The blood on the apron told an incomplete story. I circumvented the caravan, not wanting to have to explain myself to anyone—they’d know Brishen was banished soon enough. I saw no reason to call attention to it prematurely.
For once I was glad Gran parked away from the others.
The knee-high grass hung limp beneath the seasonal frost. Soon winter would come, and with it, the snow and the feeling that I’d never be warm again. I paused on the vardo steps before going inside, pulling off the apron. I didn’t want that soil in my home.
As I folded the apron, I heard approaching footsteps. I looked over my shoulder just as the chieftain turned our corner. He raised his chin and, seeing the bloody cloth in my hands, went still. His mouth opened with questions he didn’t dare give voice to. Instead, he cleared his throat and motioned for me to go ahead of him, so I cast the apron over a barrel and climbed the steps.
Inside, Gran had an iron pot waiting on the table, but that pot had never seen stew. Incense, sometimes, and medicinal pastes, yes—but never food. That day, it saw a plucked eye, oil, and a smattering of herbs.
“All is well?” she asked, hovering by her cabinet with its oddities, a jar of pale blue powder in her hand. “Put your tithe there.”
“It’s done. The chieftain is here.” I dropped the tooth into the pot, sloughing off the meaty bits still stuck to the gloves before peeling them from my fingers. They, too, needed a washing, and I brushed past the man in the doorway to bring the pitcher of water outside. I rinsed the gloves in a bucket we kept by the wheel. Water wasn’t good for leather, but they’d been waxed enough that a quick pass wouldn’t do much harm.
I worked quickly, the chieftain watching me all the while. He was silent, even as I laid the gloves out to dry and climbed the steps. He followed, glancing from me to Gran, waiting for her to acknowledge him. She finished fussing with her jars before bothering to turn his way.
“Yes?”
“I am sorry to intrude. I spoke with the Woodard elder. He is sending one of his sons off in search of Martyn and Bethan. I suggested they might be going to Caerdydd. He believed me, though he expressed concerns over the fight. I told him that was the reason you fled. To avoid more violence.” The chieftain glanced at me, nervous, and nodded at the pot. “Who is that?”
“Brishen,” I said. “I told him he was banished. His family may come to you seeking intervention.”
The chieftain frowned. “I see.”
“And they will get none, will they Wen?” Gran pressed.
“No, though the other elders may argue it with me.”
“I will speak with them. An attack of this nature warrants expulsion at the very least. The boys are lucky to get away with their lives. They would not if it were up to the gadjos.” Gran cocked her head my way. “Who is next, after Brishen?”
“Cam spoke of burning us alive inside our vardo. We need to be prepared.”
“We always are.” The reply was for me, but her attention was fixed on the chieftain, her fingers whirling circles over the glass surface of the jar.
“You cannot help him, Wen. He did not come last night,” she said softly.
The chieftain winced, much like I winced whenever she sampled my thoughts without permission. “I tried, Drina. He insisted it was not how Bethan explained it. That they were besotted and ought to marry. I said you saw it otherwise in the glass and he…”
“Called me a liar?” I said, my voice flat.
“All but, yes.” The chieftain’s shoulders sagged. “I am reconciling myself to losing him. He is a bad, spoiled boy and a stain upon my family name. I ought to be glad he is going, but it is hard. He is still my son.”
“Bad boys get what they deserve.” I motioned at the black pot with the tooth inside, no longer numb, but furious. Silas’s casting us as secret lovers in a play he acted out in his head was delusional madness, but was that so surprising? Who besides the mad would so readily dismiss the drabarni? A drabarni who’d learned magic craft from the British witches in her travels, at that? Gran didn’t flash her power, but it was feared and respected in equal measure by our people. Silas refused to believe only because he hadn’t witnessed it with his own eyes.
Or because he believed I belonged to him, he was willing to risk her wrath.
I washed my hands in the basin. There was no mess because I’d worn gloves, but the ghost of bloody deeds past compelled me to reach for the bristle brush. I sawed until my fingers puffed and reddened.
