I back away a step, my legs turned rigid with terror.
“You’ve cursed me,” he says, “I gotta be free.” And he lunges in a flash, grabbing my shawl, getting a fist-f of wool to yank me closer.
His knuckles hit my sternum and the scream lodges in my throat. I huff out air and fall back from the blow, pushing us both off balance. I tip over into the snow. I try to scramble away from his fumbling hands. He tosses my shawl to the side and catches at my ankle, jerking me toward him. “Mine,” he growls.
I kick and flail. I catch him with boot and fist, but it doesn’t do any good. I’m a rag doll. I’m a piece of goods to trade for. I’m his now.
He’s yanking me under him, he’s tearing at rotted cloth and uncovering bare white skin. I find my voice and screech curses at him. My heart pounds and pounds, terror filling my veins, rushing through me. Everything turns stark and sharp. Each breath quick. Each movement an extension of panic.
“Hush now,” he says as his body crushes me into the snow, his weight grinding my wrists into the icy mud. “Just let me have it. I need it. Let me take it.”
Bile rises in my throat. The frozen ground beneath me numbs my muscles, becomes needles and pins in my flesh. “No,” I say, praying to God, to the air, to anyone who’ll listen. “Please.”
He leans in and I turn my head, I clench my eyes shut, trying to get away from him any way I can. His whiskers are rough and painful, his chapped lips scratching at my skin. And I drown, choking on my own horror. I start to slip away, to go to that secret place inside where Pa and Hunt and all the men can’t touch me. Where all this is just a bad dream.
Then I feel something hard beneath my arm.
I open my eyes in a surge of awareness, realizing what it is. The ax handle.
“You smell like roses,” Hunt says into the side of my neck.
But I don’t feel him anymore. A strange calm settles over me and I let it fill me to the core.
No man’s ever going to touch me again.
And it’s like I detach from my body and rise to watch from above. I see Hunt over me, his weight shifting to lift my skirt, to reach his belt. My hand flails for the ax. My fingers grip white on the handle. The weapon rises up, up to swing. Silver and sharp.
Hunt never even notices it coming at him.
The blade cracks into the side of his face and neck, spraying a veil of red across my world. I push out from under his shocked face and raise the ax again.
And again.
And again.
Until I’m sure he can’t come back.
He twitches at my feet as I embed the ax into his skull with a sound like smashing pottery.
His body slips a little in the snow and the ax falls from my hands. Sticky red.
Everything’s red.
I stumble back, sinking into the snow. The red follows, slinking from my attacker. A pool of crimson spreads out, melting the snow at his head, under his chest. It moves slowly, with frighting sloth, dark and thick, reaching out to me with bloody fingers. Accusing me as it gathers at my feet.
Murderer
.
But all I feel is relief.
PART TWO
The men stop coming after Hunt goes missing. We learned from the last brave soul to visit that they whispered all sorts of stories to answer his disappearance. My favorite is that we ate him. We cooked him up with our whore-earned corn, a dozen rats’ eyes, and a bat wing.
Even I couldn’t have thought of anything more perfect.
Of course, the truth is much more dull. Becca and I merely dragged him to one of the crags and shoved him in as best as we could, then covered the hole with snow and branches. There’s been two good snowfalls since then. I’m fairly sure no one will find him. Except maybe the wolves.
We’ve been officially branded as witches. The Ice Witch, they call me, for my eyes—a white-blue that Mamma always said look like deep ice. Pa said their lack of color proved I’ve got no soul. I guess these mining men agree.
Becca’s become the Red Witch. The men say she walks the crags and peaks, wailing and cursing them. That she haunts the mines like a ghost, coming after them for their sins. They say when they put their hands to her, she cried tears of blood—I can see how that idea could put a chill in even the most solid-boweled fellow.
Several of the men left the mountain from these fears. But now, even the foremen are beginning to board up the shafts in the rock, after an avalanche that killed a dozen men. The miners are dropping right and left, and they point up our road in accusation and horror.
It’s strange how the stories go, how they grow and become alive in the believing.
And I want to take them on and make them true.
Maybe, in some ways, I have. I prayed curses on them over and over until my throat felt parched. Then Hunt came after me. And the things he said...
