The Hawkweed Prophecy (27 page)

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-E
IGHT

I
don't love you.

Charlock said to write it like she meant it.

I don't love you.

Use your magic, she said. With it, you can make him believe anything. Even this.

I don't love you.

But Poppy's hands were trembling.

I don't love you.

Her head was hollow, the words bouncing off bone, echoing around her mind.

I don't love you.

There was no magic to be mustered.

I don't love you.

Until the ink began to weep.

I don't love you.

And the sentence sizzled.

I don't love you.

And each vowel and consonant burned their shape right through the paper.

Magic.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-N
INE

I
t was for their own good. At least that's what Sorrel and Ember were told when they complained about their captivity. Hot on the heels of the queen's news came reports that other clans were on the move and heading in their direction. Last night's jubilation was quickly dampened by worry. The sisters took to their beds with a confusing mix of emotions and awoke certain of one thing: they must be vigilant. Rumors were rustling through the camp like a whispering wind sent across the seas from faraway lands. Rumors of spite and spells sent to hurt them. Rumors of other heirs to the throne, other young witches with extraordinary powers. Rumors of plans to wound and weaken the Hawkweeds before their queen was proclaimed.

The stories grew fatter and juicier with each telling, dripping their poison into ear after ear. The elders called for calm but even they seemed uneasy. You could see it in their stance and hear it in their voices. Even the very air felt heavy with foreboding. The trees stooped with the tension. The hens weren't laying and the goats' milk was thin and watery.

After breakfast Sorrel and Ember were told they must stay within the camp's circle. Every sister was instructed to watch that neither of them took a step beyond its protection. Since then Sorrel had worn an even sourer expression than usual, and when Ember tried to pick up their friendship from where Sorrel had left it, she found her advances rejected. Sorrel just looked straight through her and turned away.

So Ember was back where she started—all alone. Having tasted the sweetness and spice of friendship with Poppy, Leo, and even Sorrel, her loneliness was far sharper than she remembered. She looked to her mother for comfort, but even she, always so serene, now seemed distracted and jittery. Ember could tell Charlock was only listening to her with one ear while the other strained for snatches of conversations going on throughout the rest of the camp. Charlock wasn't looking straight at her either, her eyes wandering over Ember's head, scanning around in constant apprehension. Later Ember heard Charlock curse as she burned herself on the stove, then again as she tripped on the path. By lunch a sty had formed in Charlock's eye so she had to bandage a chamomile compress to it and now looked like she'd been attacked. Even to Ember, who had never mastered reading the auguries, none of this boded well.

“Do you think the Eastern clan have put a hex on you?” she asked her mother late that afternoon as they sat, both of them with bowls of cream under one arm while the other arm whipped vigorously until the yellow butter formed.

“Hush, child,” Charlock cautioned. “There's still such a thing as bad luck, you know.”

“I heard Sister Mabel say that they'd been sighted and they were traveling north.”

“And I suppose Sister Mabel saw them with her very own eyes?”

Ember shrugged. Her forearm was aching, the muscles in it pushing through her skin.

“Keep whisking, Ember. This is no time for idleness.”

“I don't see how more butter is going to help Sorrel.”

“Busy hands make less mischief.”

Ember flexed her fingers, then gripped the whisk once more, bowing her head to her work. The cream was at last thickening and she longed to dip her finger into its clouds and suck on its sweetness. To stop herself, she drew her mind back to their conversation.

“Are you scared of them? The Eastern clan?”

“I am scared of anyone with hate in their heart.”

“That makes a multitude.”

“Indeed it does.”

“Why do they hate us so?”

“All the clans, even the ones we considered friends, turned against us when the prophecy was told. The Eastern clan is just the biggest and the strongest. And an Eastern sister has yet to be queen. It is their turn—their right, they believe—to be chosen next.”

Ember paused before asking another question. Her mother had never been so forthcoming before, and she wasn't sure whether to press on and capture the moment or be gentle in case she broke it.

