The Near Witch E-Book

V. E. Schwab

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 439

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY'S BEST YA OF THE DECADE • NEW YORK TIMES bestseller Brand new edition of Victoria Schwab's long out-of-print, stunning debut The Near Witch is only an old story told to frighten children. If the wind calls at night, you must not listen. The wind is lonely, and always looking for company. There are no strangers in the town of Near. These are the truths that Lexi has heard all her life. But when an actual stranger, a boy who seems to fade like smoke, appears outside her home on the moor at night, she knows that at least one of these sayings is no longer true. The next night, the children of Near start disappearing from their beds, and the mysterious boy falls under suspicion. As the hunt for the children intensifies, so does Lexi's need to know about the witch that just might be more than a bedtime story, and about the history of this nameless boy. Part fairy tale, part love story, Victoria Schwab's debut novel is entirely original yet achingly familiar: a song you heard long ago, a whisper carried by the wind, and a dream you won't soon forget.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Also Available from V.E. Schwab and Titan Books

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

The Near Witch

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

Acknowledgments

The Ash-Born Boy

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

About the Author

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM V.E. SCHWAB AND TITAN BOOKS

Vicious

Vengeful

This Savage Song

Our Dark Duet

A Darker Shade of Magic

A Gathering of Shadows

A Conjuring of Light

The Dark Vault

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM V.E. SCHWAB AND TITAN COMICS

Shades of Magic: The Steel Prince

Shades of Magic: Night of Knives (late 2019)

The Near Witch

Hardback edition ISBN: 9781789091120

Ebook edition ISBN: 9781789091137

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First Titan edition: March 201910 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

V.E. Schwab asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Copyright © 2011, 2019 V.E. Schwab

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

To my mother and father, for never once doubting

INTRODUCTION

Many people long to tell a story.

Say to any group, “I write books,” and at least half will respond that, one day, they plan to write one, too. One day, when they have the time. One day, when they have the focus. Some have even started, though few have gotten past the first chapter, or the third, or the fifth.

This isn’t meant as a judgment (the world needs far more readers than writers). I only mean to say that it is no small feat, to write a book. And if you want anyone to read said book, The End is only the beginning. Next, if one has opted to participate in traditional publishing, one must find an agent, a publisher. Then comes revision, sometimes one round, sometimes half a dozen, all to ready the text for an audience, to earn that place on the shelves of a bookstore, and then, a reader’s home.

With so many obstacles between the first flutter of an aspiring author’s imagination and the final product, few stories get to live even a single life on shelves.

Almost none get to live two.

But The Near Witch has been afforded that luxury.

This is the book that, for me, began everything. It wasn’t the first one I wrote—that dubious honor belongs to the plot-less, acid trip of a story I created when I was nineteen and simply longed to discover if I was capable of holding a story in my head for more than a dozen pages, capable of finding The End.

But The Near Witch is the first book that found its way to shelves, to readers.

This, for those who don’t know, is a book about magic.

It is also a book about fear.

Specifically, about the fear of the inside toward the outside, the antagonism between those who belong, and those who don’t. Little did I know then that it would become a theme so central to my work. That all my stories, from A Darker Shade of Magic to Vicious, The Archived to This Savage Song, would center on those who felt lost inside their own worlds, or found inside someone else’s. But at twenty-one, as a second-semester senior at university, stealing hours in a coffee shop each night to write, and as a young adult on the cusp of graduation, and the unknown of life beyond school, I felt pressed between two chapters of my own life, and as if I belonged to neither.

That is the world in which this book was written.

It began with a crack, and a sputter, and a spark.

Those are the opening words of the book, but they could just as easily apply to my career as an author. The Near Witch was a small book, quiet and strange at a time when everything that sold well was loud and vaguely familiar, and though I tried to shield the fragile candle of its life, it was only a matter of time before the wind of publishing blew through, and snuffed it out.

Fortunately, my own flame was more resilient. I kept writing, kept publishing, kept bolstering the fire until it burned hot enough that the seasonal gusts of this wonderful, but fickle industry served to stoke the fire instead of quash it.

Over the next seven years, I wrote fourteen novels. With each one, the readership grew, the books found their audience, a little more with every release, and as the years passed, people began to ask about that first story.

The spark that started the fire.

It is bittersweet, to see a story wanted so long after it was gone, but I harbored a stubborn hope that one day, it would find its way back. Some part of me has been sheltering that matchstick ever since the flame went out.

And here we are.

Back at the beginning.

1

It starts with a crack, a sputter, and a spark. The match hisses to life.

“Please,” comes the small voice behind me.

“It’s late, Wren,” I say. The fire chews on the wooden stem in my hand. I touch the match to each of the three candles gathered on the low chest by the window. “It’s time for bed.”

With the candles all lit, I shake the match and the flame dies, leaving a trail of smoke that curls up against the darkened glass.

Everything seems different at night. Defined. Beyond the window, the world is full of shadows, all pressed together in harsh relief, somehow sharper than they ever were in daylight.

Sounds seem sharper, too, at night. A whistle. A crack. A child’s whisper.

