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On the fifth day after the storm had broken, Robert Dryden went to call the witch.
He left at dawn, trudging through the knee-high snow as the sky slowly grayed with the dawn. He followed the churning waters of the river Axe upwards, branches swatting at his face as he trekked through the woods. By midmorning, he caught sight of her hut, and the frail, wizened figure hacking logs into kindling behind it.
“I need your help,” Robert said, and the witch came with him.
* * *
“What is wrong with him?” She asked. The fire spat softly behind them, the feeble light making the shadows stretch and bend. The cob house had never been luxurious, but in the dead of winter, it seemed an even harsher place. Rough walls, dirt floor. One poorly hewn bed frame crammed close to the fire.
And, of course, the boy within it.
The witch knelt beside the bed, looking closely at the boy. He was young, below sixteen, maybe, though it was difficult to tell for certain. Smooth skin unmarred by pox, cheekbones and a jawline that gently curved together. He would’ve looked angelic, thought Robert, if he hadn’t been trembling from fever.
“I don’t know. ‘S why I called you, for I thought you’d be able to tell.” He shifted, anxious, feet shuffling on the floor.
She glanced up at him, then laid the back of her hand against the boy’s forehead. She took one thin wrist into her hand and felt for a pulse, expression creasing into a frown.
“How long has he been here?”
“Since the storm, five days gone. Wise found him on the beach, washed up and covered with ice. No idea how he was still alive.” The discovery of the boy had, at first, been seen as a miracle; how else was one to explain such a thing?
Yet he had not awoken, not once, since they had found him.
The witch moved about her work, listening to his breathing, feeling the beating of his heart. She lingered over his hands, gently touching the blackened fingertips.
“Will they mend?” Robert asked softly. He had little desire to cripple anyone, even less so a boy so young. Still, would they not poison the body against him, seeing as how dark they had become?
“I believe so. Soak them in warm water each day. That should help, if nothing else.”
“And the fever?”
She didn’t answer, laying her hand back on the boy’s forehead. The firelight shone in her eyes, turning them a flickering orange.
“Sybil.”
“I don’t know,” she murmured, brushing the curls back off the boy’s forehead with such gentleness it nearly pained him to see.
* * *
It was darkness. That’s what he dreamed of, at least. Darkness that was heavy, darkness that choked you with greedy hands, grasping, tightening against the struggle to break free. Birds made of blackness, birds with sharp claws that bit into his fingers, into his back. Birds that screamed and laughed and gibbered.
He dreamed in snatches, fragments that churned up and vanished beneath the haze of his own unconsciousness. Stone walls with few windows, cobwebbed corners and disapproving stares. The bite of a belt against flesh. Coughs and sobs, the sounds of someone begging - was it him, or another? Did it matter, when it cut him all the same?
At the end of it all was darkness, and it pulled him down like driftwood slipping beneath the waves.
* * *
The witch came back three days later, a covered basket over one arm. Robert had been waiting for her, and had nearly gone out to wrest her from her home more than once, but another snowfall had kept him from doing so.
Things had decidedly taken a turn for the worse.
She met him without speaking, and he brought her to the cob house. The boy lay there, ashen and shaking. The fever hadn’t broken, as they’d all hoped; if anything, he burned even hotter now. Robert didn’t know how the sheer force of it hadn’t killed the lad already.
He murmured unintelligibly, blackened fingers twitching softly. Sweat gleamed upon his pace countenance, and his cheekbones, once delicate, now seemed rather hollow. Robert had tried to force some broth into him a few times, but was met with little success.
“What holds him?” The farmer whispered, watching the witch about her work.
“Nothing good,” She said, and pulled a knife from her basket.
* * *
The world was still and silent, save for the thudding of the axe hitting wood. He swung again and again, splitting logs with ease as his thoughts churned discordantly within him.
There is evil in that room, his wife had said. You can’t see it, but even you know it’s there.
He swung again, and the log split with a resounding snap.
He shouldn’t be here, she insisted. No matter who he is, he shouldn’t be here with us. Not with whatever has a hold of him.
A swing. Another snap.
That boy has brought a darkness with him. Soon it’ll be within us, within your own children. We must get rid of him before it comes to that.
Snap. Thud. Reset, and again.
You are blind to this evil, Robert, and it will be the end, the end of us all. Can’t you see it?
The wind blew against him, cold and sharp. Already he was out of wood.
* * *
Ten days since they found the boy, and the snows came again. Flurries drifted against his face as he hastily plowed through the snow to the cob house. The screams had woken him, even from there.
Throwing open the door, now freshly carved with runic symbols, Robert stumbled inside. The single room was barely warmer than the land outside was, and the hard dirt floor was frozen beneath his feet.
From the bed, the boy writhed, though whether it was in agony or terror, he couldn’t say. Robert went to the bed, kneeling beside him.
“Corvus…” The boy cried, eyes opening slightly, revealing just the slightest bit of white. “Dominum meum…Quid me…”
“Can you hear me? Boy? Are you awake?” Robert shook his shoulder slightly, and the boy shrieked again, wrenching away from him.
He gasped out something unintelligible, the words broken and warped by the rawness of his voice.
Footsteps outside, the crunching of snow. The door creaked open, and Wise was there, hunting knife slotted into his belt, which he had wrapped over his nightclothes. He made a series of gestures, pointing at the boy. What’s wrong with him? Wise signed, fingers flying in quick succession.
He gave no answer, but one bubbled up within him. Something dark is holding him, Sybil had said. There is no more that I can do.
Robert tried to get hold of the flailing child, but he pulled away from his grasp as though his touch burned.
“Quare…Quare, me requelisti?” The boy, whose frame was nearly skeletal beneath him, began to sob. Wise moved close, carefully closing one gnarled hand around his wrist, in an effort to stop his frantic movements. Surely, if he continued on like this, he would end up harming himself.
At Wise’s touch, the boy panicked, lashing out violently like a bolt of lightning. His hands, though frail, drew blood as they cracked against the older man’s mouth. Wise grunted, letting him go, and then turned and went back out through the door of the cob house.
He returned, minutes later, with a coil of roughspun rope.
* * *
They would bury him proper, Robert decided, when the ultimate quiet finally took him. It was the right thing to do, after all, even though they did not know his name. Wouldn’t be easy, what with all this snow. But they’d make it work.
Perhaps on the hillside, overlooking the sea. That was a nice spot, away from the driving of cattle and the feet of peasant farmers. Quietlike. It was a pity that they couldn’t bury him in the churchyard, for that was consecrated ground, and would’ve been truly proper, especially given the boy’s status. But the curate would never allow someone nameless, someone abandoned, to be buried there with the baronets and the knights of old.
So the hillside it would be, and that would be enough.
He was mulling over just where it should be when Margary, his daughter, not yet twelve, sprinted up to him. Her face was red with cold, eyes wide with fear.
“He’s awake,” she panted, and clung to him desperately.