What she proposed, Janice knew it was the only way to prove anything. She was given her old clothes - her heavy cloaks, a silk to wear across her face, her heavy gloves, as she walked in sandals out across the fields. "You've lived here all your lives," she said calmly, addressing the crowd. "You know. I don't. You will sit in judgement of me, and your judgement will carry for me and for my friend Feivel. If you find my testimonies wanting, then you will try Marley seperately, but I beg you to find a new prosecution than General Farrows."

"Go ahead," the judge said.

"I am an earth oracle," she said as she stood in the middle of a field, baked by the summer sun. The wind whistled through the fields. "I thank the doctors for their aquiescence in my request for a body, any body at all, to prove one third of our usefulness and naivete and good will. I will not pledge innocence of witchcraft, as you call it, for Feivel does control horses in a way I do not understand, and I do speak to the earth in a way that none of you will ever know."

She turned towards the judge, and took a blindfold from the bench nearby. "If you would blindfold me, your honor?" she asked. "All my eyes, if you please."

She could feel the revulsion as he reached towards her twin and bound the scarf tightly around her face. She opened her eyes, but there was nothing to be seen.

"Read this sign," the judge told her as chalk clattered against a slate.

She turned towards the sound, tried to discern a shadow, a shape, anything. "I see no sign," she answered calmly.

"Very well."

"Doctor," she said, stretching a hand towards where she thought the doctors were, but already she had lost her berrings. "Direct my sleeve towards the body," she requested.

She felt a tug on her sleeve and followed it, her hand being lain on the sheet that covered the body. "I ask for silence, so I do not have preconceived notions as to whether or not my answers are correct. I will tell you the identity of this person, what he or she died of, and personal information that only you as townspeople would know. Please take it to heart that I do not use this gift wantonly, and that the interpretations of the earth and those who people it are all that I can do."

It was harder without her twin free, with her eyes bound, but she didn't want to give any notion that her ideas were preconceived. She drew back the sheet, and someone gave a stifled choking sob. She waited them out, then calmly removed her heavy gloves and touched the skin of the deceased.

Instantly, thoughts and memories and deeds leapt to her mind. A lifetime flashed quickly before her eyes, and she took a shuddering breath.

Struggling to speak through the flashes, she clenched her eyes more tightly and concentrated as hard as she could.

"His name is Quention Morrow," she said quietly. "When he was ten, he broke his arm in three places, which never set properly afterwards. He was lame in that arm, his left arm, for the rest of his life. He was a weaver by trade, though he had always wanted to be a soldier, and often cursed this arm for the things it had prevented him." She paused, drawing in a deep breath.

"And how he died?" the judge prompted.

Janice felt the pain in her chest, feeling it syphoned from the pain that had been in Quentin Morrow's chest. She bit her lip firmly. "He had a heart attack," she said quietly. "He was only thirty-five years old. He turned thirty-six on the third day of next month. He died five days ago. He died with love for his wife, Cattia, whom he never managed to leave children."

"It wasn't his fault!" a woman sobbed from the crowd, and Janice turned her head towards her.

"Please!" she sobbed. "Tell him it wasn't his fault!"

"It doesn't go both ways," she answered calmly. "I can't speak to the dead. The dead speak to me."

"What use is that?!" the woman sobbed again.

Janice shook her head, crouched, and removed her sandals. "Having just arrived in town two days ago, I do not know the lay of the land. Any one of you can tell easily that I am a stranger. I have known none of you in any of my years before two days ago. I will tell you the history of this field, the rains and the droughts, and the crops that have grown here. And you will know better than I."

The townspeople listened and waited while Janice stepped free of her sandals, as she walked silently, calmly, feeling the rush of the ages across her body, across her mind. She felt the duststorms that had ravaged the town thirty years ago, the floods that followed that. The witch scare had started during these events, blaming the weather on the acts of nefarious women. And perhaps it was true, but one had been hanged from that tree, and one had been burned, the ashes having blown into this soil.

She told the people as such, as well as the crops which had been planted here for the last ten years, moving season by season. She told them how Crawford Jameson had lost a hand here when he was eight, having surprised a grain reaper. The only reason he hadn't lost his life was because Marley had stitched the wounds in his stomach.

