Joseph Lewis - Wren the Fox Witch

Gudrun! Brynhilda! Kara! Anyone! Help me!

And after a moment, she heard over the blasting aether storm around her a shaking old woman’s voice. Gudrun’s voice.

Help yourself, girl. It’s only aether.

Wren blinked her eyes open for a brief moment and saw the white maelstrom around her, and she snapped her eyes closed again. The aether buffeted her body, her arms and legs and head, even her hair, but her lifeless clothing lay still and heavy on her skin. So she focused on that stillness, on the folds of her shiny new skirts and sleeves and ribbons.

Still.

Solid.

Quiet.

Slowly, the spinning sensation passed and Wren slowly unclenched the muscles in her belly and back. She could still feel the aether pushing and pulling on her body, but it was only the sensation of wind or water, or maybe soft hands. It was only physical and no longer inside her head, and so with one last deep breath, she opened her eyes.

The world was still a whirling white storm of aether flying around and around, but through the wispy gaps in the chaos she could glimpse the pale stone walls and the dark vistas of the palace beyond the balcony, and the shadowy figure of the woman at the railing. Wren tried to stand up and the aether shoved her sideways into the wall. But she pushed away from it and staggered through the aether typhoon toward the tall woman.

“Baba Yaga!”

The woman did not move.

“Yaga!”

The dark figure shifted, though still vague and rippling through the veil of aether. Wren saw her turn and reach out. A pale bony hand shot through the mist and touched her forehead, and Wren felt the icy fingers of aether flood sharply into her nostrils and mouth, and she fell back to the floor, choking and gasping.

The next thing she knew, Wren was lying on a bed of grass. The shadows stretched out around her into the distance in shapeless, formless darkness, and she peered in every direction, seeing nothing. No walls, no trees, no people. There were no stars overhead and the air hung perfectly still and cold around her. She exhaled and watched her breath curl away from her nose.

“Hello?”

There was no echo and no answer. She stood up, turning and turning, looking and looking.

Where am I? What happened to the tower? Where is the witch? What happened to Tycho?

She took a few steps in no particular direction and found only more dead grass underfoot and more darkness all around.

“Hello? Yaga? Tycho?”

“You.”

Wren spun to see who had spoken, and saw the crumpled form of a little old woman standing behind her, clutching a moth eaten blanket around her shoulders. She was pale and shriveled and shrunken, with wrinkled translucent skin hanging from her cheekbones and watery yellow eyes under her snowy brows. Only a few thin scraps of gray hair clung to her spotted scalp, and a bright trail of spittle hung from her thin lips.

Wren’s eyes widened. “Gudrun?”

“You. Here. Heh.” The crone hobbled forward, peering up at the girl. “One of us now.”

“One of…?” Wren covered her mouth. “This is the ring? Am I inside the Denveller ring too? Am I dead? I died? Yaga killed me?”

Gudrun cackled and looked to her left, and Wren looked as well. Seven other bent and broken figures shuffled out of the shadows, some leaning on canes, some dragging crippled feet, and one crawling with her lifeless legs stretched out behind her on the ground.

The dead valas of Denveller!

She knew their faces well. In the long year since Gudrun had died and Wren had taken up the ring, she had communed with these women, seen their ghostly faces hovering in the darkness around her, heard their voices whispering and sneering in her mind. Sometimes they offered their wisdom and experience with herbs or animals to heal some injury, and sometimes they helped her to negotiate with the spirit world, seeking out lost souls and learning their secrets. But always with a look of contempt. Always with a smug or cruel laugh.

“You’re not dead, girl,” said Brynhilda. She was a tall and gaunt figure, a woman of too much bone and too little skin. “You’re not in the ring, yet. We are in you.”

“In me? In my soul?” Wren tried to let her arms hang calmly at her sides, but her hands leapt together to fidget and squirm in front of her. “Possessed?”

Gudrun shuffled forward and her milky white eyes slowly darkened and came into focus as she wiped the drool from her lips. “Yes, little bird. Why? Don’t you like it here, with us? You should show some gratitude, after all we’ve done for you. All the answers we’ve handed you over the last year, all the work we’ve done for you. What a miserable excuse for a vala you would be without us.”

“I–I know, and I’m grateful for everything,” Wren said. “But I shouldn’t be here, or you shouldn’t. This is wrong.”

“Wrong?” Yet another woman came forward, one looking a bit younger and stronger than the others.

Kara! Nine hells…

The most ancient vala of Denveller took Wren’s hands and peered into her eyes. “Little Wren. Oh, little Wren. It might be a little early, yes, but there’s nothing wrong about being here. This is where you’re going, little Wren, this is home, this is where the long road will bring you in the end.”

Wren glanced around at the endless darkness, the starless sky, the black void of a world resting on a tiny patch of dead grass and dry earth where eight dead women huddled together in the endless night, wheezing and shaking and spitting on each other.

Wren looked back at Kara, a woman who died of old age at forty-two winters with a dozen gray claws in her raven hair, and then she looked down at their hands still clasped together. Kara’s hands were thin and wrinkled around the knuckles, and Wren’s…

She blinked and shook her head.

My hands!

Wren’s hands were as thin as chicken feet, like brittle twigs shaking in the wind. She could barely bend her fingers, barely lift her arms, they were so stiff and sore. Suddenly she was gasping for breath, wheezing through tiny wet lungs with a huge weight crushing her chest. Wren fell to her knees, her mouth hanging open as she struggled to breathe, and her hair fell forward around her face, thin strings of gray and white. Wren tried to raise her head, but her back was aching and her vision blurred.

“Help me,” she wheezed. “Someone, help me…”

She blinked.

The shadow world of the Denveller ring was gone. The ghosts of the crones were gone. Now the world was blinding white and freezing cold, and she could breathe again. Wren stood up, squinting at the bright snowy hills and the distant snowy mountains. The pain in her back was gone, and her hands were her own again, and her hair was dark red again. She shivered as the wind blasted over the hill, pelting her with ice.

“Hello?”

She took a few more uncertain steps and heard the snow crunching underfoot. Huge white clouds sailed across the face of the sun in a pale blue sky.

“Hello? Kara? Anyone?”

The snow crunched behind her. Wren turned around and felt her bowels turn to frozen slush.

A dark titan loomed over her, a giant covered in red fur and obsidian claws, with eyes that burned like molten gold, and in its maw stood a forest of white fangs dripping with venom. The beast roared.

Wren stumbled back, her shaking hands reaching for her sling, but it was gone, reaching for her knife, but it was gone, summoning up the aether, but it wouldn’t answer.

“No, no, stay back, stay away!” She turned to run and the giant fox demon roared again. Wren fell to her hands and knees in the freezing snow as a sharp cracking pain raced down her spine and erupted from her back. She twisted around and saw the dark red fur of her own tail writhing and flicking around her thighs.