“Do you ever wish I could be queen?”

“No.” Charlock's voice rang true and certain.

“Why not?”

“You are made for happier things.”

“And Sorrel isn't?”

Charlock tutted under her breath but didn't answer.

“If only this queen would hurry up and die, then everyone would know for sure about Sorrel,” Ember muttered.

“Ember Hawkweed—that is treason!” Charlock seemed genuinely aghast.

“I'm just saying what everyone is thinking. Just before the queen dies, Sorrel's name will appear on the stone and all argument will cease.”

“There may be days before that happens.”

Ember glanced at her mother and asked what she had wanted to ask all along. “The Eastern clan—what if they think I could be queen . . . what if they don't know Sorrel is the one and they are coming to hurt me?”

Charlock stopped whisking and looked up from her bowl. She answered slowly but surely. “You mustn't fret, child. It is Sorrel who is in their sights. But best be cautious nonetheless.”

For a second the lack of threat—the lack of any interest from anyone—stung Ember, but the pain rapidly turned to relief. Then suddenly she was grinning with surprise.

“Look!” she announced happily, holding up her bowl. “The butter's ready.”

Charlock smiled her praise. “Go and drain the buttermilk into the jar. Then rinse the butter well, better than last time!”

“Is yours not ready?” Ember asked, realizing her mother was still whisking. “I'm never first to finish.”

They both peered into Charlock's bowl and then, before their eyes, the cream turned dark as charcoal.

Ember screamed as Charlock stared, struck dumb with shock. “Mother!” Ember cried. “Mother! What is it?”

Charlock got to her feet and grabbed her shawl. “Throw this away. Don't let anyone see.”

“Where are you going?” Ember asked, the fear crawling across her skin.

“You are safe here but I must hurry.” Charlock's hand was on the door when she turned around, “Tell no one, Ember. Promise me.”

Ember nodded, then glanced down at the black bowl, wondering how she was ever going to touch something so vile. When she looked up, her mother was gone.

Sorrel knew where Ember was going when she alerted the others. It was immensely pleasurable to see her cousin stopped in her tracks as she was hurrying off to meet the boy. Sister Ada had Ember's ear between her bony fingers and Ember was wincing from the pain. Her cheeks were smarting too from the shame of it, being dragged through the camp and sat on the tree stump where usually the little ones were sent for punishment. The sisters had all gathered around Ember, their voices shrill with anger as they demanded to know what she'd been thinking and where she was off to and hadn't she heard the morning's instructions and did she think nothing of her safety.

Sorrel knew this was her chance and she took it stealthily. With all eyes on the humiliated Ember, Sorrel crept from the crowd, backing away to the edge of the camp. No one spied her
and called the alarm, no voice shouted her name, no arm came out to seize her. It felt all too easy. As she stepped through the boulders and beyond the circle, Sorrel expected the crows to caw and the foxes to bark their hideous cry. But the forest seemed oblivious to her presence and off she ran, looking for the softest places to tread, moving as swiftly and silently as she could. She knew how fortunate she was that her mother was away scouting for news of the Eastern clan. And her aunt seemed to have disappeared also, perhaps to barter or comb for those supplies that the coven couldn't produce themselves. In any event, it was a rare day to have both of them absent at the same hour.

Charlock would not be happy to hear about Ember's exploits, Sorrel thought gleefully to herself, feeling the wind on her back, urging her forward. She almost laughed out loud with the thrill of her escape, reveling in the notion that it would be she, and not her cousin, who would find the boy. Perhaps this time she might show herself and say a word. She might shake his hand as she'd seen the chaffs do. She might tell him her name and hear his in return.

A queen could never do such a thing. A queen could never even contemplate it. If there were a last chance for a moment of freedom, this was it.

Sorrel wove her way through the trees, marveling at how fast she could travel when there was strong reason to. The hills soon stretched before her and there, nestling in their breast, were the sparkling lights of the town, beckoning her closer.