Gran and the chieftain lingered behind me, silent. Gran was busy sprinkling her strange powder over the tooth in the pot, but I felt the weight of the chieftain’s gaze upon my back again. It made me uncomfortable.
“I do not wish to see this change you, Bethan. To see you become cold-hearted,” he said.
I said nothing, and did not turn around to face him.
“She is my daughter. Her heart is iron,” Gran said. “She is kind and good, but she is strong, too. Strong enough to do anything she wishes to do. Anything she has to do to bring back the diddicoy.”
There was pride in her voice that I would have relished on any other day. Now, after the attack, I simply toweled off my hands.
The chieftain sighed as he opened our door. It squealed on its hinge as if echoing his sentiment. “I suppose, but I worry. For all of us, but especially for Bethan.”
“That is what makes you a good chieftain,” Gran replied. “Your caring.”
“I do not feel like a good chieftain. I failed my people and my son. I am sorry for you, Bethan,” the chieftain said quietly. “If I could take your pain away, I would.” He left with footsteps so heavy on the stairs, the vardo shook on its wheels.
I glared at the space he’d just occupied. He would take away my pain? He would know it? I wanted to strike him. Shake him until his teeth rattled. Until his person was reduced to meat, until his body was not his own anymore, until his heart was encased in cold glass one minute, only to fill with molten fury the next, the chieftain could never understand.
“Scowling makes you ugly,” Gran said to me. “He means well, but he operates from ignorance. A man cannot understand a woman’s burdens, especially ones such as these. I worry that he still wishes to save his son. His conscience makes him untrustworthy. He may warn Silas away to protect him, or perhaps even shield Silas’s friends.”
“Would the chieftain betray you that way? Would he refuse to honor the banishment?”
Gran reached for the matches on the overhead shelf, but she was so short that she had to use her cane to hook the box to pull it down.
“Love makes us do foolish things. I of all people know that. If he thought he could change his son’s stars, he would. It is easier to believe the lie of redemption than the truth that some people are beyond it.”
She slid the matches across the table to me in invitation. “We burn the flesh from the tooth and store it with its ashes. If we work swiftly, you will have time to prepare for the next boy. You said Cam, but if the chieftain shows his hand, Cam will expect you. Mander, perhaps.”
I struck the match. I didn’t expect wet flesh to ignite so quickly, but whatever powder Gran sprinkled over the tooth and eye made it do just that. There was a puff of acrid smoke and then an odd fizzing sound as blue flames devoured the offerings. The smell was revolting—like beef roasted hours too long—and Gran opened the shutters, letting the awful stink out and the cold air in.
Soon, all that was left in the pot were ashes and the tooth. Gran offered me a tobacco box with a sliding lid to keep the ashes safe, and I used a wooden spoon from our herbing to collect everything inside.
“What will we do about Cam’s threat?” I asked. “It sounded like Silas didn’t like the idea, but if Cam’s desperate enough, he might ignore Silas’s dissent.” I closed the box and handed it to Gran, and she tucked it away with the rest of her ritual things, going so far as to hide it beneath her jars of feathers and dried chicken feet.
“Fire does not scare me. A gadjo from
Scotland showed my mother—your grandmother—how to talk to flames. If Cam tries to burn us, he will live long enough to regret it and not a moment more.”
She sounded so confident, I felt I could put that one worry aside. It didn’t hurt that she’d controlled the fire at the center of the caravan so well the morning before—she had been an extension of the flames themselves. If Cam wanted to attack her with her chosen element, he was a fool.
I tapped the ashes remaining on the spoon into a refuse jar, then tossed the spoon into a bucket outside, adding it to a pile of river washing.
“May I see your arm, please?” Gran asked when I locked the door. I offered it to her, and she inspected the cut I’d made to feed the roots, her finger hovering over the ragged edges. “This is too much, Bethan. Not so deep next time.” I wanted to point out that she hadn’t given me very clear instructions about the ritual, but I got distracted watching her reach for her tray of medicines.
