Shannon Delany - Weather Witch

And darkness.

The door clanged shut behind her and, falling into the straw she curled there, knees to her quivering chin, her eyes leaking in treachery.

Her left hand reached up and touched the ragged remnant of her ear and for the first time in her entire lifetime, Chloe Erendell knew hate and wished some way to escape.

Holgate

When Meggie was deeply asleep in her small room for a welldeserved afternoon nap Bran determined to bury Sybil’s skull himself. Back in the burlap bag, Sybil’s skull felt far heavier in his hands than it had when the bear of a watchman delivered it the night before. He trudged to the spot on the slope where he’d left her body not so very long ago. The earth was still torn up, a pile of lifeless dirt, marking the place they had buried her.

The ground grew moist here, as if a swamp had crept up the hill to saturate the area. That was good. Soft soil was heavier but easier to move. He set the bag down atop the recently disrupted dirt, determined to leave the skull out of view for as long as possible. He found a shovel leaning against Holgate’s imposing outer wall and set to work, his feet straddling the hole he dug. For every bit of earth his shovel’s blade moved, his feet sank in equal increments, boots squishing into the wet substrate.

Something moved in the muck threatening to suck his boots free of him and Bran watched as earthworms wriggled along the sides of his feet, pulling free of the muck to crawl up and over his boot tops. He tried to step back, tried to tug his feet loose, but they were only sucked farther down as more worms roiled out of their loamy kingdom, sparkling wetly in the sun.

“Ugh!” He snatched up the bag and shook it into the hole, the child’s ivory skull quickly devoured by darkness.

The worms ceased their palsied movement, slipping away into unseen capillaries in the ground as suddenly as they had come.

Bran managed to step back from the small pit he’d dug, his feet no longer mired. He plunged the shovel’s blade in the discarded lump of dirt, ready to bury Sybil’s skull as much as he was ready to bury the failure of her death. But as he swung the shovel back across the pit to dump the dirt, he heard something moving in the dark maw he’d dug. A noise like a thousand anxious fingers sifting through the muck rose to his ears and he set down the shovel, leaning forward to peer into the shadowy recess.

Eyes wide and mouth agape, Bran Marshall of House Dregard stared in morbid wonder as a twisting mound of earthworms, maggots, grubs, and centipedes writhed and rose together from the hollow, the skull on the living hill’s crest.

Not far down the slope the cattails rustled, giving voice to the jawless specter. “They commmmme…”

The undulating hill stilled a moment.

As did Bran’s heart.

The earth trembled and the hill erupted, launching the skull into the air—and into Bran’s arms. He held it before him a moment, the jawless thing still somehow managing to grin in death in a way he’d never seen the child do in life. His vision spiraled into nothing and he collapsed.

He woke to one of the local men leaning on the shovel and staring down at him, the man’s tongue working along the inside of his lips in thought. He popped his lips together and nodded at Bran before revealing a mouth devoid of most teeth to say, “It’s a bitch burying that thing. Poor Wendall ruined his pants twice trying. Determined bastard, he is. Best be taking it along with you, master Maker. Seems to wish to watch over you.”

The man reached down a hand and helped Bran regain his feet. “Watch over me?”

The man released him and shrugged. “Or scare the piss out of you at random intervals,” he offered, lips smacking as he sucked on one of his remaining teeth. “Far be it from me to speculate on the designs of the dead.” Taking the shovel with him he strode away, whistling a merry tune.

With shaking hands, Bran slipped the skull back into the bag and hurried to his laboratory, where he cleared a space in his shadow box–style shelves and nestled the skull as far back in it as he could.

Holgate

“Move them along,” Stevenson commanded, gazing at the sky. Unloading the wagon, chaining the prisoners, and moving the horses was taking far longer than normal. “It seems as if our good Maker is in the process of bridling a Weather Witch and I’d rather not be caught outside in the rain.”

Jordan followed his eyes up, as did a dozen other prisoners. On the tallest tower on the largest building in the walled compound was a snapping banner and, near it, a longer metal pole. The pole plunged into the sky, gashing open its gut, a circle of thickening clouds seeking to close the wound. Invisible fingers tugged dark cotton filaments from the sky and pulled them together to be spun into something stronger, wisps clumping together to build imposing thunderheads.

