Page 107 of The Witch and His Crow

Dread crept across my stomach, making it grip in pain. I was left standing dumfounded at a crossroads. Romy, or whoever—whateverthat thing had been, had led me here for a reason.

I quickly discovered why.

My eyes focused on the well-trodden ground between my fingers. A body lay there, waiting. There were the shattered remains of a bow beside the body, a quiver of arrows discarded like toys across the ground. The dread melted to fear, and allof a sudden, I lost the ability to breathe. My first thought was the corpse had to belong Romy. That she was the ghost who’d taunted me, had led me here to find her body.

Dead. Like Caym. Gone.

I knelt on the ground, hands shaking, reaching for the corpse. Their back was to me, so I couldn’t see their face. But I could see that there was so much blood. It soaked the ground, coated the back of the corpse’s head. It wasn’t until I carefully rolled it onto its back that I saw the truth of what waited.

I clapped a hand to my mouth, stifling a gasp. It was Jaz. I could tell as much from the left side of her face. The right side, however, had been completely melted off. I could see the outline of a handprint, a reminder as to who had done this.

Romy been here. Not that ghost the maze had conjured, but the real Romy. And, by the looks of it, she was the only one to go free.

There was a small part of me who felt to blame for Jaz’s death. I understood her need for revenge better than anyone. It was part of how cruel this world was to people like us. But, looking down at the ruination of her face, neck, and chest, I was just glad it wasn’t Romy who was lying here.

‘My darling boy.’

I snapped my head up from Jaz’s body, searching for the person who’d just spoke. It sounded like the wind had whispered from the path I’d just run through. But when it came again it was at my side.

‘I’m here.’

But the paths going east and west were empty. Long narrow walkways of towering walls of thorn and ivy, the far end of it shrouded in a mist.

‘Come, my darling boy.’

I pinched my eyes closed, pressing the heels of my palms into my eyes. In the dark of my mind, colours and stars burst. Thevoice was so familiar, yet so distant that I couldn’t place it. ‘This isn’t real. None of this is real.’

‘Yes, my darling boy. It is real.Iam real. Come to your mummy. I wish to get a good look at you. It has been so many years. Have you forgotten about me?’

I felt the shift of something before me, the presence of a shadow passing over light. Slowly, cautiously, I opened my eyes to find both my worst nightmare, and my life’s only wish, kneeling before me.

My mother. Shewashere. Her pale golden-brown hair floated around her shoulders as if she was in a body of water. She wore a blue flowery dress with brown slip-on brogues and a creamy knitted cardigan, the same clothes I had last seen her in. An image which had been engraved in my mind.

‘This…isn’t real.’

Mother pouted, tipping her head to the side as her eyes filled with sadness. I did nothing to stop her lifting deft fingers and trailing them down the side of my cheek.‘Of course I’m real. You know my voice, you remember it, don’t you? You’d never dare forget your own mother, would you, my darling?’

‘Never,’ I sobbed. I leaned into her hands, waiting to feel the soft kiss of her skin against mine. All I felt were my tear-sticky cheeks against heavy air. ‘But I…can’t I feel you?’

‘Shall we play a game, Hector?’ Her voice sounded far away. In a blink she was no longer kneeling before me, but standing at the entrance to the path ahead of me. I got up, body moving without thought, already preparing for what was to come next.‘Just like we used to do. That is what you want, isn’t it?’

‘I want…you. I want you to be here and alive.’

She smiled, so bright and beautiful my entire world shattered. ‘Then you must catch me and never let me go…not like you did all those years ago when you sat back and listened to me die. Doing nothing.’

The fury in her tone chilled me to the core. Anger that no child, no matter how old they were, wanted to hear from their parent.

Her disappointment in me was palpable.

Before I could justify myself, my mother turned on her heel and ran.

I left Jaz’s corpse as nothing but a forgotten memory. Although I knew, deep down, this wasn’t real—that this vision of my mother was fake—I still didn’t stop running. I needed her more than life itself.

Because her voice had been the same. The voice I had forgotten after all those years, come back to life. That alone made me run fast and hard. The dulcet tones of my mother’s lullaby voice had me ignoring the burning acid in my muscles and the ache in every bone. I didn’t have enough air in my lungs to cry out or plead. I didn’t dare waste or misplace any energy. My only focus, my only desire, was reaching her again.

Whatever game the Dreading wanted me to play, I’d play it. Just to hear my mother again. If I’d have to run to the ends of the earth for a second more of her, I would.

But unfortunately, my body didn’t agree with me. One moment I was running down twisted pathways and the next, I hit the ground. My legs gave out, my feet blistered and bleeding within my boots. I smacked into the ground with such a force that the little breath I did have in my chest was forced out.

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