A Bible like that brings respect to a man's name by its presence and gravity alone. Samuel Noyes inherited it from his father, who inherited it from his own father. The church has one like it, thick and sturdy, bound in old leather worn soft by countless hands. A few other families in Newbury own Bibles like it, and after these last two killing winters, fewer still: for many of those that did sold it for food. Most now make do with the spoken word of their Reverend.
A Bible like that is worth a pretty pence. A Bible like that, sold, might have bought enough food and fuel to save her mother and father.
--
It is not long before Nicholas, preadolescent boy that he is, tires of the readings. Halfway through the second tale he plunks down the crank, proclaims the butter churned, and tears off running with a thorough heedlessness of the Holy Book he'd never dare exhibit before his father. So then it is just she and her cousin, little Faith, who eventually grows weary of holding the heavy book. Precious as it is, she would never place it on the ground: wraps it in her apron instead, and sets that little bundle on the ground.
Then Faith rests with her head in her cousin's lap. The chick has long since run away to rejoin its siblings and its clucking mother, and in its place the little girl has found a patch in her -- her? Mercy's, at least -- dress instead. Faith traces that instead, aimlessly and sleepily, running her fingers around and around the irregular border the way her ancient ancestors traced runes carved in rock.
It is warm in the sun. Her mending done, the house clear and aired out, there is little left to do but wait for dark.
--
Crash of the gate wakes her. Had she slept, or slipped in time? Either; both. Faith startles awake, tense as an animal. Clings to girl's dress. It's cold again, and what sun there was has disappeared. Clouds overhead; last fading blue glow of twilight. Her uncle approaches, knitbrowed, heavy strides.
"Did I not instruct you clearly, girl? You were to have the children fed and in bed, and here you sit sleeping in the dirt. Lazy, slatternly thing." He pauses. "Where's Nicholas?"
witchThe shirt didn't take that long to mend. She pretended to sew for far longer than necessary, and puts it down in her lap when Nicholas runs off. She will have to take care of the butter with Faith, since the boy is such a little shit. She sees Faith growing tired and feels tender; reaches to help her. Faith is so bright, she thinks, watching the girl wrap the Bible in her apron as carefully as one would swaddle a newborn. She smiles and takes Faith's head on her lap when the girl lies down, thinking: what does the butter matter, really? perhaps all of this is a dream.
So she strokes the girl's cheek while the girl touches her skirt idly, and she grows drowsy in the fading sunlight. She leans against the tree behind her, closing her eyes, her hand resting on Faith's cheek.
--
Dark when she wakes. Startlingly dim, frighteningly so when she realizes how much time must have passed. She jerks to alertness, pulling her hand away from the little girl's head and wrapping Faith up in her arm as the child all but crawls onto her in fright. She looks up at her suposed uncle.
Her eyes flash when he calls her slatternly, rage flickering behind her gaze. That must be why a branch of the elm she leans on quivers, and why -- though the branch itself does not fall and break the man's neck, several twigs do snap off, falling onto his head.
But by then, she has schooled her features. She blinks, and she shakes her head. "We were mending, and churning butter. I was telling them stories of King David." She sounds wary, worried; that's because she is. Suddenly, and for Nicholas as much as herself and for Faith: it is growing dark, and he is just a boy.
"I don't know where he is."
stormHer uncle is not a kind man. Kind men do not gain land and prestige, especially not in this wild and hostile new world. He is hard, and calculating, and suspicious. He has seen just enough pain and sorrow to be viciously wary of it, the way a dog kicked often enough grows savage. He is, perhaps most frighteningly of all, a true believer in the teachings of his Puritan church.
Twigs fall on his head. There was no wind. And instantly Samuel Noyes's hand flies to his head. He looks at the tree, shocked. He looks at her.
"Nicholas!" The name bursts from him, shouted. He tears his eyes away, marches out the gate. "NICHOLAS."
Faith is almost in tears. "What's going on? Mercy, why is Father angry?"
witchDevon's voice goes quiet to answer, as she gathers Faith up and hoists her to her feet before getting up as well. Her hands are on Faith's shoulders. "He's always angry," she murmurs, dismissively, blithely, because it is true and because she doesn't want Faith to have any illusions about that. Samuel Noyes is an angry man, and Faith needs to learn that he is an angry man before he is anything else.
