Prologue - Big Bad

Wullamanic, Early October, Year of Our Lord, 1674.

Everyone in the tiny hamlet heard it: the scream.

A keening howl. Hurtling into the air and hurling against the banked, roiling clouds, obscuring the night sky, which almost seemed to recoil in shock and flee, like spreading wings, away from the tiny village. As they feathered and spread, as if a giant unseen had reached down and parted them in the middle, like Moses and the ocean, the full moon revealed itself. It was red, as if bathed in blood. Despite this, it outshone the vast swathe of stars, twinkling innocently, which it was hanging amongst – shone brighter than any human-made light yet made, only to be outdone by the sun. Or by the lightning. It forked and fizzed from the thundering, bruised clouds, lashing its tongue at the earth and sparking up forest-fires wherever it hit – only a matter of miles away. The moon, in her cloud-hung stage, curled its light underneath the shuddering storm head and revealed the haze of rain, leagues away across the rolling usually-idyllic hills, curtains sweeping in front of and past each other, like actors passing, trying to attract an audience. A tiny apocalypse.

A night, in short, for any honest, God-fearing person to be safely tucked away, inside.

Which isn't to say that Fear did not stretch its back and possessively, go stalking those hills, that night...

The girl whimpered and wept as she staggered down the hillside, slipping on the mud despite how carefully she tried to flee. Fear caught as a moan, in her chest, as her dresses caught on yet another barbed branch – even now, she was not yet used to this clothing. She tore at with desperately scrabbling fingers, her hands were shaking too much in the cold, frozen to numbness by the hammering rain, sheeting down and sluicing through the little white cap on her head, black wavy locks spilling out from under it. "If any woman shall not have her hair tied up, but hang lose, or be cut as a man's hair, she shall pay five shillings" – but she could barely spare a thought for such rules, all she could do was stare, fearfully, over her shoulder – as she ran.

The lightning came in bursts, flogging its light across the tiny village in brief harsh flickers. It illuminated...

The girl: her torn white cape, flowing and fluttering from her back, turned to a brilliant liquid-metal sheen by the moon: all except for the darker parts. Which gleamed red.

The knife: dripping blood, gripped in her hand as if her life depended on it – which it did. Light skittering down its edge, as if afraid.

The girl: skirts billowing outwards as she leapt from the crest of a mound, propelling herself down the hill-side with no thought for her own safety.

The girl: sprinting into the tiny collection of rough villages.

The girl: reaching the biggest long house and throwing herself at the pliant, wicker-like doors, hammering on them even as sobs wracked her, screaming for help.

The Native American preacher: opening the door and staring, in utter consternation, at his paritioner.

The girl: fainting dead away on the steps, as the rain reached her, and fell from far above...

The preacher's wife, bending daintily on knee, eventually brought her round, and she came-to to find herself stretched out on one of the bumpy, fur-strewn pallets – which ran along the inner walls of the longhouse, raised off the floor. There were swathes of braided corn, and squashes, from the recent harvest hanging above and wafting their scent down to her, from the rope-tied rafters overhead. Seeming stronger in the confined space, the smell of smoke stung in her nostrils, and wet hide – from the odd splashes of rainwater filtering through the smoke-hole in the arched, barrel-like ceiling.

There was also a raft of curious villager's heads, bobbing into view, looming out of the firelight – men with their hats on, women with their caps, like good little Christians. They were standing in a crowd around her, fascinated by her agitated state yet trying to avert their gaze, somewhat, on account of her half-wild appearance. What followed was a conversation, hurriedly relayed between she and the preacher, in her native tongue – Algonquian – which the officious little man forgave, despite her conversion.

'Child, what on earth happened to you?'

'It was a- a wolf! A monster! God save us-'

'Calm down, girl, calm down! What monster?'

'A- a wolf! It... It came so close to-'

She broke down sobbing again, and found herself wrapped about by the preacher's wife's arms, making comforting noises. The preacher tutted impatiently, a twitch flickering under his eye. He insisted she continue, explain herself or risk a fine.

'I... I only meant to... to lend my Grandmother some sustenance, during the storm!'

She told them how she had decided to brave what had only been a light shower when she had set out, from their little domed wetu, their wigwam, to come down to some friends in the village – who had promised she and her grandmother food – and when, bringing it back, how she had... had heard It. The thing. Following her through the woods. Night had been gathering fast, leeching the suns dying rays from between the trees like a rake across crops. She had hoped to reach her wigwam first, to warn her grandmother, waiting inside – but had gone inside to find it empty, vacant. She told how she, despite her fear, had had to go in search for her: no aged lady should be asked to endure a storm such as this. Hoping she had gone to the village, she had decided to come here-

'Oh, you poor, brave child!' The preacher's wife cried, throwing her arms about her again.

