The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson Page A

end of the pastures, a few yards from the forest’s edge, a bucket capsized at her feet.
    “Are you hurt?” Immanuelle asked, slowing to a stop.
    Glory shook her head, mouth open, blond curls sticking to her lips. Her gaze flickered to Ezra, as if she was as shocked to see him as she was by whatever had startled her. But the moment passed, and she snapped to her senses. Words seemed to catch in her throat as she pointed to the bucket with a shaking finger.
    Ezra stooped to pick it up. It was then Immanuelle caught thescent of rot on the air, wet and fetid. Something black seeped into the soil, slicking the walls of the bucket.
    Immanuelle swallowed dry, her stomach roiling, as Ezra put the bucket on its hook and lowered it into the depths of the well again. He twisted the crank, and the bucket descended, disappearing into the deep. When the sound of the bucket’s rim breaking water echoed up the shaft, he began to crank the lever again, working fast, his shoulders straining with the effort.
    Slowly, the bucket climbed above the stones of the well’s wall. Ezra took it off its hook and Glory staggered back, as though he’d reeled a viper from the water.
    He lowered the bucket to the ground, and to Immanuelle’s horror, she saw it was filled to the brim with a thick, dark liquid that sloshed over the rim and blackened the soil below. Immanuelle dropped to her knees beside it and dipped her fingers into the bucket. When she removed her hand her fingertips were slick red.
    “Blood,” she whispered, and with those words, a kind of dreadful déjà vu settled over her, so powerful it seemed to tear her soul from her body. It took her a moment to come back to herself. “Where is Martha?”
    “She left for the Holy Grounds with Mother for a birthing,” said Glory, stumbling over the words. “Apostle Isaac’s sixth wife went into—”
    “What of Abram? Where is he?”
    “I-in his workshop.”
    “Fetch him,” she said, and when the girl didn’t move, she gave her a little shove in the right direction. “Now!”
    Ezra stepped forward then, frowning down at her. “Are you all right?”
    Immanuelle nodded, tried to answer him, but trailed off intosilence as she stared down at her bloodstained hand. She felt that pull again, the phantom force that had dragged her from her body mere moments before—not at all unlike the lure of the woods. “I’m . . .”
    Blood. Blight. Darkness. Slaughter. Blood. Blight. Darkness. Slaughter. Blood.
    Blood.
    “Immanuelle—”
    “Thank you for the book.” With that, Immanuelle turned and broke toward the farmhouse, cutting through the pastures in a full run. It was empty, as Glory had said it would be, and Immanuelle rushed through the parlor and bounded upstairs to her bedroom. At the foot of her bed, she dropped to her knees, slipped a hand beneath her mattress, and withdrew the journal. She opened it there on the floor, smearing the pages with blood as she tore past them to the final entry: Blood. Blight. Darkness. Slaughter. Blood. Blight. Darkness. Slaughter. Blood. Blight. Darkness. Slaughter. Blood. Blight. Darkness. Slaughter. Blood—
    Blood.
    Of course.
    Shock turned to dread, and dread turned to horror as Immanuelle read the words, realizing their significance for the first time. The journal. The list. The drawings of the forest and their witches. Miriam’s words weren’t the ramblings of a madwoman. They were warnings of what was yet to come.
    Four warnings. Four witches. Four plagues, and the first had come upon them.
    “Immanuelle, what the—” Ezra stepped into her bedroom, dropped to a crouch at her side. His gaze went from her to the journal lying open in her lap. “What’s that?”
    Immanuelle snapped the journal shut, tossed it back into herhope chest, and closed it. She turned to offer Ezra some passing excuse, but the sound of church bells cut her short. Twelve tolls in quick succession, a pause, and then more bells ringing across Bethel as others