Aderyn pauses, pastry in hand. It has been her duty since her own mother passed it on. She looks to Hetty, and Hetty shrugs.
“Wait,” Aderyn says, and vanishes into her bedroom.
Hetty Pugh wanders to Aderyn’s kitchen table and begins picking at a spread of bowls filled with water to steep herbs. She dips a finger into one floating with wrinkled rose petals and tastes it. Unease ticks at Mairwen.
Her mother shoves aside the curtain separating her bedroom from the main cottage and emerges with a voluminous layer of blue and cream cloth folded over her arm.
A dress.
Mairwen touches her mouth to keep quiet her surge of hope.
Aderyn holds up the dress, handing one part to Hetty. It’s a long bodice and overskirt, dyed indigo. Hetty spreads her arms to display the soft linen shift, embroidered at the cuffs and hem with delicate green vines Mair recognizes as her mother’s own hand. The bodice has oversleeves that tie on and are slashed to display bursts of undyed silk.
It’s too rich, too beautiful. “Mother,” she breathes.
“I’ve been putting it together since last spring,” Aderyn says briskly, brushing invisible dirt off the fine wool skirt. “There’s stockings and ribbons, too, and a cream belt. A new shawl Hetty and Beth have woven for you. I was waiting for some fine boots Lord Vaughn helped me arrange to have made in the city, but you’ve grown so much these past months, and hardly fit yourself anymore.” Aderyn purses her lips for a moment, eyeing her daughter’s undone bodice. “It is a proper dress for a witch.”
Mairwen throws her arms around her mother, crushing the dress between them.
The women help her out of her older clothes. Hetty brings the bowl of rosewater and tosses it across Mair’s bare back, while Aderyn grabs a chunk of blessed thistle soap and scrubs. Mair only stands, arms up to hold her heavy hair off her neck, and takes it all, cold and hot in waves, embarrassed and thrilled to have her mother and Hetty washingheras if she’s their peer. She closes her eyes and whispers Haf’s name. Hetty goes to the door and snaps for the Lewis girl, returning with Haf hurrying at her heels. The girl asks no questions, but squeezes Mairwen’s fingers as she holds bowls of water and oil.
The women braid and pin Mairwen’s hair up. They clean her fingernails and the backs of her knees, her elbows and hips and ears, and even wash her feet, then rub an oil Mair has never before smelled into her skin. The women’s firm fingers work Mair’s muscles and soothe her, until her head nods despite the cool air and her stiff pose standing with her arms up in the middle of her mother’s house.
When they finish, they dress her in her long new shift, stockings, bodice, and overskirt. They tie on her sleeves, and the new shawl at her waist is of the softest cream wool she’s ever known. Hetty puts a bracelet woven of her own and Aderyn’s hair around Mairwen’s wrist, whispering a blessing. Aderyn kisses her daughter and whispers, “All my strength is your strength. You are everything I am.”
Then Aderyn Grace and Hetty Pugh leave the two girls alone in the sunny kitchen. Aderyn pauses before closing the cottage door. “Come out to bless this shirt when you’re ready, Daughter.”
Mairwen breathes with care. She smells thistle and rose and evergreen and pungent sage. Her skin tingles. She longs to find Rhun and show him how Hetty and Aderyn have made her into the Grace witch for his Slaughter Moon. It almost feels powerful enough to matter.
Haf takes both of Mairwen’s hands and shakes her head wonderingly. “Mairwen, you look amazing, and seem so... ready.”
“I hope this is how Rhun feels when the men are finished with him,” she murmurs, drawing her friend nearer. She embraces Haf, touching her cheek to Haf’s soft black hair. This way, Haf can’t see her face, or the tension pinching at her eyes. “When I put the shirt on him and lay the horse saint’s head upon his like a crown, I pray he feels all their strength behind him.”
Haf hugs tighter. “I hope it’s enough.”
“Rhun says he’s ready, Haf. With me binding the charm... he can do it. Give himself up and also survive.”And then, if he has to leave the valley, I’ll leave with him. So will Arthur, she thinks.
But Haf says, “I meant enough foryou.”
“I love you, Haf Lewis.” Mair wants to say it to everyone she loves today.
Haf kisses the corner of her mouth. “I love you too, Mairwen Grace.”
When the girls emerge into the front yard, where the town’s women remain circled about the fire, drinking and talking and sewing, there’s a collective exclamation at Mairwen’s new attire. She imagines it as armor. She lifts the shawl to show off the overskirt and holds out her arms and spins lightly until every woman is satisfied.
Mairwen’s appearance relaxes Devyn Argall’s shoulders and allows smiles to slide across the Perry sisters’ mouths. They read the dress and Mair’s face as proof: It will be Rhun Sayer, not their sons, sent into the forest.
It rankles her insides, and she holds their relief against them, thinking of Arthur’s bitterness when he said,I’d survive it.
Joining the circle of women upon a stool so as not to muss her dress, Mairwen nibbles at leftover cake from the bonfire as Haf kneels beside her. Bree and her friend Emma kneel with them, and as she waits her turn with the blessing shirt, Mair leans over to whisper to the three that yes, she spent the night with Rhun Sayer. Heat snakes up her neck and throat as she relates finding him half naked, kissing him, and her near begging, but then only sleeping at his side, nothing else. Emma sighs romantically, insisting Rhun must be the noblest man in all Three Graces, while Bree claims Per Argall would’ve acted the same. Haf says she knows her own Ifan Pugh would most certainlynot.
Mairwen laughs as she’s expected to, and presses her cheek to Haf’s fine hair, remembering Arthur Couch say the same to her, as if he wantedherto hear it. She wishes Arthur were here with them, with the girls, to put his fire into the saint shirt where it could protect Rhun. Competing with the boys is a waste of his time. His power is more suited here, because he knows a thing about transformation. Or heshould, if he’d admit it to himself.
When the blessing shirt comes to the girls, they let Mair take the lead. She touches the fine gray wool, imagining a ferocious lion or a quick rabbit to lend him strength or speed. But thinking of the Bone Tree, of the monster she and Arthur killed, thinking of the youngest, first Grace witch who fell in love with a beautiful devil, instead she chooses a deer, for the old god of the forest. Needles quick and sure, the four girls embroider it there at the shoulder. Em and Bree create tawny legs, Haf a sleek body, and Mairwen the crowning antlers. When they finish, Mair takes bright red thread and stitches a bloody heart to the stag’s chest. She pricks her finger and anoints the heart with three drops of her blood.
Haf and her sister try not to frown at the dangerous addition, and Emma whispers, “It looks a bit like fire, doesn’t it?” The girls each take a drink of wine, then pour the final sip into the earth.
•••
