The Omen Machine

CHAPTER 56

Henrik thought that the winds must have stilled to make the clouds drift to a halt, but then he saw the clouds again begin to move. Instead of going across the sky as before, though, the clouds started to move around in a circle overhead. They stretched into long spiral shapes as they rotated over the clearing, mirroring the glowing circular symbol on the ground. Small flickers of orange light intermittently illuminated the clouds from inside.

At the same time, the six familiars seemed to have been lulled into a trance of some sort by the murmurs from the Hedge Maid. All of them began circling the Hedge Maid along with the clouds above. Their feet weren’t touching the ground as they floated around Jit in a circle, gradually picking up speed. The clouds, too, picked up speed, going faster all the time, the orange and yellow light flickering like the light flashing in the symbols on the ground.

The Hedge Maid’s low, steady rhythm of sounds rose in pitch.

As the familiars and the clouds moved faster, the sound Jit made became a painful, high-pitched squeal. It kept getting louder and louder, higher and higher. Henrik had to cover his ears against the pain of the sound.

Suddenly, the six forms seemed to break apart. Henrik stared with wide eyes as hideous creatures with long bony arms and legs began to pull themselves out of the glowing forms of the familiars. Their backs were humped, their flesh blotchy and wet. They had no hair. Their knobby heads had angry, bulging eyes and snarling mouths that showed wicked fangs.

Unlike the familiars from which they had emerged, these things did not glow. Flickers of light from the clouds above and the circular designs below reflected off their glistening, mottled flesh.

Henrik saw then the same sorts of creatures erupting from the mounds where the stones were. Each struggled and strained to pull itself up out of the dirt. Yet more of them broke through the surface of the mounds, pulling themselves up out of the ground, joining into the growing mass of those that were circling the Hedge Maid, dancing around her like crazed animals.

But these were no animals.

Though they appeared animate, there were not living things.

Henrik thought they looked like the dead rising up from the ground, dancing with flailing arms and legs to the tune the Hedge Maid played.

He glanced back at the low, dark structure of woven sticks and branches. He realized that these mounds must be the graves of the people encased in the walls who died. After they had served what ever purpose the Hedge Maid needed them for, they were buried out here, and there they waited until called upon to serve her again.

Henrik imagined that the Hedge Maid must be a creature born in the underworld, the spawn of the Keeper himself.

In the center of the clearing the grotesque forms had gathered by the dozens, with more coming in out of the darkness of the surrounding swamp all the time to join with the others, circling ever faster. Henrik had to press his hands over his ears tighter as the sounds Jit was making seemed enough to tear him apart, enough to tear the very air apart.

The clouds moved in time with the circling forms. The light in them flickered faster and faster as the symbols on the ground flashed in rhythm with the sounds the Hedge Maid was making and the flickers in the clouds.

The sound, the light, the spinning, horrific creatures dancing like demons, were all making Henrik dizzy. His head throbbed with the beat of it all, with the pressure of it all. He squinted, fearing to close his eyes lest he never be able to open them again, yet hardly able to keep his eyes open against the overwhelming sights and sounds.

As all this activity whirled around her, Jit reached into various jars, pulling out handfuls of teeth, or what looked to be small finger bones, or human vertebrae, and cast them into the circle. With each addition light flared and danced.

The world seemed to be flickering. He saw little flashes of red, yellow, and orange.

And then Jit picked up the jar holding the flesh she had taken from under Henrik’s fingernails. The forms were rotating so fast that he could hardly make out individuals. It was all becoming a blur of dark, glistening flesh and thrashing limbs.

The Hedge Maid abruptly threw the jar she had up into the air above glowing circles and the writhing mass of forms.

Henrik saw the glass explode apart. The liquid in the jar seemed to ignite.

The world turned so bright that it looked like he could see Jit’s bones right through her body.

Everything was turned to light and fire. The trees all around burned. Hot glowing embers were drawn off the trees to swirl around the incandescence coming from the contents of the jar above the center of the flaming circle.

