Since Captain Janlav was carrying Alina, he wasn’t the one to pound on the door. Beard was. As his red-gloved fist landed against the thick planks, it felt like an omen, and that made me think of Nurse Nookes, whom I’d sometimes called a witch, though she most certainly wasn’t one.
But perhaps it was witchcraft that I happened to think of her just then. I kid you not here, Scribs. You’ll believe me when I describe to you the strange events that unfolded next.
The door opened, but no one waited behind it. An aroma of crushed nettles and garlic gasped against us, so thick I could taste it. Captain Janlav stepped in without hesitation, Celestia at his heels. Elise made sure to tag along so close after her that no guard could slip in between, and I and Merile did likewise. Then the small cottage was already so full that the remaining guards didn’t dare to squeeze in.
“Fire. I shall warm myself by the fire!” Merile limped to the fireplace, where a black kettle boiled above glowing embers. Her rats trotted after her as if nothing else mattered. As if they were right at home in the cottage.
My eyes took a while to get accustomed to the dark interior. I first felt the bunches of dried herbs and feathers brush against my head rather than saw them. A crude table occupied most of the room. Jars and glass bottles lay scattered on the wide planks. There was a small alcove at the back of the room. A woman emerged from there.
“Honored midwife, the little one has taken ill.” Captain Janlav wagered a step toward the woman.
The old woman halted before him. A shawl as black as an old crow’s feathers drooped against her hunched back. Her gray hair rested against the nape of her neck, in a knot that I doubted could be undone. Age emphasized her features, the beaky nose and beady eyes that a milky veil of blindness shrouded. Her blue-tinted lips drooped against her teeth so that I could easily distinguish the shape of each. She glanced at Alina, then past me at the open door and the guards there. No, not quite at her or the guards, but at their feet. She croaked, “Close door.”
Beard met Captain Janlav’s eyes from across the room. The captain nodded curtly. The soldier instantly obeyed. From this exchange I deduced that both of them were (and still are) desperate to keep my sisters and me safe, if you can believe that, Scribs. But about that we can debate later. Let me tell you what came to pass now before I stop believing it myself.
Once the cottage’s door creaked shut, with the guards remaining outside, the old woman turned her full attention to us. At first I didn’t understand what she was looking at—our uncomfortable sabots or the snow we’d brought in. Then it struck me. Though blind, she was, quite impossibly, studying our shadows.
“You say honored midwife…” The old woman spat on the gnarled plank floor. She stamped her sturdy boot over the phlegm and swirled it as if to put out a cigarette. “Bah! Say as it be or me no help.”
Captain Janlav glanced at Celestia, then Elise. The corner of his mouth twitched, as did his moustache. There was indecision in him. Desperation, too. “Very well. I’ll say it.”
The old woman stared at him, her blind gaze bright with wisdom and age. In the light of the embers, it seemed to me that her black clothes shimmered and took on strange hues, red and yellow of autumn, those of glorious decay. Though I’ve worn the most luxurious of clothes myself, I’ve never seen any fabric behave in that way.
“Help the little one,” Captain Janlav said, “Witch at the End of the Lane.”
I gasped, for as soon as he named her, it all made sense. The cottage I hadn’t at first noticed, the old woman’s strange demeanor, his hesitation before her. My sisters and I, we’d been brought to a place of darkness, and danger, even. Celestia’s shoulders drew back as if she were about to speak, but of what, I couldn’t even begin to guess.
The witch waved my eldest sister quiet, barely missing a bouquet of herbs tied to dry from the low ceiling beam running across the length of the cottage. She was more commanding than my sister, the one who would be the empress sooner than any one of us could have predicted. Oh, Mama… No, I won’t think of that. I will write of the witch.
“No talk. Me look.” The witch hustled to the other side of the table and swept the bottles and jars aside. She motioned Captain Janlav to lower Alina. He didn’t move, not till he received a nod from Celestia. As frail and young as our sister is, she fit on the cleared table with space to spare.
The witch gazed beside Alina, at the shadow that folded itself on Merile’s white cloak. Her grin revealed the gaps between her crooked teeth. Then she gestured at the door, her words aimed at Captain Janlav. “Now you go out.”
Captain Janlav’s shoulders hitched up. His hands curled into fists as if he could only barely refrain from unstrapping his rifle and aiming it at the witch. “It’s my responsibility to…”
The witch cut the air like a bird’s wing strikes. Her almost see-through sleeve shifted about her arm long after the movement itself had ceased.
“You here. No help. Matters with woman’s body.” The witch traced with her finger the shadow of our little sister. “Even girl’s. No cure when men present.”
Captain Janlav’s jaw set hard and his brows knit tight. I could almost sense what he was thinking. Alina needed help that no one but the witch could offer. My sisters and I were his responsibility, his prisoners. Would we tell the witch of our distress? What could she do to help us? Could we escape through the tiny windows behind the table? No, they were too small. Was there a back door? No, none at all.
“Very well then,” he grunted, the corner of his mouth twitching. “I’ll wait outside. But if I hear anything alarming, my men and I shall storm in, with drawn swords and loaded rifles.”
The witch smiled in a self-satisfied, smug manner as the captain strode out and pressed the door shut behind him. I expected her to ask us questions next: who we were, why we’d come to her. She didn’t. Instead, she brushed her hands against her black hem, and it seemed to me as if her fingers sank into the fabric (in the dim light it was impossible to be sure of anything). Then she bent over Alina, to study what ailed our sister.
“She has a condition,” Celestia said in a gentle voice barely audible over the crackling of the embers and the hiss of boiling water. We knew how to tell the litany without prompting for every single one of the doctors who had visited Alina, all asking the exact same questions.
“Condition, they call it?” The witch glared at Celestia from under her bushy, gray-brown eyebrows. The whiteness over her eyes ran thicker. “Me can see that much with me own eyes.”
I expected Celestia to argue, Elise to cry a protest. But neither of them said a word. Merile and her rats remained by the fire, unfazed, unmoving. Were they that cold, or under some sort of spell? I think the latter, but I won’t ever know for sure. And now that I think of it, Scribs, it’s better that way.
The witch, still bent over Alina, parted my sister’s lips, and sniffed at her breath. Her bulbous nostrils flared. She shook her head. “Sweet. Why?”
I glanced at Celestia and Elise. They’d been as much as told to remain silent. Was I supposed to speak? Perhaps I was.
“She hates honey,” I said. But since that alone sounded dumb, I added, “We thought she might wake up.”
“Now you think?” The witch cackled. Not one of us joined the laughter. She paid no heed to us. Instead, she placed her ear against Alina’s chest. She listened for a long time; such a long time that I was about to ask if there was truly something very terribly wrong with Alina.
The witch held up her bony forefinger. Her nail curled like a rusting scythe. I dared not to even breathe.
At last, the witch raised her head. Her gaze, when she unleashed it upon my sisters and me, was white and filled with wisdom beyond even her years. “Little one be with shadows.”