“Just one more,” she pleads, hugging the covers close. I sigh, my back to my little sister, and run my fingers over the tops of the books stacked beside the candles. I feel myself bending.

“It can be a very short one,” she says.

My hand rests against an old green book as the wind hums against the house.

“All right.” I cannot deny my sister anything, it seems. “Just one,” I add, turning back to the bed.

Wren sighs happily against her pillow, and I slip down beside her.

The candles paint pictures of light on the walls of our room. I take a deep breath.

“The wind on the moors is a tricky thing,” I begin, and Wren’s small body sinks deeper into the bed. I imagine she is listening more to the highs and lows of my voice than the words themselves. We both know the words by heart anyway—I from my father, and Wren from me.

“Of every aspect of the moor, the earth and stone and rain and fire, the wind is the strongest one in Near. Here on the outskirts of the village, the wind is always pressing close, making windows groan. It whispers and it howls and it sings. It can bend its voice and cast it into any shape, long and thin enough to slide beneath the door, stout enough to seem a thing of weight and breath and bone.

“The wind was here when you were born, when I was born, when our house was built, when the Council was formed, and even when the Near Witch lived,” I say with a quiet smile, the way my father always did, because this is where the story starts.

“Long, long ago, the Near Witch lived in a small house on the farthest edge of the village, and she used to sing the hills to sleep.”

Wren pulls the covers up.

“She was very old and very young, depending on which way she turned her head, for no one knows the age of witches. The moor streams were her blood and the moor grass was her skin, and her smile was kind and sharp at once, like the moon in the black, black night…”

I hardly ever get to the end of the story. Soon enough Wren is a pile of blankets and quiet breath, shifting in her heavy dreams beside me. The three candles are still burning on the chest, leaning into one another, dripping and pooling on the wood.

Wren is afraid of the dark. I used to leave the candles lit all night, but she falls asleep so fast, and if she does wake, she often finds her way, eyes closed, into our mother’s room. Now I tend to stay up until she’s drifted off, and then blow the candles out. No need to waste them, or set the house on fire. I slide from the bed, my bare feet settling on the old wood floor.

When I reach the candles, my eyes wander down to the puddles of wax, dotted with tiny fingerprints where Wren likes to stand on her tiptoes and draw patterns in the pools while the wax is warm. I brush my own fingers over them absently, when something, a sliver of movement, draws my eyes up to the window. There’s nothing there. Outside, the night is still and streaked with silver threads of light, and the wind is breathing against the glass, a wobbling hum that causes the old wooden frame to groan.

My fingertips drift up from the wax to the windowsill, feeling the wind through the walls of our house. It’s getting stronger.

When I was small, the wind sang me lullabies. Lilting, humming, high-pitched things, filling the space around me so that even when all seemed quiet, it wasn’t. This is a wind I have lived with.

But tonight it’s different. As if there’s a new thread of music woven in, lower and sadder than the rest. Our house sits at the northern edge of the village of Near, and beyond the weathered glass the moor rolls away like a spool of fabric: hill after hill of wild grass, dotted by rocks, and a rare river or two. There is no end in sight, and the world seems painted in black and white, crisp and still. A few trees jut out of the earth amid the rocks and weeds, but even in this wind it is all strangely static. But I’d swear I saw—

Again something moves.

This time my eyes are keen enough to catch it. At the edge of our yard, the invisible line where the village ends and the moor picks up, a shape moves against the painted night. A shadow twitches and steps forward, catching a slice of moonlight.

I squint, pressing my hands against the cool glass. The shape is a body, but drawn too thin, like the wind is pulling at it, tugging slivers away. The moonlight cuts across the front of the form, over fabric and skin, a throat, a jaw, a cheekbone.

There are no strangers in the town of Near. I have seen every face a thousand times. But not this one.

The figure just stands there, looking out to the side. And yet, he is not all there. There is something in the way the cool blue-white moon lights his face that makes me think I could brush my fingers right through it. His form is smudged at the edges, blurring into the night on either side, as if he’s moving very fast, but it must be the weathered glass, because he’s not moving at all. He is just standing there, looking at nothing.

The candles flicker beside me, and on the moor, the wind picks up and the stranger’s body seems to ripple, fade. Before I know it, I am pressing myself against the window, reaching for the latch to throw it open, to speak, to call the form back, when he moves. He turns his face toward the house and the window, and toward me.

I catch my breath as the stranger’s eyes find mine. Eyes as dark as river stones and yet somehow shining, soaking up moonlight. Eyes that widen a fraction as they meet my own. A single, long, unblinking look. And then in an instant the stranger seems to break apart, a sharp gust of wind tears through, and the shutters slam closed against the glass.

The sound wakes Wren, who mumbles and peels her half-sleeping form from between the sheets, stumbling through the moonlit room. She doesn’t even see me standing at the window, staring at the wooden slats that have blotted out the stranger and the moor. I hear her pad across the threshold, slide open our mother’s door, and disappear within. The room is suddenly quiet. I pry the window open, the wood protesting as it drags against itself, and throw the shutters back.

The stranger is gone.

I feel like there should be a mark in the air where he was wiped away. But there is no trace. No matter how much I stare, there is nothing but trees, and rocks, and rolling hills.