'But the knife you bear!' the preacher snapped, determined to have the truth. 'What of the knife?'

Then she had calmed herself, one last time, to tell of how she had heard its panting, leering over her shoulder, heard its footfalls once more, in the forest behind her. The villagers listened with round eyes and baited breath, staring in horror as she relayed her tale: of slowing down, right down, almost a stop, and waiting until the very thing was upon her... Before whirling round, and, with the knife she had brought in her striking out at it. That had been when it howled – the scream they had all heard (though none had ventured out to find its source), and lumbered off into the calling darkness, trailing blood – even as she was – while its lust for it abated. She had, in one foul swoop, cleaved its left front-paw from its foreleg! Though wrath was sinful, she confessed, she could not stop herself: there was such evil in it...

'Oh sir!' the girl cried finally, grasping at his arm in supplication. 'You must find my grandmother! I fear for her safety, oh, saints preserve me!' She just had strength left to ward herself against the evil eye, before slumping unconscious...

A different kind of light lit the tiny village, rain still hammering at the collection of rough buildings – longhouses and wigwams – which, bedraggled, huddled together like chickens in the coop under its onslaught. It was the light of torches, lit with tinder as much as with zeal, fighting with the lightning for dominance over the faces of their excited bearers. Brethren, darkly carved in the flickering orange glow, set out from the longhouse, chanting gospel and verse, and sounding like a pack of hounds, baying for the hunt – as, indeed, they were. The men with flintlocks waving in the air, rifles and pistols – reverting to their ancient Native roots, without realizing, in their passion.

They swarmed the trees – in the area she had described – squinting in vain through the pouring rain, which ran off the brims of their hats. The forest floor, where only rushing mud and twisting roots could be found, surrendering nothing to them. That was when they heard the second scream: long, tortured, mewling, it fragmented and died weakly, something in pain, pitying itself. The village men followed the sound, guns in hand, to where it began: inside the domed wigwam of the girl and her grandmother, where it stood in a little clearing. The rain was running in rivulets down its domed sides, separating into funnels which hit the ground either side so hard they bounced.

Their only clue was the trail of blood, great puddles of it, dimpled with the downpour – a trail which lead right to the door: a black, impenetrable hole in the wigwam's side, a gaping wound, just inviting any who ventured inside to never come out again. A door from which came echoed those dreadful cries. The bravest of the men stepped forth, through the rain, avoiding the puddles with his buckled shoes and ducked inside, to see: the Grandmother. She was slumped against the far wall, moaning, shaking and weeping with agony, drenched in blood, and clutching to her breast the mangled stump of her own left arm.

The other men assembled, in stunned, sickened silence, staring pitilessly down at her as each man put two and two together, in his head. The wolf, the woman, the poor scared child. But it was the preacher who, with tears of shock and fervor shining his eyes, first uttered their shared thought aloud – in a hoarse-whisper:

'WITCH.'

By rights, she was supposed to have a trial – but there was something in the villagers that night, some kind of impetus drove them on, past human rights and cold logic. Her grand-daughter arrived, holding a fresh cloak up to cover her head, just as they dragged the old woman, begging for her life, to an apple tree. She was just in time to see them lower the noose – hastily-made, from the very lengths they had to used to hang corn, in their longhouses, down in the village – over her head. She was just in time to feel herself lanced through, with her grand-mother's black eyes, as she – searching the assembled crowd for a single trace of pity – turned them on her.

'Behold!' she had shrieked, in a Native language they all affected not to understand.

She screamed as they forced her to stand on a stool, its three legs squashing circles in the mud.

'BEHOLD! I send you forth as lambs among wolves! I swear, you shall live to regret this! YOU SHALL ALL LIVE TO REGRET-'

Which was when the preacher, snarling, kicked the stool away – and the red moon looked on as her body fell with a jerk. The very instant she hit the bottom curve of her fall, all the fires, and all the candles, in the village and in the hands of the villagers: snuffed out. In the same instant, lightning struck close by; and where it touched, a fire struck up. The tree it had hit burst into flames and broke in two, one half felled with a wooden screech of snapping branches, bending in its wake. The villagers scattered in fear, the menfolk running forwards to see if any assistance could be given to the rain, in dousing it.

The girl did not run. She was still transfixed by the twitching body, swinging in the warm-choked storm breath of wind, dry between the rain, the body whose iron-gray hair was lit up white by the inconstant storm.

And that very night the Ware river, running along the south of the town, burst its banks – its waters tossed to a tumultuous sea, pounded by the raindrops, turning its usually-smooth surface to a rough pebble-dash, like metal under a smith's hammer – and washed away half the town...