clenched, her breathing harsh. Assawetough drives her spear into the ground. And, without needing a prompt, Hannah slips her hand from Devon's.

Her eyes roll back in her head. Her knees unhinge as she slips the shackles of her body; quite gracefully, that corporeal self falls.

witch

They do stop. Devon does, holding Hannah, and watches when Assawetough cuts down Ulu. She watches Assawetough arrange her. She winces a little, to herself, not because of the time taken, but because she feels the pain in the memorial. They have time for this. Of course they do.

But not enough.

--

With Assawetough there to keep the night dark and Oiguina there to protect them, Devon watches over Hannah in particular. She lets her go, but not a moment later she's blinking sharply, darting forward to grab Hannah and ease her to the ground.

Nervous laughter threatens to bubble up from her throat. She whispers at Hannah's slack face: "You didn't tell me you were going to fall down."

the world of men

There is no reply. Of course there isn't. Her eyes are closed, her body heavy and limp. Now and then her eyelids flutter, like a dreamer's. There is no outward sign of what may or may not be happening. She can only trust that Hannah has sent her spirit out, that she slips now from one dream to the next, one mind to the next, dragging sleepers deeper into sleep, cutting tenuous ties to the surface, closing portals, shutting tunnels back to the waking world.

Some minutes go by, Assawetough watchful and stoic, Oiguina pacing before long, electric, furious, knives dancing restlessly and thoughtlessly in her hands. Eventually she turns to Devon.

"We give Ha-na enough time," she whispers. "We go. Anyone still wake, too bad."

witch

Devon remains beside Hannah, waiting. Watchful. She listens. Oiguina paces and speaks, and then Devon simply says: "Or Assawetough goes, in darkness, and sees if any are still awake." Her brow wrinkles. Her voice quiests.

"I know they killed Ulu. I want to hurt them for that, too. But not everyone locked in there can defend themselves like we can. If someone's awake and panics, what is to stop him from hurting one of those twenty women, instead of us?"

She looks at Assawetough, gives her a nod. "Please."

the world of men

"We do," Oiguina spits, teeth flashing. "We stop them."

Assawetough speaks a word -- swift, hard. Oiguina clenches her teeth. Then mutters something to Assawetough: a quick translation, one assumes, as Assawetough responds by nodding to Devon.

Then the woman pulls her spear from the ground. Lightfooted as even Oiguina is not, she eases the town hall door open, slips through. The door remains ajar, but even so Devon cannot hear her at all. A bar of dim lamplight spills through that cracked door, but even as she watches it darkens. It is an unnerving, unnatural thing to watch: no flicker, no change in hue or quality, but simply a leaching-away of light.

Seconds tick by. Minutes. There is a sudden rustle in the brush that brings Oiguina's knives flashing out, but it's only a rabbit darting away. Oiguina swears under her breath.

Then all at once Hannah lurches upright, sucking a breath. Flails and pants as though waking from a nightmare, or surfacing from a near-drowning. She grabs Devon's hem, an arm, a leg, whatever she can get her hands on. Pulls herself up.

"They all sleep soundly," she whispers urgently. "The magistrate, the pastor, everyone I could find. But I could not find the magistrate's captain, Mercy. I know not where he is -- mayhaps he does not sleep. He could be awake. He could wake the others. Mercy -- "

Assawetough reappears at the town hall door. She beckons, a quick and efficient motion.

witch

Devon doesn't even respond to Oiguina this time. Assawetough does. And Devon doesn't follow it up; it's not necessary. Assawetough slips away, and Devon watches, waiting. She's very still. Oiguina is reactive enough right now for both of them; she's fire itself. If she feels half of the charge that Devon does right now, then it must feel like her skin is on fire, like her blood is on fire, like her own thoughts are flickering, licking, climbing up the walls of her skull. Devon steadies herself.

And then she nearly gets clocked in the skull when Hannah sits upright, their heads coming perilously close before Devon rears back. She puts her hand on Hannah's shoulder as the girl flails, holding her, and then grips her arms, helping her -- slowing her, a bit -- to her feet.

"It's all right," she says, cutting through Hannah's words as Assawetough comes out, beckoning to them. "We won't let him warn the others."

She looks over at Oiguina, meeting her eyes. "He might not get a chance to yell," she says. She says it to Hannah, ostensibly, but the words aren't for her. It's not quite permission for Oiguina, either. At most it is: Go for it.

No, not permission. But absolutely a blessing.

Without another hesitation, she takes Hannah to make sure she isn't wobbling on her feet and goes -- all but running -- towards the door. If Oiguina pushes ahead, Devon lets her. But she thinks back to her time slipping through the stream of the future and tries to recall the layout of this place. "Cells are this way," she whispers, and begins heading that direction.

And it's okay if Oiguina doesn't go with her.

Hell: it's okay if Assawetough doesn't, either. As far as Devon is concerned, they have a matter to attend to, together, with the captain. Regarding Ulu.

Prices must be paid. It's a law that predates this village. It's a law that predates the written word.

the world of men

He might not get a chance to yell.

Oiguina flashes a thin smile. She understands.

They are running now. It is very dark inside the town hall. It is very dark everywhere -- and so Assawetough, far more levelheaded than Oiguina, does accompany Devon. She leads the way, Devon and Hannah right behind; Oiguina, for her part, remains up above on the main floor, facing the door with a knife in her left hand, her right hand empty. As Devon races down the stairs into the chilly, dank basement, her shadow is thrown onto the wall before her by a sudden, blazing firelight.

--

In the cellar then. Crowded, miserable, stinking of too many bodies crammed in together. The jail is tiny, just two cells, exactly as her mind's eye saw it. There are three guards and they are all deeply asleep. One slumped over a table with a half-eaten bowl of porridge, one leaning against the wall with a musket as his side, one passed out in front of a cell door. The women inside are reaching through the bars, straining for the keyring on his belt. They startle when they see Devon and her witches. Then a commotion, someone pushing forward, a small body, a girl. It's Faith:

"Mercy!" She bursts into tears. "Oh, Mercy, you've come for me. I knew you would!"

"Mercy," Mary Goffe, in the adjoining cell, "by God's grace, how came thee here? And Hannah. And Assawetough! What has happened? Where are the others?"

Disturbed by the commotion, the guard on the floor mutters in his sleep.

witch

She has no time or patience for their relief. And Devon makes a sharp, silencing gesture with her hands. "Shut up!" she hisses at the women in the cells. At little Faith. She would rather she were horrified. Holy. That she could silence them with a look, simultaneously reassuring them. But if they wake that guard with their straining or their joy at seeing her, then...

well, somewhere down that train of thought, Oiguina burns the entire fucking village down.

She walks forward, barefoot and quiet, to the cell, and touches Faith's hand with her own. She looks also at Mary Goffe, and at all of them. "Be. Silent. We are leaving. First this building and then the village." Her eyes lift, including all the women. "If you don't want to come, you don't have to. And we've all paid a price to try and help keep you safe if you stay. But those of you who know you will never be safe here... you need to come with us."

Another bubble of nervous laughter. The Terminator line. She wants to say it. No, Devon. Stop it.

With a slow exhale, Devon goes to the lock on the gate and wraps her hands around it. She doesn't even consider the keyring. Besides: these women need to see what she's talking about.

What she can do.

She wraps the cold metal in her palms and closes her eyes. Old locks aren't pin and cylinder, but... what was it? Half-mortsomething. But they're simpler. It's about a very narrow band of energy, pushing in one direction, pushing at hard, weathered metal. And in her mind, whispering to that metal: open. open. open, open, open, open, openopenopenopenopen.

the world of men

They fall silent at once -- Faith startled, Mary understanding her caution, all the rest of them frightened. When she reaches forward to grasp the bars, they shrink back. She closes her eyes. She focuses --

but it's not even necessary. She hardly has to picture the metal, the rust, the grooves. A loud clack! and the lock pops open in her hand. A gasp ripples through the cell. A dozen women push through the door, disorderly, chaotic, tripping over each other. Faith all but flings herself at Mercy, attaches herself to her side. Those in the other cell press at the bars, rattle the door. Mary Goffe hisses -- shh! -- but it hardly does any good at all. They're calling out to Mercy now:

"Mercy! Save us!"

"Free us, Mercy!"

The guard on the floor -- kicked by some uncareful or vengeful woman -- stirs and grumbles. The one at the table smacks his lips and starts to lift his head. "Mercy," Hannah whispers, "should I try to -- ?"

witch

Clack and thunk. Devon feels the lock loosen in her hands and blinks. She looks at it and smiles briefly. Very briefly. Because:

Jesus H. Christ, she thinks. They push open the door -- loudly -- and start coming out of the cell -- loudly -- and saying all kinds of stupid shit -- LOUDLY -- before Devon can stop them. She has Faith clinging to her and Hannah asks her and Devon exhales: "Yes. Please. Just sit down first."

Turning back to the women, holding Faith at her side, she pleads with them: "Please. Please be quiet. You're going to get me shot if you don't be quiet."

It's not an empty threat, or an empty plea. She saw the musket. She throws herself on their mercy. She can't help them if she's bleeding on the basement floor, for god's sake. But she goes to the other lock all the same, wrapping it in her hands much like the first.

the world of men

She doesn't even have to think about the second lock. She touches the bars and the lock springs apart, and another exclamation ripples through the crowd. Mary shh!s again, louder, and meanwhile Hannah's slid down to the ground unconscious. The guard at the table is still lifting his head. Assawetough gets there first, slams the butt of her spear into his temple. His head drops with a thud. That's one way to handle it.

Then from above, a commotion, a clatter, the door slamming open, a strange and low whoompf. Someone screams -- but not for very long.

The guard with the musket starts to straighten. Then, abruptly, he lets loose a loud snore. Slumps over on his side, fast asleep. Hannah's pushing herself up the next second, shaking herself out of grogginess. The crowded cellar is fairly swarming with newly freed women now, some of them grasping at Devon's hands and arms as though she were some sort of blessed figure, some saint, some Virgin Mary; others cowering away from her, crossing themselves, whispering prayers.