I stare out at this empty landscape, and it seems impossible that I saw him, saw anyone. After all, there are no strangers in the town of Near. There haven’t been since long ago, before I was born, before the house was built, before the Council… And he didn’t even seem real, didn’t seem there. I rub my eyes, and realize I’ve been holding my breath.

I use the air to blow the candles out.

2

“Lexi.”

The light creeps in between the sheets. I pull the blankets up, try to recreate the darkness, and find my mind wandering to the night before, to shadowed forms on the moonlit moor.

“Lexi,” my mother’s voice calls again, this time penetrating the cocoon of blankets. It burrows in beside me along with the morning light. The night-washed memory seems to bleed away.

From my nest I hear the thudding of feet on wood, followed by an airborne pause. I brace myself, staying perfectly still as the body catapults itself onto the bed. Small fingers tap the blankets covering me.

“Lexi,” says a new voice, a higher-pitched version of my mother’s. “Get up now.” Still I feign sleep. “Lexi?”

I shoot my arms out, reaching through the linens for my sister, trapping her in a blanketed hug.

“Got you!” I call. Wren lets out a playful little cry. She wriggles free and I wrestle the blankets off. My dark hair nests around my face. I can feel it, the climbing tendrils already unruly, as Wren sits at the edge of the bed and laughs in her chirping way. Her hair is blond and stock straight. It never leaves the sides of her face, never shifts from her shoulders. I bury my fingers in it, try to mess it up, but she only laughs and shakes her head, and the hair settles, perfect and smooth again.

These are our morning rituals.

Wren hops off and wanders into the kitchen. I’m up and heading to the chest to fetch some clothes, when my eyes flick to the window, examining the glass and the morning beyond. The moor, with its tangled grass and scattered rocks, looks so soft and open, laid out in the light of day. It is a different world in the gray morning. I can’t help but wonder if what I saw last night was just a dream. If he was just a dream.

I touch my fingers to the glass to test the warmth of the day. It is the farthest edge of summer, that brief time where the days can be pleasant, even warm, or crisp and cold. The glass is cool, but my fingertips make only small halos of steam. I pull away.

I do my best to uncoil my hair from my forehead, and wrestle it back into a plait.

“Lexi!” my mother calls again. The bread must be ready.

I pull on a long simple dress, cinching the waist. What I wouldn’t give for pants. I’m fairly certain my father would have fallen for my mother if she wore britches and a hunting hat, even once she’d reached sixteen, marrying age. My age. Marrying age, I scoff, eyeing a pair of girlish slippers despairingly. They’re pale green, thin-soled, and they make a very poor substitute for my father’s old leather boots.

I stare at my bare feet, marked by the miles they’ve walked across the rough moor. I’d rather stay here and deliver my mother’s bread, rather grow old and crooked like Magda and Dreska Thorne, than be bound up in skirts and slippers and married off to a village boy. I slide the slippers on.

I’m dressed, but can’t shake the feeling I’m missing something. I turn to the small wooden table by my bed and exhale, eyes finding my father’s knife sheathed on its dark leather strap, the handle worn from his grip. I like to place my narrow fingers in the impressions. It’s like I can feel his hand in mine. I used to wear it every day, until Otto’s glares got heavy enough, and even then I’d sometimes chance it. I must be feeling bold today, because my fingers close around the knife, and the weight of it feels good. I slip it around my waist like a belt, the guarded blade against my lower back, and feel safe again. Clothed.

“Lexi, come on!” my mother calls, and I wonder what on earth the hurry could be, since the morning loaves will cool before I ever reach the purchasers, but then a second voice reaches me through the walls, a low, tense muttering that tangles with my mother’s higher tone. Otto. The smell of slightly burned bread greets me as I enter the kitchen.

“Good morning,” I say, meeting the two pairs of eyes, one pale and tired, but unblinking, the other dark and furrowed. My uncle’s eyes are so much like my father’s—the same rich brown, framed by dark lashes—but where my father’s were always dancing, Otto’s are fenced by lines, always still. He hunches forward, his broad shoulders draped over his coffee.

I cross the room and kiss my mother’s cheek.

“About time,” says my uncle. Wren skips in behind me and throws her arms around his waist. He softens a fraction, running his hand lightly over her hair, and then she’s gone, a slip of fabric through the doorway. Otto turns his attention back to me, as if waiting for an answer, an explanation.

“What’s the rush?” I ask as my mother’s eyes flick to my waist and the leather strap against my dress, but she says nothing, only turns and glides over to the oven. My mother’s feet rarely touch the ground. She’s not beautiful or charming, except in that way all mothers are to their daughters, but she just flows.

These, too, are morning rituals. My mother’s kiss. Otto’s appearance in our kitchen, regular enough that he could leave his shadow here. His stern eyes as he gives me a sweeping look, snagging on my father’s knife. I wait for him to comment on it, but he doesn’t.

“You’re here early, Otto,” I say, taking a slice of warm bread and a mug.

“Not early enough,” he says. “The whole town’s up and talking by now.”

“And why is that?” I ask, pouring tea from a kettle beside the hearth.

