Heart on Fire

by Amanda Bouchet

  Magic, though, is a different matter. Hopefully hers is limited to potion mixing.

  Griffin’s hand flexes on my lower back. Being the diplomatic one, he says, “We apologize for disturbing you. We know you like your privacy.”

  The hermit narrows her eyes. “And yet you came anyway. You want something from me.”

  It’s not a question, and the statement is directed at me. Of course I do. We wouldn’t be on a frosty mountainside next to the deepest crack in Thalyria otherwise.

  Griffin and I stop near the opening in a stone wall that seems to be acting as a de facto gate. Flat slabs of granite form a pathway leading the rest of the way to the house.

  “I’ve heard you make powerful potions,” I say. “Potions for unlocking magic.”

  The witch looks me up and down. Her concentrated, almost hostile gaze penetrates me on a deep level, scraping as it goes. “Has your magic locked up, then?” she asks.

  “It comes and goes,” I answer with a small shrug that’s a lot more casual than I feel. “It’s unpredictable.”

  “All your magic?”

  I shake my head. “Just the new magic.”

  The witch laughs. It’s a cagey chuckle that sends a shiver tracking down my spine.

  I ignore the icy prickle. Besides feeling some aggression from her, I can’t pinpoint what’s making my hackles rise. She’s probably testy because she’s a hermit, and we just interrupted her all-important alone time. She hasn’t told us to get lost, though, and I don’t feel I can justify turning back, even if a part of me almost wants to.

  “No one has new magic. There’s only magic you don’t know how to use.” Turning, she swings her door wide open and then shuffles back inside, fading into the shadows of the entryway.

  “Don’t just stand there,” she calls irritably from somewhere inside. “Come in. But leave your weapons at the wall. I don’t want them in my house.”

  I don’t move. Or disarm. “What do you think?” I ask Griffin.

  He shrugs.

  I make a face. “That’s helpful.”

  “You tell me,” he says.

  “She’s creepy.”

  He frowns. “And?”

  “And I don’t know,” I admit. Speckled, stooped, and wrinkled certainly aren’t grounds for turning tail. Neither are power-filled green eyes. We’re here because her magic is strong. “I guess we should go in and see.”

  He nods. It doesn’t sit well with either of us, but we disarm and leave our weapons in a pile behind the stone wall. We leave our cloaks there as well since the day has warmed up nicely, and we likely won’t need them inside.

  Griffin enters the house first, scanning the interior before allowing me out from behind him. We both had to duck to avoid the lintel, and that’s saying something for me. The witch made it under easily, her entire upper body being almost horizontal.

  Inside, the house opens up into a large, rectangular living space with a rather surprising vaulted ceiling a good two stories high. The wood is a pleasant shade of light brown, and colorful, upside-down bouquets of wildflowers and bunches of drying herbs decorate the lower parts of the walls. The air is fragrant and warm, carrying a slight medicinal tang along with the stronger scent of something delicious-smelling simmering over the fire.

  Three closed doors line the north side of the room. They’re probably bedchambers and storage, since that part of the house is carved directly into the mountainside and therefore bound to be windowless. The main room is bright and unexpectedly welcoming, with comfortable-looking furniture and thick rugs scattered around. There are two enormous windows, one to the east and another to the south. The glass is barely wavy, the kind that costs a royal’s ransom, telling me that the witch either sells her potions for a mighty fortune or someone gave her a very precious gift.

  The hermit’s lush, green meadow spreads out to the south, gently sloping toward the barn. A light wind ripples the grass in waves and teases the dark pine boughs at the edge of the woods. There’s nothing at all beyond the other window, except for the not-too-distant snowy pinnacles of the nearest Deskathi peaks.

  My stomach dips nervously, and I know without having to go anywhere near it that the east window directly overlooks the pit.

  I inwardly shudder. I could never live this close to that yawning crack. I’d be afraid my house would fall in.