"We need to go," Mary Goffe says -- her eyes first on Hannah, then swinging to Devon. There they stay. "Have you a plan?"

"Mary," Hannah interrupts, "Mary, you need to know. Ulu, they -- "

"I know. We need to go. Mercy?"

witch

Devon flinches as the spear hits the guard. She can't understand her own feelings: at the sight of Ulu she wanted to rise up, tear the roof off this building, pluck the men inside up by their skulls, and then drop them from hundreds of feet in the air. She wanted them to die terrified. She wanted their bodies broken. She wanted vengeance. And now she's here flinching when some guard gets his head knocked a bit. She shakes her head, her own dissonance not what she needs or wants to focus on right now.

There is a scream though, and it unnerves her again: the self that a moment ago felt unsettled suddenly feels a surge of satisfaction. Devon watches the man with the musket sharply, carefully, tensing, then looks over at Hannah. The door to the second cell is opening, women pouring out as with the first. She is grabbed at and shakes people off -- except Faith. Faith, she holds to her side, a hand on the little girl's back.

"Stop it," she mutters at people. "Stop it, all of you. There's no time."

She bends then, picking Faith up under her arms and tucking the girl's legs around her. The girl smells. The girl is shaking with fear and hunger and weariness and it fuels Devon's anger. The girl is too big to be carried but this time Devon doesn't feel her weight as badly. She holds her and begins walking towards the stairs without another word.

They follow or they don't.

the world of men

They follow.

Most of them, anyway -- dazed, shocked, amazed, trailing in her wake. Faith would follow even were she not carried. Devon knows this, can tell by the way the little girl clings to her. God knows how she ended up here, though surely Devon can take some guesses. The men looking for her. The men going to the farm, finding her gone. Certainly they wouldn't blame Samuel Noyes, upstanding citizen, farmer and landowner. Certainly they wouldn't blame his firstborn son.

Some of the women don't follow, though. A small and timid handful, three or five at most -- calling after them: "What shall we say? How do we -- what shall we -- "

-- and Hannah wheels on them, uncharacteristically angry: "Say the Devil took us! Say the earth opened up and swallowed us! Think of something, do something to save yourselves, you fools. Do it quickly, for they will not sleep long!"

--

On the ground floor, Oiguina is cleaning her knife on the captain's coat. A pool of blood spreads beneath him. His face is a scorched ruin.

She looks up as the women climb up from below, a stinking and tattered horde. Her dark eyes flicker over the ragged crowd; she is counting. She stands with a terse nod when her eyes find Mary Goffe. She pushes open the town hall door.

It's still dark outside, the stars blotted out, the town shrouded in shadows. Some of the women shrink back, afraid, but others take their hands. Whispers in the crowd -- they're finally quiet now -- courage, Bess. Take my hand, Sarah. They step out into the cool night behind Devon, and then they look to her for direction.

witch

She holds Faith's hand against her chest. She lets Faith feel it beating. She walks up the stairs, and when some of the women call after them, afraid to follow, Devon turns to look at them. She isn't angry at them. She understands.

It's hard to leave your home, and not know where you're going. Or what will become of you. They're blind, in some ways, to the reality of what faces them: of what will happen to them if they don't leave. If they don't risk.

But Devon doesn't formulate anything to say in time. Hannah has already wheeled, snapped at them. Devon catches her eyes as she turns again, and says nothing. Neither approving not disapproving; just noticing, and accepting. Then she keeps going upstairs.

Blood touches her bare big toe before she sees anything, and feeling the thick stickiness of the liquid, Devon reaches up, takes Faith's head, and turns it so her face is buried in Devon's hair, which smells of night. Not death, or stale urine, or terror. It smells like nothing at all except the places Devon has been, the things she has done, the spirits who touched her.

She sees the captain, pauses, and looks at Oiguina, asking her in silence to hang back a moment. She stands there, nodding at Hannah to lead the women outside while she stands guard over the captain with Oiguina. She has words for the other woman, her harsh sister, before they leave.

Only Faith really hears what she says to the firestarter.

"Thank you."

--

Then she goes outside, setting Faith down when the poor girl's feet can touch grass. Takes her hand and walks with her to the horde. Passes by them so they can see her. And then she leads them, before they escape,

to the gibbet where Ulu rests.

No: not rests. Where she lies. Perhaps she cannot rest yet.

--

Devon reaches down and plucks a few blades of grass from the ground, steps to Ulu, and places a few on the dead woman's face. She never met her. She doubts Faith did, either, but hands the little girl some of her grass, too, wordlessly asking her to cover the unburied body as well. To bless. To thank. To apologize. To honor. Then she begins walking away, towards the woods.

the world of men

The silence in the town is surreal. If not for Hannah's witching -- if not for Assawetough's magic -- surely a hue and cry would have been raised by now. Surely the streets would swarm with angry citizens, men who would like nothing more than to jail and punish these miscreants, these women that for some reason or other were deemed unfit for polite society, for respect, for life.

Yet there is nothing. The town sleeps on. The guards sleep on -- all but the one Assawetough knocked unconscious, and the one Oiguina burned.

Devon thanks her for that. Oiguina, implacable, stares back.

--

Only when they stand over Ulu, watching Faith lay grass over the woman's face, does Oiguina speak. Her harsh sister's voice is soft, but now gentle:

"There are others who deserve worse. Judge. Priest. Men who pointed finger at Ulu. At Mary. At all them. I will give them, if you allow me."

witch

Devon stands for a moment longer before she leaves, with Faith beside her and a dead witch before her and a sister at her ear. She hears something that is very true. And she looks at what was done to Ulu. She can see she was hanged, her neck snapped, the life choked out of her. She can see that she was beaten: her swollen eye, her split lip, her crushed cheekbone. She doesn't know if Ulu was raped, but she knows it's possible -- if not by the men of this town, then most likely by the magistrate or his men. Her eyes feel hot.

"I can't tell you to kill or not," Devon whispers, blunt as ever. She doesn't hide these words from Faith; the shock of a murdered man, yes. But talk of morals -- real morals, not the ones that twist to forgive men and punish women -- she won't shy away from. She keeps her eyes on Ulu.

"But if you do, where does it end? Some of these women pointed fingers, too. Hannah named me," she adds, with a small shrug. "People get scared. They make mistakes. How do you know who is making a mistake and who deserves to die?" She says this, looking down at someone who she knows didn't deserve to die. Not like this. Not at all.

She turns then to look at Oiguina, her eyes luminescent, bright, saturated with blue that shouldn't be visible in Assawetough's darkness.

"We all paid the price the Ladies asked. They are bound to do as we asked. I don't think it's up to us to punish everyone we think deserves it." She exhales then, sighing, and shakes her head. "But I only know what's right for me, sister, and I for one am glad that we're so different. You know better than I do what you can live with, and what you can't. Do what your heart and your wisdom tell you is right."

She picks up Faith again, looks one last time at Ulu, and walks away.

the world of men

There is vengefulness in Devon. There is rage, and power, and a sense of justice that demands to be sated. Yet, also, there is a softer wisdom. An understanding of limitations and mistakes, a capacity for forgiveness.

There is none of that in Oiguina. None that she can see, anyway. Oiguina is all anger, all reaction. Well. No. Not all. If that were all she was, she could not react as she does not: with frustration, but intelligence and reason. She sighs sharply. Shakes her head.

But when Devon walks away, she follows.

--

So they depart: Devon, Oiguina, Hannah, Assawetough. Mary Goffe. Faith Noyes. They walk from the town, through the gates or simply away -- north and west, toward the unexplored interior of the continent. After a while, Faith asks to be let down, holding her hand as she walks. She looks in the direction of home a few times, but she doesn't ask to go back.

After a while, she hears Mary and Hannah speaking quietly to one another. Sharing stories, sharing pain, sharing grief and guilt.

After a while, the darkness begins to lift. The stars come back out. They are far from the town already when the bells begin tolling, rapid and hysterical. Oiguina is the only one who turns back, and her face is fierce, eager for battle. No pursuers burst from the trees, though. No hoofbeats in the air, no gunshots, nothing.

A little farther, and they can no longer hear the bells.

A little farther, and they can no longer smell the sea. Just the forest, dotted with sparse pinpricks of civilization -- the Wampanoag people, and perhaps others like these women: exiles by choice or by necessity, those who have fled the cold, restrictive confines of their society. By and large, though, an uncharted land, a deep and dark wilderness.

A little farther, and with little preamble her wolf joins her little band. He slips out of the woods, man-shaped, and though some of the women startle he keeps his eyes ahead, doesn't stare or threaten. His hand finds hers as they walk, larger and warmer than Faith's.

witch

She meant what she said. She's glad Oiguina is frustrated, and disagrees, and that they aren't placating each other about it. She thinks of how, in days to come, she can repay her sister, show her the respect she feels for her, but then she remembers:

this isn't her time. Every time she takes step, she thinks it's going to be the last one she takes. Mercy will come back. Devon will go home. She blinks. She touches Faith's hair. She holds her as they walk, and squeezes her hand when she senses the girl's uncertainty and sadness.

When they're far enough, and she hears soft voices talking about what has happened and what may happen, she murmurs to Faith:

"You are going to grow up differently now than your mother did, or her mother. It will be very hard, and so you will become very strong. You'll have to pay close attention and learn everything you can. You won't always be happy, but you will make your own choices. And that's worth it."

That's all she says. There's time that passes, and dawn coming on, when she hears bells. She just keeps walking. All of them keep walking, except Oiguina, ever-ready. Ever the protector. Devon thinks it again: she is glad for their differences.

