A Spell for the Revolution (5 page)

The group fell silent, more thoughtful than scared, he hoped. Either the meeting exhausted him, or three weeks of travel finally caught up with him, but when they were done he went out to the porch and tilted his head back. The first stars had already appeared in the sky. A yawn split his face and he lifted his hand to cover it as Deborah came out and stood beside him.

“I’ll go fix the fence in the pasture,” he said.

“Magdalena and I will set extra wards around the buildings tonight,” she said. “It’ll be enough until tomorrow.”

“I’ll get my musket and take first watch then.”

“Ezra will take care of that. Just like standing watch on a ship, he said. Maybe you should get some sleep.”

“But—”

“You’ll be of more use to us tomorrow if you get some sleep tonight.”

“I do feel like I could use a week’s worth of sleep,” he admitted. Or a week and a half. He hadn’t slept well the whole journey back, startled awake by every rustle in the grass or set on edge every time he smelled pipe tobacco. So
he said his good nights and retired to his room in the barn, where he fell onto the mattress still half dressed.

He jerked awake, grabbing for a weapon, just as he had every night since Virginia, but this time, at least, it was morning. By the time he had his tomahawk in hand, ready to strike, he remembered where he was. The pounding sound that he had taken for Bootzamon’s fist on the door was only Ezra, hammering on the new addition to the house.

He felt more groggy than awake, more stiff and sore than when he’d lain down, so it took him a moment to pick the straw out of his hair and notice the double serving of breakfast that had been left beside his blankets. Thank you, Deborah. He spooned the boiled oats into his mouth, savoring the molasses. The coffee was cold and weak, but nothing could be done about that. They had to water it down; everything was in short supply because of the war.

He left his jacket in the barn and washed up at the well, blinking at the bright sun. Another hot day. The others bent to their own work in the gardens and around the house. Even with the Covenant leaving threats on their doorstep, they had to take care of their everyday tasks.

Proctor rolled his sleeves to his elbows and unbuttoned his collar. The best way to protect them would be to strengthen the borders. And that meant fixing the fence.

The fence rails along the steepest part of the hillside pasture lay in a tumble. Ezra could have fixed it in minutes, but the old man had spent his whole life in the small confines of ships. He’d paced out an area that encompassed the house, the barn, and the necessary, and it was hard to budge him beyond the rails of that imaginary “deck.” So he’d left The Farm unprotected. Proctor shook his head and started restacking the rails.

Ezra was a bit peculiar, but to be truthful, most of their students were peculiar. Living in fear, forced to hide their special talents, warped them all in some way, the way it
had warped Proctor’s mother. Deborah’s idea to start a school was smart. Maybe younger students, like Zoe, could grow up without fear and shame.

Assuming they had a chance to grow up.

The woods beyond the fence loomed dark and ominous. Bootzamon—or some other agent of the Covenant—could be out there right now, just waiting for a chance to get past their protections. He finished repairing the rails and stepped back to size up his work. He and Deborah could come out here later and restore the protective spell—

One of the posts started to slide. A second later, the fence toppled, and all the rails rolled down to his feet.

There was nothing sinister at work. The fence uprights rested on a flat rock that followed the slope of the hill—as soon as the weight of the rails pressed down, they slipped loose and the whole thing collapsed. He shouldn’t have been so hard on Ezra. The old sailor probably fixed it two or three times, then decided to leave it for “the one what knows how to farm.”

A walk along the edge of the pasture confirmed that the whole length of the slope was rocky. If he shifted the fencerow, he was likely to end up with the same problem in another place. So the rock had to go.

He used a post-end to scrape dirt away from the edges of the rock. Then he jammed the post under the rock and tried to lever it up. The rock didn’t budge. He scraped deeper and tried again without results. He needed help.

Down at the house, the women headed inside for their lessons. Ezra was climbing off the roof of the new addition to go join them. Proctor shouted and waved his arms to get the old carpenter’s attention. Ezra waved back to Proctor, and mimed tying a bowline. Ezra thought rope could fix anything that couldn’t be hammered right, and he’d made Proctor learn how to tie a variety of sailors’ knots. Having made his suggestion with the gesture, Ezra went inside.

