فصل 37

37.

In Which the Witch Learns Something Shocking

It wasn’t Luna, Xan told herself again and again and again. My Luna is safe at home. She told herself this until it felt true. The man shoved another spider into her mouth. Despite how repellant she found the food, she had to admit that her birdish gullet found it delicious. It was the first time she had ever actually eaten while transformed. And it would be the last time, too. The slow vanishing of her life in front of her eyes did not make her sad in and of itself. But the thought of leaving Luna . . .

Xan shivered. Birds do not sob. Had she been in her old-­woman form, she would have sobbed. She would have sobbed all night.

“Are you all right, my friend?” the man said, his voice hushed and stricken. Xan’s black, beady bird eyes did not roll as well as her human eyes rolled, and alas, the gesture was lost on him.

But Xan was being unfair. He was a nice enough young man—a bit excitable, perhaps. Overly keen. She’d seen the type before.

“Oh, I know you are just a bird and you cannot possibly understand me, but I have never harmed a living creature before.” His voice broke. Two large tears appeared in his eyes.

Oh! Xan thought. You are in pain. And she nestled in a little bit more closely, clucking and cooing and doing her best in Bird to make him feel better. Xan was very good at making people feel better, having had five hundred years of practice. Easing sorrow. Soothing pain. A listening ear.

The young man had built a small fire and was cooking a piece of sausage he had taken from a package. If Xan had her human nose and her human taste buds, the sausage would have smelled delicious. In her birdish state, she detected no fewer than nine different spices and a hint of dried apples and crushed zirin petals. And love, too. Copious amounts of love. She had smelled it even before he opened the package. Someone made that for him, Xan thought. Someone loves that boy very much. Lucky fellow.

The sausage bubbled and hissed on the fire.

“I don’t suppose you’ll be wanting any?”

Xan chirped and hoped he would understand. First of all, she wouldn’t dream of taking the boy’s food—not while he was lost in the forest. Second of all, there was no way her bird gullet would tolerate meat. Bugs were fine. Anything else would make her vomit.

The young man took a bite, and though he smiled, more tears came pouring down his face. He looked down at the bird, and his cheeks turned bright red with embarrassment.

“Excuse me, my winged friend. You see, this sausage was made by my beloved wife.” His voice choked. “Ethyne. Her name is Ethyne.”

Xan chirped, hoping to encourage him to continue. This young man seemed to have so many feelings stuck inside him, he was like a pile of kindling, just waiting for that first, hot spark.

He took another bite. The sun had vanished completely and the stars had just begun to show themselves in the sky’s deepening dark. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. Xan could feel a little rattle, deep inside the young man’s chest—the precursor to loss. She chortled and cheeped and gave his arm an encouraging peck. He looked down and smiled.

“What is it about you, my friend? I feel I could tell you anything.” He reached over and put another small bundle of kindling onto the fire. “Not too much,” he said. “This is just to keep us warm until the moon rises. And then we must be on our way. The Day of Sacrifice waits for no man, after all. Or, at least, it hasn’t so far. But we’ll see, little friend. Perhaps I’ll make it wait forever.”

Day of Sacrifice, she thought. What is he talking about?

She gave him another quick peck. Keep talking, she thought.

He laughed. “My, you are a feisty thing. If Ethyne is not able to fix your wing, rest assured that we will make you a comfortable home and life for the rest of your days. Ethyne . . .” He sighed. “She is a wonder. She makes everything beautiful. Even me, and I am as ugly as they come. I loved her, you know, when we were children. But I was shy and she joined the Sisters, and then I was maimed. I had made my peace with loneliness.”

He leaned back. His deeply grooved face glowed in the firelight. He wasn’t ugly. But he was broken. And not by the scars, either. Something else had broken him. Xan fixed her eyes on his heart and peered inside. She saw a woman with hair writhing like snakes perched in the rafters of a house with a baby clutched to her chest.

A baby with a birthmark in the shape of a crescent moon.

Xan felt her heart go cold.

“You may not know it, my friend, but there is a witch in the woods.”

No, thought Xan.

“And she takes our children. One every year. We have to leave the youngest baby in the circle of sycamores and never look back. If we don’t, the Witch will destroy us all.”

No, Xan thought. No, no, no.

Those babies!

Their poor mothers. Their poor fathers.

And she had loved them all—of course she had—and they had had happy lives . . . but oh! The sorrow hung over the Protectorate like a cloud. Why didn’t I see it?

“I am here because of her. Because of my beautiful Ethyne. Because she loved me and wanted to have a family with me. But our baby is the youngest in the Protectorate. And I can’t allow my child—Ethyne’s child—to be taken away. Most people just carry on—what choice do they have?—but there have been those, tender souls like my Ethyne, who have gone mad with grief. And they get locked away.” He paused. His body shook. Or perhaps it was Xan who was shaking. “Our boy. He’s beautiful. And if the Witch takes him? It would kill Ethyne. And that would kill me.”

If Xan had felt she could spare the magic, she would have transformed right then and there. Held the poor boy in her arms. She would have told him about her mistake. She would have told him about the countless children that she had carried across the woods. About how happy they were. How happy their families were.

But oh! The sorrow hanging over the Protectorate!

And oh! The tyranny of grief!

And oh! The howls of a mother driven mad by sorrow. The grief and pain that he had done nothing to stop it, even though he didn’t know how. Xan could see the memory lodged in the young man’s heart. She could see how it had taken root, calcified, inflamed by his own guilt and shame.

How did this begin? Xan asked herself. How?

As if to answer, she heard in the caverns of her own memories the padded footsteps of something quiet, predatory, and terrifying, coming closer and closer and closer.

No, she thought. It couldn’t be. Still, she was careful to keep her own sorrow inside. She knew, better than anyone, the damage that sorrow can do when it finds its way into the wrong hands.

“In any case, my friend, I have never killed anyone before. I have never harmed any creature. But I love Ethyne. And I love Luken, my son. And I will do what is necessary to protect my family. I am telling you this, my swallow, because I don’t want you to be frightened when you see me do the thing I must do. I am not a wicked man. I am a man who loves his family. And because I love them, I will kill the Witch. I will. I will kill the Witch or die trying.”