10. The Omen

. . .

A line of salt would have been too fragile to last as the land's protection. Instead, buried around the perimeter of occupied small homes and businesses that made up the still growing township, was a series of small wooden tokens. Each one was engraved with a mystic square of words - the 'sator' square, which in the hands of a blessed practitioner could fend off many forms of evil. The wood itself was from sacred sources. Fenna had a small stockpile, using the chips to leave peace where she walked.

Now she looked down at the ground where the scent of brimstone reached her nostrils and frowned. She didn't dig to examine the psychic damage, knowing better than to risk her own carefully-crafted protections. But the stench carried strong enough in the crisply cold air to tell her that there had been a breach. She shook her head and looked back towards the main street, where the knot of men still huddled close against each other to ensure their words didn't carry.

If she focused, she might hear them anyway. There was no need. She knew what they were about - the hunter had arrived that morning. Rae had been worn down by her pleas and the Father's pleas, and the stinking presence of yet more dead livestock in the wake of the horrific loss of the Jaeger family. And then, as prophesied, a rambler was found gut open at the edge of town. That had caused a ruckus.

Rae was losing weight, obvious in the way his face had sunken in. Rational thought lay quiet as winter approached, and the wrath of God became a weightier thing within men's minds. She shook her head. This was not about His wrath at all. Only the old dark looking for new places to set roots.

The hunter was a good start, anyway, even as it meant she herself must now take greater care to go unseen. Collateral damage - the hunter's ways meant no tolerance for even her small wisdoms. He would burn her out along with whatever corruption hid in the woods beyond the town, if he turned an eye to her.

Fenna sniffed, winter's bite leaving her nose numb and red, and she turned only to find herself all but about to run into the tall man behind her. She gasped, startled, as the figure looked down upon her.

"Ma'am," he said, courteous enough to pass for polite. She smelled him, too, now. Leathers gone raw from hard travel, old must, dirt, and those burnt spices oft used in church thuribles. The last told her who he was. The hunter. Already drawn too close for her immediate comfort. He took a step back and bowed his head, as a gentleman might. He didn't seem to smell the brimstone. Not as she did. "My apologies. I was not meant to startle you. The reverend Father suggested I introduce myself. You were a friend to the Jaegers."

A bit much to put it that way, but she mentally thanked Jannsen for the exaggeration. She had told him she wanted a look at the hunter herself, to gauge his worth here. "Their loss is nigh unbearable." She shook her head and allowed a curtsy, keeping her hands warm and hidden under the fur that was one of her very few extravagances, and still only ones with practical purpose. She blessed the foresight that told her to go the day without the seals upon her hands or wrists. Less safe this season, but with him right before her, a better choice.

"I'm sorry for it." The man tugged off the almost absurdly large leather hat to incline a sleek, dark head still greasy from long-travel. "My name is Hellstrom, ma'am. Damien Hellstrom. I've been retained by the town for security purposes. Come out from the city to help find out what's been rustling your cattle, maybe attacking your good folk."

A solid approach. She pursed her lips approvingly, noting his only mistake to the truth of his nature was the use of the word what. "You may call me Fenna, Mr. Hellstrom."

"Not your family name."

"It is not." She looked away, unable to keep that fact from stinging to the bone. "My husband is lost, and it pains me to hear his name. So I go by my first alone for now. It is a strange thing I ask of my acquaintances and friends, but it comforts me to recover in silence." All true enough. It occurred to her to press a little further, angling to distract him with sympathies. "My daughter still carries his name, of course. She is away for schooling."

Hellstrom nodded, seeming to accept that. "We do what we must in the hard times."

She smiled, but only with as much decorum as widowhood would allow her. "That we do." She bowed her head politely. "Did you have questions about the Jaegers?"

"Mostly I don't think there's a need to keep you long. But if you might consent, ma'am, I'd ask for an hour or so of your time. Get a feel for who they might have known and what might have been after their cattle." He looked away as snowflakes began to drift down. "Been a long while since any of the tribes kept around here, but I know rumors of a Shawnee family or three staying rogue in the hills."

