Page 2 of The Sea Witch
“Head to the crossroads. We’ll block her escape routes to the north and south.” Lawrence kicked his horse, as did the others, and with the pounding of dozens of hooves, they were off on the hunt.
Alys’s hands tightened on the reins.
Damn them all.
The glare of torchlight was swallowed by the trees along the road. Her eyes adjusted to the night, making sense once more out of shadows, before she urged her horse into a gallop. The world was huge and dark around her, sinister where once she’d been most alive and herself in the hours between midnight and dawn.
She headed back to the village from where the men had ridden. Alys slowed the horse as she neared a stone house at the edge of the settlement.
A man armed with a musket stood sentry outside the front door. He peered sharply into the shadows, eager to make his name as a hero.
Late autumn mists muffled sound, and she called upon their dampening ability to deaden the noise of her horse’s hooves upon the ground. In muslin tatters, the fog silently crept forward. The guard outside the house shifted from foot to foot, looking nervously around as the fog slid over the terrain and surrounded the cottage, turning the world hazy and indistinct.
He remained at his post, but held his musket closer, as if more for comfort than protection.
The longer Alys waited, the more the noose tightened around her neck. Once again, she held her breath as she guided the animal around the back of the house. There was no one standing guard back here, and the windows were all dark.
She dismounted and loosely tied the horse’s reins to a birch standing white and ghostly beside the house. The animal shifted restlessly and she rubbed its muzzle to calm it, but the beast was unused to being abroad at this hour, and with an unfamiliar rider.
Not merely any rider. A witch.
With arms grown strong from climbing masts and fastening rigging, Alys pulled herself up the tree, until she reached a second story window and peered through it.
Light from the moon slid into the chamber, revealing the rough-hewn wooden floor, a washstand, and two narrow beds.
Alys tapped on the glass. Faintly at first, and then a little louder. Two figures clad in pale nightgowns came to the window, which swung open with a squeak. Alys winced at the sound.
Cecily’s and Polly Gower’s astonished faces appeared. Both had plaited their hair for sleep, though Cecily’s braid was flaxen and Polly’s braid was black. In the moonlight, Cecily’s fair cheeks glowed ghostly white, while Polly’s bronze skin shone deeply.
Polly had been forcibly taken from her Pawtucket family as a small girl and “adopted” by Reverend and Mrs. Gower. The Reverend liked to claim he treated Polly as his own daughter, insisting she and Cecily were sisters in every capacity, but Cecily didn’t have to scrub the chicken coop, or draw bucket after bucket of water for the household’s baths, or a hundred other tasks Polly was made to do.
Before the women could speak, Alys whispered, “Whatever’s most precious to you, grab that, and dress warmly. Quickly, now.”
Cecily said, “What—”
“Talk softly,” Alys hissed. “Henry Dales stands guard outside your front door, waiting for his comrades to join him and seize us.” At the Gower girls’ questioning looks, Alys explained, “You, me, Susannah, the others. I overheard men talking by the courthouse. We’re to be arrested and charged with witchcraft.”
The girls’ eyes widened.
Alys drew in a shuddering breath. “They’ve made charges against you and me and the rest, and they’re coming for us tonight.”
“Will they—” Cecily’s hand went to her neck.
“A trial is too much bother for them. We won’t live past sunrise.”
“We can take the southern road to Gloucester,” Polly said.
Alys pressed her lips into a line. “The roads out of the village are watched.”
“Then there’s no way to freedom.” Cecily’s words were despairing.
“There’salwaysa way to freedom.” Voice firm with conviction, Alys instructed, “Dress quickly, take only what you must. The men are at the crossroads, there’s no way out to the north and south. Sentinels are stationed at our houses. Use the forest and the fields and gather the others. I’ll summon as many shadows as I can for you. Meet me at the docks in quarter of an hour. Come now, Ellen.”
A pained silence fell.
Alys closed her eyes, but it never stopped the images from flooding through her mind, and she would never,neverforget the sound of the tree limb creaking from the weight of her sister Ellen’s lifeless form...
“Hurry, girls,” she said.
