The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [23]
“Who is she?”
Now the young woman with brown eyes laughed; it was a mocking sound. “Why, don’t you know anything? Cirynn is to be the Maiden for this coven.”
The Maiden? Aryn started to ask. However, at that moment, a clear sound rang out over the garden. Three of the very youngest witches stood on the steps of the rostrum, each holding a silver bell of a different size. Three disparate tones blended together, shimmering on the night air.
As the tone faded, the girls left the rostrum and returned to their group. Obviously the first meeting of the coven was about to begin, for other witches hurried through the gathering, making their way to their places.
“Pardon me, deary,” a cracked voice said. “These old bones are sharp, and I’d hate to poke you with them.”
Startled, Aryn turned around to see a hunched form. She breathed a sigh, recognizing the ancient witch she had given the cobweb to the other day. The crone looked just the same—head balding and knobby, hands twisted like roots, red-rimmed eyes like bright buttons lost in masses of wrinkles—except now she wore a robe of ash gray. Once again Aryn recognized her own handiwork: This was the gray robe she and Lirith had helped sew.
“What is it, deary? You look as if you’ve got a bird in your mouth trying to fly out.”
Aryn remembered herself. “I’m sorry,” she gasped. “Please, come through.”
The crone grinned—displaying bare gums—and hobbled past, disappearing into a shadow near the foot of the rostrum. Next to Aryn, the young witch with brown eyes shuddered.
“She’s positively awful.” The young woman glanced at the left side of the grove. “They’re all awful.”
Aryn shrugged. “They’re just old. We’ll all be old someday, if we’re lucky to live so long.”
The other made an exaggerated grimace. “I should never want to live so long if it means I’ll look like that. I don’t know why we let them come. All they do is mutter about Sia and the old days when nobody cares.”
“But everyone should care,” Aryn said. “Maybe they aren’t young anymore, but they are wise. And beauty isn’t everything.”
The young woman’s brown eyes narrowed to slits. “I suppose someone like you would say that.”
Aryn’s face stung. She opened her mouth, but before she could speak, the young woman with brown eyes bolted from their group and hurried to the knot of young women clustered around Cirynn. She whispered something in Cirynn’s ear, and Aryn felt blue eyes upon her. As Aryn watched, Cirynn smiled, then twisted her right arm into an unnatural position, drawing it halfway up the sleeve of her white robe as she curled her fingers inward. Those gathered around her clasped hands to mouths, failing utterly to stifle their laughter.
Still Aryn stared, turned to ice. The grove dimmed, and the laughter of the young women transmuted, growing higher in pitch, echoing in her mind until it phased into something else—the singsong rhymes of children.
Little Lady Aryn,
What is she wearin’
Under that dress of blue?
A dead bird wing,
Such an ugly thing.
She’d fly if she had two.
Shut up, Aryn wanted to shout at them. Shut up, all of you! But her voice was too small, a little girl’s voice. She couldn’t speak, and she had no wings to let her fly from this place. All she could do was run—run and hide somewhere they wouldn’t be able to find her.
“Sister, are you well?”
Aryn staggered, then a cool hand touched her good arm, steadying her. The images of the past faded, and a figure came into focus before her.
The woman clearly belonged with the witches who stood in the center of the grove—that must have been where she was moving when Aryn stumbled against her. She was beautiful, although not in the pale and perfect manner of Cirynn. Rather, her beauty seemed to radiate from within, its brightness independent of its housing, like the light of a lamp.
Her skin was the color of almonds, her cheeks high, and her nose small and flat across the bridge. Her dark eyes tilted at the corners, and fine lines