Page 16 of The Year of the Witching

Pushing herself off the ground, Immanuelle wandered the cemetery, weaving between the headstones, reading epitaphs in an attempt to clear her head. Some of them belonged to prophets and apostles of ages past, but most marked the resting places of the crusader soldiers who died in the civil war to overthrow the witches. A few were mass graves, and the stones that marked these simply read:In remembrance of the Father’s Men andthe dark they purged.As for the witches, there were no monuments to mark their graves. Their bones and memories lay within the Darkwood.

At the center of the cemetery was a thick slab of marble, nearly two stories tall, hewn into a pinnacle that jutted from the soil like a half-buried bone. Immanuelle knelt to read the inscription at the foot of the monument, though she didn’t have to. Like most everyone in Bethel, she knew it by heart.

It read:Here lies the Father’s first prophet, David Ford, Spring in the Year of the Flame to Winter in the Year of the Wake. Below that, words gouged deep into the stone read:Blood for blood.

Immanuelle shivered. Buried beneath her feet were the bonesof the Witch Killer, the prophet who’d purged and burned and cleansed Bethel of evil. For it was David Ford who’d ordered Lilith and the rest of her coven to the pyre, who’d set the fire and stoked the flames. Every purge began with him and the war he’d waged during the Dark Days.

Immanuelle pressed off the ground and stood. As she did, she heard a soft cry on the wind. Easing between the tombstones, she walked to the edge of the graveyard, which stopped just short of the forest. An iron fence ran along the edge of the cemetery, separating it from the encroaching woodland just beyond the Holy Grounds. And it was there that she spotted them, Ezra and Judith together in the darkness just a few paces from the memorial she cowered behind. They stood close to one another, and Judith was holding him by his shirt, the cloth balled up in both of her fists.

“Enough,” said Ezra, and he pulled at her fingers, trying to pry them open.

Judith only clutched him tighter. “You can’t make me want him.”

“You made a vow,” Ezra snapped. “You were cut same as Leah, and you’d do well to remember that.”

He started to push her off him, and that was when Judith rushed forward, forcing her lips to his. She fit her hands beneath his shirt, shifting her hips against him. “Please.” She mumbled into his mouth, his neck. “Please, Ezra.”

He seized her by the shoulders, shoving her back. “I said no.”

Tears filled Judith’s eyes. She strained forward again, catching him by the hilt of his dagger, and she pulled it so violently the chain that held it snapped. Silver chain links skittered into the darkness, a few flying so far they hit the ground at Immanuelle’s feet.

Her heart stumbled, then skipped a beat. She turned to leave,tripping over the skirts of her mother’s dress as she went, desperate to get away, when one of the children playing by the fire screamed.

Ezra snapped to attention, spotting Immanuelle as he turned his head. He called her name and she fled, running as fast through the graveyard as she had in the woods the night of the storm.

CHAPTEREIGHT

Father help them. Father help us all.

—MIRIAMMOORE

THAT NIGHT, IMMANUELLEdreamed of the forest. In sleep, she conjured visions of the Dark Mother wandering the corridors of the woodland, cradling a slaughtered lamb in Her arms, Her black veil trailing through the brush. She dreamed of scarecrow witches burning like torches in the night, tangled limbs and stolen kisses. In her nightmares, she saw the Lovers toiling in the dirt, grasping at each other, teeth bared, pale eyes sharp with moonlight.

When she woke, she was sweating cold, the back of her nightdress damp, clinging to her shoulders like a second skin. She sat up, dizzied, her heart tapping a sharp rhythm against her ribs. Her ears rang with a plaintive bleating.

At first, she thought it was the echo of a dream. But when it sounded again, her mind went to her flock, the shadows of her nightmares fading as she sprang to her feet and took her cloak off its hook on the door. She shoved her feet into her muck boots, snatched her lamp off the bedside table, and eased down the attic stairs and into the hall.

The farmhouse was silent, save for the wheeze of Abram’ssnores. She knew he’d taken Anna’s bed because of how close he sounded. He took Anna’s bed often those days, rarely, if ever, haunting Martha’s.

Immanuelle was glad of it. On the nights that Abram did go to Martha, she didn’t sleep, and often Immanuelle would hear her pacing through the halls. Once, years ago, near midnight, Immanuelle had caught her grandmother in the kitchen with a mug full of Abram’s whiskey, staring out into the black of the forest while her husband slept in her bed.

Another cry cut the silence, and Immanuelle’s thoughts returned to her flock. She dashed downstairs as quietly as she could. Her lamp swung as she hurried, throwing light and shadow. The wailing continued, a hollow, keening sound that seemed to slip through the bones of the house. As Immanuelle crossed into the back pasture, she realized—with a cold twist in her belly—that it was coming from the Darkwood.

Stepping off the back porch, Immanuelle crossed into the pastures, the glow of her oil lamp a spot of warmth in the black tide of the night.

Another cry, this one sharper than the last, and louder.

Immanuelle broke toward the pastures in a full run, only to find her flock clutched together against the midnight cold, still and silent and entirely unharmed. She did a quick head count. Twenty-seven in total, every lamb and ewe accounted for. But the crying continued, now more a howl than a wail.

Then, something else: a scream, ripped straight from a woman’s throat.

At the sound, a sharp pain shot through Immanuelle. She doubled over, the lamp slipping from her hand. She snatched it from the ground before the oil could spill and the grass catch fire, her teeth set against the pain in her stomach.

The cries became more frenzied, until Immanuelle realizedthat they weren’t cries at all, but rather a kind of song. She knew she ought to go back to the house, return to her bed where it was safe and leave the wood to its own evils. But she didn’t.

It was as if someone had tied a thread around her sternum and pulled, drawing her closer. As if something, or someone, was leading her to the Darkwood. Perhaps she could fight it if she really tried. She could listen to every instinct urging her to turn around and return to the farmhouse. She could keep her promises.

But she didn’t do any of those things.

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