Chapter 64: The Witch by My Side
“Oi! You filthy little rats! Drop what you're holding! I'll have your hides for this, see if I don't!” a man’s rough, angry voice bellowed from behind us, followed by the savage barking of dogs.
“Damn it, the foreman’s here! Run, Parula!” Jared hissed. He had warned me someone was coming. Even without a watch, without a lookout, he had known, his instincts honed to a razor's edge by a life of timing and evasion.
“Wait!” I ducked down, my hands scrambling, and snatched the old, black-covered Bible from the pile. It was probably useless, but it was the only other book here I could read. There was no time to look for anything else.
“No time! Go!” Jared scooped me up into his arms again and took off, a blur of motion. Behind us, I could hear the baying of dogs. He moved through the mountains of refuse with a startling, ferret-like agility, his bare feet making no sound on the shifting piles of junk. This place of decay and forgotten things was as familiar to him as a home. He didn't follow the path the other scavengers had taken, but instead ducked and weaved through a dense forest of rusted iron and scrap metal, using his small size to slip through gaps that seemed impossibly narrow.
He finally brought me to a crumbling section of the outer wall, where a small, dark hole had been dug out at the base. It was a dog's entrance, perhaps, or a secret bolt-hole known only to the desperate. Jared, of course, already knew it was here. A flicker of Parula’s memory surfaced, confirming that she, too, had known of this escape route. But the memory only came after I had seen the hole. This was the curse of her fragmented mind; I could only remember things passively, triggered by sight or sound.
Jared pushed me through the hole first, then scrambled out after me. The sounds of pursuit, the angry shouts and the barking of dogs, were gone. We were safe. It was, I suppose, the first time in my life I had ever truly stolen anything. The thrill of it, the adrenaline, was a strange, unwelcome sensation. I had always been a good kid. But our haul was significant. Two books. The atlas, a key that was already beginning to unlock the secrets of this twisted world. And the Bible, a strange, unexpected prize. Its leather cover was worn smooth with age, the pages yellowed and brittle, the corners soft and frayed from countless turnings. Unlike the pristine, new atlases, this book had been loved, had been used, before it was discarded. But it hadn't been discarded willingly. As I flipped through the pages, I saw it: a dark, rust-brown spatter of dried blood across the page of Psalms, a silent, damning testament to its previous owner's violent end.
I was still examining the strange, blood-stained Bible as we made our way back through the city. The city we returned to was a different beast from the one we had left. The streets were crawling with peelers, their green uniforms a stark, unnerving presence. A tense, watchful silence had replaced the usual din. And on every wall, on every post, were newly pasted wanted posters. The portrait was just as I had imagined. The witch was beautiful, even more so than I had thought, with the face of a suffering, fallen angel. It was impossible to reconcile this image with the monster who had drained the life from a crowd of people with the flick of her wrist.
By the time we descended back into the familiar gloom of the waterway, the last vestiges of daylight were gone. The roar of the factories was a constant, distant thunder. We returned to our dismal little alcove, and Jared, after a quick, cautious look around, pulled aside the ragged curtain. And then we froze.
Someone else was in our home. A figure, huddled in the deepest shadows of the alcove. A tangle of bone-white hair, stark against the gloom. A body, perfectly formed, but covered in a roadmap of fresh and faded scars. A beautiful, angelic face, now pale and drawn with exhaustion…
Bloody hell.
It was her.
The witch.
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