newbury. new england. 1692.

storm

Oregonian coast is so bleak, so grey, a great crashing Pacific colliding with the rocks. There they are, the wolf, the girl, the motorcycle; their heavy outerwear and the stiff wind narrowing their eyes, blowing back their hair. Sea salt on the air, spray on their cheeks. Maybe tomorrow will be a bright day. Maybe tomorrow it will be clear and blue and green, but still cold; it is always cold in the Pacific northwest.

It is always cold, but the wolf is warm. He is warm where he stands beside her. Warm when he slides an arm around her waist, pulls her against his side. They watch the pacific for a while, this ocean neither of them has seen before. Well; except in Panama. But that was different, southerly, tropical. This is a very different trip from that meandering journey into the south. This is west, to the end of the road, to the edge of the continent, where

she looks into the horizon, and

something shifts.

--

It happens so quickly; like a sudden swim in her senses. Balance off, then regained. Still a grey ocean. Still a grey coast, grey sky. Cold now, though, and she is alone. There are rocks beneath her. There's no asphalt behind her. No road, no sound of cars, no subtle scent of industry. Just the smell of the sea, and the scratchiness of roughspun fabric on her skin. Her knuckles cracked with cold, her palms rough with work.

And distant sounds. Children, calling to one another in high voices, coming nearer. Their footsteps, running; panting for breath in that unabashed way of the young. Feet skid on pebbles and now there are two near her, one in trousers and one in a dress.

"Come, Mercy! Father says you must come!" It is the boy that speaks. Perhaps eight, perhaps ten, towheaded and rumpled. She has a sense it is always so: the brother speaking and not the sister, who is younger and smaller and shyer. They are related to her by blood; she knows this to be true, too. They are her niece and nephew, and their father her uncle-by-marriage: a stern man, scowling, humorless. Farmer with a small and rocky and poor farm, here on the island, here on the ocean. Lost his wife two winters back. Same winter that took -- her parents? is that who they were? -- Became even more humorless after that.

"You'll be late for church," the boy insists, "and the Reverend shall be angry! Come!"It is always cold, but the wolf is warm. He is warm where he stands beside her. Warm when he slides an arm around her waist, pulls her against his side. They watch the pacific for a while, this ocean neither of them has seen before. Well; except in Panama. But that was different, southerly, tropical. This is a very different trip from that meandering journey into the south. This is west, to the end of the road, to the edge of the continent, where

she looks into the horizon, and

something shifts.

--

It happens so quickly; like a sudden swim in her senses. Balance off, then regained. Still a grey ocean. Still a grey coast, grey sky. Cold now, though, and she is alone. There are rocks beneath her. There's no asphalt behind her. No road, no sound of cars, no subtle scent of industry. Just the smell of the sea, and the scratchiness of roughspun fabric on her skin. Her knuckles cracked with cold, her palms rough with work.

And distant sounds. Children, calling to one another in high voices, coming nearer. Their footsteps, running; panting for breath in that unabashed way of the young. Feet skid on pebbles and now there are two near her, one in trousers and one in a dress.

"Come, Mercy, you'll be late!" It is the boy that speaks. Perhaps eight, perhaps ten, towheaded and rumpled. She has a sense it is always so: the brother speaking and not the sister, who is younger and smaller and shyer.

storm

[IGNORE THE REPEAT I'M DRUNK OKAY

YAY HILLARY.]

witch

[YAY HILLREE]

witch

Devon holds tight to him. Her helmet is snug and painted with protective sigils; her arms are warm around his waist, her hands on his chest. Sometimes she even sleeps, as though the wind and the motor and his rage do nothing to her, phase her in no way. That is not true; it is just that sometimes she grows bored, and when she is bored, she sleeps. Her dreams are more interesting. But she never sleeps deeply. She wakes when they pass a shoreline, a break in the cloud cover that shows the sun.

Rafael feels every slip into unconsciousness, her hands growing lax, her arms resting, her hands falling to his hips.

He feels every waking: how she holds onto him, suddenly, instinct before awareness.

--

All the way to the coast. All the way to the sea she has never seen before. The Atlantic was the one she always crossed, the one she knows. The Pacific is another animal entirely, and she senses it the way she senses other strange things, like a change in the moonlight or Mercury going retrograde.

