Shannon Delany - Weather Witch

“Yes, Papá,” she agreed. “I think I will visit Maude first for a drink. I am parched.”

“Go then, little dove,” Bran said. “Have a care on the stairs—I will meet you in the library in less than an hour.”

She nodded and he helped her through the door and watched as she started her descent before he closed the door once more.

“She is an interesting child, do you not agree?” he asked Jordan as he approached her with the bread and bowl. “If I follow her suggestion, give you this piece of bread, could we dispense with the unpleasantness and shoot straight to you calling up a storm?” He picked up the bread and held it before her face. “It is fresh. And warm…”

“I cannot. I am no Witch,” Jordan protested. Her wounded finger flinched, curling toward her palm in response to his nearness.

“Not even for a nice piece of bread? Can you smell it over the stink of the Tanks and your magick?”

Her nostrils flared involuntarily. “Yes, I smell it,” she whispered, her eyes reflecting back the frantic hunger that threatened to crawl up from her stomach and out of her throat. “But I cannot call a storm. I have no magick.”

The Warden strapped her to the boards.

Bran shook his head. “I wish you would stop repeating such nonsense.” He set the bowl down on his table and unrolled the cloth that held all the instruments of his particular trade. He picked up a scalpel and bit into the bread. “Oh. It is delicious,” he said around a bite of the stuff. “And so, so very soft…” He crossed to her side and looked her straight in the eyes as he said, “Just like a lady’s flesh.”

And then he made her scream.

Philadelphia

All the way up the Hill Marion left signs of his passing. Small patches of wilting grass marked his every footstep and the air became unseasonably cool wherever he passed. His breath came out in frosty puffs as he pushed on to the Council’s chambers and then, standing before the doors, he hesitated.

Yes, he could clear Chloe’s name. Yes, he could prove her innocence, make an ass of the Council Court and … and name himself as witness. Put himself at the scene of the supposed crime, thereby admitting his true identity.

Showing that he was the son that was taken for witchery, the one Witch that had escaped Holgate.

If they tortured Witches to Make them, what might they do to a Witch who had escaped and wreaked wintry havoc? His fingers flexed at his sides. They had stolen him from the family their laws had ruined. He should have died that night beside his parents and his little brother but instead the Council and their Weather Workers had taken and tortured him. Made a monster of him. What more could they do to him that they hadn’t done already?

What could they still do to hurt him? What was left for them to take that they hadn’t already ruined? He should have died that night five years ago. Why had destiny spared him then? If the Council discovered him now, killed him now, at least he’d die knowing he saved one person who was important to him. And, if God was just (if there was a God), perhaps he’d be reunited in Heaven with his family. He decided he had nothing left to lose and the rescue of Chloe—even if it meant a much sooner heavenly reunion with his parents and little brother—was quite the gain.

He squared his shoulders, set his jaw, and climbed the last set of stairs into the Council’s main hall. Automatons shifted along the walls, watching him as he moved toward a central desk and a reassuringly human watchman. “I am here to speak to the Council Court and present them with new evidence.”

The watchman looked up at him. “The Council is adjourned for the day to oversee the administration of justice.”

Marion’s brow creased. “But I have new evidence that can clear the accused named in the case of Chloe Erendell.”

“Oh.” The watchman’s mouth dropped open and he looked over his shoulder to the broad expanse of doors and large windows overseeing the Council’s broad courtyard.

And that was when Marion saw them—a crush of bodies all turned to watch something ahead of them. “No,” he whispered, realizing. “No. The paper says Wednesday hence…”

“Yes,” the watchman yelled at his back as he sprinted across the room’s length, “they confused the dates—the paper was very apologetic—we usually have more spectators for a noon hanging—quite the event…”

Marion was at the doors and shoving through them, pushing past people when he could not slide between them and shouting—always shouting, “Stop! Stop!”

But the crowd was cheering and laughing and there was no more place for him to run and so he made his way to the one tree in the courtyard and shimmied up its trunk just high enough to see the gallows and the hooded figure in a simple shift who stood there, noose about her neck, dark hands and feet bare, her head bowed as she gave her final confession. There stood his nanny, his last connection to a more innocent time, and he knew then just what he still had to lose.

He screamed her name, cried out her innocence again and again, and snow billowed out from his mouth but was whisked away with his words by the breeze and evaporated in the day’s heat and the crowd’s fierce haze of human musk.

The floor beneath Chloe’s feet dropped away and she fell toward the ground—only stopped by the sudden tightening of the rope round her neck. Her feet kicked out a moment and Marion gasped, ramming his knuckles into his mouth to keep from crying out to her—or anyone again.

Then she was still.

And he was all alone in the world.

This time for certain and for good.

The cold seeped out of him, cruel and deadly, burrowing into the tree that held him in the same insidious way the cold clutched his heart, so that, after the crowd drifted apart and Marion finally climbed down from its branches, only then did the tree’s leaves begin to curl and blacken along the edges. Only then did the cold begin to kill it from the inside out—the same way the cold was killing its young master.