She's hungry and tired. She thought she would feel disappointed if she never used that immense power she felt rising up in her, but she finds she doesn't. She's relieved. She's in awe, a bit: it was there if she needed it, but it didn't rule her. She thinks of Rafael, and how when his power rises up in him like that, it can overpower him. She knows that happens sometimes. She thinks that must be horrible to live with, to be at the mercy of your own terrifying strength.

And just as she thinks of him, there he is. The only man among them, and unexpected, and Devon almost calls out to Oiguina please don't set him on fire. But Oiguina doesn't. And he comes to Devon, and she takes his hand, and gives it a squeeze.

"Two people died," Devon says quietly. "Only one of them deserved it. I don't think many women stayed. There are more of us now than I expected."

She looks over and up at him.

"I think I'll be sent back home soon," she whispers, aching a bit. "But if I'm not, will you stay with us?"

the world of men

None of them rightfully know where they're going. Not even Devon, seer and leader. Yet they follow her, and she follows her own instincts, and every step she takes feels -- like it could be her last here, yes. But also: right.

--

Her wolf looks at her, and it is a complex look, full of love and ache. He wraps his arm around her, kisses her temple. "Of course," he says.

Not all the women looked at him welcomingly. Most of them did not. Most of them looked at him suspiciously, uncertainly, knowing him only as the miller's boy. Suspecting only some love affair between him and the witch that they've now bound their lives to. Knowing nothing of his true nature, nor hers, nor where they came from.

No one sets him on fire, though. No one throws stones. Faith looks at him curiously, and then tucks herself closer to Devon's other side.

--

Hours pass. It is nearly dawn when Devon seems them: three hooded figures standing in the shadow of an oak, watching her.

The women following her don't seem to see them. Her lover doesn't even seem to see them. But her sisters do, and gradually the loose coalition slows, stops.

"What's going on?" Rafael mutters, tense.

"They have come for their due," Hannah murmurs. "One season from each of us. They have come for their first."

witch

And some of them left husbands. Men they had their eyes on. Some of them left brothers. Fathers. Not all of them hated the men in their lives. Even Devon thinks it's a little unfair that she still has him, even though overwhelming that is her sense of gratefulness that he's here again.

They come to a place to rest. They have to. Some of the women are crying from sheer exhaustion. Devon herself feels like she's about to drop. They find a place in the woods, and she asks one more favor of Oiguina to help keep them safe, and then she starts to settle down with Faith -- and Rafael, but --

a cloaked figure in a shadow. Devon is bolt upright again, walking immediately in front of the crowd of women. She sees the two other figures behind the first, in deeper shadow. She takes a breath and goes toward them, unaware that maybe no one else can see. Soon: Hannah, Assawetough, Oiguina join her, staring at the same spot.

Rafael speaks and Devon's instinct is to shush him, unfairly. Hannah, however, a far more adept communicator than any of the other three, answers for him.

Devon just looks at the Ladies, waiting.

the world of men

Behind her, she can just hear Rafael: "What?"

Hannah doesn't answer. No one answers him. But Hannah follows Devon, standing beside her. And Assawetough. And Oiguina. And, after a pause, and without thoroughly understanding -- Mary.

Faith.

One of the three takes a step forward. Even hooded, Devon knows it is the Mother; it could be no one else. And even without beckoning, without pointing, without giving any indication of choice or preference, Devon knows: she has been summoned. She has been called.

witch

So this is unfair. Rafael doesn't know what Devon exchanged. And she is pretty sure that right now she can't stop and explain to him what she gave, and what she promised. She doesn't even dare glance back at him, out of respect for the deal she struck, and what's at stake. She breathes in, and exhales, and when the Mother summons her, Devon's feet are moving before she entirely makes the decision. She walks forward.

"I'm ready."

the world of men

The reaction is instantaneous. Rafael, snarling -- "What the hell -- " while Faith cries out her name and catches at her hand; the women, murmuring in confusion and bafflement, one or two trailing after her before their path is barred.

By Oiguina, fierce-eyed. By Assawetough, using the shaft of her spear as a hard stop. By Hannah, even, who is trying to soothe, trying to explain. Telling Rafael that there was a deal struck, a bargain made; telling Faith to remember what Devon said, remember that you will grow up differently now, and it will be hard, but you will be strong, and you must pay close attention and learn, and make your own choices.

Because then it will be worth it.

It is worth it.

--

It all falls away behind her. Devon is walking forward, and every step takes her closer to the Ladies. Every step seems to muffle the sounds behind her; seems to lengthen the distance between her and her sisters, her wards, her lover by a thousandfold.

The Maiden threads her arm through hers.

The Crone lays a bony hand on her shoulder.

And the Mother holds forth her hand.

witch

It's up to her sisters to explain it to Rafael. It's up to them to stop the women of the new tribe they created from preventing Devon from leaving. It's up to them to make sense of this, to reassure them: she is not being killed. She is not leaving them forever.

But she is.

Sort of.

--

For Devon's part, she starts finding it hard to hear what is happening behind her. She is enveloped by the Ladies of the Wood, wondering -- absurdly and suddenly -- if she's going to end up losing her job because of this.

Then there's a soft arm against hers, and a hard hand on her shoulder, and then, as she reaches out,

a warm hand taking hers.

Maybe she only imagines the warmth.

the world of men

Maybe she imagines the warmth.

Maybe she imagines the sudden vertigo, the world tilting, the sky whiting out and opening to swallow her. Maybe she imagines the place she is taken to, the island amidst the mists, the saltless sea that laps at the shores. The cabin she lives in with these Witches, these spirits; the strange and boring tasks she is assigned, the pailing of water and the brushing of hair and the beating of straw, the cooking though they never seem to eat, the washing though they never seem to sweat or soil or, for that matter, change.

Maybe she imagines the other tasks, too. The things she learns, the power she harnesses, the magic she conjures. Maybe she imagines all that they teach her. Maybe she imagines commanding the sky to turn, the stars to shine; the moon to rise and fall. Maybe she imagines the tide peeling back for her, the azure cities she finds beneath the waves. Maybe she imagines sprouting wings and flying, sprouting scales and swimming; maybe she imagines floating in the great black expanse beyond earth's thin little cover of air, never needing to breathe.

Maybe she imagines what she is shown: the bifurcation of Mercy-Devon, Jonathan-Rafael. Maybe she imagines the life that they leave after she and her wolf leave them. Maybe she imagines the tribe in the woods, the little huts they build for themselves, the women learning to work at the tasks of men, plowing and sowing and building and milling. Maybe she imagines Jonathan and Mercy, and how he stays by her side, not a wolf in this life but merely a man, a good man who hunts for them and works for their future and does not mind that she is powerful, and respected, and supernatural.

Maybe she imagines the passage of years: that in time, the tribe grows -- that others come to join them -- that they build a small and hidden society there, a place of refuge and acceptance, of safety and tolerance. Until the world changes. Until the world matures, and grows less hateful and less dangerous; until the children's children's children's children begin to venture back into the world, a few at a time, and then a trickle, an exodus.

Maybe she imagines that some of them end up in Boston. Settle there, thrive and grow. Maybe she imagines that their descendants, one day, are her own people -- a closing of the circle, a snake swallowing its tail.

--

Maybe she imagines all of it.

Except she knows she does not.

--

She opens her eyes, and she is looking at the sea. It is not the saltless sea she remembers. There is no mist. The ocean is the pacific, and it is deep and cold and blue, and the sun is shining, and it is summer. She can tell by the shadows on the ground. She knows because she knows the movement of the sun now, the wheeling of the heavens. She knows all of it, and she could command all of it, except ...

except she cannot. She is losing it, each wash of the waves erasing a little more of what she has been given, but not allowed to keep. Some knowledge is forbidden. Mankind has known this since the very beginning. In the end even the memories are vague. She remembers Newbury, and what happened there. She remembers the future she was shown, which is now the past. But what lies between, her time with the spirits: all that remains there is an impression, a subconscious echo engraved in her bones.

She will find herself a little more powerful now. She will find her will a little easier to exercise.

And she finds herself, for now, alone at the edge of an ocean, half a continent away from home. Wearing what she wore when first she departed into the past. Some money in her pocket. A cellphone in her hand.

It's still charged. So: perhaps the Ladies are kind, after all.

the world of men

Maybe she imagines the warmth.

Maybe she imagines the sudden vertigo, the world tilting, the sky whiting out and opening to swallow her. Maybe she imagines the place she is taken to, the island amidst the mists, the saltless sea that laps at the shores. The cabin she lives in with these Witches, these spirits; the strange and boring tasks she is assigned, the pailing of water and the brushing of hair and the beating of straw, the cooking though they never seem to eat, the washing though they never seem to sweat or soil or, for that matter, change.

Maybe she imagines the other tasks, too. The things she learns, the power she harnesses, the magic she conjures. Maybe she imagines all that they teach her. Maybe she imagines commanding the sky to turn, the stars to shine; the moon to rise and fall. Maybe she imagines the tide peeling back for her, the azure cities she finds beneath the waves. Maybe she imagines sprouting wings and flying, sprouting scales and swimming; maybe she imagines floating in the great black expanse beyond earth's thin little cover of air, never needing to breathe.

Maybe she imagines what she is shown: the bifurcation of Mercy-Devon, Jonathan-Rafael. Maybe she imagines the life that they leave after she and her wolf leave them. Maybe she imagines the tribe in the woods, the little huts they build for themselves, the women learning to work at the tasks of men, plowing and sowing and building and milling. Maybe she imagines Jonathan and Mercy, and how he stays by her side, not a wolf in this life but merely a man, a good man who hunts for them and works for their future and does not mind that she is powerful, and respected, and supernatural.

Maybe she imagines the passage of years: that in time, the tribe grows -- that others come to join them -- that they build a small and hidden society there, a place of refuge and acceptance, of safety and tolerance. Until the world changes. Until the world matures, and grows less hateful and less dangerous; until the children's children's children's children begin to venture back into the world, a few at a time, and then a trickle, an exodus.

