Page 21 of The Year of the Witching

“Immanuelle, what the—” Ezra stepped into her bedroom, dropped to a crouch at her side. His gaze went from her to the journal lying open in her lap. “What’s that?”

Immanuelle snapped the journal shut, tossed it back into herhope chest, and closed it. She turned to offer Ezra some passing excuse, but the sound of church bells cut her short. Twelve tolls in quick succession, a pause, and then more bells ringing across Bethel as others took up the alarm call. And so, the first of the plagues began.

CHAPTERTEN

Love is an act of loyalty.

—THEHOLYSCRIPTURES

IMMANUELLE SAT ONthe mule cart alongside Martha, staring out across the dying plains as they rolled down the main road toward the Holy Grounds. The air was thick with the stench of gore, and the drone of blood-fat mosquitoes was so loud it almost drowned the sound of the cart’s wheels rattling.

In the ancient times—when the daughters of the Dark Mother had waged war against the Father’s flock—there had been battles on the plains. Immanuelle recalled the stories her teachers told at school, tales of wounded men and blood-soaked battlefields that stretched as far as the eye could see.

Immanuelle thought of those stories as they rode toward the cathedral, crossing through the dying farmsteads of the Glades and past miles of gore-blackened cornfields. In the weeks since the blood plague had struck, the tainted waters had seeped into the soil, infecting the earth and killing the crops.

The whole world had gone red and rotten.

Immanuelle’s throat ached. She hadn’t had a sip to drink since sunup. The Moore household rationed water now—everyone did—but still, there wasn’t enough to go around. Clean water could notbe found anywhere within Bethel’s borders, and rumor had it that the Church’s stores were all but depleted.

To Immanuelle’s surprise, Martha tugged at the reins, steering the mule toward the Outskirts, a sprawling shanty village that cowered in the shadow of the southern wood. Most Bethelans avoided the Outskirts, for fear of the sinners who dwelled there in shame and squalor.

“Blood flooding in the Holy Grounds,” said Martha, to explain why she’d decided to take the long way to the cathedral. “The roads there are impassable.”

The cart pulled past a series of shacks so bowed and decrepit they looked as if they were one good gust away from collapsing into a heap of sticks. As they drew toward the center of the village, Immanuelle spotted the small, dilapidated church where those in the Outskirts gathered to worship on the Sabbath when the rest of Bethel assembled at the cathedral. The building had a short, crooked steeple and a single stained-glass window that depicted a woman in a black veil, who Immanuelle assumed was a saint or angel, though she wore no diadem. It wasn’t until the cart drew nearer that she recognized the woman for who she was: the Dark Mother.

In the frescoes painted across the cathedral’s vaulted ceilings, the Goddess was always depicted as a wretch, all twisted limbs and clawed fingers, lips smeared with the blood of crusaders she’d devoured in battle. But in this portrait, the Dark Mother looked beautiful, even gentle. Her skin was a deep shade of ebony, almost as dark as Her veil, but Her eyes were moon pale and wide. She didn’t look like the damned Goddess of witches and hells. No, in this depiction, She appeared more mortal than monster... and somehow, that was worse.

The cart rattled on. A few shirtless boys ran barefoot through the muck of the streets. As Martha and Immanuelle approached,they stopped their games and froze, owl-eyed and silent as the mule cart rumbled past.

Lurking in the distance was the shadow of the western Darkwood. The deeper they ventured into the village, the closer the Darkwood crept. While the forests of the Glades in the east were lush and thick, they were nothing in comparison to the wilds that bordered the Outskirts. Somehow, the woods of the west seemed more alive. The treetops crawled with life—fox squirrels as big as cats ran the branches of the trees, and crows roosted in the canopy of oaks and dogwoods, sunning their wings and cawing their evening songs. Overhead, a white-bellied hawk circled the sprawling woodland and a powerful wind stirred through the trees, carrying the scent of loam and slaughter.

Running the length of the wood were tributes and sacrifices—a bushel of corn tucked into a nook between tree roots, a sheepskin slung over the low bough of an oak, a basket of eggs atop a tree stump, wreaths of what appeared to be dried rosemary, dead chickens and rabbits strung by the legs and hanging from the branches of pine trees.

Immanuelle craned out of her seat to get a better view of the strange assortment. “What is that?”

Martha kept her eyes on the road. “They’re offerings.”

The wagon rumbled past what appeared to be a kind of altar—an intricate thatch-work of twigs and branches upon which a goat lay gutted. “Offerings to who?”

“The woods,” said Martha, and she seemed to spit the words. “In these parts, they worship them. The Prophet ought to cast them to the wilds for such a sin. If they love the woods so much, let them return to it.”

“Why doesn’t he?”

“It’s an act of mercy, I assume. But I don’t presume the ways of the Prophet and neither should you.” She cast Immanuelle a firmglance before returning her gaze to the road. “Besides, those in the Outskirts have their station—as we do ours. Even the sinner has a place in this world. And even the heretic can exalt the Father in his or her own way.”

As they crossed into the heart of the shanty village, a young woman with mahogany skin emerged from the ruins of a crumbling cottage and wandered into the middle of the road. Her feet were bare and bruised, and there was a squalling infant bound to her chest with a sling. She threw her arms out as they approached, her parched lips parted, eyes wild. “Water for the baby, please. Spare us a drop to drink.”

Martha muttered a prayer and flicked the reins. The wheels of the cart broke through a puddle, splashing the woman with blood. She staggered back, clutching her child, and stumbled on the hem of her dress as she retreated.

Immanuelle turned to say something, but Martha caught her by the wrist. “Leave her to her sins.”

But Immanuelle couldn’t pull her eyes from the woman. She watched her, crouched and weeping on the side of the road, until she shrank to no more than a mote on the horizon, and then disappeared.

They journeyed on. As they turned south toward the Holy Grounds, the drone of flies and mosquitoes grew louder. The shanty village gave way to open plains and blood-flooded meadows that were drowned by the overflow of contaminated groundwater. In the distance, the sprawling estates that belonged to the apostles of the Church, cornfields and cattle ranges so large they stretched well past the western horizon. They were filled with the rotting, fly-swarmed corpses of cows, horses, and other animals that had died of thirst in the early days of the plague.

“Miriam used to ride these hills,” said Martha, her hands stilltight around the reins. She smiled faintly, and Immanuelle caught a glimpse of the woman she might have been before her daughter’s death. Someone kind, warm even. “Abram bought her a pony the summer of her thirteenth birthday. She rode it most every day, up and down these paths—going fast as the devils themselves—until one day she ran it too hard. That mare tripped over a stray stone in the road and snapped its leg at the knee. I watched it happen. She fell right there.” Martha pointed to a copse of dead apple trees along the shoulder of the road.

“What happened to the horse?” Immanuelle asked, and when she spoke her chapped lips split open. She tried to wet them, but her tongue was dry.

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