The woods ended far sooner than Ichabod
would have thought.
He stopped dead on the edge of the path. He was standing in the narrow gap where
he had first seen the Horseman, headless then. A flock of sheep huddled close
together against the cold. The full moon lit the thick layer of fog that swirled
and eddied close to the ground making it glow eerily. A well worn path meandered
down to Sleepy Hollow. A series of torches protected the perimeter as they had
since the first headless corpse had turned up.
The last place he wanted to go was town. He turned away and let his feet carry
him onward up through the field and out to the ruins of a small cottage.
Strange, he thought, that so much bitterness and rage could have begun in such a
humble place. If the widow Archer and her twin daughters had not been cast out
into the cold, Christiaan might never have been killed. Katrina might have lived
and died a humble peasant. There would have been no murders to bring him to this
place.
He knelt before the remains of the hearth and idly picked up the stick Katrina
had used to draw in the ashes. The figure she had drawn so long ago was still
there protected somehow from the elements.
Strange, she had looked at the ashes with the same detached preoccupation as his
mother. How much of his life had been directed by magic, he wondered, how much
control did he truly have over himself. He could see his mother now, she knelt
by the hearth mindless of the ashes and dust and drew with that happy,
distracted look singing a wordless tune. She did not seem to be aware of him. He
walked to her side and looked over her shoulder at the mark. She traced it over
and over the turned to look at him.
"Do not forget, my little bird. You are never alone. Trust your
heart."
Then the door flew open and his father was there, Bible clutched to his breast
and liquor on his breath with the fires of Hell burning in his eyes. Ichabod had
reached for her, but there was no stopping his father in a rage.
With a gasp, Ichabod dropped the stick. When the pain and fear of the memory
faded, he found himself staring into the ashes. He had unconsciously drawn an
image there next to the first. A numbness seemed to wash over him. He sagged to
both knees. His chest felt tight. The image he had drawn, the image his mother
had told him to remember, was the same one on the back on the Hessian's pin.
With sudden desperation, he pulled the book of magic he always carried from his
coat pocket. The moon was bright enough to make out the pictures and diagrams.
The first one he came to was Katrina's rune. According to the book, it was a
design to inspire love. Somehow, that did not surprise him as it should have.
The second symbol was not in the book.
Suddenly very confused and weary, Ichabod Crane sat on the cold ground and drew
his knees up to his chin. He let his head drop onto his knees in a near fetal
position. He hugged the cloak tightly around him and tried to quiet the thousand
clamouring voices in his head.