The Witch Child (Excerpt)
The man on the gray horse didn’t know how close he rode to death when he frightened the little girl hiding in the bushes, but she kept control of herself as Mama told her to do. She watched as he swung out of the saddle and beat his fist against the door. “Mrs. Spinnel!” he shouted. She knew why he had come. He had brought a shadow with him that would haunt her for the rest of her life.
The door whipped open and the old woman stood with a gaping mouth and her knitting needles clutched like a dagger at her waist. “Kreggs? They’ve come back, haven’t they?”
“I had to warn you. Prayin’ they didn’t see me leave my post.”
“Bless you, Kreggs. Did you see Brenna in the meadow when you rode up?”
“No.”
“Help me find her. I don’t want them ta hear me shoutin’ her name.”
Kreggs hopped on his horse again. He rode through the meadow, the animal’s legs disappearing in the tall grass. Mrs. Spinnel hobbled around to the back of the cottage. As soon as they were out of sight, Brenna ran inside and up the ladder to the loft where her bed lay. She hid under the quilt and listened.
The straw in her mattress crinkled so loud, she wondered if they would hear as she scooted and squirmed in the bed and pulled the quilt over her just right so she could watch the door. The fireplace crackled on one side of the one-room cottage. A pot that hung on the iron crane above the fire bubbled. Dust that she’d stirred up when she ran floated and swirled in the beams of sunlight that came through the gaps in the thatched roof. The old wooden chair, the washbasin, the spinning wheel, and the skeins of yarn in the basket waited in a hush for Mrs. Spinnel to return.
She remembered the first time she came here. Her mother woke her up in the middle of the night and told her to be quiet. She took her outside and lifted her onto the bare back of a donkey loaded with saddlebags, then led them down a trail to Mrs. Spinnel’s cottage in the dark. Mama didn’t even have a lantern to light the way. She remembered how strange it felt. She and her mother had never gone anywhere after dark for as long as she lived.
Mrs. Spinnel let them in as if she’d been expecting them. Brenna remembered the old lady from market days in the village, but had never been to her house before. She had this straw-filled mattress and warm quilt ready by the fire. The old woman’s bumpy red nose stuck out from the wool scarf tied around her head as she gave Brenna a little honey cake, still warm from the oven. Mrs. Spinnel and her mother talked deep into the night about someone called Lord Deafol and some magic folk. She remembered dozing off, then waking up to the sound of her mother sobbing softly, and how Mrs. Spinnel reassured her that everything would be all right.
Brenna’s mother shook her awake before dawn and said something to her that echoed over and over again in her mind ever since. “I’m sorry, Brenna dear. I have to go away for a while and you must stay here with Mrs. Spinnel. You listen to her and she will take care of you.”
Those words sent a terrible panic through every part of Brenna’s body. “No. Mama, take me with you!”
“I can’t, dear. It’s dangerous. I want you to make me a promise. Do you remember the Vow?”
“Yes.”
“I want you to stay true to your Vow, be good, and I’ll be back as soon as I can be. Do you promise?”
“I promise. I promise!” She said it as a plea, believing that if she promised it, her mother would stay.
Within a few minutes, Mama was gone with the donkey and its saddlebags. She remembered watching mama’s long, red curls swaying in the dawn light as she climbed the hill. She thought Mama would be back in a few days or a few weeks, but now it had been more than a year. The fog rolling along the river and the red and yellow leaves had come and gone. Now the frost crusted over the world every morning and the freezing winds of winter would be here soon. She hadn’t seen so much as a letter from her.
In years before, she went to the village school most days to learn her letters and counting with the other children. Now Mrs. Spinnel did not let her go. When Mama left, she didn’t feel like going, anyway. After some time, she thought seeing other children would make her feel happy again, but Mrs. Spinnel forbade it. “No, dearie. It’s best that no one sees you again for a while. When your mother comes back, perhaps then it will be safe again.”
And so she had stayed here at this cottage for more than a year. In the spring and summer months, the old woman let her go out in the meadow to pick flowers and play, but that’s as far as she could go. Most days she stayed here helping her cook soup, bake bread, and clean. Mrs. Spinnel’s brother and her nephews, who herded sheep in the hills, would come by to bring her wool, which she spun into yarn and gave to them to sell on market days in the village square. Brenna had learned to use the spinning wheel and knit. She’d learned to sew a bit too and could mend things, but every day she woke up wondering if today would be the day her mother came back.
