‘Is there nothing else you can do? That’s a huge expense,’ he whines. ‘Something more… witchy? You wouldn’t want people to think you were—’
There’s an implied threat in his words, that the witch in the woods might be responsible or held accountable even if she’s not, and I think it’s best for both of us that he doesn’t finish that sentence. ‘Do you know what’s happening, Thaddeus?’
‘No.’
‘Well, nor do I and I am going to do my best to find out – but I doubt I’m clever enough to discover that this very day.’ I point at him. ‘A ring of salt around the perimeter, that’s the best interim measure I can suggest at this juncture. You’re welcome.’
After that he can’t leave quickly enough. As I watch him through the window, mounting the roan, dangerously close to tipping off, and then finally trotting away, I think about this new development. Children still, no adults. And nameless children this time – or rather, less nameless and more easy-to-forget. Children with less parental oversight, for who could keep track of forty orphans, let alone Widow Wilky in her seventies. I think about the tales of spectral huntsmen preying on little ones, taking the most vulnerable in a herd. I think about that man-thing of shadow and bone at the Black Lake that night, waiting for me to swim to the shore, about the grey creature that stalked me as I hid inside a tree and the grotesqueofferings on my doorstep as if I were a dark god. Connections and questions and no proof.
More questions I have no answers to. More matters to deal with. The one issue I can deal with immediately is upstairs, weeping into a pillow, and my natural urge to fix, to solve, kicks in. With a sigh, I turn towards the staircase.
***
‘Once upon a time,’ I say to Rhea’s back, ‘there was a woman. I wish I could say she was a girl, that she was too young to know better, but she wasn’t. She’d already turned thirty, some might say old enough to have a modicum of wisdom at least, but that’s not the way of such things. We learn from experience, or most of us to varying degrees, and this girl – woman – hadn’t had the sort of experiences needed to soften certain of life’s vicissitudes. Many things had come easily to her, though her childhood was a rocky shoal. But she had certain abilities which had lifted her from poverty and deprivation, gained her power and influence, and yes, fame of a certain sort for rather a long time. Then it all fell apart – you don’t need those details. They aren’t relevant, not really to this story, so don’t ask, just listen.
‘When everything fell apart – quite literally, the fall of a city, of a dynasty, the erasure of history – she found herself traipsing mountains and plains and deserts and swamps, drifting down rivers in small boats then onto large ships and sent across seas, and finally into the hands of a Visiting Sister. Her name was and is Fenna. Under her watchful eye there came more traipsing, more travelling, more of the fleeing witch divesting herself of who she’d been, her last possessionsand personality, hiding her power and working so very hard to cover the haughtiness that had made the people who’d bowed before her for long years forget that she’d been born in a slum. As they moved from place to place, she felt she left something behind with each step, each stop; replacing it with something that felt ordinary, until she didn’t recognise herself. Until no one who’d known her, she was certain, would ever recognise her.’ I clear my throat, watching for a sign that Rhea’s taking any notice. The girl remains still, facing the wall.
‘The Visiting Sister left her at last with an old, old woman who’d married a woodcutter and lived in a cottage, made a name for herself as a henwife, not a true witch, not threatening, but folk would come to her for curatives and charms. Her remedies were small, her magics barely more than wishes. The younger woman felt herself abandoned and she was scornful of the old one’s smoke and mirrors and nonsense rhymes. She, after all, knew whatshe’donce done, what she could still do if such a thing wouldn’t bring undue notice to her, if such an act wouldn’t result in her death were she to be found. And she wanted, more than anything, to live.
‘Ultimately, the younger witch began to make a sort of peace with her keeper; she grew bolder and began to visit the village, taking messages between the old woman and her patients, ferrying medicines and payments back and forth, wearing the paths to and fro down a little more each time. And she met a man who took her fancy, then her heart.’
A tremor in the body on the mattress, a twitch as if resisting the urge to roll over and stare.