The Hedge Maid held her hands up, summoning forces he had never imagined. She stood alone against the light, defined by it, holding sway over a world turned to an inferno.

In the center of it all, in the heart of the blinding light, standing out like bright stars, there was something brighter yet. Small bits— the bits of flesh Jit had recovered from under his fingernails— were so incandescent that they made the rest of the burning world seem dull in comparison.

Her arms raised, Jit seemed to be commanding those bright sparks to pull everything else up with them as they rotated while climbing ever higher into the sky.

Alone in the center of the roaring conflagration, Jit lifted her arms higher, commanding it all to come together.

The masses of bone men howled as they burned, their bodies coming apart in flaming sparks and smoke that was sucked into the horrific vortex of blinding radiance.

Everything around him, all the trees, the vines, the moss, the bushes, even the ground, glowed as it burned and disintegrated into flaming embers and ash, coming off in long whorls that were pulled ever inward to spiral up toward the tiny sparks of blinding light that rose up through the center of the spiraling clouds.

The wind roared, the fire roared. Henrik had to squint against the blinding power of it all. He would have covered his eyes but he dared not take his hands away from his ears for fear that he, too, would be summoned by Jit into the inferno.

Even when he shut his eyes, he saw the same things as when he’d had his eyes open.

It was a night of burning color, of blinding light, of deafening sound … of madness.

Everything was being pulled into the glowing light in the center of the clearing. Branches and debris ripped from trees and the entire forest ignited as it was pulled in. Trees and plants disintegrated into a thousand sparks that swirled around and upward, following the radiant sparks of flesh. The bodies of the dead that had risen came apart in crackling, glowing embers like everything else.

The howls of terror and agony kept tears running freely down Henrik’s face.

The Hedge Maid lifted her arms again. The very air in the center of the clearing ignited in a blinding furnace of light.

Just when Henrik thought he would surely be pulled into it all to die in the terrible ignition of light, it ended.

The sudden silence felt like it might make him fall over.

It felt like he had been pushing against the sound, as if he’d been trying to stand in a gale. When the sound abruptly stopped, he almost stumbled forward.

His ears throbbed. His head throbbed. His whole body throbbed.

But the sound was not the only thing that was gone.

Henrik blinked. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The raging whirlwind of fire and light was gone as well.

He looked around and saw that the moss on the nearby trees hung limp in the still, humid air, just as it had before. Every tree was still there. The ground that had broken open as the bone men had erupted out of it looked undisturbed.

It was as if none of what Henrik had just seen had actually happened.

Except, the jar was gone and tiny bits of glass, like a thousand fallen stars, lay scattered across the bare ground.

Henrik couldn’t understand what had happened, what he had seen. He couldn’t understand if the fire had been real, if the creatures he had seen come up out of the ground were real, if the terrible sound and all the rest of it had been real.

Bishop Arc, still standing where he had been in the beginning, looked unharmed, and unmoved. He wore the same glare as he had in the beginning. If he was surprised by the deafening display of fire and light, he didn’t show it.

In the center of the clearing, the six familiars slowly circled in around Jit, tending to her, fussing over her, touching her protectively, as if to see if she had survived the ordeal. She ignored them as she used a foot to swipe away the marks she had made in the dirt with her staff when she had first come out.

The Hedge Maid turned her dark eyes toward Bishop Arc. She let out the squealing clicks that were her way of talking. Henrik could see her straining to open her mouth more as she made the sounds, but the net of leather thongs prevented it.

One of the familiars floated a little closer toward the bishop. “Jit says that it is done.”

His red eyes turned from the familiar to Jit. “See that you do the other things I have asked as well.” His brow drew down tight. “Don’t give me cause to return.”

With that he turned and stormed away. The darkness seemed to gather in around him as he went, like a black cape, making him look like a dark shadow moving across the ground.

A familiar leaning in made Henrik jump. He hadn’t seen her sneaking up behind him.

“Now,” she hissed, “time for you.”