Page 48 of The Year of the Witching

The priest laughed, a brash sound that echoed through the chapel. “The wood protects no one. If you want the dull comforts of safety, you make a blood sacrifice to the Father in the hopes of appeasing Him. But if it’s power you want, you’d best leave your sacrifices at the Mother’s feet.”

“But how do you bleed to buy the Mother’s power?” Immanuelle asked, growing more and more confused. “I imagine it has to be more difficult than nicking your thumb and saying a prayer.”

The priest frowned, clearly growing suspicious. “Why would a girl from the Glades ask a question like that?”

“Passing curiosity,” said Immanuelle, but she could tell the priest knew it was a lie.

He stepped past her, his robes rustling as he walked back to the chapel. “You know, Vera wanted to keep you. Always said that if Daniel and Miriam were to have children, they ought to be raised in the Outskirts.”

“I didn’t know,” Immanuelle whispered, her voice thick with tears. All these years she’d been such a fool, assuming that her family in the Outskirts had no interest in her, that she was alone in the world, apart from the Moores. It was a strange and wonderful revelation, but there was pain in it too. It hurt to think that she’d been kept apart from someone she might have known andloved. Someone who might have loved her, too, and understood her in a way that the Moores simply could not.

“If the gate ever opens for you, then you should go to Vera. You’re all the family she has left. It would do her good to see you.”

Immanuelle turned to look at the small spot on the wall, Ishmel, an islet in the vast sea of the wilderness. “Perhaps I will.”

The two meandered out of the apse, back into the chapel. The chickens were still burning on the altar, and a girl stood by it, feeding the fire with pine needles, moss, sprigs of dried rosemary, and other herbs Immanuelle didn’t know by name.

“If you have no other questions, I really should be getting back to my work.” The priest motioned to the burning altar.

“I do have one more request.”

He raised a brow. “Hopefully not one that pertains to witchcraft and blood magic?”

Immanuelle flushed. “No. Nothing like that. I just wondered if it was possible for me to see the house where my father and grandmother used to live.”

The priest considered this for a moment, then nodded, calling over the girl who tended to the burning offering. She was stunning—tall and dark-skinned, with wide eyes and well-cut cheekbones. Her hair was a few shades darker than Immanuelle’s, and it was carefully braided back into a series of four thick cornrows and collected into a tight bun at the nape of her neck.

“Adrine, this is Immanuelle Moore,” said the priest, and he nodded between the two of them. “You’ll take her to the ruins of the Ward house.”

Adrine appraised her, expressionless, nodded, then turned on her heel and stalked out of the chapel. Immanuelle turned to bid the priest farewell, but he was already praying over the altar, his face veiled by a haze of smoke.

CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO

The doors of the Father’s house are always open to those who serve him faithfully. But the sinner will be turned away.

—THEHOLYSCRIPTURES

IMMANUELLE AND ADRINEwalked in silence through the empty streets. The village they passed through was so quiet, Immanuelle might have thought it long deserted. There were no children playing in the streets. No dogs barking. No signs of life at all, save for the vultures circling overhead.

“Everything is so still,” Immanuelle whispered as they passed yet another shuttered house. There were bone wind chimes strung from the rafters of its porch, and they clattered together with a hollow sound when a breeze swept down the street. “The Glades are crawling with the blight sick.”

Adrine wrinkled her nose. “Is that what you’re calling it in the Glades? The blight?”

Immanuelle shook her head, embarrassed by her slip of the tongue. “It’s just... my own colloquialism. I’m not sure it has a proper name.”

“We call it an affliction of the soul,” said Adrine. “Our ancestors passed down stories of witches and soothsayers that used to curse men with a similar sickness.”

“So it was used as a kind of weapon?”

Adrine nodded. “In a sense.”

“Do you think there’s a cure for it?”

“I think the sickness is the cure,” said Adrine.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand your meaning.”

“Sometimes the things that seem like they’re hurting us are really a part of healing. When a child is sick and you bleed them, to them the bite of the knife seems like a punishment, when really it’s the cure. When your people purge, you do great harm, but you see the violence and the fire as a cure for sins that are far worse. Maybe this sickness is much the same. Maybe it’s a kind of purging, meant to root out a deeper evil.”

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