Feels something else. Rafael's arm around her, and her love for him growing and swelling the same as the waves, and then

sudden solitude. A grey day, and an emptiness. A new ocean. The one she knows better, and she knows it instantly: this is not the sea she was just looking at. Its whole spirit is different. It does not feel for her the way the Pacific feels. She recognizes it, and takes a deep sharp inhale of air before anything else, any other sensation, registers for her.

It is so quiet. She thought it was quiet before, standing on the coast with Rafael, staring at the Pacific. She had no idea how quiet it could be: no cars, no motorcycles, no faint hum of electricity you feel but do not notice until its absence. She breathes in and cannot smell Rafael, and it uneases her deeply.

Her arms are empty.

Devon rubs her hands, her awareness slip-sliding between timestreams, turning towards smaller children who she knows and does not know. Mercy, they call her, and she knows that name, but does not understand it. She feels it in her as she has always felt it, but does not answer to it.

He is so fair, and she so dark, and of course he is blessed by his fairness, favored for it. She freckles in the sun, an embarrassment to them all.

Devon blinks several times, frowning at the mention fo the Reverend. She hides her mouth when she licks her lips to moisten them, instinctive, refusing to show her salacious mouth or her wicked tongue. First sounds, then sensations. The loss of warmth. The welcoming of modesty. She breathes in sharp, feeling rocks under soft-soled shoes. She looks at the children.

"'Tis Sabbath?" she hears herself say, and knows how stupid it is. She hurries after them.

storm

The boy -- turning around, running -- casts her a contemptuous glance over his shoulder. He is a male, after all, a man almost, and she just a silly girl -- even if his voice is still high and piping. "What other day would it be? Now hurry, quickly now!"

The girl lingers behind. She reaches out wordlessly and takes her hand, wanting to be led; or perhaps sheltered, somehow.

witch

Little prick,

says the part of Devon's mind that does not belong here and understands none of this.

Little prick,

echoes the part of her mind that does.

--

She steels her face and follows him, pausing as the little girl pauses. Frowns, slightly, and holds out her hand.

"Are you afraid?" she murmurs, as they walk.

storm

She is only seven. Girl knows this, sure as the sun rising in the east. Rising watery and pale over that vast, endless ocean: the only she has ever known in this life. The little one is only seven, and she lives ever in her brother's shadow. She is, after all, a girl: born to silence and servitude and sin, descendant of Eve that she is. Here at the edge of the world, the tiny hamlet of Newbury perched on and surrounded by the vast merciless Sargassos: they all cling to life only by the grace of the Lord, but the females in particular who, without the strong hand of their men, would surely stray into sin and be utterly lost.

Well. That is what the Church teaches, anyway.

The little girl takes her hand eagerly and clings. She too wears a frock, a tiny bonnet; a miniature of the adults in every way. The dress is pink, but a muted hue -- both for decorum, and for lack of means to achieve any brighter hue. She shakes her head -- hesitates -- then nods.

"Nicholas said they hanged people again," she says softly. "But a day's walk away, he said, in Salem and Ipswich. Nicholas said they were witches, and if we go not to church daily, then we too are lost."

Nicholas: her brother. And her name: Faith.

witch

Seven is a holy number. Seven is the number of God, as six is the number of the Devil, and five is the number of Man. She knows this as well as she knows the little girl, the little boy, the men she has not seen who are so severe in their eyes. She holds the girl's hand tightly in her own, both dominant and warm, carrying her along.

This is why no one likes her: she is taller than the other boy and she knows it. Stronger than him, and she exercises that strength. Warmer than the Reverend, God's own voice to their community, and hateful because none here know God to be warm.

And yet:

god, whatever it is, is very warm indeed.

--

Salem.

Devon pauses, her feet stopping fully on the rocks. Salem. She knows that name, that word, that place, though in this life she has never been. In her own life, her real life, she has; she went there from Boston and she felt at home and she felt alien, she felt familiar and strange, she felt comforted and unsettled all at once. She knows Salem.

Hanging is the gentlest of what might happen here.