Maybe she imagines that some of them end up in Boston. Settle there, thrive and grow. Maybe she imagines that their descendants, one day, are her own people -- a closing of the circle, a snake swallowing its tail.

--

Maybe she imagines all of it.

Except she knows she does not.

--

She opens her eyes, and she is looking at the sea. It is not the saltless sea she remembers. There is no mist. The ocean is the pacific, and it is deep and cold and blue, and the sun is shining, and it is summer. She can tell by the shadows on the ground. She knows because she knows the movement of the sun now, the wheeling of the heavens. She knows all of it, and she could command all of it, except ...

except she cannot. She is losing it, each wash of the waves erasing a little more of what she has been given, but not allowed to keep. Some knowledge is forbidden. Mankind has known this since the very beginning. In the end even the memories are vague. She remembers Newbury, and what happened there. She remembers the future she was shown, which is now the past. But what lies between, her time with the spirits: all that remains there is an impression, a subconscious echo engraved in her bones.

She will find herself a little more powerful now. She will find her will a little easier to exercise.

And she finds herself, for now, alone at the edge of an ocean, half a continent away from home. Wearing what she wore when first she departed into the past. Some money in her pocket. A cellphone in her hand.

It's still charged. So: perhaps the Ladies are kind, after all.

the world of men

[WAIT I FORGOT]

the world of men

Maybe she imagines the warmth.

Maybe she imagines the sudden vertigo, the world tilting, the sky whiting out and opening to swallow her. Maybe she imagines the place she is taken to, the island amidst the mists, the saltless sea that laps at the shores. The cabin she lives in with these Witches, these spirits; the strange and boring tasks she is assigned, the pailing of water and the brushing of hair and the beating of straw, the cooking though they never seem to eat, the washing though they never seem to sweat or soil or, for that matter, change.

Maybe she imagines the other tasks, too. The things she learns, the power she harnesses, the magic she conjures. Maybe she imagines all that they teach her. Maybe she imagines commanding the sky to turn, the stars to shine; the moon to rise and fall. Maybe she imagines the tide peeling back for her, the azure cities she finds beneath the waves. Maybe she imagines sprouting wings and flying, sprouting scales and swimming; maybe she imagines floating in the great black expanse beyond earth's thin little cover of air, never needing to breathe.

Maybe she imagines what she is shown: the bifurcation of Mercy-Devon, Jonathan-Rafael. Maybe she imagines the life that they leave after she and her wolf leave them. Maybe she imagines the tribe in the woods, the little huts they build for themselves, the women learning to work at the tasks of men, plowing and sowing and building and milling. Maybe she imagines Jonathan and Mercy, and how he stays by her side, not a wolf in this life but merely a man, a good man who hunts for them and works for their future and does not mind that she is powerful, and respected, and supernatural. Maybe she imagines Assawetough becoming respected, listened to, a de facto elder of the tribe. Maybe she imagines Oiguina, still harsh, ever the protector, but perhaps growing a little less likely to cut and burn and kill. Maybe she imagines Hannah growing stronger, and more sure of herself. Maybe she imagines Mary growing less bitter. Maybe she imagines Faith growing up, a girl and then a young woman and then, one day, a witch in her own right.

Maybe she imagines the passage of years: that in time, the tribe grows -- that others come to join them -- that they build a small and hidden society there, a place of refuge and acceptance, of safety and tolerance. Until the world changes. Until the world matures, and grows less hateful and less dangerous; until the children's children's children's children begin to venture back into the world, a few at a time, and then a trickle, an exodus.

Maybe she imagines that some of them end up in Boston. Settle there, thrive and grow. Maybe she imagines that their descendants, one day, are her own people -- a closing of the circle, a snake swallowing its tail.

--

Maybe she imagines all of it.

Except she knows she does not.

--

She opens her eyes, and she is looking at the sea. It is not the saltless sea she remembers. There is no mist. The ocean is the pacific, and it is deep and cold and blue, and the sun is shining, and it is summer. She can tell by the shadows on the ground. She knows because she knows the movement of the sun now, the wheeling of the heavens. She knows all of it, and she could command all of it, except ...

except she cannot. She is losing it, each wash of the waves erasing a little more of what she has been given, but not allowed to keep. Some knowledge is forbidden. Mankind has known this since the very beginning. In the end even the memories are vague. She remembers Newbury, and what happened there. She remembers the future she was shown, which is now the past. But what lies between, her time with the spirits: all that remains there is an impression, a subconscious echo engraved in her bones.

She will find herself a little more powerful now. She will find her will a little easier to exercise.

And she finds herself, for now, alone at the edge of an ocean, half a continent away from home. Wearing what she wore when first she departed into the past. Some money in her pocket. A cellphone in her hand.

It's still charged. So: perhaps the Ladies are kind, after all.

scrying. calling.

Devon

It feels

very weird.

Almost no one has ever even known about what she can do. Rafael knows, and she's never given him quite the description she just gave these three women. She's shown him a little. Her mother doesn't know. Her godparents know out of pure need, and because they could teach her, and because they were witches in their own right, too. A few others, all borderline enemies, are vaguely aware. Most of what they think they know is assumption.

Nothing like this. Not other women near or at her own age. Not others with powers that could frighten as much as inspire. And when you get right down to it -- when Devon gets right down to it, walking away from the clearing -- her godparents' abilities don't come close to what she can do.

Oiguina the firestarter, Assawetough the shadow, Hannah the dreamwalker -- these are formidable strengths, capable of more than any of the three have likely considered doing with their power. And Devon knows, in her spine and in her solar plexus and in the tips of her toes and fingers, that she is very, very powerful. Especially with her knowledge of history and future, especially with her outsider's perspective, she knows that of the four of them, no one else could lead. No one else should.

And it feels weird and uncomfortable and scary and exposed and she sort of wants to throw up.

Devon walks away pretending she doesn't want to throw up. She doesn't hunch or slouch or shuffle her feet. She walks like she knows where she's going and knows what her purpose is, because she knows she's being watched.

By people she calls sisters. Out of nowhere.

--

At the water, running water or still, Devon flops down on her ass. She takes some very careful, measured breaths. She does the four-by-four breathing someone taught her, a long time ago. Inhale for four. Hold for four. Exhale for four. Empty for four. Inhale --

And after a few cycles she doesn't want to throw up as much. She can see the green and the fading, faded light and hear the water. She begins to think, very slowly, about what she wants to ask. She doesn't dare exhaust herself looking down every possible road they could take. She has to consider, carefully, where she will cast her attention.

She wishes she had her cards with her.

It doesn't come to her. So eventually she crawls over to the stream, the water that represents her astrological sign. The running water that makes her think of time itself, and finds a deep spot. Then she plunges her left arm, her receptive hand, into the water until she cannot see her fingers. It's cold; shockingly so. She feels for stones and begins pulling them in, stacking them and piling them. Both hands then, building a dam along the side of the river. With no bowl, with no stagnant water, she has to make do. Her hands are freezing by the time she has built up, with mud and rock and grass and the like, a pool of water.

Devon returns to her breathing as she waits for the water to become still. And she sits, far back enough that she can see the moon reflected in that little pool.

She stares at the moon's reflection, inhaling slowly. Exhaling slowly. Counting until she begins to forget how to count. What numbers are. She begins to envision a plan: she and the three others make their way into town. Somehow. They find the women being held. Somehow. They get them out. Somehow. They slip away from the town -- maybe there is a confrontation, maybe there isn't, but they escape -- and go into the woods again. They find the supplies that Devon and the others have already gathered. Somehow. The ones that cannot leave children or family behind have to stay, and take their fates into their own hands.

Devon thinks of this and thinks of Faith. It hurts. She retreats, and returns to the storyline she is building, the vision she's creating:

They leave this place far behind. They walk for miles. They hide when pursued. They fight if they have to. They go far, far away, suffering greatly as they do. They find a place. They are not pursued any longer. They settle. They build homes. Somehow. They defend themselves from the wild, from raiders, from danger. Somehow.

She asks the water, and the moon, if this is true. If they could do this. If they could live. Would it lead to their certain doom, would it make things worse, or would it be a hard-won deliverance? Where would they go?

She exhales deeply, and that question pierces most deeply into the water, circles through it, rises back up into the air towards Luna: If we could escape that way, where would we go that we could be safe?

Devon

[-1 WP

Perception + Occult (witchcraft)]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 5, 6, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

divination

Time and water bear a certain similarity. Time flows. Time is a current, bearing most along inexorably toward some future. Time is causality: a ripple upstream affecting what is downstream. Time, in some rare cases, allows retrograde motion. It is always more difficult. It is always less predictable, fighting one's way against the current. Once in a while, someone -- a witch, or perhaps a werewolf -- might be thrown back, reflected across some distance, dropped back in the stream to... what? To follow the current, the preordained path that one's soul has already taken? Or perhaps to effect some change, to alter some course; to pour water down a different path? One might go mad pondering such things. Perhaps it is best that Devon does not.

Never mind. That is not the point. Point is: time is a current, mindless but powerful, with what can seem like a will of its own. She asks something of time. She tries to look ahead, but her path is not altogether her own to choose. She looks, but time decides what she sees.

She sees:

the tiny town jail, two cells in the cellar of the town hall. It is crowded to bursting. There are easily twenty women there, crammed in amongst the cast-iron bars. Some stand and some sit and some lean despondently against the walls. There is no room to lie down. She sees the magistrate, thin and hook-nosed, conferring with the pastor and the town elders; sees their lips moving though she can hear no words. Sees them poring over records and books, scratching names onto lists whose meaning she can't readily divine. Sees them dragging the women one by one before them, sees the lists grow and shrink, sees names moving from one to the other and back again. The sun rises and falls and rises and falls. She is looking far forward now, days and weeks, perhaps months; an undisturbed future should she do nothing at all. Stocks and pillories, whipping posts, gibbets, drownings, burnings, death.

