“Hello,” Mairwen says, heart and stomach aflutter because she knows who these women are. Grace witches. Her grandmother, and her grandmother’s mother, on and on back to the original Grace witches, and this, here, the youngest, first Grace.
The girl, Grace, lifts her hand beneath the veil to point at Mairwen. Her lips move, and from all around the wind carries her voice, a whisper of wind. “You’re not one of us.”
Mairwen shakes her head in denial. “I’m a Grace witch. My mother is Aderyn Grace, daughter of Cloua.”
“Grace witches do not come into the forest until they are here to remain.”
“I came in because my father was Carey Morgan, a saint, and his bones are here.”
The other veiled women murmur, asking each other:A saint?
Is that all?
Could that be the answer?
Why her breath bends the trees and her blood gathers wind?
But the first Grace shakes her head; her veil trembles with the movement. “No. The saints are all on the Bone Tree, but your heart is not here for sacrifice. Daughter of the forest.”
“My—my blood does not gather the wind,” Mairwen says.
“The devil obeys you,” says the first Grace, glancing outside their grove to where Baeddan Sayer crouches, clutching his head, rocking himself like a baby.
“But...” Mairwen’s mouth is dry. “My mother is a witch and my father a saint.”
The first Grace presses her lips together. She appears no older than Mairwen, sixteen if not younger. Mair wants to ask about the devil, the old god of the forest. Did she love him? Why did she find him beautiful? Mairwen has always thought the worst things were full of beauty, and perhaps this first Grace knows why. But when she opens her mouth, the first Grace says, “Stop.”
Mairwen listens, because she chooses to, not because she is compelled.
Wind gusts, and the trees shiver, and the long veils of light flutter. Baeddan groans.
Before Mairwen realizes what’s happening, Baeddan is behind her, holding her shoulders. He bends over and shoves her head to the side with his face, then bites into the flesh at the base of her neck.
She cries out in surprise, then at the flash of pain. “Baeddan!”
“I’m sorry, so, so sorry,” he whispers, touching his sharp teeth to her skin again. “Oh, Mairwen Grace, look!”
The first Grace’s eyes are locked to the wound and Mairwen tries to see, craning her neck. Warm blood leaks down her collarbone.
“Grow for me,” the first Grace whispers.
The little star lights floating in the air begin to drop like rain.
Discomfort blooms in Mairwen’s chest, slithering like a worm toward the wound on her shoulder. She struggles again, gasping. Her eyes are so wide, but all she can see is dark blood, nearly black in the moonlight.
The worm reaches the bite, and it grabs the edges of broken skin. Mairwen closes her eyes and feels a surge of energy, a spark.
Baeddan laughs. “Look!”
She does, in time to watch the little purple flower lifting itself out of her flesh, twining up her neck to her cheek. Her eye aches from the effort of focusing on it, and then the flower seems to kiss her cheek and break away, drifting and tumbling down to the ground, where it blackens and dies.
“Look!” Baeddan cries again, releasing her to dance around. He gouges his chest, and with the spurt of purple blood flowers bloom, curling around themselves and winking bright violet. Then they too break off, die, and land like ashes on the ground.
“The forest is inside you,” says the first Grace.
Mairwen touches the smear of blood and looks at it. Red, as blood should be, but so dark.
“You can break it all, or remake it.”
