Page 22 of Sightwitch
Some hovered so high that even with her arms stretched upward, I do not think the girl could have reached the top. I’ve no idea how she got the stones up there.
Sixteen stacks she built, until the ground was barren. Eventually, she ate an apple from her rucksack. Then she napped amid the stone columns.
By the time the sun set, I had decided to retrieve her. To take her into the Convent, though it would surely be a death sentence for us both.
In fact, I had convinced myself that,No!Of course the woman would not return for the girl, and it would be more cruel to leave her here, where she would die of starvation, than to bring her in, where at least we could slowly rot away together.
“Dirdra!”
The voice, a cry from the forest, toppled my desperate day-dream and startled the child out of another nap.
“Dirdra!” the woman called again, and this time, she coalesced from the forest’s frayed edge.
The girl scrambled up, knocking into one of her piles. Somehow, though, it did not fall. It wobbled and swayed dangerously, yet remained upright. I might have wondered more at that had my heart not been splitting in two as I watched the girl scamper off.
Over the bridge she went, and into the woman’s waiting arms. A quick embrace before she shooed the girl into the woods without her. She waited until the girl was out of sight before marching to the island, around the fountain, and finally to the northern shore.
She looked directly at me.
I immediately dropped to my knees.
“Why will you not take her?” she shouted in accented Cartorran. “She is clever and she listens well! Please, Sightwitch, we have nowhere else to leave her.”
She can see me,I thought, crawling away from the nest’s edge. She can see me and the glamour has failed and I am exposed.I half fell down the ladder trying to get away. I needed to check on the Standing Stones—somehow, they must have broken and the glamour had fallen.
SHE COULD SEE ME.
“She will die out here,” the woman cried after me. “I am begging you to take her, Sightwitch. Please!”
I paused then, my pulse hammering in my eardrums. If I didn’t answer, would she follow? If the glamour was down, there was nothing to keep her outside the Convent grounds.
So I swiveled back and cupped my mouth. “And she will die here too! The Sightwitches are all gone, and there can be no home for her at the Convent.”
With that, I spun on my heel and sprinted directly for the Standing Stones.
It is only now, as I sit against the tallest monolith of the eight while the last of the day’s light fades, that I realize the woman must have been a Threadwitch.
All the Standing Stones are intact, which means the glamour spell that is bound to them still holds. She must have seen my Threads—not me—through the magic.
Which means she did not hear my answer.
Which means she will never know why I couldn’t take in little Dirdra.
For some reason, this makes me cry.
And cry and cry and cry and cry.
The grass tickles my ankles. The Rook preens atop a smaller stone nearby.
I miss Tanzi.
Tanzi Lamanaya
Y14 D27
NOTES ON RULE 12: ACCEPTING CHILDREN TO THE CONVENT
Long ago, the Sightwitch Sister Convent was vast place, spanning half the mountain, and the Sisters took in every girl who was ever left at the Sorrow.