When Mamma was well, she fiddled with the herbs and mumbled smoky prayers, hands filled with burning clutches of thistle or sage. But I never thought of her as anything except Mamma. Could she have done something before she died? Maybe all her whispers to air and nothing were for a purpose. Pa always said she had a way with sending out wishes and causing trouble in the town we lived in before.
Or maybe it was me.
In any case, it’s done. And witch or no witch, I’m filled with a small sense of ease I haven’t felt for a very long time. The road remains empty. No more Becca tears or pain in the night. No more lingering stench. I set us free with murder.
I should have done it sooner.
*
There’s no more food brought to our door, so we try other ways to find it. I’m the obvious choice for the hunt since it helps quell my anger. Becca seems to understand that and encourages my outings, content to stay and read her Bible or embroider flowers into the curtains with thread she pulls from her shawl.
I take the freedom and revel in it. I get out of the dark shack and explore. I don’t have to listen to Becca’s constant prayers and the sound of my desperate stomach is muted by the song of winter birds and the wind rustling the pine needles.
I have many fruitless outings into the pines before I figure out what I’m doing. Lots of our first meals come from the barn where I practice on smaller animals: bats, rodents, and little birds. I catch and pluck and gut and skin and feel my cold heart a little less. Their tiny bodies aren’t the most appetizing, but they keep us alive.
I soon figure out more about how they think and what makes a good snag-line. So I decide to make traps to lay out in the trees where I know the foxes come around to look for shelter and smaller animals. By some miracle I might catch one of the furry beasts—maybe Becca and I can use the skins for trade, and the meat’s got to taste better than bat or mouse.
I check the traps every day and watch for signs of life in case they need to be moved.
For three frustrating weeks they remain empty.
Then, one day, just when I decide I’m a fool and don’t have a clue what I’m doing, I find magic when I go check, spotting through the trees and underbrush, a dark heap lying in the snow.
Excitement fills me and I can’t help smiling in satisfaction. My first catch. And whatever it is, it’s huge. A deer.
No, maybe an elk.
It’s a dark mound against the white ground, blood splattered around it like red rain fell in the night. I move closer, through the brush, and see a piece of my rope, tugged out and taut, across a fallen tree, like the beast tried to get away. I push aside a hanging branch.
And freeze.
A boot. A cloak.
A lock of brown hair curls over a pale brow.
It’s not a deer. It’s a man.
My heart lurches at the site of his strong hands, clutching the snow. His back, broad inside his coat.
Fear laces through me.
I can’t tell what I’m afraid of. He could hurt me. He could be dead. I don’t have a clue which idea scares me more.
His skin is pale and tinted blue at the fingertips, the lips. Tiny puffs of air emerge from his nose, slow, slow, and slower, like he’s fading away.
I move around his head, to his legs, and try to get a better view of his foot. It looks like the knife I tied to my string trap impaled his calf. There’s swaths of blood in the snow and on his pant leg. The flesh that’s around the wound is dark and swollen—a sign he’s been here for most of the morning, a sign he might be past fixing. But it’s the cold that’ll kill him first.
He moans, and I jump back, pulse quickening.
His face turns and I see now, he’s covered in mountain dust, his flesh smeared with black.
From the mines.
I move back another step and have to clench my leg muscles to keep from kicking him. I consider pulling my knife from his leg and walking away, letting him freeze to death in the snow. It won’t take much longer.
He’s a miner. He’s stains and soot and the smell of sweat in my lungs—
“Help,” comes a scratchy voice. His violet lips barely move. His eyes crack open, revealing green. Shimmery green, like summer.
I stare at him in wonder and shame. He looks so young. No more than seventeen or eighteen. He’s bleeding at my feet, and all I can think of is how I might make him suffer when he’s already in Hell.
I take in a deep breath and then kneel at his side.
I study the wound more carefully. I tear his pants and look for embedded dirt or sticks. I touch around the area, checking for places gone hard with ice. His eyes follow every one of my movements, wide and watchful. His brow is tight with worry. It could be my imagination, but he seems frightened of me.
He jerks back when I look straight at him, and then I remember. My eyes. They give me away for the witch I’ve become.
“Just be still,” I say, a little too rough. “We’ve gotta get that blade out and tie a tourniquet on the leg to stop the bleeding.”