It was difficult, though, picking through the memories of the earth, the dust that was carried on the wind and left here was trying to muddle her thoughts, carry her away. She struggled against it, and she pulled herself free with a wrenching effort.

"And now," she said quietly, tying her sandals back on, still blindfolded. "I ask for a volunteer. To prove that I can read the past deeds of a person." Someone please, step forward and take my hand."

She pulled her glove free, and she extended her hand, waiting.

Eventually, she felt a smaller hand fill it.

"Hello, Agnes," she said quietly. The crowd collectively caught their breaths. "I'm sorry," she continued. "I know you. You're one of Marley's apprentices. I can't use you."

"Please," the little girl whispered back, even as Janice's head began to flood with images, acts, deeds.

"You've been sent to Marley by your sister," she said quietly, feeling the fierce glare Agnes was directing to the crowd, even as the words continued to flow from Janice's lips, even as she tried to free her hand from that of this child, who carried so much anger in her, so much hatred.

"You were sent to her two years ago to confirm suspicions of witchcraft, but also to learn her trade, so that it could undo her. You learned her secrets, even as she spoke them to you freely, openly. You and the others who had been sent in under the cover of good will and hope were brought to undermine her, to report back suspicious information. Your sister, your brother-in-law, Margaret Yllins, Ulric Thomson, Ronald Drawn, and Penny Blacksmith were behind these plots to destroy the only woman in town who held any amount of power without a man to keep her. They were afraid."

"That's nonsense!" someone cried, and Agnes' recognition carried across their hands to Janice's lips.

"Would you like to come give it a try, Mrs. Yllins?" she challenged sharply. "I did not want this girl to come to prove me because it would be outrage I would hear, whether because she supported or attacked Marley in any way."

"You're a witch and a harlot!" the woman continued to scream. "Spreading lies about good honest decent folks! And you deserve to be burned alive! No mercy!" she screamed.

The crowd tried to take up the chant, but Janice shouted them down.

"Like the mercy you offer your daughters?" she barked. She grabbed Agnes by the shoulder, quickly unlaced the back of her dress. Agnes froze, horrified, and was little more than a block of wood under Janice's quick and nimble fingers.

"You call this mercy? You call this love?" Her hands wrenched away Agnes' dress to reveal countless scars running up and down her back. "Because she dared to speak against you, you struck her until blood flowed, until you could see bone, and the only way she survived was with skills she learned from the place you sent her to bring down the only woman who treated her like a person."

"Don't," Agnes begged, but it was too late. Her tongue had already started going, and caught as she was in her visions, she could not do anything but give voice to the things she now knew.

"You treat your men like gods!" she barked. "And you treat your daughters like the maggots that creep from the flesh of those you leave to die. You make up lies to keep them in line, ruling them by fear and oppression and hatred. And why?"

No one answered her, and she knew through Agnes that they were staring at her, agog.

"Tell them!" Janice barked at the girl. "Tell them why!"

Agnes was shaking with fear. She shook her head, couldn't answer. Wouldn't answer.

"Because if they are given half a chance at equality," Janice breathed, "you're all afraid your whole little town will come crashing to its knees."

From behind her, she heard a little voice and a buzz of wings. ~Janice,~ Kendra sighed. ~I don't think you were supposed to say that.~

The crowd errupted again, and the judge moved between them and the party of the defense. "Justice will be served!" he promised them. "But only if you are patient of heart and sound of mind." He turned to Janice. "Is there any more disturbing revelations you'd like to pile on us, or shall we try you as a dissenter and disturber of the peace?"

"Go to the Lenra river," she said quietly. "And find the bodies of the girls you've lost. And ask them." She sank to her knees as her words slowed and her body exhausted itself. She unbound the blindfold and stared at the earth beneath her.

Kendra came and sat on her shoulders, and Feivel pulled hard against the guards who held him.

The blackness was fading from his eyes as they allowed him near her. He stood looking down at her, and she smiled up. "I'm sorry," she said quietly.

"You tried at least," he answered.