  The crone drifts toward the fireplace, motioning for us to follow, and I turn my back on the towering, east-facing window with relief. The kitchen is set apart from the living area by a large, liberally scarred hardwood table surrounded by four solid-looking high-backed chairs.

  I cock my head to one side, taking it all in. Four chairs? You’d think she’d only need one, being a hermit and all.

  Then again, people come here for her potions, traveling great distances and probably paying dearly for them. The least she can do is give them a place to sit.

  Catching my lower lip between my teeth, I crane my neck for a look at what’s bubbling in her pot. And maybe something to eat?

  The hermit takes a long wooden spoon from the table and then stirs what must be her dinner for a solid week. Her slow mixing sets loose even more of the mouth-watering meat and herbs aroma of whatever is stewing over the fire, and my stomach rumbles—long, low, and loud.

  She slants me an unnerving, bright-green look before moving her slightly contemptuous gaze over to Griffin. “Does your man not feed you?” she asks.

  I sense Griffin bristling beside me, as if his shoulders grow a foot in width.

  “Of course he feeds me. More importantly, I feed myself.” Sort of. I can pick berries. And maybe catch a fish. I can definitely start a fire. Sometimes.

  I glance at Griffin, and he looks back at me with a definite hint of Liar, liar, tunic on fire in his eyes.

  I shrug. I guess that’s why we’re a team. I’m Elpis. He cooks.

  The witch makes a small noise in the back of her throat. “Feed yourself,” she mutters, turning back to her pot and shaking her head as though I just said some kind of absurdity.

  I glare at her hump as she goes back to stirring the contents of her cauldron. I don’t have much of a choice; the lump on her back is higher than her head.

  “You obviously feed yourself,” I point out.

  She stirs more vigorously, making her long black shawl swish and bob around her ankles. “Only if there’s no one to do it for me.”

  Well, I guess that settles the question about visitors. Not only do they come, they cook.

  Good Gods, I hope she’s not expecting me to produce something edible. The only time I was ever truly alone in my life, I nearly starved.

  Damn it! Maybe we should have brought Bellanca after all.

  Scratch that. There’s no way an ex-princess can cook any better than I can, even with all that fire.

  “You’re not a very hermity hermit, are you?” I ask.

  The crone, who’s apparently redefining the word hermit here in Frostfire, ignores that and pulls two wooden bowls from a nook in the wall. She ladles healthy portions of her stew into them both and then plunks them down on the table along with spoons, earthenware cups, and a jug of water. “Sit. Eat.”

  I look at Griffin. He shrugs and then sits down and tries a bite. He doesn’t gag or turn into a Satyr or anything, so I do the same.

  I groan. It’s hearty and good, and the meat is so tender, it must have been cooking for days.

  The witch nods, seeming satisfied. “Tell me about your magic.” She doesn’t sit with us or eat any of the stew herself but rather takes down a small pot from one of the pegs on the kitchen wall. She sets it on the table and then pours a measure of water into it from the deep bucket by the hearth.

  I shift a little nervously in my seat, toying with my meal. The extent of my magic isn’t the kind of thing I tell just anybody—or really anyone at al
l. But we came all this way for a reason. I don’t particularly like the old hag, but she hasn’t threatened us, she can cook, and it would be pretty stupid to back out now.

  Reluctance still nearly blocks the words in my throat. “I have ichor in my veins.”

  She straightens. A bit. There’s not much she can do about her hunchback state. It’s more that she lifts her head, and her wrinkled lips purse in my direction.

  “A child of the Gods. There aren’t many left in Thalyria.” Her eyes pierce me again, and I don’t like it. I’m not sure why. If I could figure out what’s bothering me about her, I could probably move past it. As it is, she makes my knife hand twitch.

  I nod. “A few millennia removed, but yes, that’s the basic idea.”

  “Whose line?” she asks, her already creased brow furrowing into even deeper grooves.

  “Zeus,” I answer.

  Without looking away from me, she dips her hand into her pocket and then throws a handful of something leafy and brown into the small pot. She stirs, and an overly sweet, cloying scent mixes with the other kitchen smells, quickly overpowering even the strong aroma of the stew. It takes a concentrated effort not to recoil and wrinkle my nose.