And then back again. Slamming back to this instant, sent forth again: like leaf cast into the water, only to follow a different forking of the stream. Here they go, she and her witches: into the darkness, through the night. Sneaking into the sleeping town, one of them shrouding the moon and darkening the night, one of them slipping into the dreams of the guards to make them slumber deeper. One of them ready to call the flame, bring the fire, should anything go wrong -- and then her. What will she do? What can she do? It is a blank space, a greyness at the center of her scrying; a question mark for her to resolve.

Her mind's eye slips forward. Imagine they are freed. Imagine the women shuffling through the darkness, hand in hand because none can see in this unnatural darkness. Not all are witches. Some might betray them, scream, run. There might be confrontation. There might be bloodshed. No, perhaps it is better to leave some behind, rescue only those who are supernatural. Better, but is it fair? Another question; no answers. Suppose they escape, then. Suppose they run, skirts hiked up, bare feet cut by the harsh ground. Where could they go? Away. Perhaps Oiguina's people will shelter them; but likely not. They have their own beliefs, their own myths. Wise women have more standing in their society, but witches -- such women have never been welcome anywhere.

No. Their own land. It must be that. But where? Perhaps she is looking at it wrong. Perhaps they go in with fire and darkness, slaughter the town fathers, become the monsters they are feared to be. They could seize. They could conquer. They could make the town theirs, hold it for a year, a decade, perhaps even a half-century -- and then?

Something else then. Back to the flight, the escape into the wilderness. Away from the villages, white or native. Deep in the woods, or out into the grey ocean -- somewhere hidden, a secret glade, a mist-shrouded island. That is where witches have lived since time immemorial, is it not? And the world will change and America will grow and they will ever be retreating, receding -- always beyond the frontier, always in the nomansland; until the day the world has enlightened enough to no longer believe in witches. Until they can live amongst men, hidden in plain sight, and fear

well. Not nothing. But less. Perhaps that is all she can hope for. It is all she has, even in her own time.

Devon

It saps her as much as a sleepless night, doing more than a very little of this at a time. Jet lag from London to the States. That pre-Thanksgiving mess of fighting and fucking and more fucking before Rafael's driver took her three hours down the mountain to the plane to Boston. Weekend-long parties in deserts.

Reading cards is easy; she can fill in the blanks there. This is another level, and not one she's attempted for a long time. Usually fails. This amount of information, these images, this ebbing and flowing of time -- it's tiring, deeply so. Devon feels her will being drained out of her like blood.

She exhales when the images fade, and takes a break to sit back, and breathe again, and center herself. She touches the dirt and grounds herself. She cups her hands and gets some of the clear running water to drink, not from the pool she's created. She plays a mind game: reciting the Hebrew alphabet, picturing the glyphs in her mind. Doesn't know why it helps, it just always has. She doesn't even know Hebrew.

Then she comes back to the pool. She goes back in: steadies her breathing, focuses on it, then loses it, forgetting it, letting it carry her. She stares at the water and the moon-in-water, a long chain of light from water to moon to sun. It takes so long for that light to ever reach her eyes. She thinks on that. She loses herself in the paradox of darkness: how can darkness even exist, when there are so many bodies of light?

For that matter, how can those bodies of light exist, when all around them is an endless, cold void of darkness?

Devon lets her mind unfurl again. She stares into the still, still water, the perfect silver coin of Luna's face watching her right back.

She imagines something else. Follows another path. The one that leads right to the magistrate. The one that has him looking at shadow and flame, hearing whispers in his own mind, being lifted from his feet to the very roof of the chapel. She remembers stories, perhaps influenced by the Hebraic recitation she was just doing, and sees blood over the doorframes of the houses, sees the women leaving the town, taking their children before dawn, leaving this town. She thinks of the magistrate seeing a vision given of the town burning, reduced to rubble, destroyed if he does not let her people go.

Yet she asks herself what she will become. She asks the water if she -- if they -- would even have the strength. She asks the moon if she would only call down more pain and suffering. She asks the sun, so very far, so detached from all of this, so unknown when compared to water and moonlight, if the terrified men would not pursue.

She knows she has no Red Sea to drown them in.

Devon

[-1 WP

Perception + Occult (witchcraft)]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 7, 7, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1

divination

It took Moses ten plagues.

How many might it take her, witch, woman, displaced daughter of the twenty-first century?

She cannot turn water into blood. At least, she does not know anyone who can. She cannot unleash flies and locusts, frogs and lice. She cannot inflict disease. She cannot -- will not? -- kill all their firstborn. Little Faith. Little Nicholas.

She can make it rain fire, though. They can. They can bathe the land in darkness. They can haunt the dreams of the magistrate and his men, the town fathers, the preachers. They can hang them from thin air. They can poison the water with little more than plants, make them vomit and shit, make them sick to the very pits of their stomachs; they can sap their strength and make them sleepless, haunted. They can even send terrible wolf-monsters into their midst.

They can -- she can -- pry into their hearts, maybe. See the darkest secrets they hide. She can bend their will with her own, perhaps. She can force their capitulation, by plague or by pestilence or by the sheer towering force of wanting to do so. She could do all that. Perhaps.

It could work. Perhaps.

She could make them let the women go. She could make them never, ever want to follow again. She could steal them away to some refuge, some hidden sanctuary, and terrorize anyone who might have a mind to pursue.

Maybe.

Or perhaps -- in the doing -- she will endanger them all. Perhaps the trials will start. Perhaps women will hang, women will burn. If she gives them the chance, they will do it. If she gives them the time, they might make an example of their prisoners. Or they might simply panic, slaughter, try to make it stop.

It lies in the balance of her own strength and resolve. How fast, how brutal, how ruthless, how strong. Can she even do it? Has she the strength, the stamina? She is worn so thin already. Burnt from the inside-out, her witchery a fire that consumes herself.

Devon

Again she withdraws. She doesn't dare spend any more of her energy on this. Not tonight. She thinks of what she saw: different paths, forks in the road, possibilities. She sees herself in permutation after permutation, and in one of them she is frightening enough that she doesn't think even the women of this town, even other witches, would follow her.

Devon lays her palm on the water, making it ripple. She thanks the light, and the moon, and the darkness, and the water. She mars the surface and then plunges again, dismantling her little pool, unbuilding her dam. When it's gone, she drinks water again. She gets up and stretches. She unbraids her hair, lets it fall loose around her shoulders.

And she begins to walk back to the clearing.

To her sisters.

the coven

That little pool of cool, clear, still water dissipates, trickling back into the stream. The mud washes free of her fingers easily, and what moisture remains is soon absorbed in that thick hair of hers as she unbinds it.

She looks less like Mercy with every passing moment, and more like Devon. Or perhaps simply: less like the self imposed upon her; more like the self that she is. Loose-haired and in a shift, bare-shouldered and bare-ankled, she walks back toward her sisters. It is nearly full dark now, the sounds of day replaced by the quiet whirring of crickets.

And a twig snapping to her left. And a wolf slipping out of the undergrowth, white from muzzle to tail; white except where streaks of red still linger. As she watches he grows to enormous, skyblotting size; shrinks again into the version of her lover that exists in this world.

He wipes his mouth clean as he moves toward her, stooping to scoop water from the stream, wash. Droplets drip from his fingertips as he closes those last few inches, wraps his arm around her, kisses her quickly and fiercely on the temple.

"They were looking for you earlier," he whispers. "You and that Hannah girl. They've tossed more people in jail. All hell's breaking loose, everyone accusing everyone else. People are confessing to save their necks, but they won't let anyone go unless they point the finger at someone else.

"Samuel Noyes is getting looked at too, but he's got kids at home so they let him go home for the night. Couple others are on the hangman's list already." He nods in the direction of the women. "You with them now?"

Devon

Twig snaps. Devon freezes like a doe. Her head comes up, her hands tense and held slightly out at her sides. She turns her head rapidly to the sound, and then sees the wolf, and a fond, lopsided smile breaks across her face. Her smile, when it's really there and not a smirking twist, is a wide, bright thing. She almost drops to her knees to welcome him, in case he chooses to stay in that form, but she arrests the motion when he shifts.

She does take a half-step back in the middle. When he is that large, monstrous thing. When instinctive self-protection overtakes her recognition of him for a moment. When her breath catches. But it is a flicker, nothing more. The next moment he's Rafa, and she's smiling warm and happy and going to him.

In the darkness it isn't clear til a few steps closer that there is still that much blood on him. She doesn't smile anymore, but it isn't a sudden collapse. Devon is patient this time while he washes his mouth. She doesn't lunge at him, glomp him, climb him like a tree. She waits for him to come back to her, and when he wraps his arm around her waist, she stretches and wraps her arms around his neck.

Her eyes close for a moment as he kisses her temple, leaving a cold wet imprint of creek-water and warm love. Her eyes open. She listens.

"I know," she whispers, her brow furrowing a bit. He asks about the women. She nods. "They're with me."

She doesn't even mean it as a correction, but in a way, that's what it is.

"I don't think I should take you back to them with me, though," she whispers. "They're scared. Rightfully." She's quiet a moment, thinking, then asks: "You killed some of the magistrate's men?"

the coven

Just a beat's pause. He doesn't flinch, but there is that silence.

Then, "Three. But there's more in town, and they sent for reinforcements. Town'll be crawling with soldiers and corpses in two, three days at most."

He looks toward the clearing again -- the small, banked fire barely visible through the trees. Even as they watch, it goes out. Probably Oiguina, wary of detection. "Won't go back with you if that's what you think best. But wanna stay close. Help."

Devon

Three. Assawetough was right. Devon didn't doubt it, but she likes the confirmation. She breathes in deep, exhales less slowly than she should.

Devon nods. "Want you to stay close," she mumbles. Her fingers are tangling in the folds of his sleeve.

"We're going to get them out of jail," Devon whispers, knowing he will probably not like any of this. Not a word of it. "Hope we can do it quiet, but... it will get ugly if it has to." Another deep breath. She wants to tell him the other piece of her plan, but she thinks he really won't like that part, since she won't be able to tell him what might happen. She simply doesn't know. So she leaves it out.

