Mara Angnakak, also known as Crone Mara, is the oldest Practitioner in Jacob's Bell, predating the founding of the town. She is noted to straddle the line between Other and Human, having at least centuries of limited knowledge and experience because she was only able to teach herself what she knew. It is suspected that she may be illiterate, but not confirmed.
An offhand comment by Maggie Holt suggests that she may occasionally take people who wonder into her woodlands and use them to maintain her youth, and later revealed she switches bodies with her own children.
Appearance[]
She appears as nothing more than middle-aged aboriginal woman to the untrained eye. She can alter her appearance to that of a withered old woman or a twelve-year old girl as well. It is thought to be a result of her reason for her long life, body-swapping with her children.
Personality[]
Mara is noted in the notes left behind by Rose Thorburn Senior to be reserved but holding an extreme amount of hatred for the rest of the practitioners in Jacob's Bell. To this end no one tries to sit next to her during the meeting. She has no love of anyone who is white, but in the past had nurtured many native people with her knowledge, leading to the rise of their communities.
Having had tens of thousands of years to live she does so in a ritual of activity, leaving her mindset in itself grounded in the old ways from which she was born in. Gain, loss, love, fairness, right, rights, things of that nature she finds are recent inventions younger than her, and she considers herself to be humanity distilled, without culture or ideas to pollute and weaken her. She's articulate whens he speaks, but she seems more comfortable when the lines of enemyship are drawn. She is endlessly patient and does not seek company, seeing loneliness as a luxury.
History[]
Mara herself states that she is one of the first humans to come to the Americas, her parents bringing her across to Canada in reed rafts; and that she had performed the same daily routine for more than nine million days, at least 24,657 years. She also declared that she had lived been reborn at least a thousand times, again suggesting an age in the tens of thousands of years.[1]
Rose Sr notes she was around before the Algonquins, which was more than 2000 years old.[citation needed] Mara described herself as having nurtured the communities that grew up around her for centuries.[1]
Pact[]
Mara first appeared in the story after Molly Walker had died, due to a fail-safe that showed the majority of the major parties in Jacob's Bell to Blake Thorburn while he slept. She later appeared during Blake's first council meeting.
Signatures[]
Maggie Holt came to her home, where Mara appeared as a chained little girl and tested Maggie to see if she would free Mara from her chain. Maggie refuses by putting her identity together, with Mara stating she would have been compost if she had tried and then telling her they wouldn't deal. She arrived as Maggie was claiming a new name, Mags, and originally planned to oppose her. When Mags stated that what she was doing was the harder path and she would suffer more because of it, Mara decried 'no contest' in allowing her to form it.
Null[]
She appeared in the council meeting where they were determining who would participate as a competitor for the position of Lord, with her remaining out of it. She seemed to recognize James Corvidae.
Sine Die[]
She appears in the form of a thirteen-year old girl in the forest, trimming the trees as Blake's group arrives. She then confronts them on the fact that they have intruded on her lands, confirming that she would not have allowed them to enter or come if asked by Mags, the Ambassador. Blake refuses her offer of killing one so that another may go, but when a conflict started Rose appeared and tried to shoot her only for her to dodge the bullet. She then gives a member of the Knights of the Basement who was close to death a heart attack and planned on killing another person with a touch, utilizing the rule of three to enable her to kill with a word after. To that end she killed Corvidae to break him of his bindings and then summoned him again, trying to trick Blake until he realized the trap and used the Hyena to finish the Corvidae off for good and take her hostage.
They put her in a circle and bind her, and Blake explains that he's going to ask her questions and swear an oath, knowing that she'd lie over and over until she was powerless. While she made offers otherwise, they were insistent and her forest started to collapse around her every time she lied until she confessed that it was Johannes making the town sink and pointed out that by wasting their time with her he has a clear shot at the Hillglades House. It was after this that she mentions a deal would be made where everyone got what they wanted, only for it to be lesser, after seeing her house burned down.
