Shannon Delany - Weather Witch

Through forests thick with wildlife that scurried, flew, and sang from the treetops and across cleared swaths of land where small clusters of houses gathered together and called themselves villages they went, the wagon groaning and Jordan becoming increasingly sore. The road narrowed as they climbed into strange foothills. At rare moments Jordan glimpsed water miles away and far below, sparkling like a bed of shifting sapphires.

She scooted to the other side of the wagon, clutched the bars, and pressed her face against them to get a better view. The water was so wide! She had never been allowed to view such a large body of water. Her father said seeing such places (especially the sea) did strange things to a man or a woman—gave them what he called “the longing,” a desire for adventure aboard ship.

Jordan snorted and sat back, her eyes searching for water between the stocky hills. She crossed her arms. Her father was odd about some things. She felt no longing. Yes, she might admit a fascination with such a large body of water but she had heard enough tales of the Merrow to have no desire to board any ship—not even the aptly named Cutter, its hull bristling with blades for slicing waterborne enemies to ribbons. No. She had no longing to be on any ship. Or in any wagon.

She peered out from under the wagon’s roof. No. Not even an airship gliding through the sky and cutting through clouds or stealing thunder for its newly rumored thermo-acoustic engine could tempt her aboard. No. Certainly not. She was Grounded and would stay that way.

On horseback now, the Councilman dropped back to ride beside the wagon. Jordan tipped her chin up and looked away in defiance. She would prove she was no Witch. She would forgive them the indignities they had served her and might even be so gracious as to not mention it again in public.

Stevenson pressed his horse close to the wagon and smiled. “It won’t be long now,” he assured. “And you’ll be with your own kind. All will be right as rain,” he said, his tone mocking.

But beneath his slick smile she remembered the threat. If she could not be Made she would be made to disappear. And there was only one way to do that.

Murder.

Philadelphia

The young man no longer stuck to the shadows, no longer waited until nightfall to work his magick—or mischief, as those Grounded would claim. He was tall and broad of shoulder with dark hair and gray eyes and a coolness about him that made people think of first frosts and snowfalls. And with good reason.

Because Marion Kruse was a coldhearted young man.

Truth be told, he wanted nothing more than to return to a simpler time. A time he didn’t wander the roads and towns doing small things to amuse himself and set others to wondering. He wanted nothing more than to be back at his mother’s feet, reading books about pirates and scoundrels that made her laugh and tell him and his brother to never grow up to be wicked—that goodness was its own reward. He wanted nothing more than to grow fat on Chloe’s generously proportioned biscuits and call her “nanny” again. Nothing more than to go fox hunting with his father and friends (even that frustrating pretty boy Rowen Burchette) and dance with an attractive girl.

He wanted nothing more than to go back to before he’d been Made.

But Marion had been taught that going back was nigh unto impossible.

For a few years after his escape he had drifted through the forests and along strange roadways, meeting people and learning more about them than he’d ever known before. Too often knowing more meant respecting them less. But over the years he kept drifting closer and closer to his home city of Philadelphia. Not intentionally, but one night he looked up at the stars and realized they were nearly in the exact position as those he’d watched from his bedchamber on the Hill.

He paused on the sidewalk by a window box filled with begonias. They were his mother’s favorite. So he moved on, glancing at the sky and the airships hanging there, big glass-bottomed airboats fat as fruit in fall. He lifted his face to better view the shadowy bellies of the ships overhead and wondered how many were infested with pirates—or respected captains with a pirate’s worldview. The airships were modern ones with wings, rudders, and a large balloon keeping them aloft even when their Weather Witch of a Conductor could not. They were the stuff of myths and legends.

Like his kind had been once.

Funny how magick and myth became reality so readily. He grunted, looking back at the begonias.

He wouldn’t harm them.

But roses …

There were bushes of them in the next yard, bold blossoms so big they nodded on thorny canes. Nearly perfect, blooms wide to drink in summer’s sun. The gate and delicately crafted wrought-iron fence separating these roses from the ones inside looked familiar. He’d been here before.

