Page 47 of The Year of the Witching

“Because I’m ready.”

The priest raised an eyebrow. Appraised her through the rolling smoke. “You weren’t before?”

Immanuelle squared her shoulders. “I was scared before. But I’m not anymore. So I’d like to see them, if you could point me in the right direction.”

The priest’s expression shifted from cold to pitying. “I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place, Ms. Moore. There are no Wards here.”

The wind left her, as though she took a punch to the stomach. She leaned forward, braced herself on the back of a pew. “They’re all gone? Dead?”

“No. Not all of them. As far as I know, your grandmother, Vera Ward, is the last of your living kin. But she left Bethel just days after your father was murdered.”

So there was hope after all. Perhaps all wasn’t lost. “Do you know where she is?”

The priest nodded to the right. Immanuelle followed him down a narrow aisle between two benches and into a little room off the chapel. It looked much like the adjoining apses and galleries of the Prophet’s Cathedral, only this space was much smaller. Its walls were painted with the sprawling mural of Bethel and the territories beyond it. On the far wall were the Glades, Outskirts, and Holy Grounds, with the appropriate designations for famouslandmarks like the tomb of the first prophet, the Haven, the Church of the Outskirts, and of course the Prophet’s Cathedral. Surrounding it all was the Darkwood... only it wasn’t painted that way. In the mural, the forest took the form of a naked woman, curled fetal around Bethel.

Immanuelle stared at the fresco for a long time in breathless silence, tracing the woman’s form, trying and failing to parse its meaning. Eventually, her gaze fell to a short verse etched into a wooden plaque on the right side of the wall:The forest is sentient in a way man is not. She sees with a thousand eyes and forgets nothing.

“Is that from the Holy Scriptures?” she asked.

The priest shook his head. “Not one you’ll find in your holy book. Consider it... an unsanctioned addendum.”

“Is it meant to be a reference to the Mother or the forest?”

“Both,” said the priest. “The Motheristhe forest. She is the soul, and the Darkwood is Her body. To us, the two entities are intrinsic. One is the same as the other.”

Immanuelle touched a spot toward the edge of the woodland, tracing the path of the tree line that ran along the Moore land. “I’ve never heard it explained that way before.”

“That’s because your people aren’t schooled in the ways of the Mother.”

Immanuelle didn’t like the way he said “your people,” as if to erase the blood tie that bound her to the Outskirts and the Wards. But she made no mention of that discrepancy. Instead, she turned her attention back to the mural, tilting her head to study the map above her. The ceiling loomed high, and it was painted with the faint outlines of maps, but the illustrations were far more abstract than the ones that depicted Bethel. She saw a few names she recognized—Hebron, Gall, Valta. “The heathen cities?”

“In the words of your Prophet, yes.”

“Is that where I’ll find my grandmother?”

The priest shook his head and tapped a small blank spot in the wilds just north of Bethel. The village was labeled Ishmel. To Immanuelle’s immense surprise, it wasn’t far from Bethel. Judging by the scale of the map, it was only a few leagues from the Hallowed Gate. She guessed that with a good horse, a trained scout could ride there in no more than a day or so.

“Is there any way to get word to her?”

The priest shook his head. “It’s illegal to send letters past the gate, and even if you could get a letter through, there’s no promise you’d receive a response. I doubt Vera would send a letter back to Bethel and risk the wrath of the Church. If you want to talk to her, you’ll have to do it in the flesh. Find someone to smuggle you through the Hallowed Gate, and someone else to smuggle you back in again.”

“Is that even possible?”

“Almost anything is possible if you ask the right questions to the right people and you’re willing to pay the price.”

Immanuelle mulled this for a moment. “How will I know if my grandmother’s still in Ishmel?”

“You won’t. There’s no way to. Leaving Bethel is an act of faith. Vera used to say so herself before she left.”

“You mean before she was exiled?”

He frowned at her as if she’d said something disrespectful or out of turn. “Vera turned her back on this place of her own accord. Left through the gate long before your Prophet had the chance to exile her formally. In fact, she left the night after her boy burned. His body was still on the pyre when she fled.”

Immanuelle cringed at the image of her father, dead on the pyre. “Do you think she’s still out there?”

“I do,” said the priest. “That woman knew how to bleed forwhat she wanted, and she always had a way with the woods. I’m sure the wilds were kind to her.”

Immanuelle thought back to weeks ago, to the last time she was in the Outskirts. On that day, as she and Martha rode past in the wagon, she’d seen a multitude of tributes strewn along the forest’s edge. Was that how the Outskirters were attempting to avoid the full wrath of the plagues? By feeding the Darkwood in order to win its favor? “You mean she made offerings to the forest in exchange for... safety?”

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