“What is this for?” Rowena asked me, knowing Magda was having a waking nap and not inclined to answer.
“It’s illegal. So. A drug?”
“You mean like lightleaf?”
“Maybe? Or the mushrooms inThe Life of Unathat let you see visions.”
“I love that book,” Magda mumbled. “They took that book though.”
I paused in my grinding, wiped my sweaty brow, and asked, “They took it? Who took it? Why?” I was unnerved. Would someone take away my prized possession?
The midwife opened her eyes and sat forward, removing the pipe from her mouth, her face pinched. “Father Kenneth. The priest before Tibolt. He banned certain books. Anything Tintarian, ofcourse. They came to this house and took whatever they could find and burnt it to ash.”
“But you have so many books still,” Rowena said.
“Well, I buried some of these for a long time. In a tin box by the stable. But Tibolt did away with that,” Magda said. “He didn’t have the heart to do so much. It takes hard work to bring a whole settlement to heel. And so most of these are used things the tinkers brought me from Eccleston, upon my request. ButThe Life of Unais hard to come by this side of Tintar.”
“Perhaps, I have your copy,” I proffered, regretting it, thinking she may want it back. “I found it in Brother Tibolt’s office. And I kept it.”
She turned to me and smiled. “Then it is yours. I have it memorized anyway.” Magda regarded me and let that pink smoke curl out from her nose. Then she said, “It’s time for tins,” and stood abruptly. She went to one of the shelves along the wall and brought down a crate, then returned with it to the table. Inside was a series of small, flat, tin boxes, each made up of two halves and wedged shut by one side being slightly smaller than its mate. Magda emptied out the crate, not bothered by the cacophony of tings as the boxes spilled forth.
“Take up a spoon and put the paste into each one, shut it and pile it back into the crate. We’ve deliveries to do tonight.”
“Deliveries?” we asked in unison.
“Alright,alright,” the old woman groaned. “I’ll explain this part.Thisis mother’s moss. It grows all over the continent inside the chambers of god trees, but you have to have a little magic in you to see the door. It is easily made into a paste like so. Requires no long distilling or brewing. A bit, just the size of the thumbnail, taken daily on a woman’s tongue and swallowed, will prevent her from quickening with child. It will also make her courses more regular and come with ease. If a woman’s back pains her when she bleeds, it will be less so if she takes the moss. And if she is early on with child and doesn’t want to be...” The midwife trailedoff.
“Doesn’t want to be?” Rowena asked.
The old woman frowned. “Doesn’t want to be. If it’s only a moon, she can take a whole tin of this, mixed with tansy, and it will clear out her womb. The pain is appalling though.”
I looked at the growing stacks of tins in the crate. “Do you—Have you been distributing tins of this to the women of Sheridan all this—Since you got here? I don’t understand. Is that what we’re doing?”
Magda nodded. “I want you both to learn the other’s trade and practice, as it is better to have two minds know a thing than just one. But Roberta, this will be your work as the forager. You’ll harvest, grind, and dispense. By night.”
My twin and I looked at each other.
“It’s too dangerous to keep in stock at the apothecary,” the midwife went on. “It is better that Rowena never is seen connected to it.”
“You’re telling us,” my twin interjected, “that the women of Sheridan have been using the paste for winters and winters and no one else knows?”
Magda smiled and leaned back in her chair. “They may spit on the ground where I tread and avert their eyes, but the women of this place know what I offer. It is not spoken. It is whispered. From one woman to another. And they can condemn me all they want. I bear their damnation happily if it means their bodies are given reprieve from constant pregnancy and their children have more food on their tables.” She held up one of the tins. “This lasts about two moons. Keep track of who needs it when, but never write that down. The women will find a way to return the tins to you. When they need more, they’ll put a dried anemone somewhere outside their house. I try and walk through town and the sharecropper houses once a week or so to check for anemone flowers. That is your signal that they need another tin. Women who live in the keep have to come here for it. Or ask a friend. Too risky for me to go in there.”
I felt my mouth fall open. All the windflowerwreaths we had seen hanging from doors and the dried garlands strung outside windows. All those cup-shaped blooms with dark centers, in a rainbow of vibrant colors—those decorations we had grown up seeing in town—were a code.
“Our mother puts a string of dried ones outside the front window every now and then,” Rowena spoke aloud, looking at me.
“Every two moons,” Magda corrected. “I advised her to never have another child. The two of you nearly took her life.” She took her pipe out of her mouth and smacked her lips. “Not that that was your fault.”
She gave us old cloaks with hoods. She made us tie kerchiefs over the lower halves of our faces. We were not allowed to ride into town, horses being too loud. We walked the hour or so into Sheridan. Rowena and I took turns carrying the hefty crate. Then we crept up to doors and windows and looked for wreaths and garlands.
“Sometimes it’s a lone blossom on the ground,” Magda whispered from under her own hood. “You have to look everywhere.”
“We’ve no torches,” Rowena said.
“Then you had best always do this on nights with a moon, I guess,” Magda sneered. She was winded, clearly out of sorts from the long walk. “Go slowly. You’ll see what you need to. Mygods, you’re both insufferable today.”
I understood then that Magda had spent so many winters, even as her bones grew old, creeping in the dead of the night around town, around the rows of sharecropper houses, looking for signs of a woman in need.