My mother turns to us, flour painted across her hands. “We need to go into town.”

“There’s a stranger,” Otto grunts into his cup. “Came through last night.”

I fumble the kettle, nearly scalding my hands.

“A stranger?” I ask, steadying the pot. So it wasn’t a dream or a phantom. There was someone there.

“I want to know what he’s doing here,” adds my uncle.

“He’s still here?” I ask, struggling to keep the curiosity from flooding my voice. I take a sip of tea, burning my mouth. Otto offers a curt nod and drains his cup, and before I can bite my tongue, the questions bubble up.

“Where did he come from? Has anyone spoken to him?” I ask. “Where is he now?”

“Enough, Lexi.” Otto’s words cut through the warmth in the kitchen. “It’s all rumors right now. Too many voices chattering at once.” He’s changing before my eyes, straightening, shifting from my uncle into the village Protector, as if the title has its own mass and weight. “I don’t yet know for certain who the stranger is or where he’s from or who’s offered him shelter,” he adds. “But I mean to find out.”

So someone has offered him shelter. I bite my lip to swallow the smile. I bet I know who’s hiding the stranger. What I want to know is why. I gulp my too-hot tea, suffering the heat of it all the way down to my stomach, eager to escape. I want to see if I’m right. And if I am, I want to get there before my uncle. Otto pushes himself up from the table.

“You go on ahead,” I say, mustering an innocent smile.

Otto lets out a rough laugh. “I don’t think so. Not today.”

My face falls. “Why not?” I ask.

Otto’s brow lowers over his eyes. “I know what you want, Lexi. You want to go hunt for him yourself. I won’t have it.”

“What can I say? I am my father’s daughter.”

Otto nods grimly. “That much is clear as glass. Now go get ready. We’re all going into the village.”

I lift an eyebrow. “Am I not ready?”

Otto leans across the table slowly. His dark eyes bear down on mine as if he can bully me with a glance. But his looks are not as strong as my mother’s or my own, and they do not say nearly as many things. I stare calmly back, waiting for the last act of our morning rituals.

“Take that knife off. You look like a fool.”

I ignore him, finish my bread, and turn to my mother. “I’ll be in the yard when you two are ready.” Otto’s voice fills the space behind me as I leave.

“You should teach her properly, Amelia,” he mutters.

“Your brother saw fit to teach her his trade,” replies my mother, wrapping loaves of bread.

“It’s not right, Amelia, for a girl, and certainly not one her age, to be out and about with boys’ things. Don’t think I haven’t seen the boots. As bad as walking around barefoot. Has she been in town taking lessons? Helena Drake can stitch and cook and tend…” I can see him running his fingers through his dark hair, then immediately over his beard, tugging his face the way he always does when he’s frustrated. Not right. Not proper.

I’ve just begun to tune them out when Wren appears in the yard out of nowhere. She really is like a bird. Flying off at a blink. Alighting at another. Good thing she’s loud, or else her sudden appearances would be frightening.

“Where are we going?” she chirps, wrapping her arms around my waist.

“Into the village.”

“What for?” She lets go of my dress and leans back to peer up at me.

“To sell you,” I say, trying to keep a straight face. “Or maybe just to give you away.”

My smile cracks.

Wren frowns. “I don’t think that’s why.”

I sigh. The child may look like a bundle of light and joy, but she doesn’t scare nearly as easily as a five-year-old should. She looks up, past my head, and so do I. The clouds overhead are clustering, coming together the way they do each day. Like a pilgrimage—that’s the way my father put it. I slip free of my sister and turn away, toward Otto’s house, and beyond it, hidden by hills, the village. I want to get there as soon as possible and see if my hunch about the stranger is correct.

“Let’s go,” calls my uncle, my mother in tow. Otto eyes the knife at my waist one last time, but only grumbles and sets off down the path. I smile and follow.

* * *

The town of Near is shaped like a circle. There’s no wall around it, but everyone seems to know where it ends and where the countryside begins. Stone walls snake through the village, no higher than my waist and half swallowed by the weeds and wild grass. They wander past clusters of cottages scattered among empty hills or fields, until you reach the center of town, where the structures stand almost side by side. The center of town is filled with seamstresses and carpenters and those who can do their work shoulder to shoulder. Most of the villagers live close to the town square. No one ventures onto the moor if they can help it, but a few cottages, such as our own, and the Thorne sisters’, dot the edges, sitting right up against the seam where Near meets the moor. Only hunters and witches live out this way, they say.

Soon the thickest circle of houses sprouts up into sight. The buildings, all cut stone trimmed in wood and topped with thatch, are huddled together. The newer houses are paler, the older ones darkened by storms and licked by moss and weed. Narrow, well-walked paths run between and around and through everything.

And I can see even from a distance that the center of Near is bustling with people.

News spreads like weeds in a place so small.

When we reach the town square, most of the villagers are already floating about, gossiping and grumbling in turn. As they arrive, they break up into clusters, splitting into smaller and smaller groups. It reminds me of the clouds in reverse. Otto breaks off to find Bo and the rest of his men, probably to dole out orders. My mother sees a few of the other mothers, and gives them a tired wave. She lets go of Wren’s hand, and my sister flutters off into the crowd.

