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By Root 449 0

over the winter and spring, probably eaten by crows, but the frayed remains of the noose still swung from the oak tree. I could see the whole horrific scene as if it were not memory but solid reality before me now: Mistress Conyers in her sodden gown, torn between horror and justice. Enfield, the soldier of the Blues, itching to hang me from the same oak tree. And earlier, Hartah on the beach, his arms waving in the driving rain as the Frances Ormund struck the rocks and the terrified sailors staggered ashore into the wrecker’s knives. My aunt Jo, shouting to me over the storm, her features blurred by flying water: Roger! Go! Go now! The one thing I could not see was myself, the sniveling boy who clutched at the hem of Mistress Conyers’s gown and begged for his life. That boy would not come clear in my eyes, my mind, my muscles. I was no longer him.

I crossed over.

It was strange to leave a calm spring afternoon in the land of the living and arrive in storm in the country of the Dead. Always before, it had been the other way around. Now the sky here was as wild, the sea as high, the wind as howling as on the night of the wreck on the other side. The only differences were that no rain fell, and underfoot the ground shook as if it, like the Frances Ormund, were about to come apart.

Bat remained where I had left him all those months ago, sitting on a tree stump beside the track from cabin to cliff. He jumped up as soon as he saw me. He looked the same: flat head, big nose, greasy hair, slurred voice. A child in the tattered clothing of a shipwrecked sailor, the knife handle carved like an openmouthed fish still in his huge hand.

“Sir Witch!”

“Yes, Bat.”

“Ye come for Bat!”

“Yes. Are you well?”

The simple question confused him, not unreasonably. What did “well” mean—either in Witchland or the country of the Dead? Bat said nothing. He eyed me with a mixture of fear, respect, and hope. I had no idea what time had meant to him, waiting here on his stump. Nor did I think too deeply about the matter. I was too busy pushing away pity for what I was about to do to him.

It was Bat who first showed me that the Dead do not always know they are dead. It was Bat who first showed me that, lacking this essential knowledge, a dead man could will himself to fly up the cliff face. That was what I had later used to save Cat Starling from the Blues intent on burning her. Instead I had sent her to flying away through the air, and so further convincing the soldiers that they were in Witchland. It was with Bat that I had first devised that stratagem, and it was with Bat that I was now going to test a further idea. I could not risk Cecilia for the experiment; she was too precious. First would have to come Bat.

I said, “Why do you not kneel to me, Bat? I am, after all, a lord of Witchland!”

Hastily he got down on his knees, muttering apologies I could not understand.

“I am going to release you from Witchland,” I said. “Come closer.”

On his knees the sailor inched toward me, until I could see the flaking white part in his greasy hair. I stepped closer, too, and our bodies touched.

“Stay completely still, Bat.”

“Aye, sir.” His voice trembled, but he obeyed.

I put my hands under his armpits and pulled him to me, like a child or a lover. I held him as close as possible. Then I crossed over.

Dirt in my mouth—

Worms in my eyes—

Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs—

But this time it went on and on. I was trapped between, buried in the earth forever and ever and the other rotting skeleton buried with me, screaming in my nonexistent mind. . . . It went on and on and ON—

And then I was through, gasping on the fresh spring grass, and Bat sprawled at my feet, howling and terrified and alive.

It took me a long time to recover my breathing, and Bat even longer. Gasping, wheezing, the only thing I could think of was Hygryll. The men and women in the round stone room covered with earth, who had followed me—the hisaf—in a gray fog to the country of the Dead. They had existed in the country of the Dead only as wisps, but then, they had