(18) Willow Witches

I rap a knuckle on Exie's door at moonrise. Actually just after moonrise, but given that my brain doesn't like time with natural measurements any more than time on clocks, I resign myself to being tardy. It doesn't matter anyway. When Exie has unhooked all her traps and tripwires and actually opened the door, I find a rucksack sitting in the middle of her bed, orbited by enough debris to constitute a solar system. She's nowhere near packed.

I eye the bag with a raised eyebrow. "We're not hiking the silk road."

Exie gives me a look, then turns her back on me with a dignified huff. "I just want to be prepared."

A pocketknife and a fistful of matches are enough preparation for me, though I'd settle for a rope if I'd had room to pack any. My parents weren't exactly encouraging nightly escapades when they gave me the smallest suitcase in the house. That was probably on purpose.

I fall back on the room's spare mattress and wait for Exie to finish fussing over what she will or won't prepare for. To her credit, she does have rope. I can overlook the pocket mirror, suspiciously shaped box, and half-dozen little glass bottles—three corked, three empty—for that. It's been half an hour by my absolutely unfounded estimate when she hefts the bag over her shoulder at last. "Ready."

"Did you get divine fire and holy water in there, too?"

Exie frowns. "I already said I don't like burning people."

"That was sarcasm."

"Oh." She pauses. "Were you joking before, too?"

"About what?"

"Burning down the school."

"Good question," I say, and head for the door before she can interrogate that non-answer. To be honest, I don't know, either. Melliford Academy could use a purging. As for whether I could genuinely be the one to light the first match, well, I hope I never have cause to find out.

The hallway outside is, as ever at this hour, empty as a midnight graveyard. Exie and I make it to the crossroads before a dorm door clicks. We dive around the corner. A student tiptoes out and makes tracks for the bathroom, hugging herself like the darkness will attempt to lick her elbows. I remember to breathe.

It's not until we reach the school's vestibule that I think to ponder whether its doors are even open. But worrying early just means worrying twice, so I approach them with only a check for lurking teachers, put both hands against the wood, and push. Nothing happens.

"They're locked," whispers Exie.

"I noticed," I grumble.

"No, look. It's inside."

I lift my gaze. My eyes have adjusted, and moonlight leaking through the lobby's stained-glass wallpaper is enough to make out the aspiring tree-trunk that spans a pair of metal brackets mounted on each door. I stick both hands beneath it and give an experimental lift. I've paid dignity tax on smaller things.

"Here," says Exie at my shoulder. My heart tap-dances, and not just because she startled me. Her shoulder brushes mine as she slips her hands beneath the bar, our fingers almost touching. "Lift together."

I lift immediately, realize I did so alone, and drop the bar in panic just as Exie makes her own attempt. She sighs. "On a count of three."

She counts, and this time we manage to coordinate. The bar could clobber a charging bull if wielded by someone less muscularly challenged than I am. Exie begins to crouch with it, and it slips in my hands.

"Careful!" I gasp.

"Set it down."

"Don't drop it!"

"Don't stand there like it will lower itself."

We crouch together, bickering. Only once the bar is down do I realize we've made ourselves an epic tripping hazard. There's a metaphor about hindsight in there somewhere. We should probably move the thing, but my arms have kicked up a song and dance already, and I'll need to climb a tree yet tonight if I'm to make good on my promise of wall-snooping. Not to mention locking up behind ourselves whenever we return.

Exie steps delicately over the bar, which I promptly trip on as I follow her. I seem unique in my ability to bungle seventy-fifth impressions just as well as first ones, but Exie doesn't pay me any mind. She's testing the doors. I watch, bemused, as she swings them gently out and back. Either fanning the lobby, or else testing for booby traps. If her room taught me anything, it's that you can never be quite sure with her.

"They oil the hinges, at least," she say then, and pushes the doors wide enough to slip through. We slither out into the cold September night. The sky is clouded, like I guessed. It's just as well; Melliford Academy's grounds are creepy enough without an extra coat of silver, and I've never been fond of moonshadows. I startle as Exie abandons me. She swings herself off the side of the steps and makes tracks along the school wall, bent low enough to stay beneath the windows. I follow her. Only minutes later, we lean against the stone together, facing down the open stretch between us and the school's back wall.

"No windows," I say, and glance behind me in case my memory has deserted me.

"That doesn't mean nobody's watching."

I don't know what that means. I don't want to know what that means. Before my nerve and dignity can desert me, I push myself off the wall and cross the lawn at what I hope is more a scoot than a scuttle. When I run face-first into the wall on the other side, Exie's there beside me. Dark tree-shadow cloaks us both. Exie's almost invisible in it; if anyone is watching, I'll be the one they see. Or maybe I can play off my sun-averse face as a floating head that haunts these grounds. Similar things have worked before.