She picks up the apron-wrapped Bible and hands it to Faith. "Put the holy book away, right where it belongs. You know what to do to take yourself to bed, yes? Even with no candle and just the moonlight?"
She smiles at Faith then, proudly, because she believes in her. Squeezes her. "Get thee to bed. Tuck yourself in like a good, grown-up girl like me. And we'll all come home soon with Nicholas in tow, and your father will be quite proud of you for being such a lady. Now obey me, sweet one. Run along."
And she rises, still smiling until Faith is no longer looking at her, and then she takes off after Samuel Noyes, intent on helping him find his son.
stormFaith nods, obedient. Except: no. It's not obedience. Not to her. It's something else, purer and sweeter than that: the desire to do well, the desire to do good, the desire to live up to her cousin's belief in her. She stands a little taller, as though the trust laid in her paradoxically lifts a weight.
"I can do it," she promises. Hesitates. Hugs her, quick and tight, before turning and running back into the house. "Lord keep you, Mercy."
--
Samuel Noyes has a head start: some hundred or two yards ahead, crashing into the dark forest. He has no torch, no lantern, nothing but the last fading light still lingering in the overcast sky. She soon loses sight of him, but she can still hear him bellowing Nicholas's name.
In the growing dark, the trees tower and sway. Wind through the leaves almost sound like whispers; don't listen too close and she could almost imagine words. Behind her, the tiny dark shape of her uncle's house -- and beyond that, quite in the distance, the frail little lights and curling chimney-smoke of their little village. Twenty paces into the forest and she can't see it anymore. Not the house, not the village, not any of it: no sign of human life. Just deep, moist, breathing dark.
And:
a light. Far in the distance, glimmering in the trees. A dull orange leaping glow, like a candleflame -- though she knows it to be more than that. A fire, it must be, and a large one. Else she would not have seen it. It is in the opposite direction of her uncle's receding shouts.
witchThe was always something seductive about the dark, for her. About the lonely, empty places. She found herself a secret burrow behind a tree in a graveyard; she keeps herself away even from the one she loves because she must always be able to go to ground, always escape, always
follow lights in the darkness,
listen to the voices in the shadows.
--
Back at the homestead, before that darkness grows velvet before her eyes and before she sees lights or hears whispers, Devon loves Faith. She touches the girl's face, that agonizingly soft cheek, and adores her. She is embraced, quickly, but her own return is tighter still, firm, clutching Faith to her for a longer moment than the girl might expect. She puts her hand over Faith's crown as she holds her, whispering:
"Bless you, sweet one."
And she means it. With whatever she had in her that might have made Nicholas shut up and certainly made wood fall on Samuel, Devon means it. Fuels the blessing, which may be nothing at all, with the ferocious love she feels for the little girl. And then lets her go, and takes the blessing returned to her for what it is.
Whatever gods there are, may they keep her close in their palms. Shielded.
Devon believes there is power in Faith's innocent, pure belief in what she says.
--
Out there in the woods surrounding the homestead, Devon tries to follow Samuel. He sounds angry, and he sounds afraid, she thinks. The two are linked. She is afraid, too. Animals. A loose branch to trip a foot. At least one wolf roaming the countryside here, and who knows what other things beyond the ken of mortals. She follows, skirts catching on branches, lifting her voice also:
"NICHOLAS!"
It resounds, and comes back to her, echoing off of the trunks of elms, shivering in their leaves. She listens for a long moment, waiting to hear breath, or whimper, or a call of answer. She waits to hear anything at all. She then begins to look for a forked branch. She will dowse for him if she has to. She has no doubt she could find the boy. Maybe there's a stone she could use as a pendulum. Something. But turning, looking, Devon hears the leaves rattle against one another. They begin to talk. She blinks slowly and shakes the sensation off, but it only seems to grow more insistent.