Abilities[]
Mara is a Blood Hag, a practitioner who has been around for an extended period of time with both magic and Other abilities at her disposal.[2] Her knowledge is vast due to her age, and while not clearly defined so far she had demonstrated:
- Avian Taming: Mara has tamed most of the turkey vultures and crows in the woods surrounding her. This isn't a magical ability, but the result of taming them over a long period of time.[2]
- Basic Workings: Like many of the local practitioners, she could sense and disrupt Blake seeing her in his dream.[3] On one occasion Mara created a powerful circle from blood and feathers that protected her from magic and Others.[4] She was also able to use glamour.[5]
- Soul Manipulation: Crone Mara switches bodies with her own children to extend her life, placing the souls into dolls after her previous body dies.[citation needed] She can also ward away the spirits that carry the dead off, leaving people's souls to rot in their bodies.[6]
- Mortality Infliction: Given an item they own, Mara can grant an immortal being such as a Bogeyman a "heart" so that she can kill them.[7] She can cause a heart attack simply by ordering people to "Die", at least under the right circumstances.[8][9][10] She can also kill someone with a touch, possibly even a Bogeyman.[11][12] Each kill she inflicts is easier than the last.[9]
- Resurrection: Mara was able to quietly raise an Other she had slain mid-fight as her servant.[5]
Domain[]
The woodlands around Jacob's Bell are hers in a way few people can claim, having been there for thousands of years. The spirits within it are also within her power and will side with her under most circumstances.[13]
She has an instinctive awareness of her environment while within[14][13][15] and could seemingly dodge bullets.[4][16]
The easiest path through her woods was always a trap, and would lead you to her.[17] Practitioner children were warned to always take the harder path there, and use the church bells from the town as a guide.
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 “The town will fall, just as it rose, two hundred and fifteen years ago. Before that, I was here. I watched people come and go. Settlements rose and fell. Not many, not large, but a number. Before that, I was here.”
“Been here a while,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed. “The man and woman who brought me into this world came to this place on a raft of reeds, and I was so small I had to be carried. We traveled from the west to here over my lifetime, following the deer and the hunt. When my parents passed, I stayed. I was one of the first to lay claim here, and I have never given it up.”
“Over the water to the west?” Peter murmured. “The lake?”
“Ocean,” Tiff said, her voice almost a whisper.
“I nurtured those who followed after me or passed through, offered them my hand and my amassed knowledge, so they could be communities, a people. Many are mine. Hundreds of years of work. I saw things follow in our wake, things stirred into existence by our being. Your Others, echoing our intelligence, echoing our pride and fear and pain, to join those Others that were here before the first people. I am familiar with them all. I know what man is, and I know that your love and law and fairness are invention. Invention younger than I am.”
[...]
“You know the power of your repetition. Three times, you do something. Three times you bind it to make it so. Agreed?”
“That’s the gist of it.”
“Invention. But at the core, there is truth. I have not counted, but I can still be utterly confident in saying that I have woken up in the same place for more than nine million of your days. I have gathered, hunted, cooked and eaten the same foods on those same days. I have been born, bled for the first time, and been reborn on more than one thousand occasions. The wheel of life and death turns forward and I am an indelible part of it, especially here. This is a pattern, this is my ritual. Now tell me, what is the truth of this. What does it make me?” - excerpt from Sine Die 14.6 - ↑ 2.0 2.1 Crone Mara remained where she was. She reached out and touched a branch.
A crack and the branch she’d been tending before our conversation now broke.
The crack seemed to echo through the woods, in the same moment the wind died.
Like a gunshot, almost, reaching across her territory, the sound bouncing off trees that happened to be in the right place, against stones, skipping over the surface of water like flat, balanced stones.
The sound reached its intended audience. The birds returned. [...] the sky was swallowed by a mass of birds, even that light disappeared.
[...]
“Practice,” Tiff said. “Simple actions, made into powerful ones with tens of thousands of years of repetition. Train a bird, tune a sound…”
“This is how she operates?” Evan asked.
“No,” Tiff said. Her voice came from another space, as if she were moving. I hadn’t heard the footsteps. “She’s a blood hag. She’ll have Other powers, and practitioner powers. This is just what someone can pull off if they just happen to be immortal and very patient.” - excerpt from Sine Die 14.6 - ↑ A weathered aboriginal woman, brushing a young girl’s hair with a broad-toothed comb. It might have been an ordinary scene, except it was the dead of night. She picked up a chain, then shackled the girl at the wrist. She noted the observer, then scattered the image with a wave of one hand. - excerpt from Bonds 1.1
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 I took in Mara’s hostage. Alexis knelt in the snow. A circle of blood
and black feathers surrounded them. Only five or so feet across.
[...]
“They can’t help you,” Mara said. “The circle will protect me from workings. If a gun is pointed at me, I’ll know. I’ll hear the gunshot and move before the bullet hits me.”
[...]
I lunged for her. My hand hit the barrier, a wall of air. I stabbed it, and achieved nothing. - excerpt from Sine Die 14.7 - ↑ 5.0 5.1 Corvidae stood before me. Hand extended, an inch or two from Evan. His arm went limp, and he dropped to his knees. He broke up into feathers. I saw only a glimpse of a lock of hair in one hand before the hand disappeared. Letita’s hair. Glamour.
