“Sure, dear. Hand it here.” Agnes reached back as Hazel pulled forth the jar, her heart thumping wildly as she did so. Agnes grasped the jar without looking and placed it on her workbench.
Without warning, she whirled on Hazel.
“Wheredid you say you found this?” Her voice was sharp.
Hazel recoiled. “I-It was in our kitchen. At Briar and Rose. Shattered on the floor.”
Agnes’s eyes grew wide then narrowed to near slits. Without another word, she spun back to her workbench, turning her back on Hazel. She knocked around her own glass jars of herbs frantically, as though looking for something specific. She dug around in her cupboard, grabbing things and mumbling to herself. When she turned around, Agnes had several small sachets of herbs, affixing them to Hazel’s person and her bag. Hazel eyed them warily. “What was in that jar, Agnes?”
She fixed a pointed gaze on Hazel. “That is Witchbane powder, cultivated from Veilroot. Did you handle it? Did it touch your skin?” She glanced down at the bandage on Hazel’s finger. “Yourblood?”
“No,” she lied. “I swept it up with a dustpan and dumped it into the jar. I cut myself with a knife while preparing the eveningmeal yesterday. Is it… Am I in danger?” She swallowed the lump in her throat.
“No more than normal, my dear,” Agnes replied. Hazel found it less reassuring than she would have liked.
“What is it used for? Why are you worried about me touching it?” she blurted.
For a moment, Agnes said nothing. Then she gave what Hazel suspected to be a carefully crafted lie. It was too rehearsed to be the truth.
“Witchbane is exactly what it sounds like. In the decades following the Thousand Years War, during the first persecution of witch kind, Veilroot was ground into a powder, then steeped in tea and consumed by witches who wanted or needed to conceal their powers. Only in the last twenty-five years has it become prevalent again.”
A manicured lie or a truth she lived through?Hazel wondered.
“I’m not a witch, Agnes,” Hazel scoffed, “so why is it so important I don’t handle it?”
Her weighted gaze lingered over Hazel before she answered. “Witchbane is known to cause childbearing issues in women.Allwomen. And I’m not going to assume whether or not you want babes of your own, but if you envision that for yourself, you’ll do well to stay away from it.”
Fine.Hazel nodded and changed the subject. “And what’s all this for, then?” she asked, gesturing to the herbs and trinkets Agnes loaded her up with.
“Hmm, these? Just some charms and small wards for you to take home to your father, along with the tea leaves he requested.”
Hazel thought perhaps she’d had enough tea for a while, but she didn’t say it aloud. She fingered through the herbs. Rosemary. Dried hawthorn berries. Bay leaf. Sage. Plants forprotection, according to the limited herbology Agnes had taught her.
Her heart thumped a little faster. “Should I be worried?”Should Pa?
Agnes laughed then. “No, dear. And I am sorry to have frightened you. We will try again sometime, and I am sure we will have a more successful reading. As for the rest of this… it’s nothing for you to concern yourself with.”
Sure…Hazel was less than convinced but said nothing more.
They embraced, the tiny, hunched woman barely coming up to Hazel’s chest.
“Love you, auntie.” She planted a loving kiss on the old woman’s wrinkled forehead before excusing herself from the cottage.
Hazel looked back one last time before she crossed through the ward again, waving to Agnes over her shoulder. As she stepped through, feeling the familiar buzz again, she thought Agnes’s face darkened with concern. But then, she was on the other side and both the old woman and her cottage were gone.
A WEAVER IN THE WOOD
As she left the forest and Agnes’s home behind her, Hazel pondered over the stranger-than-usual encounter. The unshakeable Agnes transformed into a hollow, unsettled version of herself during her visit. And while nothing was certain anymore, she suspected the tea leaf reading was the most likely source of her trepidation. At least she hoped.
All the talk about magic, witches, and how Larksridge had been one of many cities where magic once thrived had Hazel’s mind swirling. It would have looked so different from the Larksridge she now knew, the place where she had grown up. The half-farming, half-merchant town would most certainly never accept a witch in their midst now.Could you even imagine?She laughed at the absurdity of the thought, though the reality was sad. Such a shame for people to be so closed-minded.
Amid her thoughts, she came upon a pebble on the path and gave it a little tap with her foot. Then another. She struck it once more, and it tumbled through the air before bouncing, skipping, and disappearing into the wood line.
Hazel scratched the back of her neck and brushed a rogue hair out of her face. Something caught her eye in the direction the pebble had gone.
What the…
Something was out there, glimmering and dancing in the tall grass at the edge of the wood.