It took her some time to find him. The night air stung with cold, and the homeless were huddled in shelters and not at their usual street-side posts. It was when Sorrel was passing the church that she sensed him. The wind was whistling through
the graveyard and Sorrel stopped to hear it. Led by its gusts, she passed among the headstones, each as varied as their inhabitants once were—old and crumbling, young and gleaming, tall and short, light and dark. But below they were all the same now. Bone and skull. Row upon row of skeletons lining up for the afterlife.

Even in death, the chaffs must attempt order
, thought Sorrel. She came to the wall and waited, wondering if she had followed the wrong lead. Then she looked up at the dark cloud swirling against the cobalt sky. Coming to her aid, the moon appeared for an instant and a blast of wind caused a sudden bang. Sorrel turned and saw the garden door illuminated and knocking gently against its frame.

The boy was sitting before a tiny makeshift grave. Sorrel tried but couldn't sense the person buried there. She puzzled at who might be laid within that the boy might visit on such an unforgiving night as this. Then, in his hand, she saw a letter. The boy held it up and looked at it, feeling the folded paper under his fingers, turning it in his hands. Just one light sheet but so heavy with significance. The boy feared its contents, that much was clear. Once read, the words could never be unread.
Open it
, thought Sorrel impatiently. But still the boy just sat there, postponing the moment.
Open it
, Sorrel urged, longing to say the words out loud, to scream them. But he didn't dare.

Sorrel concentrated her mind and breathed slow and deep. As she exhaled, a breeze flurried around her. She sent it to the boy and it whipped around him, trying to pull the letter from his hands. The boy held it tightly, and when the wind tugged the paper from his grasp, he reached up and grabbed it with both hands. The gust gathered force and snatched the letter away, carrying it up and around so the boy was on his feet, running after
it, turning and jumping for it. Sorrel smiled at this little jig and then, when she'd tired of seeing the boy leaping this way and that so foolishly, she had the air flutter the paper open and let it land in his hands.

The boy looked to the skies and shouted, “So you want me to read it, do you?” For a moment Sorrel felt a tinge of trepidation that he had somehow seen her, but his eyes were looking crazily up at the sky and then he cried out, “You can't come tell me yourself?” and she knew it was the letter's author he was berating. The boy held the letter up before his eyes. “Okay, I'm reading it. Happy now?”

Sorrel quieted her mind and let the wind soften. The boy shut his eyes for a moment, then opened them and looked at the words sprawled across the paper. Sorrel could see his pupils moving across the lines and she could feel it when the shock came. So strong it was that the tremors shot all the way through his body and into the ground, pulsing across the earth until she felt them for herself in the soles of her feet.

The boy read again and again and again, as though searching for some way to understand or hoping the meaning might change. Sorrel wanted to take the offending paper away. She wanted to start over and shake his hand and introduce herself. But then the boy fell to his knees and bowed his head low until it touched the earth. The paper crumpled in his fist and smudged in the wet, dark soil. The rain came of its own accord, pattering down on the both of them. The boy stayed curled up like that for a while, and when he raised his body, he unclenched his hand and looked at the paper, now sodden and torn, the blue ink smeared and running down it in tiny rivulets, washing the words away.

When he finally moved away, it was with purpose. His face was set hard into a single, unchanging expression. Through the town he strode, pulling open the doors to the bars and pubs, scouring the rooms intently, then slamming the doors behind him when he failed to find whom he was seeking. Sorrel watched from a distance, safe from view, as the boy never looked back, only forward, striking place after place on his hunt.

Sorrel's curiosity grew with every stop on the route. At first she felt a dread that it was Ember whom the boy was after. That lasted but a second.
The other girl?
Sorrel speculated.
Had she written the letter?
It was exciting, all this intrigue. As she waited in suspense for the boy to reappear, she became aware that she was enjoying herself, and with this came the realization of how rare it was for her to feel so entertained.