  “And?” she presses.

  How does she know there’s an and? Grudgingly, I cough up the rest. “Titan. I don’t know her name.”

  “Then you are descended from the Origin.” It’s not a question. It’s also the only option for anyone who knows their history, which she clearly does.

  I nod. Flowing through my veins, I hold the legacy of the old Gods and the new. The trouble is, I’m broken.

  “Ichor makes you strong. Stronger than most. Stronger than even the most powerful Fisan Magoi.” The witch takes a short, thick, dark-brown stick from a cupboard along with a small metal grater and then scrapes some wood shavings into her potion. The ingredient could be anything from willow bark to callitris. I’m good at recognizing magic-based potions. Organic—not so much.

  “And your power stems not just from any God, but from the king of Gods himself.”

  I look up from the now-bubbling potion, puzzled. Why would that matter? Ichor is ichor. Right?

  Whatever the hermit is concocting pops loudly, startling me. Something rises up from the bottom of her potion, foaming, and then the whole thing turns a disgusting yellowish-brown color. Creeping veins of black appear, marbling the surface like growing spider legs. They spread out, oozing toward the edges of the pot.

  Repulsed, I nearly shudder. The visual is as awful as the smell.

  She picks through some jars on her shelves, pulls out a new ingredient, and then drops a fuzzy white flower onto the surface of the brew. I wish I’d paid more attention to my organics and herbalist tutors. Asteraceae?

  The black streaks pounce on it, smothering the flower. The poor bloom shrivels and then sinks, sucked under. The black goes down, too, curling in on itself and then dropping to chase the flower.

  I swallow the increasing need to gag. That was unpleasant.

  The ever-thickening potion starts to froth and hiss.

  “You should have no trouble using all sorts of magic with your heritage,” the witch says. “Endless possibilities race beneath your skin.”

  “Endless possibilities?” I ask. “Aren’t we limited to our birthrights? And to oracular gifts?”

  “Most are.” She looks at me like I need an intelligence-creating potion rather than a magic-unlocking one. “Are you like most?”

  I shrug. Well, when you put it that way…

  “What can the Gods do?” she asks.

  Warily, I answer, “Pretty much anything.”

  She stares at me, partly disgusted, partly expectant. Definitely like I just answered my own question. It’s the kind of look Mother used to give me, and I don’t like it any more now than I did then.

  “I’m not a God. Far from it.” If I could do anything I wanted, I would have definitely avoided a few key moments in my past, like near-death by Hydra, for one.

  “Shortsighted,” the hermit mutters, going back to her potion. “No vision.”

  “Excuse me?” I say, stiffening. What does she know about me? About anything?

  She shakes her head, stirring.

  “Look. All I really want is the thunderbolt. It comes and goes. I can’t seem to control it, which means I can’t count on it when I need to. That’s what the potion is for, right? To make the magic flow?”

  She turns back to me, her power-lit, light-green eyes disturbing. I’m suddenly glad I don’t see myself in a mirror very often. I don’t know how Griffin can stand it.

  Looking down, I push a chunk of meat to the back of my bowl. It gets caught in a tangle of orange and white root vegetables. I’m not hungry anymore, and as I meet the witch’s piercing gaze again, the nasty feeling in the pit of my stomach grows.

  “Born with the thunderbolt. Only the Origin was gifted so.” She scoffs, and her bitter tone strikes me as excessive. Honestly, I’m not just uncomfortable anymore. I’m confused.

  Wariness and true unease unfurl where there was only caution before. “I wasn’t born with it,” I say slowly, definitely not adding that I’m the new Origin of Thalyria. “It’s only manifested recently.”

  Her gnarled and spotted hand is steady as she reaches into the deep pocket of her shawl and then pulls out another powder, this time contained in a small vial. She uncorks it and sprinkles the entire contents into her potion pot. The mixture foams again, stinking so much that I grimace.