The door swung open and Mrs. Spinnel’s boots thumped against the floorboards. “If you’re in here, child, I need you to show yourself. This is no time for hide-an’-seek. We’re in danger.”
Brenna hesitated, but hearing the shaking fear in the old woman’s voice, she popped her head out from the loft. “Where is the man on the grey mare?”
“Kreggs is gone, but you need to pack some warm clothes and let’s be gone from here double-quick.”
“No. We can’t go!” Brenna howled.
Mrs. Spinnel had already shoved several knitted sweaters into a leather bag, but spun on her toes and stopped to face the child with a shocked look on her face. “The bad men, the ones your mama ran away from, are coming. Please don’t dawdle, child. We need to go or they could do terrible things to us both.”
“But how will Mama find us? She won’t know where we went!”
“Well, we might be goin’ to the same place she went and we might find her there.”
Brenna stopped crying. It was like a dark storm had come to an abrupt end and the sun’s rays shone out of the clouds. She stood in shock for a second, watching Mrs. Spinnel hobble in every direction, putting this and that in her bag, saying, “Get your things, child!”
Brenna did as she’d been told and in minutes, they had set off across the meadow toward the wood at the foot of the hills. Brenna wondered if this was the way her mother had gone to get over the mountains and down into the town beyond called Kemlin. Mrs. Spinnel told her that’s where Mama went, anyway, to find a new place for the two of them to live, far away from the bad men.
From a knoll that climbed higher than the cottage, she could see the road bending away. She imagined a whole cavalry of knights in armor would come galloping toward them. She turned and ran to follow Mrs. Spinnel as close as she could.
Mrs. Spinnel’s breath wheezed as she limped up the slope. Her whole body lurched left and right with each step. She weighed against her gnarled old walking stick, her loyal companion that normally leaned against the wall by the door. Brenna imagined it had accompanied her on a Ftime of journeys over hills and rivers and roads to faraway lands. They passed several piles of big, grey stones that stood almost as high as the grass. These reminded Brenna of a time before her mother left, when she still went to the village school.
She played in this meadow with Abel, the cobbler’s son. He liked to carry long sticks and pretend they were swords, thrashing the grass like an enemy knight. Brenna liked to make chains of daisies to wear like crowns in her hair. She liked to look for fairies in the grass and when she couldn’t find them, she would dig holes under the rock piles and decorate them with sprays of yarrow and clover to make homes for the fairies to live in.
“Please stop thrashing. You’ll scare away the fairies,” she said.
“Fairies are just stupid make-believe.”
“No, they are not, and I’m going to… Abel!”
The biggest adder she had ever seen lay coiled up near his feet. He didn’t see it and he didn’t hear her. He kept slashing at the grass. The snake flinched.
“An adder! Abel, there’s a snake!”
The change in her voice got his attention, and he spun his head around to see it coiling up to strike. He jumped back. She could sense its muscles tensing. She had to stop it. Just as its mouth opened, and it sprang toward his ankle, she did it, and then she wished she hadn’t.
Abel stood, shocked for a long time, looking at what had once been a snake. Then he looked at her with his eyes wide. “Did you do that?”
She knew she should say something to calm him down, but she couldn’t think of anything. His fear of the snake had turned toward her now. The look of surprise in his eyes had turned to terror. “You’re one of them,” he said as he slowly backed away from her. “Stay away from me.”
“Abel, wait.”
He didn’t. He turned and bolted away from her like a beaten dog. She watched him running over the hillocks, back toward the village. He glanced over his shoulder once or twice to be sure she didn’t follow him. That is what did it. The shaky feeling all over her body came out in a pitiful wail as she fell to her knees and cried in the grass until the sun had fallen low in the sky.
She dreaded going home. She did not want Mama to know. She’d promised never to use her powers. She had taken the Vow. No matter how many times Mama asked her what was the matter, she wouldn’t tell her. Why was she looking so glum? Then someone in the village must have told her. Someone must have told everyone and on market days in the square, people just stared at Brenna and frowned. Their spines and jaws would tense when she and Mama walked by. Some huddled and whispered, and some moved away from her and her Mama as if they were adders, about to strike. That is how Lord Deafol found out about Mama, and about her. That is why she and Mrs. Spinnel found themselves struggling up this hillock, trying to get away.
