Seren Crowhart, Dragons’s Fire Chief and owner of Crow’s Brew, the trendiest place on the island to get your cup of joe, is partnering with the local businesses to support the authors and readers after the Library Board struck down two more books from its shelves.
Town’s Council and Chamber of Commerce are to discuss the issue next week. All town business owners invited.
Watch this space.
—Crow’s Caw
Rhiannon hadno clue how she’d ended up on the stone steps of the old house. What she did know was that the gates opened like water for her, letting her in.
The lump in her throat already choking her only got larger, spikier, tearing her from the inside out. The memories of this place—not the happy, sunny ones but the last year of fights,recriminations, and blood, so much blood—overwhelmed her, and when she saw the familiar tombstone in the very back of the garden on the lower steps of the Viridescent cliff among the yews, she crumbled.
She knew not how much time passed; it was all a blur of tears and the ragged surface of the stone. Not even twenty-two years of wind and rain had managed to polish the roughness. Rhiannon traced the etched words over and over until she could feel her fingertips split, and the droplets of her blood now covered the name.
Elizabeth Crowhart
No dates. Nothing about who she was. A mother. A sister. Beloved.
Just the name.
She felt Seren before she heard or saw her and for once begrudgingly appreciated the gift of the craft.
“It would be so inelegant to jump a foot in the air because my baby sister snuck up on me.”
“Only you would think of elegance while bleeding all over a tomb. And wearing the torture devices from hell on your feet. I don’t know how you walk in them.”
Rhiannon stood up from her crouch and slowly turned around. The tears she had dried earlier sprung up again. Her baby sister was a baby no more.
“It’s been twenty-two years, give or take a few days, Rhy.”
At her childhood name, Rhiannon’s tears fell freely, all control forgotten. Seren extended her arms and Rhiannon walked into them, the sobs wrecking her.
“Is that why it took you a month to show up here? The stilts held you hostage?”
Her sister’s low—lower than her own—voice was soothing, like water itself, and when she looked down at her hands shecould see them clean and cool, a few puddles on the ground around her telling the story of Seren’s gift.
But the craft wasn’t the only gift her sister possessed. The patient eyes, so like her own, the exact same shade of green, looked at her with kindness, despite the aloofness Rhiannon had feared even as she expected to find it.
She let it go, preferring to follow Seren’s lead, but instead of the house, as Rhiannon predicted and dreaded—or maybe because out of all the people, Seren would recognize that dread—she was welcomed into the luxurious garden to the side of the cottage.
Rhiannon gasped in awe, and then, realizing that this surely was Ceridwen’s green thumb at work, she scowled.
“Don’t you start, Rhy. You two are worse than cats.” Seren’s quiet admonishment and nod toward a shadowy bench made Rhiannon shake her head, but for once she did what she was told without an argument.
She sat down, and as she had suspected Seren did not follow suit, standing still a few feet away, observing her. Rhiannon took this time to do some observation of her own.
Her baby sister—well, second baby, as Deryn was the youngest by twenty minutes—had grown up beautiful. Tall and slender like all of them, she was also one of the tomboyish Crowharts. Every generation in the family had them. Slim hips and a swimmer’s body, Seren sported full sleeves of tattoos covering both arms and…was it a half-shaved-off eyebrow? Rhiannon lifted hers in surprise and Seren’s smile was bashful, the Crowhart dimples peeking shyly.
“It was a fire, Rhy. I’m not that vain.”
“I only just recently found out that Crow’s Nest has a fire department now and my younger sister is chief. Also, a little vanity never hurt anyone, Seren.” They smiled at each other, and the silence reigned once again, not uncomfortably this time.
Seren’s hair was in a short braid, revealing an undercut, one she had favored as a kid, and Rhiannon’s recall immediately supplied the memory of her own shaky hands trying to fix a particularly bad haircut the town barber gave the then-twelve-year-old Seren.
Her sister had cried for two days straight, pissing off Ceridwen, angering their mother, and even the easygoing Deryn was threatening to throw her out of their shared room. Rhiannon had stepped in, and despite the trembling fingers and the complete and utter terror of having exactly zero hair styling skills, she bit her lip and bit the bullet. A short braid and an undercut later, Seren’s trademark hairstyle was born. The hug Rhiannon received was all the sweeter because she’d fixed something that nobody else had even tried to.
As if she’d read her mind, Seren’s voice broke through the fog of memories.
“You were my hero, Rhy. Before the haircut. Before you took the blame for the Chinese vase I broke. Before you made up the scariest ghost stories and I couldn’t sleep for days, terrified of the monsters you imagined.” The words were clipped, very much matter-of-fact. Very much Seren, in fact, and perhaps that was why they cut through Rhiannon like nothing nobody else had thrown at her until now.
