Jaleigh Johnson - Unbroken Chain - The Darker Road

Agny was on the grayer side of fifty winters, with leathery hands and a mask carved with symbols of water: hands cupping it, rain falling from the sky, a water spirit crouching by her left eye. She wore a gray and red wool dress, frayed and muddied around the edges from travel. The hathran walked stiff-jointed and carried a gnarled wood staff whose power Sree could feel even from this distance.

“Well met, Sister.” Sree held out her hands, and Agny clasped them tightly. Her eyes behind the mask were unreadable, but Sree sensed affection in the old woman’s grip.

“You look as if you’ve seen dark days,” Agny said. Her voice rang out clipped and strong. Age and toil had not dulled her mind, not even a bit.

“You feel it, don’t you?” Sree said. “The telthors are shaking the earth.”

“I feel the fear in the villagers, as well. That boy was drowning in it. You must not let this continue,” Agny chided. “Come.” She folded Sree’s arm through her own, and together they walked beside the lake. “If the spirits are displeased, we must act to set right whatever wrong called forth their ire. It’s the only way you will find peace in Tinnir again.”

“What of the child?” Sree asked. “She is innocent in all this, yet the disturbances seem to happen whenever she is near. What if the spirits hurt her?”

“They will not. I’m sure of that. She is the vessel,” Agny said. “The spirits are angry that Yaraella took her own life. They punish us, they remind us, by surrounding her child with violence.”

“They should punish me,” Sree said. “I failed Yaraella by not teaching her properly. If I had done my duty, she would have embraced the path of the wychlaran instead of shunning her talents. She would have become a powerful hathran, a link to the spirits-”

“Do not torment yourself with things that can never be,” Agny said. “You honor Yaraella’s memory by protecting her child. We must look to the child now to guide us. Tell me, where is she now?”

“Reina is bringing her here,” Sree said. “She is calmest by the lake.”

Agny’s sharp eyes bored into Sree. “Now I hear the fear in your voice, Sister. What are you not telling me? What is the child like when she is not calm?”

Sree dropped her gaze. “Yesterday at dawn I caught her with a knife. She’d cut herself up and down her arms. I got to her before she did irreparable harm, but it could have been much worse. When I asked her why she’d done it …”

“Yes?” Agny prompted. “Did the spirits speak to her? I cannot believe they would have told her to do this to herself-”

“No,” Sree said. “No, it wasn’t the spirits, Elina said. She said it was the shadow people.”

“Shadow people?” Agny said. “But if she wasn’t speaking of spirits, what manner of creature did she see?” Agny stiffened, as if she’d felt a shift in the wind. She turned. “Never mind. I’ll ask her myself.”

Reina walked toward them. She led Elina by the hand. The child stepped clumsily, trying to put her own small feet in the footprints left in the snow by Sree and Agny. Sree hung back as Agny approached the child and went down on her knees in the snow. She laid her staff on the ground beside her and held out her arms to the child, just as she’d done to Sree.

Elina froze with one foot held in the air. She stumbled, and only Reina’s hands kept her from falling. When the ethran tried to nudge her forward, the child clung to her skirt and hid her face from Agny.

“Don’t be afraid, Elina,” the hathran said. Her voice was gentle. “I was a friend to your mother. I knew her when she was your age.” She reached inside the pocket of her skirt and pulled out a fist-sized wooden box with blue waves painted on the outside. “She made this box for me.”

Hearing the word “box,” Elina turned her face to look. Her hair hung down in her eyes, but she followed Agny’s movements as the hathran lifted the box lid to reveal a tiny painting of a waterfall that spilled from the lid to the bottom of the box in a cloud of white foam.

“She painted this for me, so I would always remember the waterfalls I saw on my dajemma . It was the only journey I ever made beyond Rashemen.” She closed the lid and held out the box. “I think your mother would want you to have it. It would make me happy to give it to you.”

Tentatively-though Sree could see the desire in her eyes-the child took a step away from Reina, then another and another until she was just within reach of the box. She reached up her hand and took it, her fingers barely brushing the hathran’s.

It was enough. Sree watched Agny’s eyes widen. She wondered what the old woman had sensed from the contact, but she dared not question her in front of the child. Elina took the box and walked up to Sree with her arms outstretched. Sree obligingly picked her up.

“Elina,” she said, “Agny has come a long way to visit us. She wants to know more about what happened the day you fell asleep behind the woodpile.”

The child shook her head fiercely, but Agny laid a hand on her arm. “I won’t make you speak of it, little one. All I want is for you and I, and Reina and Sree-the four of us-to join together to think of your mother and the spirits. We will remember her and comfort one another. Will you join me in this, Elina?”

Elina hesitated and glanced at Sree. Sree nodded encouragement and patted her on the back. The little girl finally nodded and then shyly buried her face in Sree’s neck.

“My deepest thanks, Elina. You are a brave girl,” Agny said. The hathran looked to Sree, and her expression turned resolute. “Will you take me to Yaraella’s resting place?”

“I thought it best if we communed here,” Sree said, gesturing to the lake. “I’ve a boat prepared for our use, so that you may be on the water during the joining.”

Agny looked surprised. “But surely, Sister, the connection will be strongest around Yaraella. That is the place the spirits will gather.”

“It may,” Sree allowed. She hated to speak of this in front of Elina, but Agny’s sharp eyes looked expectantly to her for an answer. “But we already have a strong center for this joining”-she hoped Agny would take her meaning without her having to frighten Elina by referring to her as a pawn in a ritual-“and to add the sacred ground of Yaraella’s spirit to this. I fear the power might be too much for some of us.”

“Very well,” Agny said. “I defer to your judgment in this, Sister. Lead on.”

Sree breathed a silent sigh of relief. Carrying Elina, she led the witches down the lakeshore to a small dock. Moored to one of the pilings was a boat, the bow carved with symbols of mountain peaks and flames. It was an odd grouping, when seen in that light: fire, mountain, water. But just as the symbols also represented hearth and home to Sree, so, too, did the water represent home to Agny. She’d been born on this lake and rocked to her first sleep by the motion of a fisherman’s felucca. No matter how frigid the waters became in the deep winter, Agny would rather swim than walk; she would rather be on a boat than on land. Sree often thought the water spirits had helped bring Agny into the world that long-ago day on the ship. Now they claimed part of her soul.

Agny stepped onto the boat first, then Sree and the child. Reina untied the mooring rope, and the four of them settled down on wooden plank benches. Agny closed her eyes and touched her mask with both hands. The wind lifted her gray hair. Sree breathed in deeply and caught the scent of Agny’s magic surrounding the boat. It nudged the craft away from the dock and pushed it toward the middle of the lake.

The few other craft they encountered gave way immediately when the fishermen saw the two hathrans. They bowed their heads as the witches drifted silently past.