"Gonna leave town. Escape. Go wander in the desert for forty years or something."

the coven

No. He doesn't like it. She can tell by the way he tenses, his arm hard beneath that sleeve. He's holding on to her too, his hands gripping her sides. They barely seem conscious of their grasps.

He doesn't protest, though. Just grunts, frowning. Manages a muffled little laugh at that last bit.

"Won't be able to help you much. Not without panicking the women. But I'll keep close. Do what I can. At least can probably pick off anyone who tries to follow you."

Devon

Of course he doesn't like it. He wanted her plan to be 'how to get back to 2016 pronto' not 'how to stop a witch hunt'. She gets it. She doesn't blame him. She touches his arm and nods when he says he can't help.

"Just shadow," she whispers. "From some distance. Pretty sure Assawetough and Oiguina may sniff you out better than you might think, and Oiguina's the 'throw spear first, ask questions later' type, I think."

Not that a spear would do jack shit to him. Annoy him. Sting like a motherfucker, but not kill him. Not bladed with sharpened shale. Still: Devon doesn't want her new sort-of-ally to throw a spear at her boyfriend's face. Awkward.

the coven

"Who?" he says, because of course he does.

So she explains. Or doesn't. And either way, he gets the idea: they might try to attack him. He's frowning again.

"I'll try to stay out of the way," he says. "When're you going back?"

Devon

"They're... native American," Devon says, because she doesn't even know their tribe's name. She sucks at history. "They're witches, too. Or shamans. Or something. Assawetough doesn't speak English but Oiguina does and she's a little mean and can also set you on fire with her brain, so I don't want her to get jumpy about my shapeshifting boyfriend with very sharp teeth."

There. All explained.

She breathes in. "Now, I think," she whispers. "I'm not letting anyone else get hanged, or raped, or enslaved by these fucking assholes."

the coven

That makes him put his hands on her face. He does that sometimes, when he feels uncertain and when he loves her terribly and when he's gripped by some silent and desperate emotion. His palms are warm and his fingers are strong, his hand big enough to encompass her. He sets his brow to hers and exhales and then he kisses her, hard and saturating.

"I'll stay close," he repeats yet again.

Devon

Her eyes fall closed. His motion is almost desperate and her eyes fall closed almost sleepily, fondly. She likes how warm he is; it's cold in the woods, and her hands are still chilled from the water. She breathes in and she can smell him -- and to be fair, he's pretty ripe. But it's still him, and it's familiar, and she tucks in closer to him. He kisses her, which she wasn't fully expecting, but she melts into it a little. Kisses him back, more softly.

Reassuringly.

Devon's eyes open again when they part. She nods. "I know," she tells him softly. She puts her hand on his hand where it rests on her face, looking up at him.

Doesn't say she loves him. But he probably knows it, right now, without hearing it.

the coven

"Love you."

Strange that this time, he's the one to say it. She's the one to feel it, and hold it there in her heart, trusting her silence will mean something. He stays close another moment, hotblooded and vital and stinking of sweat and blood and mud and wheat.

Then he's letting go, drawing back, his hand turning over to grip hers and squeeze.

"Be careful. Okay? We'll meet up again ... when you're done, I guess."

Devon

She wants to fuck him again. Suddenly, fiercely. She feels it like something plummeting down her body from her lower lip through her heart, her belly, hitting her with lust that almost hurts. She takes a breath. Not now. Not this time. But before he lets her go she reaches for him again, pulling him to her, kissing him, aligning her body to his.

Not her fault if he hears a soft groan from her mouth to his, just then. Or if she has that look in her eyes when she pulls back. When they take each other's hands instead. She nods, holding onto him a few more seconds.

"All right."

And then she goes. Has to go. Quickly, careful in the dark, slipping back through the trees towards the others.

the coven

Hard to let her go just then. But he does. Has to. He stands there, though, watching her as she goes: the flash of her calves and the soles of her feet, her long limbs and slender wild body. He senses it too: she is more herself now than she was before. More the her that is her; less the her that is imposed.

--

The witches are waiting for her when she returns. It is dark now, the fire put out. Still smells like woodsmoke, seared meat. Assawetough is burying the charred bones, a gesture both respectful and practical. Hannah jumps up when she sees Devon coming.

"You're back," she says, glad. "What have you seen?"

Devon

Devon slips back into the clearing by memory and instinct, somehow, despite the lack of light. She sees shadows move among shadows and does not feel frightened; she breathes the smell of meat and finds herself ravenously, stomach-growlingly hungry.

Hannah, of course, is on her feet and on her way before Devon has a moment to settle, but she doesn't mind so much. She seldom has people so glad to see her, so openly eager for her company.

So she breathes in, and sets her hand on Hannah's arm, and walks with her over to Assawetough and Oiguina so they can speak quietly.

"Twenty women I saw," she says quietly, "in two cells. In coming days they will be tried, tortured, and many will be killed.

"So we will get them out." She looks for the glint of Assawetough's eyes in the darkness. "I saw you shrouding the moonlight, covering everything in darkness." Perhaps Oiguina will translate for her. She does not ask. She is still caught, somewhere in the darkness, between the water and earth, between the endless starry sky and the heat of Rafa's body, always burning so ferociously, always consuming, always roaring.

Her hand squeezes where it still holds Hannah's arm. "I saw Hannah walking through the dreams of the men who hold our sisters and the innocent women of the town."

She does not call witches innocent. She uses 'innocent' as another word for a child who does not understand the truth of things.

"I saw Hannah making them sleep heavy and deep." She looks for Oiguina, or follows the sound of her voice. "I saw you protecting us. With spear, and with wisdom. But if necessary: with fire."

Devon takes a very deep breath. "I think we should call the Ladies of the Wood. Not for bloodshed or punishment. For protection. There are women we cannot take, children who cannot follow. If we leave them behind -- "

It's hard to even say it. She has to take another breath. "I will not leave them to suffer and be punished for our sake, and I will not drag them into the wilderness against their will. I will make the plea and I will make the offering."

She's still a moment, her limbs tense and her heart thumping tightly in her chest. "I saw another spirit of the wild, white-furred and strong, who may protect us on our flight. But I saw blood on the creature's white fur; it is no god, and can be killed if we do not run quickly enough."

Her eyes close. She's half-lying. She tells visions of possibility as though they are truth. She wonders if every seer in history has done this. She feels it in her gut:

they probably did.

"We go west. Stay to the north. Keep to the edges of frontierlands. The only people that make their way to survive in this places care more for a healthy brew during illness or wise hands during a birth than they do about the edicts of the false gods of the pastors and magistrates."

Devon opens her eyes. Some of the words don't even feel like they are her own. She wonders if every seer in history, from the days of the Witch of Endor to Nate Silver, felt this detachment from truth as it came to them, pulsing through the unseen divine opening in the very tops of their auras.

Her gut twists with the thought. She senses it again:

they probably did.

She opens her eyes.

"We should go tonight."

the coven

The women listen silently -- all but Oiguina, who translates in sporadic, low murmurs. Sparse. Skeletons of phrases, distilling Devon's words into their simplest, most practical meanings.

She sees the women shift as they are mentioned, one by one. Assawetough's chin rising almost imperceptibly. Oiguina's eyes flickering, her lean hands clenching and opening restlessly around the hilts of her many knives. Hannah drawing a sip of breath, as though steeling herself.

When she finishes, there is a brief silence. Then Oiguina speaks:

"We call the Ladies of the Wood. You, me, Assawetough, Ha-na. All. Then we go. Together."

Hannah nods. "Aye. We four are as one, Mercy. We shall call the Ladies together and we shall pay their price together."

Devon

Hannah says they'll pay the price together. Devon's eyes skate to the other two women, checking their assent. Given, she exhales, her shoulders rounding.

"I have no idea what I can offer them. Or what they will ask for. I just hope that since I'm asking them to protect, not punish, they don't want buckets of blood this time."

the coven

"Not matter. They tell us what want," Oiguina says, drawing a knife, resheathing it: just to check its weight and position. "We pay, if can." Pause. "Ready?"

Devon

She winces a little, but nods. "Yeah," she murmurs, but that's all she's got.

Devon goes back to the spot where she slept, and picks up the shale knife she was handed earlier, carrying it back. Looks at the others and takes a breath. "All right. How do we do this?"

the coven

This time it is Hannah who speaks. Hannah who reaches out with her hand, twining her fingers with Devon's.

"Join hands," she says, and reaches with her other hand to take Assawetough's. Who takes Oiguina's. Who takes Devon's. "Stand together in a circle. Sometimes it helps if we stare into a fire, but ... we'd best not. And we needn't."

Hannah's hand is ice cold with nerves. Oiguina's is, unsurprisingly, hot and strong, all sinew and bone. Standing across from her, Assawetough meets her eyes, holds it for a long, solid moment, and then lets her lids fall.

"Close thy eyes," Hannah whispers. "Wipe clean thy mind. Think only of the Ladies. Bid them come."

"I bid you come," Oiguina murmurs, the cadence of rote and rhyme, a prayer, a ritual. It is echoed again by Assawetough in her own language, and then yet again by Hannah:

"We bid ye come."

Devon

Hannah takes Devon's hand and Devon is about half a second from shaking Hannah off with a taken-aback oi!but that's just instinct. Habit. A dislike of being touched by all but a very narrow, carefully chosen selection of people. She settles herself like an animal smoothing its fur, taking a breath and exhaling, linking her hand to Hannah's. It feels intimate, and uncomfortable, and vital, and electric. Hannah links them to Assawetough, then to Oiguina, and when Oiguina moves to take Devon's hand, this time she's there waiting. She looks at Oiguina to her left and then across at Assawetough as the four of them position themselves, equidistant and balanced.