The squat clay pots were painted different colors to indicate the contents’ purpose, and Gran chose the orange one, flipping the lid and covering the tip of her finger with a smelly substance. She rubbed it over the gash, actually worming her way inside the wound to smear in the ointment. It stung, but I didn’t complain; she keeping me safe from infection.
Gran wrapped me in linen from knuckles to wrist. “No more cutting. We must come up with some other way to work Mander’s offering. I just wish we had time….There is so little time.”
She pushed the medicine aside, reaching for her list and scratching out two lines. I wondered if those had been Tomašis and Brishen’s names.
“Something more traditional for Mander. Tonight, after dinner, when the clan is gathered by the fire, you will sneak into his vardo. Look for a hairbrush, a pillow—anything with his trace upon it. The bigger the sample, the better. We can conjure something tonight or do it in the morning depending on when you return.”
I didn’t fancy the notion of creeping about in other people’s homes, but it wasn’t like Mander would offer me his hair, and plucking it from his head would cause a fuss. While no one would deny Gran and me our vengeance, they wouldn’t be happy that we were harming their sons before turning them out.
“Should I send Tomašis to do it in my stead?” I asked.
“No. Not only would I not trust him because he is stupid, but he was also the last person seen with Brishen. Silas will be suspicious. I hope Tomašis lies well, for his mother’s sake if not his own. There would be something cruelly ironic about having spared his life only to have Silas end it for disloyalty.”
I hoped Tomašis lied well, too, though less because I was a charitable soul and more because I’d gone through the trouble of binding him and didn’t want my efforts wasted. I sat at the table, quiet, and watched Gran fold her list and tuck it away. She gathered her sewing basket from the floor and rifled through the contents. I was dismissed, apparently. Most days, I’d cherish free time, but idle time meant idle thoughts…and I didn’t want my thoughts to drift back to the wheat field and leave me vulnerable to emotion—I wasn’t ready to feel yet.
I tapped my fingers on the tabletop until Gran cast me a look that suggested I should sit still before she made me sit still. I decided to work with our herbs. Days ago, I’d complained that herbcraft bored me, but its easy monotony was exactly the distraction I needed. I pulled the canvas bags and colored yarn from the drawers and took the clustered herbs down from the hooks in the ceiling.
Gran watched me. She cocked her head as I reached for the fennel stalks above my head, but before I could bring them down, she pointed to another hook. “No. Not that. Give me the dwayberry.” I did, handing her the sprig with its deadly berries and dusky-purple flowers. The cutting was drying out, the petals on the blossoms shriveled to wrinkled silk.
“This. For Mander,” she said.
“Poison him with nightshade?”
“No. Well, it is a poison, yes, but we can use it to poison his mind instead of his body. If you can get his hair…” She trailed off, retrieving her list again, and I could tell by her crooked smile that whatever idea she’d conceived pleased her. “If you get the hair tonight, we can send him a living dream—dream magic. The enchantment creates illusions in the mind, and it takes only a single drop of our blood. If we conjure a truly potent vision, Mander will focus on it instead of you, and you can corral him. The trick is to find something frightening enough to hold his attention.”
“Thomson,” I blurted, without thinking twice. “He didn’t like Thomson. He said as much in Martyn’s field. He thought he was scary.”
“Who is Thomson?”
“The scarecrow. He’s terrifying. Or was terrifying, before they ripped him apart.”
Gran’s eyes swept over to the bag holding the clothes I’d worn during my attack. I hadn’t burned them yet because I hadn’t had the opportunity. She reached inside to pluck a few pieces of Thomson’s straw from my blouse, twining them around the dwayberry, one of her pointed fingernails bursting a fruit so its juices ran down her skin. “This. Tonight, you get a piece of him. His essence.” She paused to eyeball me, a grin prefacing her unmelodious cackles. “And tomorrow, you control his nightmare.”
It didn’t occur to me until after we’d eaten dinner to ask Gran what she meant by “corral him.” She peered at me over her bowl of soup, her brows knit together as if I asked only stupid questions.
“If Mander believes he cannot move, he will not move. Control his vision, control him. You can take whatever you need while he is under your sway.”
“Oh. Of course,” I said, as if it was evident, though it was anything but.
