13
Nathan, Duke and Audrey stared back at the slender woman who stood outside of the cage she had just constructed out of the tree roots.
"When I said I had left it well-guarded, I did not exaggerate," Prue told them. "This was where my home stood once," she gestured at the barren circle. "I wanted to protect my family from them," she went on, and exhaled heavily, glancing at Duke. "But I failed to do so. Now perhaps I can remedy that."
"Let us out of here," Audrey demanded.
"When I have satisfied myself that you are changed, then I shall," Prudence replied. "But for now, I will leave you there."
She turned and made to walk away but whirled back around.
"And just so you know, that enclosure is more for your protection than my own," she finished, and went back to the place where Duke had dug into the ground.
"Prue, let us out of here!" Duke yelled at her, but Prudence gestured vaguely behind her.
"Silence," she uttered.
"Help!" Nathan shouted. "Somebody help!"
"Nathan, stop," Audrey said. "No one can hear us."
"What do you mean, no one can hear us? I can hear myself," Nathan answered, puzzled.
"She's made some kind of-sound barrier around us," Audrey replied. "We can hear in here, but outside of this cage, we can't be heard."
"So she is actually a witch," Nathan breathed.
"Not of the sort that you might imagine," Prudence called from where she was intently digging. "I was a shamana, a healer. A protectress," she continued.
"You can hear us," Audrey said.
"Of course. No one else can, however," Prudence told her, puffing slightly from the exertion of digging.
Audrey mulled something over in her mind.
"This sound barrier isn't witchcraft-it's a Trouble," she said.
"What?" Nathan asked. "Prudence already has a Trouble, Audrey. She can't die."
"And she can take other Troubles," Audrey replied. "What if-" she thought. "What if she's able to-use them, somehow."
"You mean like Ian Haskell?" Duke questioned. "But he couldn't only hold onto more than one at a time."
"Prudence is also a Crocker, like you," Audrey pointed out. "She's a Trouble storehouse. Maybe she found a way to utilize them."
"Or use them like a weapon," Nathan muttered. He looked toward Prudence, who was still digging. She was about two feet into the ground, and they heard her spade strike something hard.
Prudence dug feverishly, abandoning the shovel and using her fingers to loosen the object from the dirt, her attempt unsuccessful.
She glanced back toward the cage, and gestured at it.
The roots reactivated, and Audrey thought Prue was letting them go; but instead they wrapped around Duke, who yelped in protest, Nathan and Audrey tugging at them to try to free him, but the other vines pushed back at them, separating them from Duke.
Instead of hurting him, however, the vines and roots pushed Duke to the outside of the cage, leaving her and Nathan still trapped inside. Duke looked from Nathan to Audrey and then back to Prudence.
"Come help me, I cannot lift it," Prudence said.
"Let them go," Duke answered sternly.
"I have told you my conditions for doing so already. If you wish them let go, then you must help me with this first," Prudence said patiently as though explaining something to a child.
Duke looked back at Audrey and Nathan, who nodded.
"Go help her. But be careful," he uttered in a low voice. "And if you have to-use this," he whispered, offering Duke his service revolver.
"I'm not killing her, Nathan," Duke shot back. "It won't do us or Haven any good-she can't die."
He turned and headed over to the hole where Prudence was.
"Did they try to convince you to kill me?" she asked. "I cannot die. If they wish me to demonstrate that, I will."
"Prue, nobody wants you to die, most of all, me," Duke told her. "But you have to learn to trust us. Mara is gone," he stressed. "And she's not coming back."
"Help me free this, and then I shall know for certain that she is gone," Prudence replied, offering her hand to Duke, who helped her out of the hole.
He peered down into the hole that Prudence had dug. There appeared to be a strongbox of some sort, buried deep into the mud. It had lain there so long the earth had become hard and compacted around it.
Duke took his knife out and began cutting into the ground, carving out a trench around the box.
Eventually he had carved it out enough on one side to be able to use the spade as a lever, and after much effort on he and Prudence's part, the earth finally gave up the box it had held onto for so long.
Duke set it outside the hole, and Prudence knelt down alongside it, once again taking her necklace in hand.
The strongbox appeared to be silver, and Duke recognized the pattern of the design as being identical to the smaller silver box and the larger one that had contained his father's weapons.
"This was crafted by my father," Prudence said. She moved the clasp of her necklace, and a small key slid out from behind the skeletal carving on her pendant.
She moved the cover over the keyhole, and inserted the key into the lock, turning it effortlessly even after five centuries.
Inside, Duke saw several items; there was a book-shaped bundle wrapped in oilskin, and two conjoined small oval portraiture that he presumed to be Prue's children, judging by the way she held them in her hands, her eyes brimming with tears before she laid them tenderly back into the box.
There was a cloth-wrapped object in there as well, and this Prudence removed, untying the old leather that bound it, her eyes traveling up to where Audrey was watching her intently. She unfolded the cloth, revealing what looked to be a doll, but Duke had been around the Mik'Maq when he was growing up enough to know a totem object when he saw one.
Prudence took it in her hands, and showed it to Audrey, who merely watched, and Prue's face puzzled.
"Do you not recognize it?" she asked.
Audrey exhaled, exasperated.
"No, I don't," she snapped.
Prudence stood up, drawing closer to the cage with the totem doll, and faced it directly at Audrey.
Audrey felt a momentary flash of something.
It was something about the doll. She was in a wooden house, she and William, demanding the doll from Prudence, but she couldn't remember why. Before she even had to time to react, the memory was gone and Audrey gasped.
What is it and why is this thing so important? she thought. She looked back at Prudence, who was observing her closely, her eyes narrowed.
"You remembered," she said evenly. "I saw it in your eyes-you remembered, did you not-Mara."
Nathan felt cold fear clutch at his insides, because he'd seen it in Audrey's eyes too. Maybe Mara wasn't as dead as they thought after all.