He didn't sound like he believed that. Nor would anyone with sense. The first people were indeed long gone now, though a few of her contacts said the legends of Tecumseh and his war had made of him a folk hero already, scant decades after the chieftain's death. She tried to not shift, nor fidget overmuch. A little woman of the new villages wouldn't know all this. She smiled instead, affable and light. "Whatever it is that troubles our town, I am sure we are in good hands, Mr. Hellstrom."

"Does my own tale precede me?" He sounded amused.

She arched an eyebrow, then stretched a hand to indicate the lobby of the small inn. A public place for the pair to talk, avoiding any unseemliness. "I referred to our Lord, of course."

"Of course," he echoed, still amused.

. . .

The hunter's questions were functional and, like his introduction, mostly careful to hide his true purpose. Fenna treated him in kind, the lone widow who went about the village as everyone's friend and confidant. She told him what she could, and that much was the basics of the Jaegers' life of some handful of years as Mr. Rae kept the town afloat. The rest he would know from the men of the village - the awful end, and the corpses lost in the fire. That fact yet disturbed her. But he seemed satisfied with her answers, and left after that promised hour without looking closer at her. Good enough, though she was still a little unsettled by the way he appeared at the hidden line.

Witch hunting was a rare and oft disused tradeskill now, best at work in the newest settlements and left for those without patience or talent for 'real' work such as ranching or trading. Hellstrom looked like a longtimer, however, in his clothes. Maybe he had some actual weight to him. She might have a better look at him sometime, perhaps in his own element. But for now, at least his presence alone might slow down the assault coming from the darkness between the trees.

So she went home for the night, padding soft through the new snow and with an eye kept on the moon as it rose full and silver-bright behind the breaking clouds. The trail to her home at the distant edge of the village was a clean enough one, safe and silent, and that is how she knew to twirl with her hands at her pockets when the sound of snapping branches and footsteps on stones reached her. Fenna said nothing, only swept the close-kept trees with her sharp gaze and with her fingertips brushing her special bible and her salts and other trinkets hidden deep within her petticoats. She found the edge of the one she wanted most, feeling it warm against her skin.

She relaxed on instinct when the woman stepped out of the shadows, and then tightened again, more strongly now. The woman in black took another step, dainty across the snow, and that was when Fenna realized she was leaving no footsteps in the soft drifts. The woman's accent was an old one, touched with a faint English lilt. "Easy, sister. This is a call of courtesy."

Another step out of the shadows and into the moonlight, allowing her to get a better look. Fenna's fingers curled around the silver coin, washed in holy water at a font in Boston five years prior. A seemingly simple token of protection, strong enough to remind her to have confidence against the surprisingly tiny woman in all blacks. "Name yourself."

"And give you power over me?" A light, tinkling laugh. "I will not, but nor will I take offense at the request." A black gloved hand flicked out, and Fenna tried to not wince in self-defense. "Your protections are powerful, little sister. We believe we've smelled you before, at the wintering logging camps to the east, and also at Georgetown." A pale face inclined a full, round cheek towards her under the plain black bonnet. From the back, dark brown hair flowed freely, in defiance of social norms. It made it clear the sedate clothing she wore was a mockery. "How well will those rivers flow, and for how long? We see a future there, where darkness gathers atop high steps and casts down the tortured priest. You delay, sister. You cannot stop the dark."

"A compliment, and then you toss what I am aside. Yes, you see my works for the Lord where I've been." Fenna felt the coin burn hot now between her fingers. "What do you want from this meeting?"

"Want? I come to give, freely. I will give you a choice, and then I will give you a warning." The woman in black stepped onto the path, blocking Fenna's view of the rest of town with a broad skirt. Under it, she could hear scales rattle. Blackened silver and slithering skin. "You can leave, little sister of that fallen Christ-child. We will permit this. It is not our way to hunt our own kind until else fails-"

"I am not of your kind!"

The woman looked amused, red lips pursing and then showing white teeth. "They will burn you the same as us should they think to fear you, and your flesh will resist the snare. Same as us. You pledged to different Gods, although I am sure, sister, next you will say there is but the one. Consider it said already. But to the rest of my words - Leave, sister. Or know that you have a place with us. Our number is sacred… but numbers can change."