“Look after her,” she says to me, already turning away, gliding in the direction of a group across the square.

I have other plans, but the protest dies in my throat. My mother doesn’t beg. She just gives me the look. The look that says, My husband is dead and my brother-in-law is demanding enough, and I have so little time to myself, and unless you want to be a burden on your poor mother, you’ll be a good daughter and look after your sister. All in a look. In some ways, my mother is a powerful woman. I nod and follow Wren, tuning my ears to the voices, almost all rumors, buzzing and bustling around me.

Wren leads me past Otto and Bo, the two talking in low tones. Bo, a narrow man with a slight limp, is several years younger than my uncle. His nose is long, and his brown hair curls across his forehead but recedes to either side, making him look pointed.

“…saw him by my house,” Bo is saying. “Early enough that it wasn’t too dark, late enough that I didn’t trust my eyes entirely…”

Wren has strayed far ahead now, and Otto casts a look up at me, giving a sideways jerk of his head. I turn and go, making note that Bo lives on the western edge of the village, so the stranger must have circled Near in that direction. Catching up to Wren, I pass by two families from the southern part of town. I slow my pace, careful to keep my sister in my sight.

“No, John, I swear he towers like a bare tree…” hollers an older woman, holding her arms wide as a scarecrow.

“You’re daft, Berth. I saw him, and he’s old, very old, practically crumbling.”

“He’s a ghost.”

“No such thing as a ghost! He’s a halfling—part man, part crow.”

“Hah! So there’s no ghosts, but there’s half-crow people? You didn’t see him.”

“I did, I swear.”

“He must have been a witch,” a younger woman joins in. The cluster quiets for a moment before John picks back up too emphatically, passing over the remark.

“No, if he was a crow-thing, then that’s a good omen. Crows are good omens.”

“Crows are terrible omens! You’ve lost your mind, John. I know I said it last week but I was wrong. Today you’ve really lost it…”

I’ve lost Wren.

I look around and finally see a slip of blond hair vanishing into a nearby circle of children. I reach the cluster and find my sister, a good head shorter than most of them but just as loud and twice as quick. They are joining hands, preparing to play a game. A girl a year older than Wren named Cecilia, all edges and elbows in a skirt the color of heather, takes my sister’s hand. Cecilia has a scatter of freckles like muddy flecks across her face, vanishing along her cheekbones and into auburn curls. I watch her swing Wren’s small hand back and forth until a shape stumbles into the dirt nearby, letting out a small sob.

Edgar Drake, a boy with a whitish-blond mop of hair, sits in the dirt, rubbing his palms together.

“Are you all right?” I ask, kneeling down and examining his scraped hands. He bites his lip and manages a nod as I clear the dirt away with my thumbs as gently as possible. He’s Wren’s age, but she seems unbreakable, and he is a patchwork of scratches from always falling down. His mother, the village seamstress, has patched his clothes as many times as she’s patched him. Edgar keeps staring sadly at his fingers.

“What does Helena do,” I ask, offering a smile, “to make it better?” Helena is my closest friend and Edgar’s older sister, and she dotes on him incessantly.

“Kisses it,” he murmurs, still biting his lip. I set an airy kiss on each palm. I wonder if I babied Wren like this, would she be so fragile, so shocked by a knick or scrape? Just then she lets out a raucous laugh and calls to us.

“Edgar, hurry!” she shouts, bouncing on her toes as she waits for the game to start. I help the boy up and he hurries over, nearly tripping again halfway there. Clumsy little boy. He reaches the circle and slides in beside Wren and squeezes her right hand, knocking her shoulder with his.

I watch as the game takes shape. This is the same one I used to play, Tyler on one side, Helena on the other. The spinning game. It starts with a song, the Witch’s Rhyme. The song has been around as long as the bedtime stories of the Near Witch, and those have been around as long as the moor itself, it seems. It is a fearfully addictive tune, so much so that it seems the wind itself has taken to humming it. The children join hands. They begin to move in a slow circle as they sing.

The wind on the moors is a’singing to me

The grass, and the stones, and the far-off sea

The crows all watching on the low stone wall

The flowers in the yard all stretching tall

To the garden we children went every day

To hear the witch and watch her play

The children sing faster as they pick up speed. The game always reminds me of the way the wind whips up the fallen leaves, spinning them in tight, dizzying rings.

She spoke to the earth and the earth it cracked

Spoke to the wind and it whistled back

Spoke to the river and the river whirled

Spoke to the fire and the fire curled

But little boy Jack he stayed too long

Listened too close to the witch’s song

Faster.

Six different flowers on the little boy’s bed

Her house it burned and the witch she fled

Cast out, thrown out, on the moor

Near Witch, Moor Witch, now no more

And faster, still.

The witch still a’singing her hills to sleep

Her voice is high and her voice is deep

Under the door the sounds all sweep

Through the glass the words all creep

The Near Witch is a’singing to me

The song starts over.

The wind on the moors is a’singing to me…

The words circle round on themselves until eventually the children fall down, tired and laughing. The winner is the last one standing. Wren manages to stay up longer than most, but eventually even she topples into the dirt, breathless and smiling. The children rise unsteadily and prepare to play again as my mind turns slow circles over the mystery of the stranger, with his eyes that seemed to soak up moonlight, and his blurring edges.