‘That man was broken – he’d come to the village some yearsbefore, terribly injured and been taken in by the old blacksmith and his wife. They treated him as their son, cared for him, his body healed as well as it could, he learned the ways of the forge and how to work in spite of his injuries.’
‘What were they? These injuries?’ Her voice sounds strange after so long a silence.
‘An arm terribly broken – the bones shattered – a shoulder and ribs and hip much the same, and healed badly, so his shoulder and back hunched, and he walked with a painful limp. He was clever and handsome, had no pity for himself, and all the confidence in the world.’ I smile at the memory. ‘And he had no fear of the witch, which was something new for her. And she knew… she knew that she could help.’ For long moments I can’t speak, can’t get it out.
‘Is it that man you were with on harvest home? Who whisked you away on that great horse?’
I keep speaking as if she’d asked nothing. ‘And sheknewwhat she could do. So she offered and he accepted. She’d warned him it would hurt, it would hurt horribly because that’s what her gift was like, but he said yes, no matter what. One night they went deep into the forest where no one would hear him scream. And…’ I’m choking a little now, my ears ringing with his shouts and cries, sharp to begin with then hoarse and weakening the longer it went on, subsiding to moans and whimpers. But he never pulled away. Never said stop. ‘And when she was done, he was whole again, or as much as he would ever be.’
‘Why aren’t you with him?’
‘Everyone was delighted at the miracle. We told them he’d wandered far and gotten lost, that he’d come to a great oak andfallen asleep there after pouring water on its roots to beg its protection for the night. That when he’d woken he was healed; that he’d woken but not where he’d laid down and try as he might he could not find that place again. We’re in the Great Forest – folk are willing to believe that such miracles happen. While there’s magic in the world folk will believe anything. Even when, I suspect, magic dies and leaves us? Folk will still believe what they want to.’
‘But you’ve healed others since – you helped that man not long after I arrived. That Lutetia woman’s son.’ Rhea rolls over, onto her back, staring at me with something other than despair or hatred.
I nod. ‘And in the years since, it’s become less important to keep the secret, and more important for me to be able to help people. Broken bones are the biggest injury I encounter here. When I first arrived, there was a real chance I might be found; however, as the years have moved on my fear of that, the likelihood, has lessened.’ I shrug. ‘And it’s never wise to let anyone know the full extent of what you can do.’
‘What happened? Why aren’t you with him?’ she asks again.
‘Will you come down and eat something? The rest of the story in return for a few mouthfuls.’ She’s reluctant but she’s also very hungry and this, I imagine, feels like she’s not giving in but rather purchasing something she wants: the end of the tale. I help her to her feet and down the stairs.
In the kitchen, the pot of stew on the hob is ready and the fresh loaf of bread on the counter is still warm. When we’re both seated, her meal in front of her, she looks at meexpectantly. I say, ‘A mouthful of food first. If you starve much longer you really will be ill. You need your strength. Chew slowly, swallow carefully.’
Obediently, she takes a bite of the buttered bread, then a mouthful of stew.
‘Yrse warned me. She told me it wouldn’t last, not to trust him, that he would break my heart.’ I shrug. ‘She was right.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He wanted a wife. Children. Asked me. I said no – I liked how things were between us, liked the freedom to come and go. That had been my life, after all, before it all changed. Freedom. He waited almost two years – not so long in the grand scheme of things – then announced if I didn’t want what he did, there was nothing to keep us together. He took a wife and I… By then Yrse was dead, the cottage left to me, and I had no one to confide in, not even to sayYou were right, old witch.’
‘And then?’
I swallow before saying the words that have never before passed my lips. ‘And then I made the first summer husband. I told myself it was pragmatic – a labourer to help with the hardest of chores, but,’ I shrug, ‘well, he became something else. Something more. And he was my first so I didn’t know what would happen, how short his season would be. As I told you, I kept him too long. Watched him turn back into a version of what he would have been if I’d not interfered. And I… I loved him in my own sad and desperate and aching way. He filled the abyss that Faolan had left. He was loyal, lived to please me, was obedient. That’s potent, as you know.’
