Joseph Lewis: Wren the Fox Witch

Omar ran to one side, grabbed hold of a large chest of drawers next to the wall, and shoved. The tiny wooden legs screeched across the bare floor, until two of them snapped off. Together, they wrestled the bureau in front of the door, and then stood panting in the shadows.

In the quiet, they heard thumping and grunting and distorted echoes from the hall outside and from the rooms below.

Omar crossed to the windows and looked down. “Good. There’s a balcony here. We can get to the roof, move to another part of the estate, and find our way out of here, quietly.”

“Wait a minute, what’s going on?” Wren asked in an anxious whisper. “We’ve got an army of dead bodies out there walking around, and they’re still got souls inside them. That’s crazy. That’s not how it works.”

“Oh, you noticed that too, did you?” Omar grinned. “Yes, that is a bit unusual.”

Wren frowned. “Doesn’t anything surprise you anymore?”

“Not really, no. The world is huge and strange. If you would just stop expecting it to always play by the rules, it would surprise you a lot less, too.” He unlatched one of the tall glazed windows and gently swung it out. It squeaked softly.

“But don’t you think we should stay here and figure this out? What if it’s another plague, like the one in Ysland? Some sort of ancient soul-breaking creature, maybe? One that turns people into frozen corpses instead of giant foxes?”

Omar chuckled as he swung one leg out the window and carefully slipped through the narrow opening onto the wrought iron balcony, which groaned as it took his weight. “It’s possible,” he said. “But what happened in Ysland was awfully rare and unlikely. I doubt the exact same thing is happening here. And besides, even if it was the same, this time it isn’t my fault, so I don’t feel particularly inclined to linger. Come along, little one. It’s time to go.”

Wren crossed the room. “But-”

The door handle behind her rattled in its housing, and a voice whispered, “Wren? Let us in! Hurry!”

Wren dashed back to the bedroom door. “Thora? Is that you?”

“Of course it’s me. The door at the top of the stairs was locked, so we came back down. And those things are coming up the stairs. Let us in!”

Wren looked down at the bureau and then back at Omar standing out on the balcony. “Help me move this!”

“Absolutely not. Now get out here, young lady. I imagine we have a long night of running and hiding before us. And I may be immortal, but I still get tired and sore-footed, and I’ve no desire to watch those corpses tear you apart, either. Now come along!”

“No, we can’t just leave her out there.”

“We can, and we will. Need I remind you that those two tried to kill us not a quarter of an hour ago?” He held out his hand through the open window. “Now come on!”

You don’t need to remind me, but there’s a difference between a blood feud and Ragnarok, and when it looks like the world is ending, it’s not a crime to set old wounds aside, even if it’s only for a little while.

Wren lunged against the side of the chest of drawers, heaving it slowly back across the room, its two broken feet screaming across the scratched floorboards. Between shoves, she heard the thumping on the stairs outside, and she heard Leif grunting and cursing, his sword sighing through the air as he hacked the frozen bodies to pieces, the limbs banging and rolling on the landing just outside the door.

“Hurry!” Thora yelled. “They’re getting closer!”

The bureau shifted a little more, enough for Thora to slam the door inward a bit, just enough for Wren to see her face in the gap. The taller girl looked pale, her golden eyes wide, her lips twisted into a terrified grimace. Wren shoved again and the bureau screeched again, but her hand slipped and she stumbled off to one side, right against the corner of the bed. Her shoulder struck one of the wooden columns, and the sudden pain jarred her from her chest to her hips.

She turned to look at the widened gap in the door. Thora had shoved her head and one shoulder into the room and was straining to push the door open, straining to push the bureau just a bit farther away, but the huge chest of drawers had caught on a warped floorboard and refused to move any farther.

Wren staggered up and saw Omar out on the balcony, his arms crossed over his chest, a stern and disapproving look on his face. But she dashed back to the door just as a heavy body was flung against it from the other side. There were two booms in quick succession, and each time Thora winced and grunted. Leif was shouting, and judging from the sounds Wren guessed that his sword was banging and hacking into the walls and floor as much as the corpses.

Thora’s hands clutched the door frame, her eyes screwed shut as she shoved with all her strength against the blocked door. Wren grabbed the bureau and pulled, but with a sinking, exhausted feeling in her belly that there was no hope of it moving any more. She ran to the door and grabbed Thora’s arm and tried to pull the other girl inside, through the gap was still far too small.

Then Thora’s face went slack and she stared into Wren’s eyes, and for a cold instant they stood together, face to face, in silence. Then a blue hand with black nails wrapped around Thora’s face, two of its fingers poking into her mouth, and wrenched her back out into the hall. Wren leapt forward to slam the door shut with shaking hands, and she sat with her back to the door, gasping and shaking as she listened to Thora and Leif scream together just two paces away, just behind her on the other side of the door. Leif roared and Thora shrieked, and then both went suddenly silent, and all Wren could hear were wet thumping sounds on the floor and wall behind her.

Staring across the room, over the bed, through its tattered curtains, and past the window, she saw Omar still standing on the balcony. He was gazing up at the roof, one finger tapping lightly on his chin as though he was trying to decide what sort of flowers might look best around the window frame.

A body crashed against the door behind her, rattling the hinges. With a hot surge of adrenaline in her legs, Wren scrambled up, ran across the room, and jumped through the open window. She stumbled into Omar’s arms and looked up at the Aegyptian, only to see a weary and slightly condescending smile.

“Oh good, you’re here. Now we can run for our lives.” He jogged across the balcony, pointed out a series of handholds in the brickwork and roof, and together they climbed up onto the icy tiles beside a narrow chimney.

“I can’t believe you just left them like that,” she said.

“And I can’t believe you tried to save them.”

Wren’s foot shot out from under her, and she fell to her knees. Omar helped her back up and they trudged slowly and carefully up the slope of the roof through the snow and over the ice, squinting into the whistling wind.

“How can it possibly be colder here than in Ysland?” Wren muttered.

Omar snorted. “Ysland’s covered in volcanoes. It barely counts as cold at all. This is genuine cold, here. This is winter as it should be.”

“You like this?”

“I hate this. But at least it’s the genuine article.”

The ice underfoot crackled and the snow slid down a bit here and there, but otherwise the roof held together and they walked along the apex arm in arm, each of them looking down at a steep fall across the tiles and into a frozen garden or a snowy courtyard or a wrought iron fence with tiny spikes along the top.

On their right side, they could see the walking dead milling about near the front gates of the castle grounds, but they were merely shuffling in circles or leaning against walls. They moaned softly to one another, making sounds that were almost words. Here and there, a pair of them would collide and paw at each other, sometimes even hitting each other, but never with much force or passion, and they would drift apart again.