Page 32 of As Many Souls as Stars
‘He said he would fix it,’ she wailed. ‘That we would no longer be cursed. But oh, oh, Cybil, my love is dead, and there is no escape for us. There never shall be.’
‘I can help you, if only you would come down—’
Bess laughed, a laugh as much a scream. ‘I will meet them. My husband, my son. Away from the curse—somewhere better. Somewhere new.’
‘Mother,do not—!’
Bess stepped off the rooftop.
Cybil did not look. She could not look. She turned away, squeezed her eyes shut. She heard the thump against the ground, like a pheasant shot down; she heard the men shouting in horror. In the darkness behind her lids, she saw flickers of red light from the torches surrounding her, and the network of her own veins, tree roots spreading wider and wider. The spade was heavy in her hands, the wood made warm from her touch. It felt like a living thing, a loving thing, ready to obey her command.
Behind her, Martingale’s voice came, unshaken by what he had seen. ‘Come with me, Lady Cybil. If you are cooperative, the courts shall be merciful.’
Cybil opened her eyes. She turned to look at him. She could feel the heat she had felt on the roof rising once more, a prickling burn across her skin; and she could hear the shadows whispering, too, as familiar to her as the sound of the music she had once played on her virginal, or the threads of the tapestry she had once unpicked. Their whispers gathered in the tips of her fingers, in the base of her belly, in every bone and sinew of her limbs. They were hungry, sohungry. All she needed to do was feed them.
All she needed to do was make a trade.
‘I do not require your mercy,’ she said. ‘If you believe me a witch, then a witch I shall be.’
Then she allowed every ember that had collected within her hollow heart, every ounce of loneliness and regret, every frustrated desireand fragile hope, to release itself from her—rising, meteoric—and she fed them, grinning, to the shadows.
The pain was indescribable: something being rent from her, torn and seared, a new emptiness where she had not known a presence had even existed. But the pain was beautiful, also. It was a new colour she had never seen; a language she had not known she spoke. The shadows welcomed her, consumed her—and as a slice of her soul was lost, she knew the darkness would do anything she wanted.
A trade, she told it.My fire for yours.
The shadows spun about her, joyous, grateful, a whirlpool of darkness, singing their thanks in incomprehensible hisses. Then they flew towards Harding Hall.
It took only a moment. With a great groan, the roof of the Hall collapsed upon itself, as the entire building burst into flame.
The fall of the roof sent a shower of sparks into the air. It made an echoing boom that shook the ground beneath their feet. The heat that arrived in its wake was so shocking in its intensity, so dry and furious, that most of the men cried out in alarm and began to run into the shelter of the woods. Cybil did not flinch. She looked up at the burning shell of her childhood home, and as she watched, several of the windows burst, unable to survive the sudden rise in temperature. Lead began to melt in great drips from the sections of the roof that had survived. An acrid scent filled the air.
A deep, fearful silence fell upon those who remained. Both Martingale and Peter had become insubstantial with terror, shivering like sheets in the wind. Cybil’s home was gone, her mother dead, but she did not feel sadness, or even fear. She took a deep breath of ashen air and then began to laugh.
No evidence now, witchfinder, she thought.There is nothing left. Nothing.
For a moment, no one reacted. Then Martingale cried to those men still present, voice shaking, ‘Well? Arrest her!’
None of the men moved. Peter sat on the ground and covered his face with his hands.
Martingale cursed and ran towards Cybil, clutching his hat with one hand to keep it on his head. Cybil swallowed her laughter, thenturned and fled back towards the gardens; he gave chase. Despite the fact that the spade was slowing her, unwieldy and almost too heavy to lift, she could not abandon it. She had no other weapon, save the power that had set the Hall alight.
But the shadows had now gone silent. Cybil felt suddenly and profoundly exhausted, and when she tried to summon the spark, it doused itself before it could catch. The exhaustion only worsened as she ran, feet skidding over frost-limned stone and half-melted snow. When she reached the flower beds, she tripped, falling to her knees. Her elbows skimmed across the ground, ripping twin tears in the silk of her sleeves. Her skin burnt from the scrape. In front of her, endless rows of soil lay orderly in the darkness, scarred with frost, crowned by barren trellises.
For a moment, Cybil could hear only her breathing, and the creaking sounds of Harding Hall as it burnt. Then footsteps approached on the path. As they slowed, she turned her head to see the worn leather of Martingale’s boots.
‘Stand up,’ he said. ‘Surrender willingly, and you may still survive this night.’
Howling in anger, Cybil spun around and slashed at his stomach with the edge of the spade.
The tool was not sharp enough to cut through his clothes, but it was a good blow all the same. Martingale fell like a sack of stones before her. Groaning in pain, he reached for the spade and attempted to wrestle it from her; they became entangled, rolling together across the ground, four hands on the handle and legs flailing wildly.
Cybil was more furious, more desperate, but she could not match Martingale’s strength. Eventually, he managed to shove her down, so that she was flat on her back against the ground. He wrenched the spade from her grip. Brandishing it triumphantly, he loomed over her, flushed with exertion.
‘Enough now,’ he said to her. ‘You are mine.’
Cybil spat at him. ‘You will burn in Hell. When you see the flames, know that I sent them.’
‘Silence,’ he hissed. ‘You will see Hell yourself, soon enough.’