Devon's skin goes cold and damp with sudden sweat. She knows she pales, color high in her cheeks in the cold as though she had a fever. She tightens her hand on the girl's.

"Aye," she whispers, more for Faith's sake than her own. Tightens her hand brutally, and steps forward more briskly, pulling Faith along: "But for God's grace, we are lost. Amen. Come, Faith. And hurry."

Her eyes stare at Nicholas's back. She will not trust him. It is cruel, but so true for her right now: there is something on him that God put there, stabbing and violent, and blessed for its violence. She will protect Faith, and be wary of the men who are told they are God's only hand on the earth.

She longs for Rafael. He likes witches. At least one witch.

storm

[fml i'm too drunk for family relationships. THE KIDS ARE HER COUSINS.]

He is far ahead, Nicholas: his thin back in the roughspun clothes, his trousers baggy and shapeless so he can grow into them for years to come. He is running, hair shining in the sun. She does not trust him, and perhaps she is right not to. He is growing up. He is almost a man, in these wild and untamed frontiers, and men

hurt

women in this world. That is the sad truth of it. Ask any witch, true or merely accused: ask any of them swinging from the gibbet; ask any of them drowned in the river; ask any of them burnt to cinders on the stake.

--

They follow, Faith and the girl, who is named Mercy in this time, after the virtue; who is named Devon in another, after the land. Up from the rocky and inhospitable shore -- through a patch of forests, where woodcutters harvest their lumber year after year and, at least for the time, seem to make no dent at all in the burgeoning wild. There are beasts in there. There are natives in their, savage and bareskinned. There are wolves in there; she can hear them howling in the night.

And in comparison, her village seems so tiny. Even in this time she knows it is small: small compared to Boston, already a burgeoning port city, though she's never seen it with her own eyes. Small, even, compared to Ipswich and Salem, where there are so many people and so many witches that they are holding trials, hanging women and men. A tiny huddle of cabins around a small church: this is her home, her village, the only defense good Christian men and women have against this dark and savage land.

She can see them now, these good men and women: streaming into that church, that parapeted structure of raw lumber. The men in their dark clothing, the women in their demure dresses and buttoned-up collars. Heads down, heads covered, ashamed in the sight of the Lord, as one must be: sinners that they all are.

"There's papa," Faith quails, seeing. And there indeed he is, Samuel Noyes: a brawny man in his forties, which is very nearly an elder in this day and age. Not wealthy, but comfortably situated -- enough, at least, to earn the respect of his peers. He stands by the church door as the last of the congregation files in, arms folded across his chest, scowling at the crowd in search of his children and his wayward, unwillingly-adopted niece. "Oh, Mercy, he looks angry. We are late again and we shall be punished."

witch

One day they will know her, and name her appropriately: devon.

(Once upon a time they knew her, and named her appropriately: órfhlaith. cailleach)

--

Here, they call her Mercy, and she knows in her heart it's as true a name as any other, though she resists it. She hated Rafael a little, when she smoothed that white-tea spray over his wounds, not to heal but to ease his pain. She hated him, though she coudl not bear to see him in pain. She would do all she could to ease it. She does so still at work, taking this shift or another to spare someone else.

She cannot bear to cause harm. She is mercy incarnate. Of course they call her that, in a world writ by virtues and wariness of sin.

--

Over the rocks and through the woods, away from the water,

she hurries along, following Nicholas-after-the-saint, tugging Faith-of-Abraham after her. She walks in with pride,

then stops herself.

Devon lowers her eyes and her head, slows her steps. She holds Faith's hand and lets her hem fall from where she hiked it slightly to walk more quickly. She goes carefully here, within the walls of their township. She worries: what will become of Faith if she speaks up? What will become of her if she does not?

Faith hesitates and Devon tightens her grip on the poor, small girl's hand. "Courage, Faith," she whispers, eyeing Samuel Noyes with her brilliant blues. Faith worries. Mercy feels rebellion in her heart, sin of sins. Pride; worst of the seven. Oh, Father, forgive her.

Devon looks him in the eye for a moment, as though curious about his anger. She walks past him, glancing at him and then away, back to the children. "One thing or another, you'll be punished," she murmurs to the girl. "May as well be for being late to prayers."