“Move them along,” the Councilman demanded again.

But they were all rooted in place, as dull as trees, transfixed, by what was going on in the sky and on the tower top far above them.

“Damn it all,” Stevenson muttered, sprinting unceremoniously for cover.

The scent came first—the odd taste of moisture and metal that filled a nose with the promise of rain. The drops sprinkled down, a drizzle at first, then fattening, falling faster until the rain was a blinding sheet cloaking the observers in a dark, wet wall that only relented when lightning sparked in the sky, snaring the metal pole. The bolt wrapped it, blinding them as thunder joined in and rattled their bones with a crack so loud they jumped and huddled together.

Then it was over, the last wave of rain fell in a soaking solid line and the air cleared, the clouds dissipating until nothing remained except a remarkably cerulean blue.

“Now!” the Councilman shouted from his spot in the hulking building’s doorway. “Move them now, you idiots!”

The Wraiths shoved them forward, snarling and threatening, their lips pressed close to their captives’ ears, their teeth bared like fangs.

The prisoners pressed forward, a wet wave of flesh, all knees, elbows, anger, and fear. They were herded through a broad doorway and down a hallway that ended suddenly at a wall. The Councilman rounded on the group of them, pushing them back from the hall’s end, angrily waving his hands.

A Wraith stepped forward and stomped once, twice—three times.

A heavy wooden door with iron cross bracings and a thick inset iron ring lay flush in the floor. There was a rattle from the ceiling above them, and, looking up, Jordan noticed the entire section of wall and ceiling was ribbed with iron strips. A hefty metal hook descended slowly from a hole in the ceiling, suspended by a fat black chain that lowered one clanking link at a time. The Wraith grabbed the hook and, lifting the ring in the door, connected the two and stomped on the door once more before sliding aside.

The chain went taut with a groan and the door opened, a hungering mechanical maw. Inside only the faintest hint of light split the deep darkness, broad steps beginning at the doorway’s edge.

The Wraith gave a short and keening cry.

“Down,” the Councilman commanded, and they were jostled forward, descending clumsily into a darkness so pervasive it had its own unique scent. Somewhere between the rich smell of forest loam and freshly sprouting fungi and the thickest plume of sewer steam Jordan had ever accidentally walked through was the residence of this particular place’s scent. The prisoners gagged at first, gathering at the bottom of the stairs, and then choked down the scent, their lungs struggling to accept it as breathable air.

Stevenson peered out at them from behind a mask, the noise of his breathing amplified through a strange filter that gave him even more of the appearance of being some variety of wild hog. “This way,” he said, and they followed, eyes and noses streaming against the overpowering stench of earth and filth and, above it all, overripe humanity.

Even the Wraiths wore masks there, the backs of their deformed and nearly bald heads pinched into straps to keep the mask’s front snug to ill-formed faces.

The prisoners walked between them, subdued as sheep, led down a wide aisle flanked on either side with heavy doors bearing wide hinges and barred windows at eye level. Jordan stretched up on her feet as they passed one by, trying to catch a glimpse of what lay inside, but she saw only darkness and the barest hint of movement.

“These are the Reckoning Tanks,” the Councilman’s voice hissed out as he motioned the Tester forward to explain.

“You will be kept here until the Maker calls you for Reckoning.”

“Reckoning?” someone asked. The simple act of raising a one-word question sent him into a fit of coughing.

The Tester smiled, his mask fogging. “Yes. The Reckoning is the first step in being Made.”

“And,” Jordan spoke up, giving a little cough and pawing at her nose, “if it is discovered we cannot be Made? That this is all”—she choked down another cough—“a horrible mistake?”

The Councilman and Tester looked at each other and turned away, ignoring her. “Load them,” the Councilman commanded, and the Wraiths grabbed them one at a time and, opening the doors, shoved them each into their own Tank.

Jordan pitched forward into the dark cell, her hands stretched before her and the only thing that stopped her from colliding face-first with the stone wall marking the Tank’s far end. She struggled to catch her breath, but her body still rebelled against the heady scent of her polluted environment.