"And if I should choose neither?" Fenna felt a razor coldness worm its way between the laces of her dress. Witches, then, pressing against the township. Old witches of old woods, and of an unknown number. Strong enough to ignore her boundaries. Strong enough to approach her without fear. She had never faced one in the flesh, only disarmed old traps left behind. But her own mother had known the way of such war, and may well have died for it. To this day, she didn't know.

More than one. She was in real danger. The temptation was first to flee, but the silver in her fingers tightened her spine.

"There lies your warning. You will die. The hunter will die." The woman - the witch - smiled. "This town will die, slowly, in agony. And then the land beneath it will die, consumed for our coming God. Fire. Brimstone. Hell itself opened to the world, for sweet darkness to gather once again. You can't stop what's coming, sister."

"I have my faith that you're wrong."

The red lips parted in a humorless smile. "And I have my faith that you are mere ash and dust before us. You have until morning to consider, sister. Make preparations to leave then, we will freely spare time so long as you seem to ready your departure. There are too few of us in this world to be unkind to one another. Leave. I ask this with earnestness and respect. But I, on behalf of we, will only ask this the once."

"And the hunter, should I go? And the town?"

The woman turned to go, flourishing a shrug. "What of him? We have dealt with his kind before. What of the town? They are doomed, sister. You cannot save them. Save yourself."

She opened her mouth to say something more, something else defiant and worthy of the cunning-folk that came before her, only to watch the shadowed shape disappear into the trees without a sound. She brought her hands out from her skirts to clasp them together, bare and shaking cold, the coin still pressed hard enough into the skin to emboss it with the secret name of the Lord's most secret angel. She prayed instead, her lips numb and warming only when she found strength in her legs and returned home.

. . .

"In the morning, Fenna went back into town. But not to order a ride on a wagon to the distant plains, nor to the local coal railways that might allow a passenger. She went straight to the priest instead, and planned with him to give what little she'd learned to the new hunter - although under the guise of another's anonymous conference, and with some identifying details changed."

"Clever enough." Loki looked less bored with the interplay of historical magic users than he had with the mysterious death of the cattle. It showed his priorities. "I don't suppose then she went to clear out once the hunter had the information in hand."

Harkness shook her head. "No. And with the witch's warning in mind and the facts of history given to us, we can guess a few things about the outcome of that decision."

"Seven of them in the woods, up to something that could eventually destroy the town. And obviously did," said May. "But Fenna didn't know that then."

"Not then. She found out shortly the next morning, when the warning became a threat - painted out in blood and worse." Harkness looked over his shoulder for a moment, then at both agents in turn. Her voice, still dull and now more than a little worn by her story, managed to half-limp itself into the question. "If your gadgets work, what time is it supposed to be?"

May didn't even have to look. "Should be going on four."

"You don't say." Deadpan.

That made May look back over her shoulder, through the door that had been left open to allow a breeze in. The windows had been sealed. The sky was turning a deep orange, closer to night than physically possible. She made a soft noise, then got up to go check the sun's position. That was correct, with the sun on the western horizon though not yet fully setting - but the light was simply wrong. It was like the region had been veiled by something - and she realized that was very likely the exact cause. She looked back to find Loki's unhappy, examining glance. "She's right. It's changing fast out there."

He turned back to their makeshift circle, muttering under his breath as May stalked back with her usual easy grace. It wasn't a muttering she was meant to understand, she realized. A second later, one of those odd, pretty blue-white magelights was forming in his hand. He flicked it up to hover close to the ceiling, drawing the first look of real, focused interest from Harkness. He caught the look, studying it. "Not familiar with the spell?"

She looked away, closing up.

Loki made a noncommittal noise, glancing again at the notebook Harkness kept close, the dirty protection marks now barely visible on her arms. He leaned back, visibly choosing to not press the topic right then. "Let's chivvy the tale along, then. I expect the Seven's threats to this history's cunning-woman marked a turning point for all involved."

"Yes. It did." Harkness sighed. "They marked the beginning of the end."