Read The Walking for Free Online Page B

obviously afraid of him, and they'd obviously had to build themselves up to this.
    As they pressed farther into the room, he could smell whiskey breath, ' He could use their fear against them. It was his last chance to avoid violence.
    He stood straight and moved next to the fire, aware of the image the flickering orange flames would produce. "You know what I am?" he said. 'Then, you know what I can do."
    He concentrated, caused the flames to leap and grow in a roaring whoosh that sped up the chimney.
    The men, all of the men except Stevens, stumbled backward.
    "She's my daughter! Stevens said, advancing. "
    William stood still, gathering his strength, hoping he wouldn't have to use the magic, knowing he would. "I have
    not touched your daughter." He glanced quickly around the room, taking inventory, deciding what he would need to take with him, what he could afford to leave. He would miss this place.
    Stevens swung at him.
    William ducked, expecting it. The ax handle knocked down the mantel above the fireplace, the objects atop it clattering and breaking on the wooden floor. Before the big man could attack again, William waved his hand and caused the ax handle to fly from Stevens' hand.
    "Stop right now," he warned. "Leave my house or I will not be responsible." From the corner of his eye, he saw a couple of the men nearest the door edge their way back outside. No one was rushing forward to help Stevens.
    His muscles were shaking. Anger and power coursed through him. When he saw that Stevens had no intention of leaving or backing off, when he saw that the father's rage and pride were running too high, William steeled himself. Stevens rushed him. "Die, witch!"
    He'd clearly expected his friends to help, but as William began chanting some of the Words, as the fireplace roared again and a green flame leapt out and struck Stevens full in the face, the other men fled, scrambling to get out the door.
    William continued chanting and the green flame grew, spreading down the big man's body, engulfing him, freezing him in place. Beneath the sickly illumination of the unnatural fire, Stevens' body blackened, crumpled, started to melt.
    William looked out the open door at the men and horses running away, their forms little more than scrambling shadows in the moonlight.
    They'd scurry back to town, and soon they'd be back, with more men, more weapons. The righteous townspeople marching forth to put an end to the evil witch and his black arts
    All because a girl had fallen in love with someone other than the boy her father wanted her to marry. And he had helped her. William sighed.
    He'd thought this kind of persecution was over, that the haled and horror of the old days had faded.
    But it wasn't, it hadn't, it never would.
    The green flames were gone, and he stared down at the twisted black lump that had once been a body, thinking of his mother. He remembered the way she had looked at the stake, remembered the panicked expression on her doomed face, remembered the way her eyes had scanned over him without recognition, mistaking him for merely another face in the hostile crowd that was putting her to death. "Run!" the man with the torch had ordered her, and she had run in place as the fire caught, as first the kindling and then the bigger branches had begun to burn. She had continued to run as the sack dress she was wearing ripped open, had continued to run naked as around her the blaze grew.
    He touched the twisted form with his foot. In his mind, as clear as if it had been yesterday, he heard the sound of his mother screaming as the flames scorched her skin, as her legs blackened and she started to burn. He'd wanted her to save herself, to use whatever magic she had left and kill however many men she could, and he had not understood at the time why she'd gone down passively, why she hadn't struck back.
    But he knew now that she'd done it for him. Any indication that the judge was right, that she really was a witch, would have ensured