“Isn’t that just bedtime stories for Tintarian children?” My twin was trying to be respectful to the woman, but she was clearly unimpressed.
“I know you both loved Nyossa when you were younger. And perhaps, even more so recently,” said Magda. “You think I couldn’t see you?”
I was blushing, and I knew Rowena was too.
“You were drawn to the forest for the same reason any sane soul is. The essence of your spirit can be felt most in its borders.”
“Father Starling says what lures us, what attracts the mortal soul, is temptation. He says that anything that draws us is to be mistrusted.”
“Rowena,” I warned her, but when I looked at her I saw conflict on her features. She seemed to want to agree with our new mistress but could not bring herself to do so. She had spent too much time in a pew.
As had I, for I said, “I don’t believe that magic is heathen or that the Tintarian gods are evil, but I do not know that either exist.”
Then who did you pray to all those nights in the box?asked a voice in my head.Who told Tibolt to warm your body with blankets?
I gave a shudder.
Neither of them noticed, for Rowena was saying, “We were justraised that those things are evil, madam. Surely you must see why we would hesitate to believe in them. Can you not just teach us of midwifery?”
The woman fished in the pocket of an apron hanging from one of the chairs at the dining table, extracting a small pipe. She placed it in her mouth, unlit, and chewed for a moment. “Either they don’t exist or they are evil,” Magda challenged her. “You cannot claim both. You cannot say something is not real and that it is also a vile thing. Either magic is not real or it is and it is evil in your mind. Pick one.”
Before Rowena could respond, I said, “But what do Tintarian gods have to do with midwifery? Or magic, for that matter.”
My twin nodded next to me.
“Because you were either made by Mother Earth or by the fates,” said Magda. “The fates copied her handiwork when they made people. All folk are her children.”
I knew both of us were thinking of the skeletal men inThe Life of Una.
The midwife continued. “And the best way to understand a thing, is to know the maker of it, to know its origins. A woman’s womb was crafted by the goddess of earth. To know her craft, you must know something of her.”
“If we speak of these things, madam,” my sister interrupted, “we will be boxed. My twin has already suffered for even thinking she could challenge the scriptures of our church. I would not see her suffer further because of this apprenticeship.”
I was touched. I turned to Rowena. “It is my own fault I speak without thinking. It is mine and no one else’s.”
Rowena was shaking her head. “But you are easily influenced by?—”
“Do you want even a bit of freedom?” the old woman snapped. “Either of you? Do you not want the chance to earn a wage all your own and not a husband’s? Do you want anything to callyoursin this life?”
“What’s wrong with a husband?” asked Rowena.
Magda’s upper lip curled. “Nothing. I had a lovely one. He never used his being a man against me though.”
“Is that why you left Tintar?” I asked.
The old woman eyed me. “Yes and no. Torm’s father was a bitter old bastard, his prick half bent by anger, but he knew he had no answers to his problems. The land, forty or so winters past, was dying. His sharecroppers could yield nothing from the earth. And so, behind the back of Father Kenneth, a nasty man cut from the same cloth as your Starling, the old lord wrote to the city of Pikestully, had a letter carried right up to the grand bluff keep and my Mother’s temple, delivered to the archpriestess of earth magic, begging for help from someone from the temple. And the archpriestess sent me, because she sensed I was regretting my being an acolyte.”
“You were never ordained as a priestess?” I asked.
Magda shook her head. “I trained as a midwife in a fishing village south of Pikestully. But I wanted to see more of the world, so I traveled to my country’s capital and explained at the earth temple I had a knack for tonics. They said I had some soil magic in me, my penchant. But it was not four seasons before I realized my mistake. I did not want to live in a city, no matter how grand it was or how close to the sea. So I came here to heal the land.”
“What did you do to it?” Rowena asked.
“I read it like a book.”
“What do you mean?
“I mean I bled a little into the fields and gave my Mother my blood. A little cost required by the jealous fates that wanted to separate god and child. When she tasted my blood, a drop or two, she was able to speak to me in my mind, and she showed me what the fields needed.”
