“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean you can’t have a conversation with yourself without your church’s castigations in your ear.”
“She is suckling!” said my sister, stepping outside, wiping her hands on her apron. She was ebullient with her success. “Such a quick birth too.”
“It’s her sixth,” explained Magda. “Got to get the poor woman mother’s moss in a few moons when her womb is ready again. That’s enough babies for her, I think.”
We looked at her, perplexed. We had never heard of mother’s moss aside from it being one of the many medicinals named in the list of offenses.
Magda smirked at us. “That’ll be next week.”
41
THEN: DOORWAY
“Today is going to be a momentous day for one of you,” the old woman said over her shoulder as we followed her down another narrow Nyossa path, empty sacks tied to our aprons, each carrying a knife gifted to us by Magda.
“It’s short, broad, and handy,” she had said, speaking over our surprised thanks. “It can be used for more than hunting. It can double as a sort of spade if you need to dig, and every woman should honestly always have a knife on her at all times.”
The thing banged against my leg in the old scabbard Magda had given each of us. Both the uncertainty of our excursion and the unfamiliar weight of it unsettled me and caused me to shiver. It was an early spring day in Nyossa, and there was a coolness to be found under the canopies of so many trees.
“What is this path?” Rowena whispered behind me. “I don’t recognize it.”
“It’s not a path,” Magda said, stopping abruptly and turning to us.
We both jumped.
“It’s got no end and tapers off in a dozen ways into treesso thick, a fat old woman like myself cannot squeeze through. But this stretch of the woods has the biggest cluster of god trees closest to the farm.”
We eyed each other, and then Rowena said, “What is a god tree?”
“Your heritage,” the midwife said cryptically. “It is time to find out which one of you has magic in your blood.”
“Magic?” I said as if I repeated a curse word.
“Now you’ll need to look for two things,” Magda went on, ignoring me. “You’ll be wanting to hunt for blackberries and god snakes.”
“What is a god snake?” Rowena asked.
“What is this? What is that?” our mentor mimicked. “Do as I say and you’ll soon know. My gods, the young are bloody impatient. And yet they are the ones with the most time on their hands. Absolutely without sense. Look for blackberry bushes and shut up until you find one.”
“We can’t look for a god snake if you don’t tell us what one is,” I said.
She glared at me, half irritated, half acquiescent. “It’s small. Its head is without an arrow shape. It’s a fawn color with a spotted pattern of pink. They like to nap under the blackberry bushes.”
“Is it poisonous?” my sister asked.
“No more questions!”
In our tunics and breeches, we could more easily put a leg in between two trunks and peer around them to see the ground nearby, our eyes seeking blackberries and pale brown snakes.
Magda had been correct when she had said this was not a path. It was a twisting series of vein-like patches of earth where ferns grew, spots between eroded roots on which tasty pig-belly mushrooms perched, some so large they were bigger than our hands. Rowena and I stepped from vein to vein until we both spotted the toothy leaves of a blackberry bush. The fruit smelled sour and was rotting on the vine, left alone to perish without being plucked by a forager or eaten by animals.
I squatted and reached a hand out towards the bush, Rowenapeering over my shoulder. She stood just behind me, pressing close due to the space amongst the trunks. I lifted some of the leaves up and to one side.
Beneath them, a pale brown snake, mottled with rose-pink specks, napped. Its head was only slightly thicker than its body. It blinked awake and, without lifting its delicate head, looked up at us with large eyes.
My twin gasped. “It—It’s almost sweet looking, for an adder.”
