As yet, I’ve not let them into my home. My white-washed cottage, its angles slightly odd. The interior bright, surprisingly roomy, kitchen, bathroom, sitting room and workroom on the ground level; a cellar below that. The first floor has two bedrooms, and a third in the attic. It’s a sanctuary, and I’ll not easily let others over the threshold.
Witches in trouble oft find their way to dark forests and this is one of the darkest. One of the largest, hence “the Great Forest”. A good place to hide. We live away from the churches and the god-hounds who serve in them. We keep ourselves hidden as well as we may; we’re self-sufficient, making what we can, trading with the tinkers who roam the countryside and sometimes venture beneath the trees for what we cannot. Or bargaining with the isolated farmsteads or villages where our talents are needed (potions and powders for sickness and health, fertility or otherwise for women with already too many mouths to feed, or solutions for wives with husbands not man enough to behave like decent human beings). We’re easier to find than doctors in such remote spots, and more reliable, for what we dosticks. No placebos come from the hand of a hedgewitch or henwife.
It’s grown too hard to live in the cities, too hard to hide what we are, and even those of us who don’t make weight on the witch’s scale, those untouched by power, light or dark, still aren’t safe. It’s too hard to be a cunning woman or even a simple henwife when either term might so easily be pronounced “witch”. Out here we can be safe – we can’t all have the privilege of the Briars of Silverton. We’ve been hunted, yet we survive and sometimes parents and friends who love more thanthey fear send girls like this one to women like me. Sometimes girls like her go back home eventually; sometimes they can’t.
This one, Rhea, can’t apparently, and Fenna has spent the last ten minutes trying to cajole me into helping. To open my home. She speaks at normal volume, the girl hearing everything that’s said about her, some of which is not flattering, and this tells me Fenna is at the end of her tether, and any thought of protecting feelings has long fallen by the wayside.
‘Mehrab, please. Yes, she’s sulky and stubborn, but she’s also afraid. Give her a week, she’ll settle. If she doesn’t then send her away. Once she realises there’s this or fending for herself, she’ll buckle under.’
Will she though?
I look from Fenna with her greying hair with a thick white streak at the widow’s peak, hard lined face, dark cloak over trews and shirt of browns and greens and greys – a woman who knows how to blend in – to the girl with all her golden beauty; weigh the trouble this will cause me. I’ve not fostered in some years, have become used to solitude and my own ways. Grumpy and impatient, I’ve been quite happy sinking into this stage of life. This Rhea looks like hard work.
‘Where’s she from?’
‘Lodellan.’ Something in her expression tells me there’s more.
‘How bad was it?’
‘An insistent suitor.’
‘And?’
‘Later,’ she says in a low voice. I look at the girl on the bench, patting the fat tabby cat that had wandered out of the forest.Mr Tib stayed, though not invited to, even after I treated him roughly to make sure he was no shifter. I did name him, and that’s my own fault for giving such encouragement. I raise my voice a little: ‘Girl, what can you do?’
A defiant gaze turns on me; she holds one hand palm up and in a trice there’s a single blue flame of witch-fire dancing there. Mr Tib hisses and scarpers – not from the craft, but the flame, so close. She holds my stare, does this Rhea, and I know I should sayNo.I should sayTake her elsewhere, Fenna!But I don’t. There’s something in her face that reminds me of another’s – not the looks, no, but the expression, theair. A sadness at the heart of the insolence. (A voice in my head whispersBe bold, be bold but not too bold, and another repliesBe as bold as you like!) It reminds me of my debt to another, unpaid. The force of that failure presses the words ‘All right’ from my mouth and makes me nod. I can’t help but think it’s the worst decision I’ve ever made – but I know that’s not true.
2
It’s still early spring and there’s a nip in the evening air so I build up the fire in the sitting room. Fenna takes the long sofa (a tapestry of roses and unicorns, many cushions, not exactly comfortable but I imagine a novelty for someone who’s constantly travelling), and I my usual wingback chair with the knitted rug rolled into the curve of my back for support. Aching joints, tired muscles and creaking bones have become my constant companions in recent months. Them and the hot flushes, periodic forgetfulness and the rage. The spectacular all-consuming fury that comes over with little warning – as it did in the forest this morning – at the slightest frustration of my wishes.
I know it’s the changing of my life’s seasons, shifting me to autumn. It happens to us all, women, but I don’t have to be happy about it. There are things I do not miss, like the red flux and its attendant pains and risks. No children will come from me, and I might no longer turn all heads (I’m vain enough to have enjoyed that), but there are benefits to passing without notice. I’m not done yet, not with life; I no longer bleed, and my blood is my own now.
I read once of an old woman mourning her loss of beauty, her youth. Written by a man, he put words into her mouth, and grief, had her wail that she was a swan swallowed by a dragon. That the dragon of old age with all its folds and scales and ruination had devoured her loveliness, that swan trapped inside. This I’ll tell you: I had youth and sufficient looks and the influence that comes with them – yet all are fleeting, ephemeral. But the other thing? The power that lives inside, that can’t be seen except by my actions and my will? That power’s eternal.That’sthe power of the dragon. The dragon didn’t swallow the swan but rather came forth from it, has a power the swan could never wield, a fire that would singe feathers and roast tender meat. Some days I envy young women their looks and grace, but I have dragon-fire and no one can take that from me, neither by injury nor time nor the hand of man. I know which I’d rather have.
‘What was that?’ Fenna’s looking at me over the top of her mug of warm honeyed rum; I hope I wasn’t talking aloud. The habits of living alone can sometimes be incompatible with company.
‘Muttering. Sorry. Too long on my own, must remember how to be a proper person.’
‘Were you ever that?’ She laughs and farts as she does it.
I wave a hand to dispel the stink. ‘Probably not. And did you die at some point?’
She snorts, then sobers. ‘Sometimes I feel that way, I get so tired.’
‘How much longer, do you think? Doing what you do?’ I’ve known Fenna for twenty years, she was the one who guided mehere when I needed help, and she’s a good decade older than me at least. When I had to hide… she doesn’t know all of the details and nor should she ever, but she knows enough. That I was on the run, that I couldn’t risk being found and, even then, she was helping women like me. ‘Will your apprentices continue?’
‘There’s two or three I might rely on.’
‘So few?’
‘Many have been lost.’ She sighs, continues, ‘The women I help are dangerous or seen as such. They’re pursued so viciously and anyone aiding them is at risk.’
‘Yet no one’s betrayed you?’
‘My girls. My apprentices… Those who’ve been caught have taken their own lives rather than be dragged to the church prisons and tortured.’ She grins. ‘And they’ve taken as many god-hounds with them as they can. I hear, in the aftermath, what happens – whether it be fire or flood, or a concealed knife. Somehow, I always hear.’ She closes her eyes briefly. ‘And I’m not the only one. There are others who walk the paths and gather our lost girls.’
The girl, Rhea, went straight to bed after dinner, sulked her way to the small attic room that’s kept for guests and the occasional refugee witch. She said barely a word to either of us, managed to mutterthank youwhen the shepherd’s pie was served, but not much more than that. I clear my throat, eyes lifting skyward. ‘What more do you know about this one? A flammable suitor, you said?’