“You’re just…a kid,” he mutters. “Don’t touch me.”
“Oh, and you’re an old man. Well, I guess I’ll just let you lie here, then. That is, until a pack of wolves come by to help you out of your predicament.” I take off my overcoat to free my arms up to work. “It’s me who set that trap and it’ll be me who gets you out.” I study him. “What’re you doing out here, anyway?”
He shakes his head, like he doesn’t know the answer to my question—or maybe he doesn’t want to tell me. “Running. Running away.”
“Running right into my trap,” I say.
He looks like he’s still running in his mind, fear clear in his features. He coughs and clutches his coat closer to his chest. “There was a cave-in. In the mine.”
“Another one?” I ask. When he doesn’t answer, I decide there’ll be time for questions later and say, “The wound doesn’t look too bad, but I’ve got to get the knife out, so sit still and look away.”
He doesn’t look away, but he keeps still as a statue.
I reach for the dagger with purpose and don’t let myself hesitate. I yank before I can think of the consequences or the pain I’m causing.
He hisses through his teeth and his face scrunches tight in agony.
I tear a strip from my skirt and cinch it tight to his leg, just below the knee, trying to stop the blood. Luckily, the flow is slowed from the cold.
“We’re gonna get you somewhere warm,” I say. “But you have to help. Can you move?”
His teeth start to chatter—from cold or from shock—probably both. He stares up at me, brow pinched in doubt and torment, then he mumbles something about witches eating him, before he passes out.
Perfect. Now I’ll have to drag him back to the hut on my own.
I sweep the snow flat as I can, then lay my coat down beside his body. I tug a leg, and push his shoulder, then his back, ‘til he rolls onto his stomach with the fabric underneath. I take the coat’s arm and an edge from the bottom and yank, hoping the weave won’t tear—it’s my only nice piece of clothing. The cloth works fairly well as a sled and seems to be holding steady, as I make my way, slowly but steadily, back to the house. He groans once or twice, but doesn’t wake. It feels like I’m dragging stones, the weight a reminder of what this young man is and what I might be bringing back into our world.
I can’t think about that, though. I need to get him warm, fixed. Then I’ll worry.
“Becca!” I call as the shack comes into view. “I need help!”
She emerges from the doorway and runs across the yard, toward me, but as she gets closer, I see her eyes change. She slows and then stops dead in her tracks. “Wh-what’s that? What’ve you done?”
The horror on her face makes me release dark laughter. God in Heaven, what’ve we become?
“It was one of my traps. He got caught. I’m sure he’ll be fine.” I move and tug on her shirt when she just gapes and won’t move. “Take the other end, Becca, I’m exhausted and we need to hurry, he needs to get warm.”
She goes closer but doesn’t move to help. “He’s a miner.” Her eyes turn glassy.
“A miner that’s passed out and bleeding. He needs to get warm. Come on.” I see why she’s hesitating—I felt those same emotions only a few minutes ago. But I won’t let this one die. I won’t.
I go pick up the coat tails again and pull, getting him to the porch, my muscles burning. “Becca, please.”
She must not want to kill him either, cause she’s suddenly there by my side. She picks up his booted feet and we half drag, half carry him into the warmth of the shack. It’s difficult getting him on the pallet—Mamma’s pallet. There’s still dried blood on the hay, on the pillow. I’ll clean it tomorrow; now that it’ll be used again.
I guess it’s good we didn’t break it up for fuel when Mamma died. I’m not sure why we didn’t. Maybe ‘cause the act of doing anything like that felt even more final than leaving her body in the snow. More than a putting away. A forgetting.
I clean the wound as best as I can and then go to the basket of winter onions. I count three small ones out to make a poultice. He’s still, sleeping as I work. And Becca just watches me crush and heat and wrap it up to use. He releases a moan as I place the muslin-wrapped concoction on his wound, but he doesn’t wake up. Sweat beads on his forehead in spite of the chill so I dampen the fire a little.
I sit by his side and stare into the dimming yellow flames while Becca makes a supper from what’s left of the same onions I used for the poultice and some pine nuts she found yesterday. I should eat, but I don’t. I can’t seem to make myself.
I sit beside the young man all night, his even breath soothing to my ears. It means he’s still alive. I haven’t killed him.