  Holy Gods, how am I ever going to drink that?

  Stirring briskly, she says, “No one gets new magic. Not unless it’s an oracular gift.”

  Well, it wasn’t. Not this time. Does that mean I’ve always had it? Why didn’t I ever feel it before I met—

  Oh. Pieces of my own personal puzzle click into place. Griffin. He’s changed everything in my life, changed me. Has our being together somehow unlocked power that was already inside me, just waiting to come out? The ichor? The lightning? He’s certainly upped my will to survive. And protect. And feel. Has the magic been there all along, but I needed Griffin to help bring it out in me?

  I turn to him. Griffin watches me. He watches the witch. Like me, he’s hardly touched his stew.

  Unfortunately, we still have the same problem we had before. Even if Griffin has helped make the magic surface within me, it still doesn’t work like it should.

  I track the path of the hermit’s spoon through the now-lumpy sludge of her potion. I don’t want to drink it. I want to leave. That’s my gut feeling, but a big part of me wonders if it’s instinct telling me to go, or my stomach protesting the idea of swallowing something so vile.

  “You want immense power in your hands.” The witch sets the spoon aside and then looks at me.

  “I already have immense power,” I reply. “Now I want it to be reliable.”

  She keeps looking at me, and I look back. I have no idea why we’re having a staring contest, but at least I’m good at it. Eventually, she turns back to her brew and utters a series of words in the old language—none of which I recognize—directly over the pot. Finally, with an odd hiss, she adds a carefully measured pinch of something granular and mauve.

  Amethyst? It’s a balancing stone, enhancing intuition and mental powers of all kinds while also limiting their destructive nature. That would make sense for the kind of potion I need, especially when the magic in question is explosive, to say the least.

  The coarse grains sink one by one, dragging the hissing top foam down with them. The potion suddenly goes still. All bubbling stops.

  Griffin places his hand over mine and gives my fingers a light squeeze. “Can you help us, or not?”

  “Us?” The witch’s head jerks up from studying her concoction. “I wasn’t aware the magic concerned you.”

  “Everything about Cat co
ncerns me,” Griffin answers, his expression as stony as the Deskathi peaks.

  Unfazed, the old woman turns to her herb corner, takes three vermillion berries I can’t identify from a glass jar, crushes them, and then adds them to her mixture. “Cat,” she mutters under her breath, stirring again. “How pedestrian.”

  A chill slides down my spine, landing like a block of ice inside me. My hair tries to stand straight up, and my scalp tingles all over. She sounds just like someone I know. And hate.

  “That potion is for me, right?” I eye the revolting concoction. What if I should drink it? What if it works?

  “Of course.” She pours it into a cup. The transfer makes it smoke. “But I expect payment first.”

  “We brought gold,” Griffin says.

  Her upper lip curls in contempt. “I have no need for gold.”

  “I can hunt for you,” he offers. “Bring back a stag or a boar. Cure it, and it’ll last you the winter through.”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t need food.”

  Her words pluck at my already tightly strung nerves, making them play an off-key note in my head. Everyone needs gold or food. They’re the most important commodities. They buy her comfortable-looking furniture and perfect windows and keep her belly full. What old woman living alone in a remote area turns down an offer of food?

  “Weapons?” I ask, frowning. I don’t want to, but I could give up my blades—if that’s what she really wants.

  She shakes her head again, her green eyes scraping mine.

  I have a jeweled crown I’d easily give her, but it’s not here. The emerald and gold ring Griffin gave me the night of the realm dinner winks on my finger, but there’s no way I’m handing it over. I won’t give up my ice shard necklace, either. Or my wedding band. Not in this lifetime, or in the next.

  I pull a three-tiered string of fat Fisan pearls from my pocket. I’ve been carrying it around for weeks.

  “I have this.” My heart not happy about it, I hold out Ianthe’s circlet. She gave it to me to hold when she went off for a bath and forgot to get it back. That was the evening before we met up with Lycheron on the Sintan border.