Read Online We Will All Go Down Together by Gemma Files - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Gemma Files
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of two distinct shades, each: hazel in green and brown on the right, grey and blue on the left.
Yet, the girl did not truly fear until she saw the last woman, for she was terrible indeed to behold: Hard and spare and flat like a plank, with unbound hair hanging wild to her waist, dark as a stormy sky. Her dress might have been
any
colour or constitution, since it had fallen almost entirely to rags, and she went shoeless over the stony ground but did not seem to mind it, the nails of her dirty toes grown long and sharp, like claws. Her neck was circled in a stiff, yellow-starched ruff, ill-fitting enough to rub one raw spot beneath her chin, like the impress of a caged cat’s iron collar. A prim, oddly stained smile, the area outside her lips just a shade redder than that within, as though scoured clean after some indulgence—a cicatrice painted over, a faint rouged scar; tea-coloured eyes enamel-blank, teeth in a screaming mouth, with her desolate face a map of the waning moon, and her left palm marked proudly with a Devil’s kiss of a scar, for all the waking Godly world to gawp at.
As the girl stood rooted to the spot—enspelled, but not yet ensorcelled—the first lady, she in the red and black, deigned at last to notice her, and paused a while in her saunter.
“Be this a one for us, sister Jonet?” she inquired of the pale woman, lightly. But Jonet only shook her pale head, and replied—
“Nay, Alizoun; she is no fit meat for auir purposes. I see His mark already set upon her.”
At this, the eldest woman’s terrible smile grew wider. “So then,” she said to the girl. “Y’are spared this day, little poppet. Yet for how much longer, I wonder?”
“Are ye witches?” the girl asked her, swallowing hard.
“We are. Does that fright ye?”
The girl shook her head, though she felt not half as certain as she looked. “My Mammy says God will protect me from yuir likes.”
The woman leaned close, her strange eyes alight; she had clasped the girl’s hand fast in hers before the girl even thought to snatch it away, and the girl felt a painful spark jump between them where their skins (however briefly) met.
“Yuir God is a doting auld fool,” she said, “who protects nae one. Now run hame and tell yuir Mammy that, while ye still can. And tell her ’tis by Euwphaim Glouwer’s mercy that ye live, not
God’s
.”
So the girl took to her heels, leaving the three witches far behind her, laughing in mockery at her fear. And there were great disturbances in Dourvale township that night; an ill wind blew up and down killing cattle and fowl, and all the crops were blighted with a strange black plague of a kind never seen before, while a fallen candle set aflame the only kirk for miles around. In the morning, a strong young man was found dead in his bed, hag-ridden, and a babe, as yet unbaptized, was snatched from its very cradle as its mother slept on beside it, undisturbed. There was an iron pot stolen from the same bereaved woman’s kitchen, found next day on the side of what local folk called Stane Hill, all greased and lined with fat as though something had been boiled in it; nearby sat a cairn, hastily raised, and under it a collection of soft little bones, well-picked.
But as for the girl who told this story first, her hand welted up as if burnt where the witch Euwphaim Glouwer had touched her, then turned in on itself like a claw—indeed, in time, the whole of her arm grew slack and cold and withered, never to recover until the day she died (which was not too long in coming, after). And this did not change even when all three witches were taken up and tried in King James’s name; put to the question and condemned to the Fire, with true justice administered unstintingly for all their many obscene, dreadful, and blasphemous crimes against the Almighty. . . .
Ah, men of God, be very certain in your judgements. For I tell you, in the Witches’ Book there is but one Commandment only, yet that one
Yet, the girl did not truly fear until she saw the last woman, for she was terrible indeed to behold: Hard and spare and flat like a plank, with unbound hair hanging wild to her waist, dark as a stormy sky. Her dress might have been
any
colour or constitution, since it had fallen almost entirely to rags, and she went shoeless over the stony ground but did not seem to mind it, the nails of her dirty toes grown long and sharp, like claws. Her neck was circled in a stiff, yellow-starched ruff, ill-fitting enough to rub one raw spot beneath her chin, like the impress of a caged cat’s iron collar. A prim, oddly stained smile, the area outside her lips just a shade redder than that within, as though scoured clean after some indulgence—a cicatrice painted over, a faint rouged scar; tea-coloured eyes enamel-blank, teeth in a screaming mouth, with her desolate face a map of the waning moon, and her left palm marked proudly with a Devil’s kiss of a scar, for all the waking Godly world to gawp at.
As the girl stood rooted to the spot—enspelled, but not yet ensorcelled—the first lady, she in the red and black, deigned at last to notice her, and paused a while in her saunter.
“Be this a one for us, sister Jonet?” she inquired of the pale woman, lightly. But Jonet only shook her pale head, and replied—
“Nay, Alizoun; she is no fit meat for auir purposes. I see His mark already set upon her.”
At this, the eldest woman’s terrible smile grew wider. “So then,” she said to the girl. “Y’are spared this day, little poppet. Yet for how much longer, I wonder?”
“Are ye witches?” the girl asked her, swallowing hard.
“We are. Does that fright ye?”
The girl shook her head, though she felt not half as certain as she looked. “My Mammy says God will protect me from yuir likes.”
The woman leaned close, her strange eyes alight; she had clasped the girl’s hand fast in hers before the girl even thought to snatch it away, and the girl felt a painful spark jump between them where their skins (however briefly) met.
“Yuir God is a doting auld fool,” she said, “who protects nae one. Now run hame and tell yuir Mammy that, while ye still can. And tell her ’tis by Euwphaim Glouwer’s mercy that ye live, not
God’s
.”
So the girl took to her heels, leaving the three witches far behind her, laughing in mockery at her fear. And there were great disturbances in Dourvale township that night; an ill wind blew up and down killing cattle and fowl, and all the crops were blighted with a strange black plague of a kind never seen before, while a fallen candle set aflame the only kirk for miles around. In the morning, a strong young man was found dead in his bed, hag-ridden, and a babe, as yet unbaptized, was snatched from its very cradle as its mother slept on beside it, undisturbed. There was an iron pot stolen from the same bereaved woman’s kitchen, found next day on the side of what local folk called Stane Hill, all greased and lined with fat as though something had been boiled in it; nearby sat a cairn, hastily raised, and under it a collection of soft little bones, well-picked.
But as for the girl who told this story first, her hand welted up as if burnt where the witch Euwphaim Glouwer had touched her, then turned in on itself like a claw—indeed, in time, the whole of her arm grew slack and cold and withered, never to recover until the day she died (which was not too long in coming, after). And this did not change even when all three witches were taken up and tried in King James’s name; put to the question and condemned to the Fire, with true justice administered unstintingly for all their many obscene, dreadful, and blasphemous crimes against the Almighty. . . .
Ah, men of God, be very certain in your judgements. For I tell you, in the Witches’ Book there is but one Commandment only, yet that one
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