Renthia had six kinds of spirits: air, earth, water, wood, ice, and fire, and all of them were deadly. And without charms, I’m no safer from them inside than out, Hanna thought, so I might as well go now.
She took a knife, the one she kept sharp for skinning squirrels, as well as her wood ax. And she didn’t leave. Not yet. For a solid ten minutes, Hanna stared at the door to the outside. She’d walked out it plenty of times, but each time, it felt harder and harder. Someday, they’ll find my body, hidden under my bed, safe from spirits but half-eaten by rats. Move, coward!
Calling herself names didn’t particularly help. Nor did conjuring up an image of her half-eaten corpse. Instead it was the wind that did it. She heard the window rattle and the loose shingles on the roof clap together, and she bolted out the door. Outside on the narrow porch, she looked out over the forest, her heart thumping hard.
Her home—her family home, before her parents died—was at midforest, budded from an oak tree so massive that it could have supported several homes but didn’t, because her parents had trusted people only slightly more than they trusted spirits. Below, the forest floor was invisible, hidden by interwoven branches and thick scrub brush. Above, the sky was pinpricks of blue between the leaves of the canopy. “I hate this,” she informed the forest.
The forest didn’t care.
Town was two miles east, across rope bridges that straddled the tree trunks. Squeezing the handle of her knife, she set off across the bridge. The wind danced around her, and the bridge swayed with creaks and groans that made it sound as if the ropes were about to snap any moment. She had to let go of the knife hilt to hold onto the ropes on either side. Her sweaty palms kept slipping off, but she maintained her balance, with her eyes fixed on the trees around her.
She spotted two tree spirits, little ones with crunched-up faces that looked like knots of wood and smooth gray bodies that reminded her of hornet nests. Up in the canopy was an air spirit, with a white-furred body and translucent wings that shimmered in the shafts of light. None of them had killed her by the time she reached the other side of the bridge, which was nice. Of course, they weren’t supposed to kill anyone—the Queen of Aratay was supposed to keep them in check—but out here, they were far from the queen, and the spirits sometimes adopted a “dismember first, apologize later” policy. Certainly the queen hadn’t noticed or cared when the spirits murdered Daddy by causing a branch to break above him.
No one had cared—it was deemed an accident. But Hanna had heard the spirit laugh. And she still woke at night, the laugh rattling through the nightmares that always came.
Soon, she saw the village of Fawnbrook. Centered around a platform midway up the tree, the village sprawled both up and down the trunk, with houses that clung to the branches like pinecones, as well as houses that budded out of the tree like hers. Stalls with bright awnings were clustered on the platform, and people milled between them, chatting with one another. Approaching them, Hanna nodded to everyone politely, fielded a few questions about the ripeness of blueberries in her part of the forest, and made her way across the platform to the hedgewitch’s shop.
Oddly, the door was shut. Hanna knocked on it. She didn’t want to think about what she’d do if the shop was closed and she had to return home without any charms. She knocked louder. “Mistress Rowell? Please, I need to make a purchase!”
“Go away!” a voice called from within. “I’m dying!”
The woman sounded more irritated than mortally injured. Pressing her ear against the door, Hanna tried to listen for other sounds. “Do you need a healer?”
“Doing a bang-up job dying on my own without one, thank you very much.”
Hanna hesitated. She considered herself a polite person who respected other people’s privacy in the way she wanted them to respect hers, but this was an unusual situation. She tried the doorknob—it felt more stuck than locked. “Are you trapped inside? I have an ax. I could break through, if you’d like.”
“Oh, yes, please, because holes in my perfectly fine door would cheer me up. Why won’t you leave me alone?” It was definitely Mistress Rowell, the old hedgewitch—she’d come closer to the door, and Hanna could hear her better.
“I need more charms,” Hanna said. “Mine are . . . well, I waited far too long, and my home is unprotected. I can’t return without charms.”
“Bah! Foolish little mouse. Hanna, isn’t it?” A scraping sound, like a chair being dragged across a wooden floor, shrieked just inside, and then the door opened a crack. Rowell stuck her face through the gap and squinted at Hanna. “Get in, mouse.”