The tree that shrouds us is an ancient willow, its leaves somehow lacy even in the darkness. I run a hand over its craggy bark. Three of me couldn't get our arms around it; this tree is at least as old as Melliford Academy, and so are its sisters. There are four of them in total: two along the wall here, and two posted out on the lawn like sentinels. Their wizened shapes are somehow more uncanny than every stone angel inside combined.

"Are you climbing?" whispers Exie, startling me back to our present task. My hand tightens around a willow-bark crag. There's a burl near the base that should give me purchase enough to reach a bark aggregation higher up, then from there, a bundle of mid-trunk willow shoots. I grunt an affirmation and heave myself onto the twisted lump. The willow slants parallel to the wall, giving me somewhat less than a straight drop if gravity wins this round of sparring.

Burl to bark, bark to shoots. From there, I can reach another burl, but I almost don't need the foothold. The tree's bark itself is thick enough for me to wrap whole hands around, between peaks and fissures that accommodate my shoe-toes without protest from the tree. Almost before I realize it, I'm an arm's length from the top of the wall. I place my feet carefully. I can't reach the stone from here, but one more heave gets me high enough to glimpse freedom beyond.

A barren field greets me. Whatever farmer—if any—seeds this land, they've left this stretch fallow for the season. There's no sign of any buildings. Nor anything else but weeds.

"Any water?" Exie whispers up.

I don't see any. Not even the shadow of a well-wall. I suddenly wish the clouds would part, so the gleam of moonlight might highlight some water body I might be missing. I squint for any hills or hollows camouflaging in the cloud-filtered gloom, but the land remains flat as day-old pancakes, their syrup long since drained away. If there's water in this region, it isn't visible from here.

I retrace my steps back down the tree to relay this news to Exie. I find her standing arms akimbo, frowning down the grounds like they've called her mother a pigeon pie. Or maybe insulted David. Her mother could probably take the jab with a deserved amount of blustering.

"No water," I say.

"I don't think it's out there anymore," is Exie's reply.

"Come again?"

She slaps a hand against the willow. "These are willows."

"Yes?"

"Willows like water, don't they?"

I give her my most helpless look. She doesn't see it, of course; the shadow here is black as pitch, and Exie's still scrutinizing shrubbery. Then she starts abruptly into motion. I stifle a hey and dash to the tree-shade's edge after her. Exie strides out across the lawn. So much for someone watching. Paranoid at my own reminder, I cast a wary eye around before I follow. Exie pulls up without explanation in the middle of the grass. There's nothing here. Nothing, that is, until she looks me in the eye, takes a step forward, and grows three inches.

"There were others here," she says.

"Other what?"

"Trees." She squats down on her haunches and runs her fingers through the grass. They stop against something. "Thought so."

I crouch beside her. Exie waves my hand dangerously close to hers, so i wait for her to withdraw her fingers before I add my own. There's something woody in the grass. Several somethings, like sharpened twigs jammed upright in the soil for some unwitting passerby to tromp on.

"Willow shoots," says Exie. "There was a stump here. They've just chopped off the regrowth."

With that, she jumps to her feet again and fairly runs across the yard to another spot that is, I realize now, slightly raised above the rest. Exie repeats her check with a noise of triumph. Her final stop is the gap between two living willows. That's when I realize what she's spotted.

They're in a circle. Seven of them, their survivors all the same age. Willows are short-lived, if my memory of botany serves me well. These are ancient specimens, but ancient for a willow tree may still be half a century.

Or perhaps sixty years exactly, if we want to line up timelines here.

"There was water here," says Exie, returning to my side. We survey the empty lawn together. "Even not long ago. I'd bet the school filled it, but left the trees."

"That's not very reverent of them."

"I wouldn't want an unholy cesspool either."

There was once a lake on the grounds of Melliford Academy after all. "We are dealing with a cult here," I say. "I'm pretty sure 'unholy' is their whole modus operandi."

"But why fill it, then?"

"I don't know." I've said and heard that more than all its alternatives combined in these last seven days. "So, Mrs. Hardwick's office?" I add.

"We need a plan. And a backup."

I groan. "If everything takes a plan, we'll never get anywhere. Aren't you the one trying to solve this quickly?"

"No," snaps Exie. "I'm trying to solve it properly. If that's not fast enough for you, why are you even here?"

That's not a question I was anticipating. It's also not one I want to reckon with right now. "Because I want to help? How about this. We go to chapel tomorrow. If something shady happens, we plan around that. If not, we call it safe enough, and head to Mrs. Hardwick's office."

"I'm still planning."

"Well, I'm going whether you plan or not."

We glare each other down.

"Fine," huffs Exie. She looks the opposite of pleased with it. "But if chapel goes badly, we reevaluate everything."

I fight another groan. But she's already given up ground, and I don't want to be a total ass here. "Deal," I say. "But for chapel tomorrow, I'm bringing matches."

Like this chapter if you think Des should trust her thoughts on botany!

Comment your fears for chapel tomorrow...