Who is he? Why is he here? And there, softer in my head: How did he vanish? How did he just break apart?

I keep an eye on Wren while hovering on the outskirts of conversations. Several people claim to have seen the shadowy form, but I do not believe them all. I accept that he passed west at Bo’s, north by me. He seems to have walked the invisible line that separates Near from the moor, though how he recognized the boundary I do not know.

The children’s laughter is replaced by a familiar voice, and I turn to find Helena sitting on one of the low walls that taper out along the edge of the square. A group of men and women crowd around her, perhaps the only villagers in the square who aren’t talking. In fact, they are all silent, and Helena herself is the object of their attention. She catches my eye and winks before turning back to her audience.

“I saw him,” she says. “It was dark, but I know it was him.”

She pulls a ribbon from her hair and winds it around her wrist, letting white-blond strands, the same color as Edgar’s, fall over her shoulders. Helena, who never manages to be loud enough, bold enough, is drenched in sun and soaking up every drop of the attention being paid her.

I frown. She isn’t lying. Her pale cheeks always flush at the first wisp of a fib, but these words pour out smooth and sure, her cheeks their usual pink.

“He was tall, thin, with dark, dark hair that fell around his face.”

The crowd murmurs collectively, growing as people peel themselves away from other groups. Word spreads through the town square that someone has had a good long look at the stranger. I press through the bodies until I am at her side, the questions bubbling up around us. I squeeze her arm.

“There you are!” she says, pulling me close.

“What’s going on?” I ask, but my question is swallowed by a dozen others.

“Did he speak to you?”

“Which way was he headed?”

“How tall was he?”

“Give her air,” I say, noticing my uncle over their heads, across the square. He has seen the gathering crowd around Helena, and is turning toward us to investigate. “A moment’s air.” I tug Helena aside.

“Did you really see him?” I hiss in her ear.

“I did!” she hisses back. “And Lexi, he was gorgeous. And strange. And young! If only you could have seen him, too.”

“If only,” I whisper. There are too many voices chirping about the stranger, and too many eyes looking for him. I won’t add mine to them. Not yet.

The group around us has grown, and the questions redouble. Otto is crossing the square.

“Tell us, Helena.”

“Tell us what you saw.”

“Tell us where he is,” says a male voice, his tone tinged with something more severe than curiosity. Bo.

Helena turns back to her audience to answer, but I grab her arm and pull her to me, a bit forcefully. She gives a small cry.

“Lexi!” she whispers. “Easy.”

“Hel, it’s important. Do you know where he is now?”

“Indeed,” she says. Her eyes shine. “Don’t you? Lexi the great tracker, surely you’ve deduced.”

Otto is at the edge of the crowd, touching Bo’s shoulder. The latter whispers something to him.

“Helena Drake,” Otto calls over everyone. “A word.”

She hops down from the wall. My fingers tighten around her arm.

“Don’t tell him.”

She looks back over her shoulder at me. “Why on earth not?”

“You know my uncle. All he wants is to see the stranger gone.” Gone, and everything back the way it was, safe and same. Her pale brows knit. “Just a head start, Helena. Give me that. To warn him.”

The crowd parts for my uncle. ”Good day, Mr. Harris,” Helena says.

Across the square, a bell sounds, followed by another, lower, and a third, lower still. The Council. Otto pauses, turning toward the noise. Three men as old as dirt wait at the door to one of the houses, standing on the steps to be seen. Master Eli, Master Tomas, and Master Matthew. Their voices are withered with age, and so they use their bells instead of shouting to draw their crowd close. They don’t actually do anything but grow older. The Council started out as the three men who faced the Near Witch and cast her out. But these skeletal men on the steps are Council only in title, the inheritors of power. Still, there is something in their eyes, something cold and sharp that makes the children whisper and the adults look down.

People diligently make their way toward the old men. My uncle frowns, torn between questioning Helena and following the crowd. He huffs and pivots, walking back across the square. Helena casts one last look at me and bobs after him.

This is my only chance.

I slip out along the wall, away from my uncle and the cluster of villagers. Leaving the square, I catch sight of Wren with the other children. My mother is beside her now. Otto is taking his spot nearest the three old men, his Protector face on. I won’t be missed.

“As you have heard,” says Master Tomas over the quieting crowd. He is a head taller than even Otto, and his voice, though withered, has a remarkable way of traveling. “We have a stranger in our midst…”

I duck between two houses, picking up a path that leads east.

Helena’s right: I do know where the stranger is.

Almost everyone had already gathered in the square when we arrived. Except for two. Not that they like to put in appearances. But the presence of a stranger should have been enough to bring even the Thorne sisters into Near. Unless they’re the ones keeping him.

I weave through the lanes, heading east, until the sounds of the village die away and the wind picks up.

3

My father taught me a lot about witches.

Witches can call down rain or summon stones. They can make fire leap and dance. They can move the earth. They can control an element. The way Magda and Dreska Thorne can. I asked them once what they were, and they said old. Old as rocks. But that’s not the whole of it. The Thorne sisters are witches, through and through. And witches are not so welcome here.