Holgate

That night Meggie again awoke to soaked sheets, a wet gown, and a perplexed Maude. Maude had decided to sleep on the floor at her side, as cramped and uncomfortable as it was, although Meggie had innocently suggested Maude share her papá’s bed as it was so big and he was quite alone in it every night. “And a spot of warmth and kindness never hurt a soul, my mother used to say,” Meggie said loudly enough that Bran couldn’t help but hear it.

“A spot of kindness, yes?” Maude said with a smile. “Such things do quite frequently help situations one might think beyond help…” She sighed. “Quite alone in it every night, is he?” Maude had asked.

“Most certainly so,” Meggie quipped. “And I think I know why,” she said with a solemn nod.

“Oh you do, do you?” Maude asked, tucking her in after one last story. It was harder than ever to get her to go to sleep now that every night she had a friend staying over.

“Yes. It is the snoring,” Meggie said sagely. “It is a dreadful racket,” she disdained. “It sounds like an elephant trying to blow its nose!”

“I heard that,” Bran called from the other room, sending both the girls into a wild fit of giggles.

“A rabid elephant blowing his nose,” Meggie squeaked defiantly.

“Oh, is that so?” he bellowed, racing toward them, a grin on his face. He jumped onto the bed and bounced Meggie so hard she was lifted into the air and gave a little scream. But she dissolved into laughter again when she landed and snuggled back down into her pillow, dragging the covers up around her ears to better ignore her father’s silliness.

A tickle battle then erupted between the two and Bran attacked, shouting, “Come here, you! You’re a soft little thing, aren’t you?”

Meggie squealed between giggles, “A lady should be soft!”

Bran froze on the bed, arms outstretched, body stiff but rocking to the swaying of the mattress beneath his feet. The smile fell from his lips and shadows hardened his expression. He swallowed hard. Something in his chest tightened and he turned to look past the girls. To the door.

But Meggie pounced on him, knocking him onto her bed and knocking whatever dark thought had been in his head right out with her relentless joy. Maude just sat on the floor beside the bed, watching and marveling at how free Bran was now with the child—how very different—how young he seemed when it was just the three of them together.

He was a man unburdened—because of what they were all certain would be a burden.

“What?” he asked, stepping off the bed and hopping over Maude on his way back to his room and his too large for one man bed. “Why are you looking at me that way?”

“Because I see them again,” Maude whispered, her cheeks heating with a sudden and surprising blush.

“What? What do you see again?”

“Your dimples,” she said. “Only when you smile that much do they appear. But there they are.” And with a sleepy smile she leaned back onto her makeshift bed and curled onto her side, tugging her own blanket up, a smile on her lips.

He stood there in the doorway between the two rooms like a man caught between two worlds, and he reached up to touch his own smiling face, amazed that she had found something in him he had never even noticed about himself. He uncrossed his arms and watched them for a moment before leaving for his own bed—watched the two most beautiful, gentle, and amazing girls in the world.

And they were both, in at least some small way, his. And he was ready to try and offer a spot of kindness himself.

Philadelphia

Marion tried to sleep that night in the park but his dreams were as dark as the farthest corner of the sky. When dawn finally came he rose from where he’d hidden by the public hedge-maze and staggered onto the main thoroughfare. He touched things at random as he stumbled back down the Hill to the Below. No longer did he worry who saw or who screamed. No longer did he bother with anonymity or soft action. These were the people who destroyed all he ever loved. These were the people who built on the backs of his kind and ruined anyone who loved the Witches. The Witches who provided stability for their country—their government’s country.

“An election year,” the boy had said.

Marion grinned and reached out for a window box hanging in front of a cheese shop’s painted window. He trailed his fingers along a single fringed dianthus petal and watched the frost spread out like tiny snowflakes flattened flush to the flower. Wrapping round its stem, cold consumed its leaves. The frost scrambled the short distance to the next plant in the box, leaving a glittering path of destruction that wiped the entire window box of life in under a minute—all while Marion stood silent and watched his talent seek and destroy.

He would bring them all down, he promised himself, make them all suffer the unseasonable cold that was ever in his heart. He began his journey down to the Below once more, his eyes on a certain bridge and the warm glow of firelight peeking out from beneath it already. The sun was still low in the sky when he began to formulate his plan. Destiny had saved him five years ago and Made him who he was for this purpose. And if he was to get his revenge in a proper way, he had best research and prepare.

Bringing down the Maker would require planning and transportation.

But if revenge was a dish best eaten cold he was surely the best man to enjoy both its taste and temperature.

Holgate

“Today we will try something new,” the Maker told Jordan.

Her stomach flopped like a fish caught in the net of her gut. Silently she assumed her spot by the board, offering her manacled wrists to be bound for the day’s new torture.

“No, no,” he corrected. “Today we will have a spot of kindness. And a spot of tea.” He smiled and opened the door to the laboratory. In walked Meggie, carrying a tray with a teapot and cups and saucers balanced on its surface.

“Sit, please,” Bran requested, motioning for Jordan to perch on a chair.

It was then, as she sipped tea with her torturer, that Jordan realized he was quite insane. It was also then that she wondered if perhaps she would not soon follow in the same manner.

Following the new treatment he asked her if there was anything he might do to make her feel more comfortable. He made it clear he would not remove her from the Tanks, but was there anything else she might appreciate? Her eyes fell on the tea set and narrowed. “A daily cup of tea in my Tank.”