About halfway to the trees, Mrs. Spinnel stopped and looked back.
“Come, dearie. Stay out of sight. Come round the south side of this hillock before they see us.”
“Did you see them?”
“Keep goin’. Don’t look back.”
The south side of the hillock rose much steeper. Mrs. Spinnel moved slower. Her lurching and wheezing got worse. Brenna could no longer see the road or the cottage from here, and whoever was on the road probably couldn’t see them either.
After quite a few slides and stumbles, Mrs. Spinnel’s left hand gripped her walking stick, and the right grabbed for anything she could—bare roots, stones, or the trunks of the young white birch trees. In this way, they scrabbled up until they finally reached the tree line at the foot of the forested hill and stopped in the shade. Brenna finally looked back. Far away she could see the tiny wooden bridge that crossed the river, not far from the cottage. It looked as small as a toothpick, with a line of black ants crawling across it. She knew there were not ants, but men on horseback. The dim sunlight of a late autumn day sparkled off of their armor and swords.
“We’d better get to the stair, child,” Mrs. Spinnel said as she stood up again and moved toward the darkest part of the wood.
Mrs. Spinnel led her to a place where two great, overhanging oaks parted and a stairway of stones had been built into the wooded hillside. The stairs led up the slope until the dense forest shrouded it in shadows. The huge grey arms of the old oaks loomed above her and their roots writhed like serpents under the carpet of dead leaves.
“Come on, child.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I know it don’t look very nice, but it’s the safest way.”
“Where does it go?”
“Up the hill until it comes to the mountain pass. That’s where we’re goin’.”
Brenna did not like the sound of it. In stories, trolls or goblins always waited in mountain passes, trapping people and making them answer riddles before they tried to cook them if they got it wrong. She felt her whole body go stiff and her face twisting into a frown. “Can’t we go another way?”
“I need you to trust me, dearie. It’s much more dangerous if we don’t go this way. Come along. You know I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Brenna gulped and ducked, even though the oak boughs hung far above her head. She stepped in her little leather shoes after Mrs. Spinnel’s big clunking boots. After a few more steps, she saw the stairway passed under a round stone arch, overgrown with vines. On all the branches on either side, someone had tied small bones and rusty little bells on strings.
“What is this place?”
“My grandmother and the old folks in her day said it was once a city built by elves. No one I know has ever seen an elf. Some say men folk frightened them off long, long ago.”
“And what are these? Necklaces?”
“Charms. Farmers and hunters from the village have been hanging these to keep the spirits away. They think these little trinkets will confuse them and make them stay in the forest. It’s silly, I say. Spirits aren’t going to be fooled by these any more than you or me. Now come on.”
Mrs. Spinnel hobbled up ten more stairs before she turned around to find Brenna standing stiff at the archway. “What is it, child?”
“Are the elves and the spirits real?”
“No. Don’t be afraid. I haven’t seen not one elf nor spirit in all the days of my life. Now, come on, child, we’ve got to move.”
Brenna followed, but cowered from every shadow. Her eyes shifted from left to right off the path. She grabbed onto Mrs. Spinnel’s thick, bony hand and felt its warmth. The old woman towered above her. A cold gust blew up the stairs from the north and east, sending the woman’s baggy wool sweater swirling around Brenna and making her feel that a big warm grey storm cloud was sweeping her up the stairway and far away from everything she had ever known.
Now on the left and right, she could see great stone structures rising out of the brown brackens on the forest floor. Some of them rose almost as high as the tallest aspen trees. Some had once been turrets and walls of some great fortress or castle. White lichens speckled the dark grey stone. She imagined shadowy elves from stories with their pointed ears and pointed shoes hopping from the towers and scurrying under piles of crumbled stones.
She felt an icy shiver in her chest. The surrounding forest grew darker, and the air grew damp and cold. What if something jumped out at them from the trees? What if she got scared and accidentally used her powers to get away? She remembered Mama’s words. I want you to stay true to your Vow, be good, and I’ll be back. If she was bad and broke the Vow, Mama would not come back. She bit her lip. She could not use her powers. She had to stay true to her word.
“How long until we are there?”
“We’ll reach the mountain pass before nightfall. Then we’ll need to find someplace ta shelter. I can feel a winter storm comin’ on like a frost on me bones. Maybe a good snow will keep these horrible men off the mountain and we’ll have time to get to Kemlin at sunup.”