Hanna squeezed inside—the hedgewitch wouldn’t open the door all the way, and she shut it immediately after Hanna was inside. She then blocked the door again with a barrel.
It took Hanna’s eyes a few moments to adjust to the candlelight. Only one candle was lit, on the mantle above the ash-filled fireplace, and it shed a soft amber glow across the shop, creating thick shadows everywhere. Other than the dim light, everything looked the same: dried herbs hanging from the ceiling, baskets of charms on the shelves . . . and a spirit in a cage in the corner?
Rowell waved at it. “I’m training it. As soon as it’s ready, I’ll release it to slaughter my enemies and lay waste to their homes. Hah! Kidding. Caught it in my pantry last night.”
“You can’t keep it!” Hanna said.
“Why? Because that’s crazy? Actually, I do plan to free it—it’s bad for the forest to keep them caged—but first it’s going to help me find my successor, because, as I said, I’m dying, and this town will need a new hedgewitch when I’m worm food.”
“If you’re dying, you need a healer,” Hanna said firmly. She’d always known the hedgewitch was eccentric, but this was taking it too far. You didn’t trap spirits, and if you were dying, you did something to prevent it. “I don’t wish to offend you, but—”
“But you will anyway because no one begins a statement like that unless they’re gearing up for a real doozy of an insult. Go on, bring it on, my ego can take it. You think I’m insane? You believe I’ve looped the loop? Dived off a tall tree? Eaten the mushrooms, so to speak?
“You realize none of those are real expressions.”
The hedgewitch scurried up to her and stopped, her nose only an inch from Hanna’s nose. Rowell narrowed her eyes, staring at Hanna. “Tell me what kind of spirit I have trapped.”
Hanna glanced over at the cage. It was tucked into the shadows, and she could only see its shape: approximately the size of a cat, it was writhing as if it had many arms . . . or wings. Its tail trailed out of the cage like a length of rope. She couldn’t tell what kind it was, just that it was angry. She could feel its anger like sand in the wind, scraping against her skin. “I can’t see it well enough—”
“Feel it.”
“I don’t have any power—”
“You might. Feel it, with your mind.”
“Again, I don’t mean to be rude, but you are being remarkably creepy. Could I please buy as many charms as two bronze pieces will purchase, and then I’ll leave? You can continue dying, or whatever you’re doing, on your own.” She tried to keep her tone light, but her heart was beating fast and hard against her ribs. Her palms were sweating again, and she wiped them on her skirt.
“You knew it was a spirit right away. How?”
“It had that look,” Hanna said.
“It had that feel,” Rowell corrected. “Come on, girl, I’ve seen you before, when you’ve come into my shop. I’ve watched you. Asked about you. You’re a hermit, they say, but not by choice, by fear. Because you can sense them, can’t you? You can feel their hatred, their bloodlust, and it scares you in ways you can’t even name.”
“I think my fear of them is quite reasonable, and every rational person—”
“But they aren’t. They go about their lives.” Rowell whipped back a curtain that blocked a smudged-with-dirt window. Daylight seeped inside, and the caged spirit let out a half growl, half moan that sent
shivers up Hanna’s spine. “See? Happy little idiots, buying their flour and fruits, chatting about how their little tykes did on their end-of-school tests or how the harvests look for the fall. Tell me, when you greeted them, did they worry about spirits, or did they ask about blueberries?”
Hanna didn’t answer.
“What kind of spirit do I have in the cage?” Rowell asked again.
Hanna began to turn, but the old woman caught her arm, hard, the bones of her fingers digging in to Hanna’s skin. “Don’t look.”
Might as well guess. If I satisfy her, maybe she’ll sell me the charms. Hanna thought for a moment, tried to “feel” around her, and felt only a breeze and smelled sun-warmed pine . . . “Air.”
Rowell released her.
Hanna massaged her arm and turned to see the spirit in the light from the window. I was right. The air spirit was a mass of blue and green feathers, with several sets of wings that lay down its snaky back, and a scale-covered blue-and-green tail that ended in a black barb, as if a peacock had mated with a python, sort of.
