The driver shrugs.“Must have just fallen.I had taken folks to Pleasantville earlier today and it was fine.I better go tell the constable.”
He cracks his whip at his team of horses and the coach takes off, leaving us in the dust, the passengers staring at us out the windows as they go.
“Curious,” Crane muses as his gaze goes over the tree.“How does a tree that large just fall out of the blue with no wind?”
“Too much rain in the roots?”Brom suggests as Daredevil throws up his head, snorting wildly.“Whoa there, what’s gotten into you?”he chides his horse as he dances around, the whites of his eyes showing.
“I should investigate,” Crane says, clucking for Gunpowder to go closer to the fallen tree, but Gunpowder’s ears flatten back and he starts swishing his tail vigorously, moving forward a few feet and then reversing.
Gunpowder, I tell him, trying to communicate.It’s all right.We just want a closer look at the tree.
But Gunpowder won’t go, and when Crane kicks his side, the old horse suddenly rears, almost throwing the both of us off.We both manage to hold on.
“Jesus,” Crane swears.“What’s wrong with them?”
“It doesn’t matter,” says Brom, bringing Daredevil over to us.“The tree is down; we can’t get through to town.”
“There are other ways to Pleasantville,” I tell them as Gunpowder spins around and starts heading back to Sleepy Hollow.“There’s another road farther east, some trails…”
“Those take longer,” Brom says.“Didn’t you want me back in chains before nightfall?”he asks Crane, a razor edge to his voice.
“You like the chains, don’t kid yourself,” Crane says under his breath.He clears his throat.“All right, we’ll head back to Kat’s, collect her horse, and hopefully not have to deal with her mother, and then back to the school.Save Pleasantville for another day.”
We start riding back the way we came, and Crane says into my ear, “I guess it’s true what they say.”
“What?”I say back, looking over my shoulder at him to meet his sharp gaze.
“Welcome to Sleepy Hollow,” he says gravely.“May you never leave.”
17
Crane
I’m not a huge believer in coincidences.Life isn’t as random as people make it out to be, I suppose that’s why I do tarot and have a gift for divinity.Things happen because they are supposed to, because it is ordained, because there is order to life.Are we all flies in a web?Perhaps.But are we all cogs in a wheel?Most definitely.
The fact that our way out of Sleepy Hollow was blocked by a giant, healthy-looking tree wasn’t a coincidence to me.It was there for a reason.To prevent us from leaving.And if we had more time, perhaps to venture on another route to Pleasantville, or the road to Tarrytown, or on a riverboat down the Hudson, each of those attempts would have been thwarted in some way.The prickling feeling on the back of my neck, that kick in the gut that I’ve come to trust as instinct, all of those things are telling me that there is no escape now, at least not for today.
I don’t voice this to Kat or Brom, of course.They don’t need to hear my wild theories, especially ones so demoralizing and basedon nothing but a gut feeling.But I know it.Witchcraft and magic go beyond what you can see, and often beyond what you understand.The sisters have been at this game for a very, very long time.They are in charge of the chessboard, seeing the moves ahead of time.The wards protect the school; does something similar protect Sleepy Hollow when they want it to?
All the more reason to get the damn horseman out of Brom, to start working on our magic so in the event we are being kept from leaving town, we can learn to break through it.I’ll admit my defenses, as I demonstrated in class earlier this morning, aren’t the strongest, but I also know I have the ability to change that.
“We’ll do the ritual tomorrow night,” I shout as we’re cantering down the road to Kat’s house, loud enough that Brom hears me.“It’s the dark moon.The energy will be perfect for shadow magic too.If it doesn’t work, then we only have two weeks until the full moon ritual.And if that fails, it’s just a couple of days until Samhain.”
And ifthatdoesn’t work, on the day of the year where the veil is at its thinnest, well…
Both Kat and Brom nod.I’m still a little worried about how they’ll do during the ritual.Brom because I don’t want him to get funny when it comes to Kat.I take control when it comes to the both of them, but he’s used to being the dominant with her.He’s going to struggle with having to obey me in this case.Luckily, I like it when he struggles.
Kat, I worry about more.She seems a little looser around Brom now, she doesn’t freeze up when he’s close, which is good for their relationship, bad for my possessiveness and my need tokeep them apart.Still, I need to make sure she feels safe and protected throughout the whole ritual.She’s our most important piece, the one both of us love dearly, the key to bonding the three of us together.
The ritual will get intense, as well.I’ll need her complete trust in order to have the whole thing go off without a hitch, because the last thing we need is the ritual being broken.There will be pain, there will be blood drawn (all superficial wounds that I will quickly heal), and Kat might be terrified in the process, especially when dealing with shadow work, but she will need to commit to the ceremony one hundred percent or it won’t work.
Then, after, if we are successful in driving the horseman’s spirit from Brom’s body and back into the spirit world, we can think about leaving Sleepy Hollow.
All I know is that when the time comes, a fallen tree isn’t going to stop me.
And the students?the voice in the back of my head nags.What will you do to protect them?
To that I don’t have an answer yet.I don’t even know what the truth is, what the true purpose of the school is.I’m starting to think it’s not about education at all, that’s just a ruse.If I could find out exactly what the sisters are up to, then I can at least warn the students and help them leave if they need to.I could tell the outside world the truth.
