Page 8 of The Year of the Witching

The ram reared again, hooves cutting deep into the soil as he landed on the other side of the road. He turned to look Immanuelle in the eye; then he lowered his head and charged her.

Immanuelle leaped right. Judas veered left, the point of his horn clipping the edge of her mouth, splitting her bottom lip. She hit the ground on her knees again, scraping them raw.

The enraged ram gave another mighty pull, and the lead rope snapped in two. Freed, Judas bucked once more, then tore toward the forest, disappearing into the trees.

Immanuelle snatched a ragged breath and screamed:“Judas!”

She pushed to her feet, staggering to the curb, where half the road diverged toward the distant woodland. The path through the forest was leagues shorter than the long way around, and if Immanuelle took it she was certain she would make it home sooner.

But Martha’s warning trailed through her mind:There is evil in the woods.

But then she thought of the coming tithes and their leaking roof and the holes in Glory’s shoes. She thought of bad harvests, gruel suppers, and waning winter stores. She thought of everything they needed, and everything they lacked, and she took a step toward the tree line. Then another.

At the forest’s border, it was quieter, the wind dying down. Immanuelle called for Judas once again, hands cupped around her mouth, staring into the shadows between the trees. But there wasnothing, just the whisper of the wind threading through the pines and seething through the high grass.Come hither, come hither,it seemed to say.

Immanuelle felt something stir in the pit of her belly. She felt her heart quicken, beating as fast as a hummingbird’s wings. She glanced back toward the road, toward town. The sun was still partially obscured by storm clouds, but by the way it sat in the sky she knew she had close to an hour before it set fully. An hour to search for Judas, then. An hour to right her wrongs.

She could do it, if she hurried. She knew she could fix her mistake yet, with no one—not even Martha—the wiser.

Immanuelle took one halting step into the trees, and then another, her legs suddenly leaden, her feet numb in her boots.

The wind flowed through the tree branches, beckoning her onward:Come hither. Come hither.

All at once, she was running, breaking between the elms and oak trees. The air smelled of rain and sap, loam and the sweet decay of forest rot. Thunder sounded and the wind picked up again. Brambles snagged her dress and caught on the straps of her knapsack as she tore through the woodland.

“Judas!”she shrieked, wading through the underbrush, tripping over tree roots and knots of tangled bramble. On and on she went, running through the forest as fast as her legs would carry her.

But the ram was gone.

And the sun was setting.

And Immanuelle soon realized she was lost.

Squinting through the rain, she turned, trying to retrace her footsteps. But the Darkwood seemed to shift as she moved, and she couldn’t find the path again. She was cold and alone and hungry. Her knees were weak and her knapsack felt heavy, as though it was weighted with stones. Ruefully she realized Martha hadbeen right to warn her against the woods, and she had been foolish to disobey.

Gazing up to the treetops, Immanuelle saw that the last of the storm clouds were thinning. The wind still rattled the branches, but the pelting rain had died down to a drizzle, and the dull glow of the setting sun filtered through the pines. She followed its light, breaking west, running as fast as her numb feet would carry her. But the shadows were faster still, and night fell quick around her.

As the last rays of sunlight died into darkness, Immanuelle’s knees buckled beneath her. She staggered, collapsing into a muddy nook between an oak tree’s roots. There, cowering in the muck, she drew her knees to her chest and tried to catch her breath. As the wind howled through the trees, she clutched her mother’s pendant for good luck.

But she didn’t pray. She didn’t have the gall to do that.

Overhead, the last of the storm died away, leaving only a scattering of stars and a gibbous moon that hung, low-slung, in the evening sky. As Immanuelle peered up into the distant heavens, a calm settled over her like the soft folds of a blanket, and she began to feel less alone, less afraid. There was something gentle about the way the moonlight licked the leaves and wind moved through the treetops. It was as though the Darkwood was singing her a lullaby, one she’d heard before:Come hither, Immanuelle. Come hither.

As the wind’s voice seeped through the trees, the shadows blurred before her eyes, moonlight and darkness smearing together like paint. A kind of alertness came over her, and she tasted metal at the back of her throat. But somehow, she felt no fear. It had been stripped from her, as though she’d become a little less than whole, a half a girl existing between what is and isn’t.

She wasn’t just Immanuelle now. She was more. And she was less.

She was in the Darkwood. And the Darkwood was in her too.

Bracing a hand against the trunk of the oak tree, she rose, knees still weak beneath her, feet still numb. The whisper on the wind grew louder, and she stumbled blindly through the darkness after it, hoping it might lead her to the forest’s edge.

Gradually, the trees thinned, and for a moment, Immanuelle thought she’d found its end. But her hope faded as she crossed into a small clearing, a circle cut into the thick of the forest all aglow with the light of the moon. Around its perimeter grew a wide fairy ring of morel mushrooms, the biggest Immanuelle had ever seen.

And at the very center of that ring, two women lay twined and naked, their bare legs tangled together, lips split apart. The bigger of the two, a black-haired woman with the build of a spider, lay on top of the other, her spine contorted, shoulders tensed so tightly Immanuelle could see the corded muscles strain and spasm beneath her skin, which was as thin and gray as a corpse’s. The second woman writhed under her lover, moving her mouth to her neck.

Immanuelle’s knapsack slipped off her shoulder and struck the ground.

The women stopped, seized, and detangled themselves from each other, rising from the ground. One of them clawed for something in the shadows of the high grass, a dark object Immanuelle couldn’t see from where she stood. They turned to face her in unison.

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