She thinks briefly on their positioning. Hannah and Oiguina feel like they make sense. There are aspects of herself that Devon sees in each of them, though the two women could not be more opposite. But the same could be said of Assawetough: there are aspects of her in Hannah and Oiguina, but she is drastically different from Devon. And so they are all linked, each carrying the seed of another in the chain. Devon feels her eyes grow heavy. They close as Assawetough's close, as Hannah is whispering the word eyes.

Three women then, in her mind's eye. Hooded and hidden, their wrists and hands visible, their voices audible, all else in shadow. Their energies are three separate threads, and their energy is one pulsing whole, twisting like a rope. Twisting like spun thread. Devon exhales slowly and hears nearby exhales, her breathing falling into tandem with the other women. She hears the others murmuring. She echoes their recitations on each breath, heavy and round, seductive and commanding:

"Come.

Come."

the ladies of the wood

Their eyes are closed. Their hands are linked. By chance or by fate, there is meaning in their arrangement: a perfect balance, four like the winds, four like the ways, four like the corners and pillars of the earth.

They call to the Ladies. They murmur. They chant. Little by little the words die out, until only one remains: come. come. Over and over, carried on breath until it becomes as natural and unstrained as breathing itself. Each in her own tongue. Each in her own voice. A sound steady as heartbeat, unchanging and unyielding.

Until, gradually, it seems as though a faint light blooms behind her eyelids each time she speaks. An escalating like a pulsatile dawn, bringing with it an impression of silver and blood, of pine and hemlock, rich loamy earth and cold killing frost.

There is a sound like a muted thunderclap. A suction on the ears. Almost of their own accord her eyes open, and she sees across from her, behind Assawetough, the Ladies three. The hems of their robes -- summer green, ocean blue, night black -- end a few inches above the earth; nothing but open air between.

One wears her own face tonight.

One wears the face of her mother.

One wears no face at all -- nothing but deep black shadow within her cowl.

Silent, they wait.

witch

Devon's awareness of the other women intensifies until the point that it fades: it is no longer knowledge of distinct identities, separate from herself, but the unconscious certainty of oneself and oneself's existence. This is what the voices become, and what the hands in her hands become. Her head hurts with each new bright light pulsing behind her eyelids. It spikes and it elevates; it drives her out of her mind, and it fills her entirely.

Until the noise. She tightens her hands suddenly on Oiguina and Hannah, opening her eyes quickly, though she knows momentarily that normally her instinct would be to let go, immediately, of anything that might restrain her flight.

"Shit," she mutters, a whisper, seeing what they look like, though she is almost entirely sure that the other women see themselves, too. Devon exhales, and then she looks at the one she's least scared of.

"Hello, mum," she says, unable to keep the bit of ache from her voice, thinking about her real mother, always so far away, perpetually and eternally so very close. "Sorry to bother you, but I need your help. We all do."

the ladies of the wood

Mum.

That's what she calls her: the Lady of the Wood, the Witch-Spirit, the Mother. And she knows it is not her mother, cannot be her mother, because the Lady's eyes do not soften the way her mother's would. The Lady's eyes are not deep and warm and dark the way her mother's are, but instead: dark, yes, but dark like obsidian, faceted and glittering and fierce. Dark, but with a fire at the heart, as though the Lady burns from within.

Still, she does smile. And that looks like Katia Paredes. And she moves forward; runs her hand lovingly and familiarly over Devon's head. That feels like Katia Paredes. She smells nothing like Katia, though. She smells of nothing at all.

Just a single word, boundlessly warm: "How?"

witch

Love hurts Devon a lot.

It hurts to love her godparents and the peripheral members of her family that she is only related to -- only knows -- because of someone whose abandonment is still and may always be a raw, pulsing wound. Hurts to love her mother and be separated from her across such distance, for such long stretches of time. Hurts a lot, in a special and patently terrifying way, to love Rafael.

Hurts most of all to love that fuckhead, that sack of shit, that waste of life who she barely even remembers, and who never loved her back, and never will. Hurts to love someone you hate so very, very much. Hurts to have such profound proof, to have indelible dye splashed on a corner of her heart, marking her forever:

love hurts.

--

So right now, even telling herself that this is not her Mum, even knowing that this is a terrible creature who tore apart human beings and painted a church with their innards, even though she's not a stupid emo baby, it hurts to see her mother's face. And Devon really can't chalk that hurt up to anything else but love. It reminds her of the most inalienable truth she's encountered in her short life, the one that has had such a firm hand in (though is not the only contributor to) her self-isolation and introversion.

Devon takes a breath. She tightens her grip briefly on Hannah and Oiguina, squeezing their hands. She stiffens as not-mum comes closer to her, and touches her, and love pains her in the middle of her chest yet again, and her resistance to it makes her feel both safer and more anxious all at once.

It does not escape her, in that breath-taking tension, what she has in common with these spirits. But that is a thought so deeply unsettling in its implications that Devon shies from it just as she shies from the spirit itself and its stolen gestures of affection.

"We're leaving this awful place," she says. "Not all of the women will come. Not all of the children. I don't want to leave them --" she almost says 'to the wolves', but that feels like a betrayal of her boyfriend, which makes her feel bad, "-- unprotected, at the mercy of the men who hang women when they are frightened."

But how. How.

"We need the Ladies of the Wood to quiet the minds of these men. Take away their panic and violence. Make them..."

It almost sounds stupid to ask, to even hope for this:

"...gentle."

the ladies of the wood

As the Mother approaches, the circle gives way. It happens without discussion, and without thought. Assawetough releases Oiguina's hand, and then the Mother is there, touching Devon's head.

Looking into her eyes, deeply, as she speaks. Listening: ultimately, saying nothing.

It is the Maiden that speaks, and Devon knows by the way all the women startle and look toward her that she was right: they all see themselves. They all see their own mothers. They all see nothing but shadow in the depths of that third, terrible hood.

"You know there is a price. You know we have to take our due."

witch

"I know," Devon says, breathing out steadily. She hasn't taken her eyes off of the Mother standing before her. She nods, uselessly.

"Tell us what it is. We will pay it together."

the ladies of the wood

"Ask her for her thumbs," comes a voice from the shadows in the hood -- a hiss, a creak. "Ask her for her eyes, her lips, her ears."

"Ask her for something she cannot win back," suggests the Maiden, eyes never leaving Devon. "Ask her for something she will miss, though she knows not why."

"Ask her for ten years given unto me. Ten years, snipped off the end."

"Oh, Grandmother," laughs the Maiden, "that is a cruel price, even for you."

"And unfair," interjects the Mother. "She asks for safety, and not for time."

Silence for a beat, the Mother's eyes considering and probing. Beside Devon, Hannah grips her hand hard and swallows. Then the Mother speaks:

"Three memories. Three moments in your life, each of you, when you felt most safe. Three remembrances given freely, that you will never win back.

"And one year. A season from each of you, taken and never returned. Not snipped from the end, no, but plucked from the middle: a season in which you are ours, our handmaiden and our serving-girl, our child and our apprentice. A season you will not remember -- but perhaps a season that will engrave itself in your bones, if you are lucky, such that you will return to your proper life a little wiser and a little stronger than before.

"It is as fair a price, as fine an offer, as you could possibly hope for. Do you not agree, Devon of the Mountains, the Bay, the Ocean and the Isle?"

witch

Fine, Devon almost says, to thumbs. To eyes, lips, ears. They would all be outrageous prices, but she thinks of Faith. She thinks of the maids who have been surviving rape from their masters for months if not years, the ones who are now held in cages, threatened with death. She thinks of the indignity and horror these women will face, and wants to say fine. Take them. Just do what we ask.

She won't look at the Maiden, who looks so much like her. It's too weird. She knows she'll want to stare, to try and see herself as others see her, not in a mirror. It unsettles her.

Ten years also sounds like a good price.

Fine. The one I love is likely to die young. Take the damn decade off the end.

But in the end it's the one who looks like Katia that determines the price. Which is not bloody or cruel. It won't shorten her life or maul her. It will take something, though. Something good. It will hurt, but so would the loss of her thumbs, which she found so easy to say goodbye to. And a season: a few months when she will be gone, and learn everything she could want to know from these three witches, and then forget.

Devon looks at Oiguina, Assawetough, and Hannah, awaiting their nods of assent, their agreement. They all do this or none of them do. And if she gets it from them, if all three agree, Devon looks back to the Mother of the Wood and nods.

"Very fair."

the ladies of the wood

Oiguina hesitates not at all. Her nod is firm, even impatient. Assawetough draws a breath, then adds her assent. Hannah is the last, and the most hesitant. Yet in the end, she too nods, once, wincing as she does.

"Done," says the Mother at once. "The year we will collect when all is said and done. The memories, however, we will have now."

witch

Devon takes a breath. "So... how do we give them to you?"

the ladies of the wood

"Hold it in your mind," says the Mother.

"Oh, I do hope 'tis a lovely one," murmurs the Maiden. "A boy, a garden, a rose."

"Or blood spilt," suggests the Crone, "entrails strung from the rafters and limbs cleaved from torsos."

"Now why," the Maiden demands crossly, "would a memory of safety and security include such unpleasant things, Grandmother?"

"Fie, girl," retorts the Crone, "if bloodshed and violence never made a soul feel safe, why do men kill when they are frightened?"

"She is not a man," the Maiden points out. "She is a witch."

"Hold it in your mind," repeats the Mother, firmly, and the others hush. "And when it is fullest and ripest and sweetest, we will pluck it away."

"It is cruel," acknowledges the Maiden.

"But it is fair," whispers the Crone.

witch

Something about the arguments and bickering amongst the one-in-three makes Devon feel bizarrely and absurdly amused. She closes her eyes though, to distance herself from their voices, and from the place where she is now. She spins through memories that blur together and spin apart, trying to think of what it feels like to feel safe.

