Joseph Lewis: Wren the Fox Witch

At the end of the roof, Omar pointed out a brick chimney at the lower edge and they slid down on their backsides to it. There, between the angle of the roof and the wall of the chimney, the wind was gentler and quieter.

“Now what?” Wren asked. “Those things are everywhere.”

“Not everywhere.” Omar nodded at the north wall where a small gate house stood between a frosted garden and the town outside.

“Won’t they see us?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure if they can see or hear. What if they can only feel vibrations in their feet, or only smell? They’re certainly not the most athletic enemies we’ve ever faced. After all, their bodies are dead and frozen.” Omar ran his thumb along his jaw. “It would seem the only things keeping them moving at all are their souls. And that means you can simply push them away with your little trick.”

Wren nodded. “I can, but I don’t know how many I can manage. And what if the aether thins out? Besides, I don’t think I’m good enough to hold off an entire city yet. Why can’t you just use your seireiken on them?”

Omar shuffled in place and winced. “I could, but frankly I’m not too keen on having these souls absorbed into the blade. What if they’re damaged somehow? Broken, insane, diseased souls, maybe? Forever is a very long time to have a diseased soul trapped in your sword.”

“Couldn’t you just ignore them?”

“Maybe. But what if they infect the other souls in the seireiken? I have some very nice dead people in there, you know. You’ve met them.”

“Then don’t absorb the corpse souls. Just do that fancy cutting thing that doesn’t kill people. Except, you know, use it to kill them this time,” Wren said.

“Iaido? Maybe. It’s still a risk. I’m cold and tired, my hand could slip, I could make a mistake, and forever is a very long-”

“-long time to live with a mistake, I know.” Wren rolled her eyes. “Only you could make immortality sound like such a burden. I think I’m becoming thankful that I’ll die one day.”

“You’re learning!” Omar grinned. “Now let’s go. Quietly.”

They climbed down from their perch on the roof to a stone balcony, and from there they slipped over the stone walls to the garden below. Snowy evergreens stood in silent rows around them, blocking their view of the north gate as well as everything else. Wren shuffled through the snow, feeling carefully with her thin boots, and soon felt the hard edges of a paved path underfoot.

Waving at Omar to follow, she led the way through the trees into an open space full of snow-capped bushes that stood waist high, and then past flower beds where only a handful of short brown stalks indicated where the flowers had once been. She could see the north gate now, its wooden doors standing slightly ajar.

They paused a moment to listen to the wind howling over the rooftops, and the ice cracking, and the corpses moaning.

Now or never.

Wren strode out into the open and headed straight for the gate. Her eyes darted everywhere, to the buildings on her right and the wall on her left, and to the garden behind.

Still all clear.

When she stepped off the garden path onto the paved lane that led to the gate, her foot slipped on the solid sheet of ice, but Omar caught her arm and they strode on without missing a beat. The open doors of the gate house swayed gently in the wind before them, and Wren heard a dry scraping sound. Then a bare blue foot poked out the gate house door, and then the entire corpse shuffled into view. It was an older man with a scraggly white beard and frostbitten ears. His eyes were brown-in-white, mostly. Thin black veins crept in from the edges.

“Nine hells,” Wren whispered.

The corpse looked up at her sharply, and then lunged at her. Wren threw up her right hand and a mass of aether swept up from the ground, striking the dead man like a huge fist to the stomach. He crumpled over and staggered to one side. Wren swept her right hand across the paved lane and the aether swept along with her, crashing into the corpse like a tidal wave and knocking him out of the way.

She darted toward the open door, but paused to stare down at the black and blue figure on the ground. The corpse was moving, struggling to pick himself up, but his arms and legs seemed stiff and heavy. Icy crystals sparkled in the deep creases on his hands and around his eyes.

“We’re not safe yet,” Omar chided her as he propelled her through the short tunnel of the gate house and back out into the city of Targoviste.

“No one’s safe,” she said.

After Targoviste, they walked east for two days on the snowy highway and did not see a single living soul. Crows circled high overhead in a pale blue sky, and rabbits dashed through the soft snow, but nothing larger than a beaver appeared. Twice on the road they saw a shambling blue man or woman in the woods, but both times they hurried on and soon lost sight of them.

Just before noon on the first day, they sighted the city of Shumen and Omar led them in a wide circle through the woods, wading through knee-deep snow over rocky and treacherous ground to avoid even the most remote houses, and only rejoined the road when they were well clear of the last signs of civilization. Wren kept her ears uncovered, listening for voices, for the sounds of labor and play and household arguments. She heard none, and saw no one.

That evening they passed through the small town of Kaspichan, and Omar decided to risk the road rather than the wilderness. Again Wren kept watch and listened, and again there was no sign of life. But she did see muddy footprints in the snow, and she saw where the old drifts had been trampled into gray slush in the alleys, but she could not guess how old the tracks were, or whether they were made by men or animals.

During the night they slept in an empty farm house just off the road. They barricaded the doors and windows as best they could and took the watch in shifts. And during Wren’s shift she heard something out in the darkness, something moving slowly through the trees nearby, but she never saw what it was, and when morning came there was no sign of anyone outside.

Late in the afternoon of the second day, with the desolate town of Devnya far behind them, they began to hear familiar sounds in the distance ahead. Flapping canvas, snaking ropes, creaking wagons, clopping mules, and clanging tools. As they drew closer to their destination, they heard the gulls crying and the waves sloshing onto a pebbled beach, and a church bell ringing, and finally the voices of people. Talking and shouting, and cursing. And when they finally walked into the small port of Varna, they saw the tall slender men in their caps and coats, and the round little wives in their shawls and scarves, and all of them were very much alive.

Wren paused to look back across the hills and down the frozen highway. Something faint tickled her furry ears. “I hear something.”

“Such as?” Omar tugged his supple leather gloves tighter over his hands.

“Footsteps. Behind us.”

“You’re imagining it,” he said. “You’re tired and tense. You need food and sleep.”

Wren hesitated, still staring out across the wintry fields behind them, but she saw nothing. With a worried frown, she raised her scarf to cover her ears and followed Omar into the town. With the sun setting behind them, the streets of Varna were already dim and growing quickly dimmer. A few torches sputtered and growled in iron braziers outside the larger buildings, but otherwise the town was awash in shadows.

The people moving through the lanes were grim and stern, mostly fishermen with sacks over their shoulders or women with aprons full of breads, cheeses, eggs, lukanka salami, and beets. Wren sniffed out the strange meals hidden behind the closed doors, and Omar named them as they passed.