“Do you know how to find my mother when we get to Kemlin?”
“No, but I have some ideas of where ta look.”
Brenna kept asking question after question and Mrs. Spinnel answered as many as she could as they climbed stair after stair. After about a fifty more stairs, Mrs. Spinnel stopped suddenly and turned back. “Do you smell that?”
Brenna stopped, too. She did smell something — smoke. It did not smell like the pleasant scent of a chimney on a winter day. A harsh acrid scent blew in from the East—like the black smoke that came from someone burning too much sap-filled kindling—or burning something which should not be burnt.
Through a gap in the branches of the tallest trees that stood below them, Brenna could see a column of dark smoke rising high. The wind whipped it to tatters. She knew what was burning now.
“My house!” Mrs. Spinnel cried. Then she pressed her palm across her lips to keep from screaming. Her muffled voice came through her fingers. “Oh, ma house! They’re burnin’ it down.”
She watched the old woman stomp down a few stairs as if she would start running to put the fire out. She stopped, realizing it would be no use. “Those cruel little brats are burnin’ me house. I wish I could beat them with this stick,” she said, swiping her walking stick through the air. She shook it in defiance. Her bulging eyes looked wild. Brenna worried that the old woman would go mad until she slumped into a bent, defeated position, with only the stick holding her up. She cried for just a minute, then wiped her eyes with a thumb and forefinger and said, “We’ll show ‘em, Brenna. Let’s get you out of here. Cruel little boys. Maybe they can get my house and maybe they can get me, but I won’t let ‘em get you.”
The old woman walked up the stairs again, and Brenna followed close behind. Mrs. Spinnel shook as she walked. She used the stick to support her now. The sound of the thick wood clacked against each stone before the thumps of two boots. She moved faster than Brenna had ever seen her go. They had made it up another fifty steps before Mrs. Spinnel slowed down.
Between panting breaths, she said, “If you see anyone else on this path, I want you to go and hide in the woods, understand?”
“Yes.”
“If anything happens to me, you go and run through those woods as fast as you can. Go to the mayor’s house in the village. You remember it, don’t ya?”
“Yes, but—”
“You stay there until I come an’ fetch you. Understand? Promise me that’s what you’ll do.”
Brenna felt scared again. “I promise,” she said. What did she think would happen? Who would be on the path? It wasn’t long before she would find out. From high on the hill, a distant jingling sound came to her ears.
“Keep your eyes open,” Mrs. Spinnel warned. Brenna did, and before they made it much further, an odd group of silhouettes appeared against the rolling mist above them. “Go, child.” The old woman whispered.
Brenna slipped off the stairway and scurried deep into the shadowy forest. She found a wide old oak with a hole in the ground under its roots. She huddled near it. If anyone came after her, she could slip under the roots to hide. She looked back and found that she could see Mrs. Spinnel standing tall and proud on the stairs. Her walking stick in one hand and her knitting needles in the other.
“Where is the girl, old woman?” a voice called from above. Brenna followed the sound and saw two men dressed in dark cloaks on the stairs. One looked pale and tall and held two big, black dogs on a long leash. The other had long, stringy hair hanging in front of his face and a crooked slouch in his shoulders.
“What kind of rude little boy talks ta his elders like that? Your mother didn’t teach you to talk polite to your elders?”
“Tell us,” said the stringy-haired man as he walked slowly down toward Mrs. Spinnel, “or I’ll call my dogs on you.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself. I could be your grandmother. Of course, you prolly wouldn’t know if I was, since you don’t know who yer father is.”
She didn’t understand it, but it sounded like she’d insulted the man. He seemed to understand it, though. He shouted something, and the dogs raced down the stairs toward Mrs. Spinnel. Brenna shrank back behind a big root and hid her eyes. The sound of it was enough. The dogs snarled and snorted. A defiant scream came from Mrs. Spinnel, but soon it disintegrated in to cries of terror and pain. Then silence echoed through the trees.
Brenna looked up. She could only see the silhouettes of the pale man and stringy-hair, hunching over something on the stairs. The dogs had moved on to sniff under tree trunks. They did not sound like any hound she’d seen before. They hissed and moaned. When they looked up, their eyes glowed red as they surveyed the forest. The big man shouted a command to them she didn’t understand. The dogs leapt over roots and through the leaves, running straight toward her.
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