The first place she lands, slows the skim of images, is early 2014. She's still in Boston, living with her godparents. That summer hasn't happened, with the growing number of werewolves tromping through the house, including that one whose suspicions of her had secretly been intensifying. That summer that made her decide, even if her family didn't necessarily agree, that it'd be better if she just left. Devon momentarily reflects that if it hadn't been for Rafael she might have gone back eventually. Maybe a year away, maybe less.

But no, this is before all that. They called it the 'polar vortex', and it was as bad as that sounded. Airports all but shut down. It was so cold that they were keeping children and the elderly home. A foot of snow outside, temperatures that were fifty or sixty degrees below freezing, wind that howled. Devon had never, ever been so cold.

Inside it was warm, though. The hearths were lit. And she would wake when the embers burned too low and her room got too cold, rising from her creaking bed to find her breath steaming -- not a lot, but enough that she could see it. Bundling up then, pulling on a knitted hat and a blanket at the foot of her bed, going over to the fireplace to stir it and add wood and bring it back to life. It was still dark outside, and the curtains were all pulled closed so it was even darker inside until the flames leapt up.

Devon remembers padding over to the window, wrapped in a blanket and wearing her hat pulled down over her thick hair, pulling the curtain aside to look out. Thick, heavy snow covered everything. Trees. Fences. Cars. No one was out. No one disturbed anything. The world may as well have gone dark, apocalyptic. And softhearted thing that she is (or was, or tries so much to be), she thought of people not in her house. Not on her street. Downtown people, normally spending their winters in line for shelter beds or hiding from rainfall in doorways. Thought of the way the city tries to make itself inhospitable to them, with bumps on the benches so they can't lie down and spikes on the windowsills so they can't hide from the weather. Thought of stray dogs and cats. Felt her heart breaking, and felt herself grow angry.

The Ladies never said the memory of safety, of knowing she was safe in a way that so very many are not, had to be a happy memory.

the ladies of the wood

No, they didn't say that. They didn't say much at all; not much to constrain what it was she sacrificed, other than that it was a memory, and that the memory was of safety, and that she would never, ever get it back.

Perhaps this is a memory she'll be glad to lose. Perhaps she thinks she'll be glad to lose it, anyway. Or perhaps it simply comes to mind because it came to mind, unbidden and unescorted: the bitter cold, the warmth of her home, the anger and grief and -- guilt, perhaps? -- of knowing she had and others had not. Is that what brings her here? This place, this time? Because she has, and others four centuries before her had not?

Even in her time her safety is not guaranteed. But there has been some progress. There has been some movement forward, and even if werewolves sniff suspiciously at her when she passes, no one has tried to burn her at stake. No one has even tried to cast her out into the cold, when...

(?)

The memory is already gone. It disappeared like smoke in the wind, in the instant her mind was preoccupied, the moment she wasn't looking. She can't even remember what the memory was supposed to be about, or whether it made her happy or sad or angry or embarrassed. She can remember nothing of it; nothing save that once it was, and now it is not.

--

The Crone sighs within her hood, creakily, satedly.

"See, girl," she whispers to the Maiden, "I told you. Did I not tell you? It was not lovely, but bitter."

"There are two more to be collected from her," the Maiden reminds. "And then we have the others still. That one," she nods at Hannah, who instantly shrinks, "that one will be all sweetness and light. You'll see."

"The next," prompts the Mother, gentle but unyielding. "The bargain is struck. You must give. We must take."

witch

Devon doesn't want to lose any of her memories. She really doesn't. She knows she was searching, and remembers searching, but she can't remember what she found. The feeling makes her unsteady and slightly nauseated, like being seasick. Like the ground under her can't be trusted. She feels uncomfortable and afraid, and it's hard to find something else safe with that feeling.

But three. They said three.

She blinks, feeling tears in her eyes and not knowing why. She looks at the Crone for the first time, talking about memories, and doesn't know what they're talking about. Something bitter? She blinks again, looking at the Mother again, nodding. Closes her eyes again.

It's the same. The skim, the blur. Finding herself settling on something and then rushing away from it, refusing to give it up: it's old, and hazy, and she just knows that she was small enough to be crawling, small enough that she can barely remember when or where. Was it before Boston? Was it before he left?

Everyone knows he shouldn't have been in lupus around the baby, nosing at her, tamping down his rage. Shouldn't be teaching her that it's safe to get up on her tiny chubby legs, tiny palm cupped awkwardly on his nose, laughing as he licks his teeth. Stupid thing to teach a baby, that it's safe to do that with a wolf, just because this particular wolf is never going to bite her.

Devon clenches down on that memory with vicious refusal, running away from it. This is an offering. She chooses the memories, not them. Even if she didn't know this one was in there, even if it came to her when she didn't want it to, she isn't letting them have that one.

--

The other one is far more recent. Hours, days. No farther in the past. She sits on a hard pew in a hard church. She looks up and there he is. That moment, that memory, is full of anxiety and hope but not safety. The safe feeling comes later, minutes later, when he walks over to her, a wall of rage and what Devon thinks is almost unbearable sexual appeal, and says her name. Her real name. Eyes burning, voice low:

"Devon,"

and the flood of relief and security that went through her then, because it was him, and she wasn't here alone, and it was really stupid because he can't keep her safe from everything and she doesn't expect him to, but still... the feeling was overwhelming, slamming through her bones, driving out the jangling uncertainty for a few precious seconds.

Devon smiles a little, beneath her closed eyes. Not a sweet memory, either, but --

gone.

And she can't remember what it was. Or where she was going. All she knows is that she's paid twice now, and owes a third (and yet: a fourth). Devon exhales, and opens her eyes, and shakes her head.

Clears her mind a third time. Closes her eyes again a third time. This time she knows where she's going, and she's sorry for it.

--

It's spring. She's in a graveyard. Lying on her back on a blanket, and watching the boughs move overhead in the breeze. Warm enough that she isn't cold. Cool enough that she isn't sweaty. A half-eaten apple is in her hand and her free arm is behind her head like a pillow. She started to read a book but gave up, feeling too lazy to keep going. It's been a while since she found this spot, and made it her own. Nothing bad had happened that day. No one followed her home with their jeers or childish threats. She wasn't scared and suddenly relieved.

She was just alone. And hidden. And the memory is maybe one of a dozen like it, except that for some reason this one always stood out when she thought of her little private place. Maybe the yellow sunlight and bright greenery of it. Maybe the apple taste. Maybe the laziness of giving up on her paperback. Devon really doesn't know. She thinks of feeling safe and she thinks of some random day -- she doesn't even remember the year -- looking up at the clear sky through the trees, hidden away in a cemetery,

just her. Just herself.

--

And then that's gone, too. And Devon has a hollow, hungry feeling in her gut and throat and somehow in her mind. She exhales, shaken, and opens her eyes for the last time.

the ladies of the wood

It's different: those memories we think we forget, and this. The ones we think we've forgotten are never really gone. See now, there it is, proven. A memory of her father, that bastard, that creep, that asshole that ran away and left her and her mother, but not before teaching her something so stupid and untrue. That a wolf was safe. That a wolf was friendly, and loving, and kind. That this wolf, in particular, was never going to leave her or hurt her.

Or maybe just bite her. Maybe that was the only pact there, because sure as sure the rest were broken.

Well: the memory is still there. She thought it was gone but it wasn't; it's just deep in the recesses of her mind, deep in the crevices of her brain, so deep that all the corridors leading to it have gone dusty and silent, all the doors are creaking, almost all the paths are shut. Almost, but not quite. If she could find a way, dig the tunnel, shine the light, why, then there it would be.

There it is, and she can feel it going -- and she grasps at it, greedy and vicious and no, mine! and she knows the Ladies to be -- well; not kind, but at least fair. She knows it because she feels them relinquishing, that terrible tug softening, waiting.

But not forever.

--

One memory, then two, then three. They are scooped from her consciousness, cleanly and perfectly; not lost in the dust but simply gone. She can feel those avenues leading to where the memory used to be, can feel that laser-clean hollow where they used to be. She remembers sitting on that hard pew and she remembers, much later, meeting her wolf in this time except they'd already met in this time, and she knew. But somewhere in the middle there must have been something else, a bridging event, but -- gone.

She remembers the cemetery and she remembers all the other times she was there, but somewhere in the middle there must have been something else, a quintessential moment, something so pure and secure that its feeling pervaded every other memory like it, but -- gone.

--

She opens her eyes. She sees, and perhaps is not surprised to see, that two of the Ladies have traded faces, places. The Maiden is hooded now, her lovely mouth and narrow jaw just visible in the shadows. The Crone is unhooded, but still not quite visible: an impression on the retina that never makes it to the mind. She just can't seem to comprehend it, synthesize it, make a face out of those wrinkles, that desiccated hair. It is only a sense of age, of time, of -- endings and unknowns.

"Those were sweet, yet bitter," rasps the Crone, fading. Becoming see-through, faint. "Those were lovely, rare and precious as the last fruit of the summer."

"Farewell," says the Maiden, disappearing, "Devon of the Mountains, the Bay, the Ocean, the Isle. Fare thee well until we meet again, beyond the mist and across the western sea."

And then there is only the Mother, who looks like her Mother, but is not. And she kisses her fingertips, then presses those fingertips to Devon's lips. Her skin feels warm. Her touch feels like subtle electricity, humming and numbing, infusing Devon with -- something. Some power; some weight of fate. Something decided, something changed, some thread in the course of history rewoven.

"We shall see you anon, child," she says, and it sounds like a promise. "When you are finished with your work."

witch

Devon wants to flinch from that strange touch, that kiss. She doesn't. She steels herself and accepts it. She doesn't understand what comes from it, though. She doesn't understand this feeling that sinks into her from that contact.

All she can do is nod. She doesn't say 'thank you'.

You say thank you for gifts. And this was a transaction.

--

Taking a breath, Devon turns to the three other women to check in on them. Check for tears, for anxiety, for confusion. Waits a moment for anyone who needs to to compose themselves. Then she takes a breath, exhales it to steady herself, ground herself.

"Let's go."