52. Then Blood
THEN: BLOOD
Iwas not alone in my grief. In the crowd, most women were openly crying, their heads shaking, hands over their children’s eyes.
Starling must have noticed this when I did, for he said, “Mothers, you will make your children see it. See it and know that this is a holy undertaking.”
No one spoke as four guards stood at four places around the stake and leaned down to bring torches to the pyre. Only the crackling of the wood, dry and ready, easily catching flame, could really be heard.
But then, there was a hollow cackling. A sibilant laugh that was so loud it sounded as if it came from the chest of a big man—not a small, elderly widow—resounded in the square.
It was more powerful than it should have been, echoing off the stone buildings nearby.
It was weightier and carried farther than what seemed possible.
Perhaps it was amplified by the utter stillness that had gripped our town, or perhaps her gods gave her the gift of a resonating death rattle.
And then she spoke.
“My body is a great mouth. My bones are its teeth. That is why, even when you cut me deeply, you will still feel my bite. I can still bite!”
The fire licked at the wood but had yet to reach her feet or the small board she balanced upon. Magda pushed herself up on her toes. Though her face and her voice were brave, her body recoiled from the heat. But she continued.
“Cut the body down, but the mouth’s howl echoes, you see.
The evidence of me, the proof of my having just lived, is my testimony.
Yes, I am the woman who lived on the edge of the forest. Yes, I am the one you call witch and hag.
Yes, I am the one you murder tonight. And two goddesses will not let my blood dry quietly.
And one god, the true god of fire, weeps for me.
And worst of all, I tell you. This is worst of all.
The trees and their desperate branches see you.
The birds cry. Foxes and bears and wolves and wildcats whisper it, in peace, to deer and coneys.
Coneys tell lizards and the lizards tell the fish.
That howl they repeated? That is the god without a sex, neither god nor goddess but another, the one they mistakenly call Brother Air.
They are not confined to man or woman. They are the screech in the night.
And they will come for you and yours. They will claw at your windows on stormy nights, crying out for me, asking you where I am and what you have done with me.
I leave you with this! After you kill me, I would not return to the land I once called mine.
I would not go back to the edge of the woods, brothers and sisters!
The great god of air will come for you. There is no haunting like the haunting of air! ”
My vision was blurring, stung by more than the growing blaze.
Tears tracked down Magda’s cheeks, but an eerie smile remained on her mouth as she spoke her last words. “All four will come for me! All four love and cherish me, and I will be at peace in the trees. My spirit will wax and wane with the moon.”
I moved so quickly, the guards and Starling were too stunned to stop me.
I slipped from the priest’s grasp and leapt from the wagon, pelting past the men around it.
I was a short distance from the stake and reached it before I knew what I was doing.
What I had intended, I did not know. I hurled my body at one of the guards standing around the fire.
He crossed his spear in front of his body and pushed it out at me.
I grabbed the rod of it and pushed back.
“Back!” he growled. “Go back to the wagon.”
Two of his fellow guards stepped near to him.
“Let herself throw her lot in with the hag and burn,” said one.
“You’ll be next, Robbie,” the other of them said, and I realized he was not Perpatanian but a boy I had likely played with once or whose sibling I had played with. “Go back to the priest!”
I thrashed and held on to the spear, my hands alongside the grip of the first guard’s. He tried to shake me loose and hissed curses at me.
I could see Magda’s face blanch as the first of the flames licked the board she stood on.
“Grab her, for gods’ sake,” the guard said.
The other two reached for me. Before they could touch me, my palms slick with sweat, I tried one last effort to push past them, but my hands slid along the wood, and the one closest to the spearhead grazed over it so speedily, I did not feel the pain right away.
But I did see a spray of my blood arc from my hand and sail over the guard’s shoulder to the piled, lit kindling.
The pyre exploded.
A surge of white and pale orange blossomed out from the base of the stacked, chopped wood and gathered branches.
It billowed like smoke, unfurling out and upward, eclipsing the entirety of the pyre, the stake, and the woman tied to it.
Nothing of her could be seen through the opaque blaze that roared so loud, my ears ached from the noise.
The guards and I fell back and separated, scrabbling on the ground for purchase, crawling away from the conflagration. In my doubling over, the tools in my stays jabbed into my belly and ribs.
Dully, I could hear people clamoring around me. Starling was crying out for an explanation, saying it was some kind of witchcraft. Torm Sheridan was hollering for his guards to restore order to the crowd. Children were screaming in fear.
I crawled on my hands and knees on the ground, as far and fast as I could, the intensity of this new, unnatural thing terrifying me.
I felt hands under my armpits, felt myself pulled to standing and then dragged away from the center of the square. I stumbled along with my rescuer’s steps and then looked up to see my father.
“What did you do?” he asked, but not in anger. He was afraid.
Another set of hands clasped my arm, and I was pulled into my mother’s arms. I was taller but I sank into her, letting her hold me up. I felt her wet cheek against my neck. Then I felt Rowena press into me.
“You have to get away from here,” my father was saying to me. “Whatever you did, it’s grounds for charging you with some kind of spell craft. You have to remove yourself before people remember what they saw. The saint bless you, girl. What pagan thing have you just done?”
“Magda,” I said and pulled away from them, turning to the stake.
“She’s gone,” my father said. “That—I’ve never seen a fire like that. She would have burned to death before she would have even known what was happening. I can’t imagine she felt any—”
“Good,” my mother shot at him. “Thank the gods for that. Her gods.”