I picked up our bowls and rinsed them in the dish basin. I’d take them to the fire to wash them in boiling water later, when most were asleep. After I’d gotten Mander’s essence.
“Is your conscience bothering you yet?” Gran asked my back.
It was, perhaps, her way of testing my mettle for the gruesome tasks to come. Or perhaps it was her odd way of seeing if I was all right in the wake of Brishen’s tooth removal. I swept the washcloth over a bowl and shrugged.
“No, should it be?”
“It is not a matter of should. You are good, and good people do not do the things you have done or are about to do. But that is the nature of magic: it is transactional. Nothing is free. You take pieces of these boys’ lives to pay for the yellow-haired man’s life. When your doubt comes upon you—and it will—you must cling to the knowledge that those you harvest wronged you and the sacrifice is just. If you plan to be my successor, you will be in this position again one day—sooner than you would like. There is little room for half-measure or hesitation. The best you can do is take tithes only from those deserving of the pain. These boys are deserving of the pain.”
“Yes, Gran.” I stacked our empty bowls beneath the window, my eyes drifting to peer out into the night. Clouds played peekaboo with the moon while a silver fog rose from the ground, wispy gray tendrils tickling the vardo side. “I should go,” I said, turning the washed bowls upside down so they’d drip dry. “It’s a good time to sneak to Mander’s vardo with the fog.”
“Yes. Be careful. Get what you need and come back. And take these.” She handed me the shawl from her shoulders and the ritual knife, patting its handle with a murmured, “In case.” I bundled up, scarf over my hair, shawl on my back, the blade tucked close to my body. We’d been through a lot in a short time, that knife and I, and I felt better with it near.
I scrambled down our front steps and toward the back of the camp. Mander’s family was parked on the opposite side of Cotter’s Field, far from me and Gran, and I darted through the dark alleys between vardos and tents, my head low. The fog nipped at my heels, swishing past my knees to hover around my thighs. It was so thick I couldn’t see the lower half of my skirt. I looked like a disembodied torso with a red shawl and a long black knife clutched in my hand.
I kept a row of goods wagons between me and the fire. There was no music that
night; people spoke in hushed tones, their conversations grave. I had to assume that either Brishen’s absence had been noticed or the chieftain had simply come out and announced his banishment. Part of me was tempted to eavesdrop for details, but the fear of being caught kept me back. I didn’t want anyone thinking I took pride in my actions. It was an ugly necessity and nothing more.
I hurried on. Nearing Mander’s vardo, I heard a different set of voices. Recognizing Silas, Mander, and Cam, my mind flashed back to the night in the field, to the abuses heaped one on top of another. I retreated, a primitive instinct to flee overriding what my mind wanted me to do, but I forced my feet to stop.
I must stay. I must stay.
I took a deep breath.
The boys were alone. Their parents had likely gone with the rest of the adults to the fire. It was clear from their lowered voices and urgent whispers that they were up to something. As much as it sickened me to get close to them, I had to find out what. I ducked behind Mander’s vardo and crouched, the fog sweeping over my head keeping me hidden.
“Gone. Niku said he saw him heading toward the woods with Tomašis, but he never came back,” Cam said. “I went all the way to the river to look for him, but there’s no trace. Do you think he was banished? Or did the old witch kill him?”
Mander spit a wet mouthful of what I assumed was tobacco to the ground. “Tomašis’s mother wouldn’t let him out from behind her skirts earlier. She said he was too sick to see anyone. His eye, she said. If he’s so sick, why was he out with Brishen? Something’s not right.”
“That’s why we should burn them,” Cam insisted. “I know you’ve claimed Bethan, Silas, but this is too much.”
Silas hissed like a rabid raccoon, and that small sound was enough to make my hand clamp down on the knife hilt. I could picture his sneer in my head—the curled lip, the pinched brows, the narrowed black eyes. All I wanted to do was run around the corner and plunge my knife into his heart, to terrify him the way he’d terrified me and Martyn, but that would resolve nothing. I had to remain calm and quiet despite my trembling body.
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