I make my way to the sisters’ house. The path beneath my shoes is faint and narrow, but never fully fades, despite the fact that so few walk it. The way has worn itself into the earth. The sisters’ cottage sits beyond a grove and atop a hill. I know how many steps it will take to reach their home, both from my own or from the center of Near, every kind of flower that grows on the way, every rise and fall of the ground.

My father used to take me there.

And even now that he’s gone, I come this way. I’ve been to their cottage many times, drawn to their odd charm, to watch them gather weeds or to toss out a question or a cheerful hello. Everyone else in the village turns their back on the sisters, pretends they are not here, and seems to do a decent job of forgetting. But to me they are like gravity, with their own strange pull, and whenever I have nowhere to go, my feet take me toward their house. It’s the same gravity I felt at the window last night, pulling me to the stranger on the moor, a kind of weight I’ve never fully understood. But my father taught me to trust it as much as my eyes, so I do.

I remember the first time he took me to see the sisters. I must have been eight or so, older than Wren is now. The whole house smelled of dirt, rich and heavy and fresh at once. I remember Dreska’s sharp green eyes, and Magda’s crooked smile, crooked spine, crooked everything. They’ve never let me back inside, not since he died.

The trees creep up around me as I enter the grove.

I stop, knowing at once I’m not alone. Something is breathing, moving, just beyond my sight. I hold my breath, letting the breeze and the hush and the sighing moor slip away into ambient noise. I scan with my ears, waiting for a sound to emerge from the sea of whispers, scan with my eyes, waiting for something to move.

My father taught me how to track, how to read the ground and the trees. He taught me that everything has a language, that if you knew the language, you could make the world talk. The grass and the dirt hold secrets, he’d say. The wind and the water carry stories and warnings. Everyone knows that witches are born, not made, but growing up I used to think he’d found some way to cheat, to coax the world to work for him.

Something moves through the trees just to my right.

I spin as a cluster of branches peels itself away from a trunk. Not branches, I realize. Horns. A deer slips between the trees on stiltlike legs. I sigh and turn back to the path, when a shadow twitches, deeper in the grove.

A flash of dark fabric.

I blink, and it is gone, but I would swear I saw it, a glimpse of a gray cloak between the trees.

A sharp crack issues behind me, and I jump and spin to find Magda, small and hunched and staring at me. Her left eye is a cool blue, but her right eye is made of something dark and solid like rotted wood, and her two-toned gaze is inches from my face. I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding, as the old woman shakes her head, all silver hair and weathered skin. She chuckles, crooked fingers curving around her basket.

“You might be good at tracking, dearie, but you startle like a rabbit.” She pokes me with a long bony finger. “No, not much for being tracked.”

I glance back, but the shadow is gone.

“Hello, Magda,” I say. “I was on my way to see you.”

“I figured as much,” she says, winking her good eye. For a moment only her dark eye stares back at me, and I shiver.

“Come on, then.” She sets off through the grove, toward the hill and her house. “We’ll have tea.”

* * *

In three years, I have not been invited in.

Now Magda leads me back toward the cottage in silence as the clouds darken overhead. It is slow going because it takes three of her steps to match my one. The wind is up, and my hair is escaping its braid, curling defiantly around my face and neck as Magda totters along beside me.

I am a good head taller than she is, but I imagine she is a good head shorter than she once was, so it seems unfair to compare our heights. She moves more like a windblown leaf than an old woman, bouncing along the ground and changing course as we make our way up the hill to the house she shares with her sister.

Growing up in Near, I’ve heard a dozen stories about witches. My father hated those tales, told me they were made up by the Council to frighten people. “Fear is a strange thing,” he used to say. “It has the power to make people close their eyes, turn away. Nothing good grows out of fear.”

The cottage sits waiting for us, as warped as the two women it was built to hold, the spine of the structure cocked halfway up, the roofing on another angle entirely. None of the stacked stones look comfortable or well-seated, like the ones in the town center. This house is as old as Near itself, sagging over the centuries. It sits on the eastern edge of the village, bordered on one side by a low stone wall, and on the other by a dilapidated shed. Between the stone wall and the house are two rectangular patches. One is a small bordered stretch of dirt that Magda calls her garden, and the other is nothing more than a swatch of bare ground where nothing seems to grow. It might be the only place in Near not overrun by weeds. I don’t like the second patch. It seems unnatural. Beyond the cottage, the moor takes hold, much the way it does to the north of my home, all rolling hills and stones and scattered trees.

“Coming?” asks Magda, from the doorway.

Overhead, the clouds have gathered and grown dark.

My foot hovers on the threshold. But why? I have no reason to fear the Thorne sisters or their home.

I take a deep breath and step across.

It still smells like earth, rich and heavy and safe. That hasn’t changed. But the room seems darker now than it did when I was here with my father. It might be the gathering clouds and the coming fall, or the fact that he isn’t towering beside me, lighting the room with his smile. I fight back a chill as Magda sets her basket down on a long wooden table and lets out a heavy sigh.