Samuel is far away now. He sounds like he may be the dream, and these wind-whispers the truth. Devon exhales slowly, already following the firelight she sees, her shoulders rounding down, her lips no longer calling for her cousin.
stormHas she ever been so deep into the forest? The villagefolk fear it, ward their young away from it, and for good reason. There are savages in these woods. There are bears in these woods. There are wolves in these woods. She hears them howling at night, sometimes, and perhaps wonders why the thrill that chases through her bones is not entirely fear. Well; Mercy wondered. Devon knows.
There are savages and bears and wolves, and there is much worse -- so the villagers whisper; so their reverend preaches. Fear is the defining element of their lives: fear of God, fear of Judgment, fear of the Devil and his wiles. They are sinful, sinful people, sinful to the marrow of their bones though they try so hard to be good, and it would take so little to push them over the edge, tip them over the cliff, send them tumbling into damnation. Who knows what lies in the woods, what temptation might plague a man or a woman away from the eyes of others? There is safety only in the flock: the judgmental, vicious-tongued flock, with beatings and shamings ever on the horizon, with the shadow of the gibbet falling across all.
They do not go into the woods. But she goes into the woods now, leaving that tiny pitiful scrap of civilization behind. Farther and deeper and deeper and farther, until those whispering trees become distant voices; long ululating cries and deep, low, coarse shouts; women's voices, but not the sort of voice any woman in Newbury would dare.
witchDevon wonders how afraid Mercy was. Of the woods. Of god. Of her own sinful nature. Of the cries of the wolves. She can feel dim memories of the girl, like the shiver of excitement bordering on lust that would go through her when looking at the full moon or listening to those distant howls in the dark. She wonders if, in the cold light of day, Mercy was afraid, praying for forgiveness, begging not to be cast down. Praying that she was not one of those doomed to perish in a lake of fire one day, her fate predestined long before the creation of earth.
She doesn't know. She feels the girl but cannot find her or reach her, all the same. Mostly she feels her sore feet, her itchy skin, and a faint drowsiness of being woken suddenly, of using magic and tiring her spirit, of being so worried and of being so frustrated. She feels a heaviness in her limbs, like she is moving through water.
There are women out in these woods. Maenad, Devon thinks, a distant word that doesn't belong here. Her body clenches again. She keeps walking.
Faster, now.
stormIt is not hard now to follow the light, the voices. There are no tricks, no sleight of hand, no sudden disappearances in puffs of smoke. Just the firelight, growing. Just the voices, louder and louder, languages she doesn't understand and languages she does and languages that do not sound like human tongues at all.
She climbs the lip of a hill -- her dress uncomfortable and burdensome, snagging on twigs and hot from exertion -- and suddenly they are there beneath her. A circle around a leaping fire, nine in all, all of them women. Mercy would have been shocked. Even now, perhaps she is shocked; enough of their lives shared and entwined that the emotion bleeds one to the other.
Six of them with their heads are bare. Their hair is loose. They leap and stamp, beat their hands on their bodies, singing or chanting or something of both. Only two are whiteskinned as she is; two with sunweathered and cracked skin, asiatic features, thick black hair. Two as dark as dark, whites of their eyes and whites of their teeth a flash. And three others hooded and cloaked, coarse cloth drawn so low over their faces she cannot see them at all. Of these, one tall, one slender, one bent and clutching a gnarled walking-stick.
The three do not shout, or chant, or dance. They watch, even as she does from her hidden vantage point: watch as their sisters spin and pound and stomp, faster and harder and ever more furious, until all at once they are shouting at once, overlapping, a rhythm. A phrase, a word, a phrase, screamed so raw and loud their throats must tear with the sound of it. It's not until she hears the English smattered amidst the cacophony that she understands it: not a phrase, a word, a phrase, but two names bound by a preposition:
"Nathaniel Hoffe! For Sarah Hawkins!"
"Robert Clough! For Anna Benham!"
"Mary Royse! For Anna Benham!"
"Will Williams! For Mary Pickworth!"
"We remember! We forgetteth not!"
"Benedict Lamb! For Sarah Hawkins!"