Funny how your feet led you back to the places your heart longed for most.

This was her house. Her estate. These roses? The pride of her family—pictured proudly on the Vanmoer family crest. Her family?

Ruined his.

Her family was the reason, even after all this time, he dared not go home. Not that his family was where they used to be—but he dreamed someday to find them again. To track them down. To be their prodigal son.

But knowing such a move might ruin whatever they had raised themselves back up to he had never asked after them. Never tried to find them. Never sent them word he was free. It was the same reason he had hesitated outside the city’s gate, reconsidering. The same reason he had halted at the base of the Hill.

But sometimes you couldn’t help but be led back around. Sometimes destiny called so cruelly you dared not disobey. So he had climbed the Hill. Had found this house. And, as destiny seemed to dictate, he would make her family suffer.

In small, quiet ways.

At least at first.

He bent to sniff the bouncing blossoms, touching the stem of just one. Because all it took was one when your heart was full of ice.

Then he was on his way again, ambling merrily along, before anyone noticed anything was amiss. By the time they shouted, seeing how the rose petals blackened, dropping, and how the cane frosted, darkened, and twisted in on itself, deadening all the way to its knobby heart—by then he was gone.

En Route to Holgate

Wagons holding sweaty-looking occupants were already parked when Jordan’s transportation pulled alongside them, and came to a snorting stop. Their wagons were smaller, their occupants less well-dressed, and their horses more worn from what Jordan supposed had been longer journeys.

The Councilman and Tester walked over to a small crowd of agitated and mean-looking men. Voices raised and Jordan pressed her face to the bars again, hoping to hear something of importance. The crowd grew more animated, arms flailing and pointing to the wagons before motioning down the hill toward something just beyond her sight.

Then she saw the guns.

Men stood beside the wagons, muskets and rifles at their sides. Some carried the weapons, switching them from one hand to another and always—always—looking down the hill to something beyond.

The Tester and Councilman nodded, the Councilman growling out, “Hurry now! And you”—he pointed to one of the strangers—”you tell Johnson I’ll lynch him myself if this goes wrong. It stinks of treason, him arranging us all to meet so near to water and him being noticeably absent. He needs to remember where his loyalty lies now!” The wagons began to unload, guns on the would-be Witches as much as the mystery downhill. Jordan’s door opened and she bounded toward the exit but was met by others being escorted in. “But…”

“You will travel together now,” Stevenson reported, sweat heavy on his brow.

Watching his eyes she realized that although he spoke to her, he, too, watched what everyone else watched. Another wagon opened, and more Witches were loaded in with Jordan. No, she corrected herself. Not more Witches, more prisoners, Jordan thought. Maybe some of them were as she was.

Mistaken.

Two more wagons—these carrying a few sad-eyed prisoners—and the door clanged shut, the lock turned, and the Councilman took the key.

“And your name,” a boy asked her, his gaze raking across her dress and now less than perfect hair, “what did they used to call you?”

“The same thing they will call me when this misunderstanding is all cleared up. Lady.”

She barely flinched when the wagon’s inhabitants fell into fits of laughter around her. Turning her back on them, she pressed her face to the bars, steeling herself to the idea that she would not bother knowing any of them as she would be plucked from their questionable ranks soon enough.

Then she heard it—they all heard it—a noise that made the hairs on her arms raise and set her teeth on edge. A thin, trilling wail accompanied by soft, wet sounds like a child in oversized boots sloshing through puddles. The men with guns lined up, backs to the wagons. The drivers held the reins of their horses tight but still the beasts stomped and cried, tugging at their bits and bridles until their mouths foamed and bled.

“Get into your wagons and carriages and away,” the Councilman commanded. “This is no place to make a stand—not with so much water…” He abandoned them all—handing his horse’s reins to another rider, and, leaping into the carriage, he knocked so hard on its ceiling to signal the driver that they all heard.