“Sit, dearie, sit,” she says with a wave to one of the chairs.

I slide into it.

Magda hobbles up to the hearth, where the wood is stacked and waiting. She casts a short glance back over her shoulder at me. And then she brings her fingers up, very slowly, inching through the air. I lean forward, waiting to see if she’ll actually let me see her craft, if she’ll coax twigs together, or somehow bubble flint up from the dirt hearth floor. The sisters don’t make a point of giving demonstrations, so all I have are a few stolen glances when the ground rippled or stones shifted, the strange gravity I feel when I’m close, and the villagers’ fear.

Magda’s hand rises over the hearth and up to the mantel, where her fingers close around a long thin stick. Just a match. My heart sinks and I sag back into my seat as Magda strikes the match against the stone of the hearth and lights the fire. She turns back to me.

“What’s wrong, dearie?” Something shimmers in her eyes. “You look disappointed.”

“Nothing,” I say, sitting up straighter and intertwining my hands beneath the table. The fire crackles to life under the kettle, and Magda returns to the table and the basket atop it. From it she unpacks several clods of dirt, a few moor flowers, weeds, some seeds, a stone or two she’s found. Magda collects her pieces of the world daily. I imagine it’s all for charms. Small craft. Now and then a piece of the sisters’ work will find its way into a villager’s pocket, or around their neck, even if they claim to not believe in it. I swear I’ve seen a charm stitched into the skirt of Helena’s dress, most likely meant to attract Tyler Ward’s attention. She can have him.

Aside from the odd collection on the table, the Thorne sisters’ house is remarkably normal. If I tell Wren I was here, inside a witch’s home, she’ll want to know how odd it was. It’ll be a shame to disappoint her.

“Magda,” I say, “I came here because I wanted to ask you—”

“Tea’s not boiled yet, and I’m too old to talk and stand at the same time. Give me a moment.”

I bite my lip and wait as patiently as possible as Magda hobbles around, gathering cups. The breeze begins to scratch and hiss against the windowpanes. The congregation of clouds is thickening. The kettle boils.

“Don’t mind that, dearie, just the moor chatting away,” Magda says, noticing the way my eyes wander to the window. She pours the water through an old wire mesh that does little to catch the leaves, and into heavy cups. Finally, she takes a seat.

“Does the moor really speak?” I ask, watching the tea in the cup grow dark.

“Not in the way we do, you and I. Not with words. But it has its secrets, yes.” Secrets. That’s how my father used to put it, too.

“What does it sound like? What does it feel like?” I ask, half to myself. “I imagine it must feel like more, rather than less. I wish I could—”

“Lexi Harris, you could eat dirt every day and wear only weeds, and you’d be no closer to any of it than you already are.”

The voice belongs to Dreska Thorne. One moment the gathering storm was locked outside, and the next the door had blown open from the force of it and left her on the threshold.

Dreska is just as old as her sister, maybe even older. The fact that the Thorne sisters are still standing, or hobbling, is a sure sign of their craft. They’ve been around as long as the Council, and not just Tomas and Matthew and Eli, but their ancestors, the real Council. As long as the Near Witch. As long as Near itself. Hundreds of years. I imagine I see small pieces crumbling off them, but when I look again, they are still all there.

Dreska is muttering to herself as she leans into the door, and finally succeeds in forcing it shut before turning to us. When her eyes land on me, I wince. Magda is round and Dreska is sharp, one a ball and the other a ball of points. Even Dreska’s cane is sharp. She looks as if she’s cut from rocks, and when she’s angry or annoyed, her corners actually seem to sharpen. Where one of Magda’s eyes is dark as rotted wood or stone, both of Dreska’s are a fierce green, the color of moss on stones. And they’re now leveled at me. I swallow hard.

I sat here in this chair once as my father curled his fingers gently on my shoulder and spoke to the sisters, and Dreska looked at him with something like kindness, like softness. I remember it so clearly because I’ve never seen her look that way at anyone ever again.

Beyond the house, the rain starts, thick drops tapping on the stones.

“Dreska’s right, dearie.” Magda cuts through the silence as she spoons three lumps of a brownish sugar into her tea. She doesn’t stir, lets it sink to the bottom and form a grainy film. “Born is born. You were born the way you are.”

Magda’s cracked hands find their way to my chin.

“Just because you can’t coax water to run backward, or make trees uproot themselves—”

“A skill most don’t look on fondly,” Dreska interjects.

“—doesn’t mean you aren’t a part of this place,” finishes Magda. “All moor-born souls have the moor in them.” She gazes into the teacup, her good eye unfocusing over the darkening water. “It’s what makes the wind stir something in us when it blows. It’s what keeps us here, always close to home.”

“Speaking of home, why are you in ours?” asks Dreska sternly.

“She was on her way to see us,” says Magda, still staring into her tea. “I invited her in.”

“Why,” asks Dreska, drawing out the word, “would you do that?”

“It seemed a wise idea,” says Magda, giving her sister a heavy look.

Neither speaks.

I clear my throat.

Both sisters look to me.

“Well you’re here now,” says Dreska. “What brought you this way?”

“I want to ask you,” I say at last, “about the stranger.”