“You felt a breeze?” Rowell asked.
She had.
“The windows and door are closed. There’s no breeze. It was in your mind.” Rowell clapped her hands together. “Hah, I knew it!”
“So what? It means nothing.”
“It means everything! You, my frightened mouse, will be my successor!” She did a little dance, whooping as she skipped between the barrels and bags.
Hanna began to back toward the door. Perhaps she could buy charms from someone else—a neighbor might have extra, enough to tide her over until a peddler came through with other charms for sale. She could even travel to the next village, Threefork. She hated that idea, but at least it was an alternative.
“Think of it, Hanna: I could teach you how to keep people safe.”
Hanna stopped. If she could keep them safe, then no one would ever have to hear that laugh again.
Now that was an interesting thought.
Becoming the hedgewitch’s apprentice was simple. Armed with Rowell’s best charms, Hanna traveled home, packed her most precious belongings, and then moved into the loft above the hedgewitch’s shop. Over the next few days, she fielded many congratulations from the many neighbors who stopped by, mostly with pie and casseroles, to greet the new apprentice. None of them seemed to mind that Hanna was older than most apprentices—they were simply happy that Rowell had finally chosen someone, since everyone seemed to accept that the old woman was dying.
A few times, Hanna tried to ask Rowell why she was so convinced she was dying, when the hedgewitch was spry enough to dance around the shop, lug barrels from room to room, and wrestle the ladder to the loft into position.
“Because I’m old,” she’d answered once.
“Because I’m reckless” was another answer.
“Because I say so” was her third.
“If you’re sick, there could be medicines,” Hanna said. “Are you in pain?”
Rowell smiled sweetly. “Shut up.”
And so Hanna left the topic alone and instead focused on learning whatever Rowell wanted to teach her, which was primarily about the properties of various herbs, as well as how to prepare them and how to mix them for greatest effect. She spent her days in the back workroom of the shop, bent over bowls filled with dried herbs and desiccated animal parts. At night, she’d emerge, with her eyes feeling as if they were gunked with cobwebs and her hands feeling as coated in spices as a baked turkey, and she’d crawl into her cot above the shop and sleep.
It wasn’t a bad life, and for the first time in years, she wasn’t lonely.
The only true flaw was that Rowell refused to free the air spirit, and so Hanna was stuck knowing that one of them was inside the walls while she slept. She’d stuffed charms in every crevasse of the loft and laced them all the way up the ladder. She even slept with one in her hands, like a child sleeps with a doll.
After a few weeks in the back room, Rowell invited her into the shop to try her hand at tending to customers, selling them charms in exchange for food and more fresh herbs. By this point, Hanna knew all the charms in the shop by sight, having made most kinds herself. She discovered she rather liked guiding people to purchase the right charm—the charms varied by potency, types of spirits they repelled, and radius they protected. Some were better for carrying in your pocket. Others were designed to be tucked into the tiles on your roof. Still others warded doors and windows, while a few were last-resort defensive charms, meant to be thrown into the mouth of a rogue spirit who was defying the queen and about to chomp on you or someone you loved.
After the third child had come into the shop with wide scared eyes and deep circles from lack of sleep, Hanna had the idea to incorporate charms inside of dolls. She sewed little felt cats and bears and squirrels and then stuffed them with potent powders, as well as a pinch of lavender to soothe a sleepless child. Those sold very well.
“You like to help children?” Rowell observed, after Hanna had sold the fifth stuffed squirrel of the morning. “You know, you could help them even more if you learned to control the spirits.”
Shivers ran up and down Hanna’s back. “No, thank you.”
“Are you afraid?”
“Obviously,” Hanna said. She’d heard plenty of stories of women with the affinity for spirits who had lost control or summoned too many, or simply caught the spirits’ attention—most tended not to live long. “I’m not an idiot.”
“You could be powerful,” Rowell said. “For all you know, you could be powerful enough to become queen, or at least a candidate for heir.” A queen had the power to control all kinds of spirits. Hanna was certain she couldn’t do that. “Let me test you.”