"We remember! We remember!"
stormholy shit, is that share?
sharebird(Is shre!)
storm
SHARE! long time no see! get on AIM and talk to us there!
stormnevermind i jumped into OOC!
witchStill in her bonnet. Her petticoats, waistcoat, apron, stockings, all of it. She is laden with the costume of the age, of the religion. She knows it will not fool them, even as she knows -- instantly and intimately -- what they are. What she is hearing. Cries of mourning, cries of joy, cries of vengeance, cries of a twisted and dark sort of honor that she does not think any wolf could understand. Not even Rafael.
This is the part of herself that has no mirror in her world or in her time. There are kin who know what it is to love wolves, parent them, watch them slip away into furred skin and long claws. There are even kin who can call to the spirits within plants and beasts and kin who can dowse and kin who can, perhaps most miraculous of all, heal.
But none that she has met, or known of, who can do what else she does. She thinks she made Nicholas stop prattling on the road home. She thinks she may have made a true blessing on little Faith's head. She knows very well she could have broken Samuel's neck if she'd struggled with the branch a moment longer.
Her heart is beating in her chest and for the first time in hours she forgets John Thornton.
She even forgets Rafael.
--
Devon all but bursts into the clearing, she has no wish to hide. She has no fear of them, except the fear that is sanity itself: but she surrenders to it, all the same. This is a cousin to the feeling she had when Rafael looked her in the eye at the church and said her name, her real name. But it is a thousand times stronger now, pounding in her veins, pulling at her heart:
not alone, not alone, not alone.
stormShe breaks into the wild circle. There is no salt on the ground, no lines in the earth, but it is a circle nonetheless, and she can feel the power humming in the air. She has never witnessed such a thing before. Not in her time; not in Mercy's. Perhaps other lives she has lived have, and perhaps they have even taken part, but for her, this her, Devon, this is raw and new and yet so old. So familiar. It is what she has searched for, knowingly or otherwise, for so long.
--
Yet: there is sudden pandemonium when she appears. The screaming chants dissolve into simple screams. The women scatter, running in all directions, one of the native women snatching a spear from the ground as she runs fleet-footed into the night. This is New England, after all, in the dusk of the 17th century. Witches swing but a day's ride away. And she is unknown, and she is new, and she is dressed in those suffocating clothes, her hair bound tight. They cannot trust her. They fear her. They run.
But not all of them. The three, the hooded ones: they do not run. They stand as they did, unmoving and watchful. And she realizes the circle is not broken after all. She can nearly taste it in the air, that pulsing hum, that static at the edges of her visual field. She realizes, if only dimly and instinctively,
that they have no scent, the hooded ones.
The tallest of the three raises her right hand, palm upward. It is a questioning gesture, and a question follows. Her voice is sonorous and velvet:
"Why hast thou come?"
The slender one to her right:
"It is not thy time."
The bent one to her left:
"It is not thy place."
witchShe hits it. Feels it an inch before she would run right through it, and her leather shoes skid on the earth as she struggles to stop. Devon puts her hand out as though she were about to touch a true wall, and feels power touch her palm, electric and undulating. She gasps, pulling her hand back, stopping herself.
The circle itself, the cone of power, remains unbroken. And she shakes slightly, only realizing a moment later that these women are running. Shrieking, bolting, and she cries out wordlessly in protest. It takes long moments for it to form: "Please! No!"
And she knows she sounds like she's pleading, but she doesn't care. She feels tears prick her eyes, then fill them, lifting her hands and pressing her heels to hide and stopper her crying. She feels heartbroken, suddenly.
--
Something else, the same power but subtler in flavor, presses against her cheeks. And her shoulders. She lowers her hands obediently, though no order is spoken, and looks at the three women. She can smell many things here, but she cannot smell humanity on the three who come to her. They are, in this way as in others, very clearly like her.
It says something that she does not feel recognition, comfort, longing, as she did when she saw the witches dancing.
It says something, a rather awful something, that her first reaction is one of fear, and alienation, and loathing.
--
Devon's arms hang at her sides. She hears questions.
Shakes her head, miserably.
Tears come anew. And with them comes honesty. The words leave her mouth before she has thought them, truth bypassing consciousness to birth itself into being:
"Because I'm alone."
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