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Jess: who

Callie: the candle woman and her kind

she’s still not telling us, I typed.

Priya: bitch

I avoided Vivienne for the rest of the day because I was in no condition to say “of course” to any absurdity. I ran errands for her that could have waited, then drove home with my fingertips blanched white on the wheel.

The cottage crouched in a veil of fog and the pale dusk of midsummer. The five of us climbed out of the truck and walked across dewy grass to the front door. A bird chirped in liquid, tumbling notes. Callie took a deep inhale and arched her neck to look into the trees. Priya scanned the hollows of the forest like she was searching for something. Jess studied the rowan and hagstones like she was trying to decipher them.

Branwen opened the door before we’d reached the porch, her long silver hair in a braid swept forward against her left shoulder.

“Come inside,” she said, glancing at us only once.

The smell of sage hit me as I walked across the threshold. Curls of smoke rose from an incense bowl on the kitchen counter. A fresh crop of lemon balm and thyme lay rinsed on the draining board, and a sack on the floor was overflowing with muddy potatoes. I wanted to curl up in one of the old chairs and sleep. Or cry.

Callie looked enchanted, like she’d walked into a magical bookstore. Priya didn’t know what to do with her hands. Jess watched everyone, the way she always did.

Branwen didn’t study any of them, and I got the feeling she didn’t need to. She poured tea into mugs. Damian disappeared to repair some siding at the side of the house.

The table had been cleared and implements neatly laid out on it: a silver bowl on a linen cloth, salt in a jar that had once held grape jelly, a dagger on a velvet cloth, and candles bound in twine. I pulled Clemency’s journal and mirror from my bag and placed them on the table. Her locket hung around my neck.

We drank the tea, the others awkwardly introducing themselves. We stared at the implements, which she didn’t explain at first, but the dagger and the thought of what I’d have to do with it made me want to hide my hands under my sleeves. There was no small talk.

“You summoned Clemency,” she said, as a fact, not a question. I wondered if Damian had told her or she simply just knew.

We nodded.

“And she told you about what will be required.”

We nodded again, less confidently.

“Yes, but—” Callie said.

“You do not cut your palm,” Branwen said, picking up the dagger. “That’s for stories… stories written by people who have never done this. The palm bleeds too fast and ruins your grip.” She placed it back down on the table. “And it takes weeks to heal.”

Callie made an almost inaudible sound. Priya was stone still. But Jess studied the dagger, calm.

Branwen turned my hand over in hers and drew one rough thumbnail across the outside edge of it, below the little finger.

“Here, at the heel of the hand. It bleeds slowly and heals quickly, and you can still hold onto each other after the cut. You must only cut yourselves, never another woman, no matter how scared you are. This must be given. It cannot be taken. He takes, you give. Do not blur the two with the first cut.”

She wrapped the dagger in the velvet cloth it lay on.

“All the blood must go into the bowl. Not on the sand,” she said, picking up the silver bowl and resting two fingers on it. “The water must only receive it when the working gives it, not before.”

She looked up at the four of us.

“Why silver?” Jess said. It was the first thing she’d said since we sat down.

“Because silver doesn’t hold onto anything.” Branwen turned the bowl once in her hands. “You pour suffering into iron, and it will hold onto it.”

Nobody said anything. Jess turned her hand over in her lap, and Soren’s cuff slid down over her wrist bone and stopped. She’d taken it off in my car three weeks ago. I looked at it, and then at my own hands, and said nothing at all.

“Four generations of my family kept this bowl. It has been waiting for you. So when your hand is shaking over it, remember it’s not just your blood going in. Spend it properly.”

I nodded meekly. Priya looked at me as if to say, are you sure. I wasn’t sure. Not at all. I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t pass out just trying. But I had to scrape together enough belief in myself that I’d find a way to be, tomorrow.