So much for that.

Proctor skipped lessons because Deborah had already taught him the basic skills she was trying to teach the others. Today they were working on lifting—

It was hard to shake twenty years of upbringing. He was still thinking like a farmer when he needed to think like a witch. With the proper focus for a spell, he could use magic to move the rock.

And he could find a focus in the woods beyond the fence. The tall hardwoods beyond the boundary of the farm were blurry, even when he looked at them directly. But the hedge of hawthorn trees just past the fence appeared in sharp detail because they were inside the limits of Deborah’s protective spell. Anyone who came through the woods, pushing through the spells of forgetfulness and the illusion that nothing was there, would set off the alarms and then run immediately into a thorny hedge too thick for anything but a rabbit to pass through.

But would those spells stop Bootzamon?

Proctor braced himself as if he expected an immediate attack, and stepped over the broken fence. He waited, tense and anxious for Bootzamon to appear, until a pair of warblers zipped past him and snapped him back to his senses.

He found a nest tucked in the crook of some branches. Though he reached in carefully, the thorns scraped his bare arms as he pulled a gray pinfeather from the nest, the smallest, lightest one he could find. Then he tore a couple of leaves off the nearest branch and shoved them in his mouth. The sharp taste as he chewed on them made him feel more alert. No witchcraft to that, just his mother’s herblore.

He stepped back across the fallen fence and shoved the feather under the edge of the rock. The sharp end of the post fit in the same spot for a lever. Folding his hands around the wood, he bowed his head to say the spell. He wasn’t as good as Deborah at pulling out the right Bible
verse on a moment’s notice, so he simply asked to do God’s will and prayed for the strength of Samson. He had come to realize that the words were less important than the images in his head. He pictured what he wanted to accomplish and ran it over and over in his thoughts, like a dog wearing a path around the edge of a pen.

When he felt the power rising in him, like water bubbling up from a spring, he stood, took a deep breath, and heaved on the lever another time.

The stone rose a few inches and stuck.

“It’s as light as a feather,” he murmured to himself. He let the power flow through his hands and down the rail. They needed the fence repaired, needed the protection against intruders. “Light as a feather, light as a feather.” He heaved again, pouring all his energy through the lever.

The rail splintered, and, at the same instant, the stone popped out of the ground, spraying dirt everywhere as it fell back down with a
thump
.

Proctor had flung his arms up instinctively to protect his face from the splinters, but his knees buckled beneath him and he fell to the ground, dizzy and nauseous. The thumping pain in his skull half blinded him, and he tingled all over with that familiar pin-cushion sensation.

But it had worked. The stone—no, the boulder—was bigger than a cider keg, and it had been planted deep. He laughed through his dizziness. He had moved it with magic. Well, magic and his own strong back. Now he could fill in the hole, brace the cross posts against the stone, split another rail, and be done with the fence.

Of course, to do that he needed his shovel and hatchet, which were down at the barn. He stood to go get them, but he had only taken one or two steps when black spots swam before his eyes. He tumbled back to his knees.

He crawled on his hands and knees halfway down the slope, then stood and staggered unsteadily to the well. Though he lifted the rock with magic, his body ached as if
he had done it with bone and muscle. His arms were almost too weak to haul up the bucket. The ladle of water tasted like copper coins scraped against his teeth, and he spit it out.

They knew so little about magic. It drew on a source—Deborah, like his mother, insisted that the source was God. Unlike God, the source was not infinite, and drawing too much could leave you as defenseless as a child.

Which was why evil witches drew on the power of others. A year ago, Proctor had stood at this very well with Cecily Sumpter Pinckney, an aristocratic lady from Charleston, South Carolina. They had all thought her an ally, come to The Farm to learn how to use her gift. But she had been an agent of the Covenant, spying on potential enemies in the colonies. She drew her power from her slave, Lydia, and none of them had known it, though Lydia had tried to warn them. Their blindness to her warnings had left Deborah’s mother and father dead.

