Joseph Lewis - Wren the Fox Witch

“Faster!” Hrist cried.

“Faster!” Kara ordered.

Wren bore down on her chest, tightening her muscles, making herself smaller so her shivering ghost could spin ever faster. And suddenly the trembling stopped and she felt strangely warm. She knew, dimly, that her ghost was whirling within her body, spinning like a top, but spinning so fast that she could barely feel it anymore.

Wren opened her eyes.

At first, all she could see was white. Then she blinked and saw that the white was moving, flying, whirling past her face, whirling around her body. She turned her head and saw through the tiny wispy gaps in the white wall to the faces of the men and women standing around her, staring in at her in fear.

I did it.

She looked up and saw that the column of aether reached all the way up to the distant ceiling.

I really did it!

“Now use it!” Kara grumbled.

Wren rose to her feet, careful to keep her hands close to avoid touching the aether storm.

“Everyone get back!” She yelled through the white wall. “Everyone get down on the floor!”

She squinted through the whipping clouds, but couldn’t tell if anyone had heard her.

“Get down now!” she screamed.

Wren raised her arms over her head, letting the bracelets fall to her elbows. She could still feel her soul revolving within her flesh, spinning like the stars in the night sky, flying like the leaves on an autumn wind. She brought her hands together, feeling the humming vibrations in her ring and in her bracelets, and slowly she brought her hands down in front of her as she pulled the aether out of the storm cloud, drawing it in tighter and tighter into a ball of freezing white mist rolling between her hands.

As she pulled the aether down to her, the wall of the storm grew thinner, revealing a room full of people lying flat on the floor with their hands over their heads, and a few young men in the distance on their knees, still shooting at the dark figures out beyond the torches.

Wren inhaled and in one final gesture she pulled all of the aether into the whirling sphere of storm clouds trapped between her palms. Now she could see everything. The terrified people, the broken furniture, the guttering torches, and the sea of rotting faces clambering over the fallen dead to reach the huddled survivors.

Wren turned her hands so that one was below the storm-sphere and the other was above it, and with a silent prayer she ripped her hands away from each other. The aether exploded outward in a flat arc, tearing across the entire room like a pair of enormous white bullwhips snapping through the darkness. And everywhere that the aether whips struck a cold body, a soul would fly free up into the air as the corpses toppled over to the floor.

In an instant every dead body in the entire chamber was lying on the ground and a thousand pale faces and figures hovered in the air looking lost and frightened and sad, but also relieved and grateful. They looked down at her, a multitude of fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, farmers and soldiers and sailors and fishers, and the ghosts smiled gently as one by one they faded away into the darkness.

Wren stood very still, staring into the shadows with her fox eyes and listening with her fox ears. But no more figures shambled through the open doors, no more frozen tongues murmured, and no more dead feet scraped over the tiled floor. Everything was still and silent, except for the dripping of the water and the purring of the torches.

“Tycho?”

The major scrambled up and dashed to her side. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said. She could still feel her soul spinning, though much slower now and slower still with each passing moment. It had filled her with warmth and a wild sharpness, like lightning in her skin, but now it was fading, leaving her chilled and tired. She leaned on his shoulder slightly. “Can you please close those doors now?”

He smiled. “Yes, I think I can.”

Nadira descended the stairs slowly, her hand sliding down the cold stone wall, feeling the grain of it, the age of it, wondering how many other hands had passed over it. She wore a heavy brown robe over her borrowed clothes, a worn monk’s habit draped over a servant’s sturdy green dress. It felt strange not to be wearing trousers, feeling the air on her legs, feeling the cloth flowing around her. It stirred very, very old memories of her life in Damascus. Her first life, in the nunnery.

At the bottom of the stairs, she found a cellar. It was a long room with doors leading to other chambers, but the center of the floor directly in front of her was home to a pile of old Persian carpets and bearskin rugs flanked by three iron braziers, and on top of the mound of carpets lay an old woman with long white hair.

Nadira glanced around the space as she stepped farther in, and saw nothing of interest. No windows, no furniture, no alcoves where an enemy might be waiting to strike. She sat down on the carpets and peered at the old woman. “Wake up.”

She poked the woman. “Hey, you alive? Wake up.”

The woman didn’t move.

Nadira sighed. “Well, I can see why they left you here, at least.”

“Left?” The woman blinked and rolled her head to look at her guest. “Who are you?”

“Nadira.” She wiped her nose and sniffed violently. “I’m new around here. And you are?”

“Yaga, mother to Koschei the Deathless.”

“Oh, you’re Koschei’s mother?” Nadira smiled. “I think I met him once or twice.”

“I doubt it. He is a warrior. He does not consort with palace maids.” The white-haired woman sat up slowly.

“I’m no maid.” Nadira reached into her dress and pulled out the chain around her neck to display the little golden pendant shaped like a human heart.

Yaga plunged her own gnarled hand into her blouse and held out a matching sun-steel heart. Slowly, they both put them away.

“So,” Nadira said. “I hear you were the last ones that received Bashir’s little gift.”

“Bashir? Oh, you mean Grigori? Yes, I believe we were the last. Five hundred years ago. You?”

“Two thousand, or so.”

Yaga sneered. “Typical. He took you young and beautiful. And me? Look at this.” She waggled the loose flesh around her neck. “This, for five hundred years. Bah!”

Nadira shrugged.

“Where is everyone? Where is Wren?” Yaga asked.

“Everyone’s gone,” Nadira said. “The palace is empty. I heard them running around in the halls, and then I came out and watched them leave, scurrying like mice to get away.”

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know. Bashir put me in a room and told me to wait for him to come back, but he didn’t, and now everyone’s gone.”

“Bashir? Ugly name. I like Grigori better. He looks like a Grigori.” Yaga glanced away and wet her lips. “He came to me the first time when I was younger, like you, and then he went away, for years, and didn’t come back again until I was like this.”

“He came back?” Nadira snorted. “He never came to see me.”

“He’s a man. You can’t expect much from a man, especially once he’s tasted you.”

Nadira blanched. “You slept with him?”

“Didn’t you?”

“No!” Nadira shivered and let the horrid thought scamper back into some dark corner of her mind, but then another thought took its place. “Is Koschei his son?”

“No, no.” Yaga cackled. “Koschei’s father was a trapper, a fur trader I found half dead in the forest near my house one winter. He died, but not before he gave me my precious Koschei.”

Nadira nodded and let a long moment of silence pass between them.

“Does it change, over time?” Yaga asked. “You said it’s been a thousand years.”