I checked. Alexis was no longer in the circle.
The second time I’d nearly been fooled, tonight.
A second breach of trust.
To make use of him like that, she’d killed him. That much was true.
But she was a practitioner.
She’d called him right back.
Disguised him. - Excerpt from Sine Die 14.7 - ↑ “No compromise. I intend to kill each of you in turn,” Mara spoke. “One by one. I can ward off the spirits and powers that would carry your companion’s souls to their eternal rest. Bind soul to dying body, so that their self can endure the moment of death for centuries. The act of rotting and being ripped apart by carrion birds, a dim, broken awareness.” - Excerpt from Sine Die 14.7
- ↑ She held out the Hyena, balancing it on one hand, so it teetered slightly. “Enact your judgement. I am life, birth, death. By this token, give the monster a heart, and return his weapon to him, impaling-” - Excerpt from Sine Die 14.6
- ↑ “Die,” Mara said.
The heavyset man reacted to the word like he’d been slapped. A step backward, gun pulled back and pointed away, as if he were afraid he’d reflexively pull the trigger.
He dropped to his knees. I could, now that his face was no longer in such utter shadow, make him out as one of the individuals that had been in the room when I’d first met the Knights. Was he the one with the artificial leg?
Teddy?
The import of the word had become clear. Shots rang off. Mara dropped, and she did it fast enough that I suspected the first bullet and most of the others had flown over her. - Excerpt from Sine Die 14.7 - ↑ 9.0 9.1 “She didn’t touch Teddy!” another voice shouted. “And he’s having a heart attack!” “Slowing him down, but we’re not equipped for this,” the female Behaim called out. “I don’t know!” Rose said, raising her voice as the bird cries intensified. She grunted as one bird attacked her. “But she’s not doing it again, she might need something more concrete to off the rest of us, some possession of ours, some point of reference! Touch is the most obvious. Each kill should be easier than the last! Don’t-” - excerpt from Sine Die 14.7
- ↑ If Rose was right, Mara would try to achieve a sequence. Kill someone who was close to death already with a word. Use a touch to kill a second person. By the rule of three, would she be able to kill someone who wasn’t close to death with a mere word? Rose? - excerpt from Sine Die 14.7
- ↑ “Don’t let her touch you!” Rose called out.
Green Eyes hesitated, stopping at a ridge.
“She only needs to touch you to kill you!” Rose elaborated. - excerpt from Sine Die 14.7 - ↑ I wasn’t as afraid of being touched as the others had reason to be. No heart with which to suffer a heart attack. [...] She could kill with a word or a touch, but I had to hope she couldn’t kill me without giving me life first. - excerpt from Sine Die 14.7
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 “Bullshit!” Roxanne joined the cry. Evan was only a step behind her. We managed to make Mara look annoyed. “I have been here for a long time,” Mara said. “My day is a ritual. My existence is ritual. The spirits that dwell here are mine. They will side with me.” Her face was cloaked in shadow, framed by her hair, shrouded by the canopy, and something told me it was intentional, as if she instinctively knew where the light fell, here. The only light there, in her silhouetted form, was a gleam at one eye, like the edge of a knife. - excerpt from Sine Die 14.6
- ↑ Mara was running, one eye on the gunmen, and she was moving faster than I did. As light as I was, my feet still stabbed through the snow, five steps in six sinking me to mid-calf or knee level. Mara’s footsteps didn’t. She moved easily over the crust of snow, and when her feet did punch through it, she found something solid beneath. - excerpt from Sine Die 14.7
- ↑ I moved, but every movement came with cues. The crunch of snow. With years of experience, she would know, she’d intuit exactly where I was in respect to her. - excerpt from Sine Die 14.6
- ↑ Rose fired.
Mara moved in the same moment, away from the bullet, simultaneously turning to glance at me. To see a small cloth doll with a weird leathery face being dashed to pieces.
The bullet didn’t strike home, but I was pretty sure that she’d been grazed. Clipped in an ear. One hand went to the side of her head.
“I thought you said this gun made me accurate.”
“Benefits you,” the man I’d nicknamed ‘Shotgun’ spoke, holding his trademark weapon. “Can’t help you if the target can dodge bullets.”
- excerpt from Sine Die 14.6 - ↑ “Take the harder path! The obvious path is a trap, here!” another voice said. It might have been the male Behaim. He was grunting as the birds assaulted him. “Paths will turn you around and send you back into her clutches!” - excerpt from Sine Die 14.7