“No! You can’t—”
And that was the moment that the old hedgewitch set the air spirit free.
After being caged for so many weeks, the spirit was frenzied: it shot out with a high-pitched shriek that Hanna felt echo through her bones. Its eyes looked as though they held storms—colors swirled like cyclones around its pupils—and its jaws were open, saliva shimmering on its many rows of teeth. She saw all of this in less time than it took her to draw a breath that she would not scream. Stretching its wings out, the spirit flew directly at Rowell.
But Rowell was ready: she threw two charms in the air in front of her. Hitting each other, they exploded in a cloud of powder, and the spirit veered away—toward Hanna, who was not ready.
Hanna froze.
Her muscles locked.
Her thoughts . . . They raced, in tight circles like a trapped rat, and then instinct kicked in, and Hanna dived behind one of the barrels as the spirit impacted on the table just behind where she’d been standing. The force of the impact flipped the table backward, and it crashed onto the floor—herbs and powders spilling across the shop—and the spirit pivoted to again target Hanna.
Charms! Need charms! She reached blindly around her and began throwing. The charms hit, but they were earth charms, water charms, ice, fire . . . Where was air? She needed air! Her hand plunged into a basket that she knew held—
It was empty.
She looked across the shop.
Rowell was smiling at her.
I’m going to die, Hanna thought.
And then she thought: No! Her mind screamed it, so loud that she felt as if the thought was bursting out of her, through her skin.
The air spirit jerked backward.
Flapping its wings, it hovered in midair. It clapped its beak-like jaws open and shut, and it pumped its wings harder, preparing to attack again.
“Command it, Hanna. Force it to leave.”
Go! Hanna thought at it.
“Tell it to never come back.”
Go! she thought. Go, go, go!
Switching direction, the air spirit flew for the window. It crashed into it, shattering the glass, and then it soared upward, past the houses, toward the canopy, and then punched through the leaves to disappear against the sky. Ha
nna ran to the broken window, the shards of glass crackling beneath her shoes, and stared upward.
“I didn’t die,” Hanna said, her voice full of shock and wonder.
“Told you,” Rowell said calmly. “I’m the one who’s dying.”
Three weeks later, Rowell was dying, her internal organs shutting down. The healer that Hanna had summoned told her, in hushed tones, that nothing could be done. “Sometimes the body can’t keep going,” he said. “Sometimes it’s too hurt to heal.” And then he’d patted Hanna on the shoulder, as if that would make her feel better.
When the healer left, Rowell beckoned to Hanna to come closer, and Hanna crossed the room to sit on the side of her bed. She held her master’s wrinkled hand. It felt like bones covered in stretched dry fabric. “I’m going to tell you all of my wisdom now,” Rowell said. Her voice was a whisper, crackling like leaves in the fall.
Hanna leaned closer.
“Hah! I have no wisdom.” Her chest shaking, Rowell laughed in short, painful jerks. “Oh, wait, yes, I do: When the world hits you, it’s all right if you can’t hit back. Sometimes pain, loneliness, sorrow can make you stronger. But sometimes it just plain hurts. And that’s all right. You can be strong after you heal. And I think . . . I think you are almost healed.” She closed her eyes.
Silence spread through the shop.
Hanna choked back a sob. “Rowell?”
Rowell’s eyes popped open. “What? I’m sleeping. Can’t you let an old woman sleep? Honestly, you’re worse than a spirit. Go do some chores.”
It was late that night when the old hedgewitch finally passed, in her sleep, and Hanna stood in the center of the shop, alone, while two of her neighbors carried Rowell’s body out and brought it to be buried on the forest floor. While the villagers planted the traditional white flowers of mourning, Hanna planted several of Rowell’s favorite herbs at the foot of her grave. It seemed appropriate.
She then shut herself in the shop and threw herself into her charmwork, and when the shop seemed quiet and empty, she worked harder, and when nighttime came, she surrounded herself with as many charms as could reasonably fit around her cot.
Unfettered II: New Tales By Masters of Fantasy Page 31