Cecily was nothing compared with the widow Nance. Nance used death magic. In John Hancock’s slave cabins, on the night before the battle of Bunker Hill, she had murdered a small boy, planning to draw on Deborah’s power as she spilled Proctor’s blood, sealing a death spell on the patriot leaders and destroying the rebellion. Just thinking about it made the scars on Proctor’s arms itch.

Magic flowed both ways in a spell between two witches, like tidewater at a river’s mouth. When Deborah broke the widow’s spell, all the magic flowed the other direction, killing Nance. The widow was dead, but Cecily was still out there, still drawing on Lydia’s power to augment her own. Ever since their encounter with the widow, Deborah had become obsessed with the drawing spells, how they worked, how they could be broken. None of them wanted to be fooled by anyone like Cecily ever again.

And now Bootzamon was out there somewhere too. His
master was out there. Proctor looked down at the gate. How many enemies did they have?

He took another sip of water. This one tasted palatable enough to swallow. He still felt weak, but not as dizzy as he had a few moments before. In fact, he thought he ought to go brag to Deborah about moving that boulder.

He walked carefully over to the house, like a drunk trying to keep his balance. His head still throbbed, leaving his vision tinged with gray. The door stuck in the frame. He braced his shoulder against it and shoved—he meant to nudge it quietly so he wouldn’t disturb Deborah’s lesson, but it banged open and he stumbled into the house.

He looked up in time to see all seven witches sitting around the table, holding hands in a circle. Seven candles were lit—he didn’t have to count them because he knew how Deborah used the flame as a focus. There’d be one for each. Inside the circle of candles, a smooth river stone, the size of a large yam, floated above the table.

Zoe squeaked at Proctor’s entrance.

The stone thunked to the wood.

Deborah released the circle, practically flinging the hands away from her. “That was excellent,” she said. “The best lifting you’ve done yet. Next, we’ll try it individually.”

Yes, he had advanced far beyond the other students.

“It’s too hard—my head aches,” Abby complained. She was the next youngest, after Zoe. “We work so hard, I feel like I’m getting weaker, not stronger.”

Magdalena placed her liver-spotted hand over Abby’s. “There, there,” she said. “It will be all right. You are doing well. Deborah, if you must be busy, I could the lesson continue.”

“This will only take a moment.” Deborah rose, stomping across the floor toward Proctor. “I assume this is of life-or-death importa—oh, you’re bleeding.”

“No, I’m not,” Proctor said, looking down at his hands.

She rushed to his side and reached up to his cheek. “Be still—”

“Ow!”

“You’re such a baby,” she said, softly enough that no one else could hear. She held up the bloody splinter for him to see. He’d been too numb and dizzy to notice until she pulled it out. He reached up to feel the wound. “Be
still,”
she said.

She touched his cheek and it tingled a different way, like bubbles rising up in a pint of beer. The pain lessened at once. The blood turned to a scab, and the scab began to dry as if it had been there several days. But the sensation dizzied him, and he flinched away before he collapsed.

“How did you do—?”

His question was interrupted by a single bell—Deborah’s outer boundary warning. Someone was approaching The Farm. Before they could react, the invisible chimes tinkled.

Someone was approaching in a hurry.

Her eyes met his. The hiding spells should also protect them, but last year Cecily had betrayed their secrets and let in assassins. Did someone know the way through again?

“I’ll get my musket,” he said.

Her face hardened again instantly. “I’ll prepare to meet them just beyond the well. Magdalena?”

“Ya, ya, we all know what to do—now go!”

The panic in the old woman’s voice chased Proctor out the door. He was not going to risk a repeat of yesterday, when he’d gone to the gate completely unprepared. But the effort of running across the yard dizzied him. He crashed against the barn door, holding on tight to keep from fainting.

Deborah walked slowly and deliberately past the well. She was tucking her hair under her gray bonnet and smoothing the front of her dress. She slipped her right hand into her front pocket, where she kept a protective charm that she had never let him see.

The barrier shimmered down at the gate, and a rider appeared on a dark horse. Proctor’s vision was still blurry, and everything was gray. But he could see that the rider’s jacket had a military cut with epaulets, and he was armed with guns and had his hand on the hilt of a sword. He trotted crisply straight toward Deborah.