Chapter Sixteen
I woke sometime in the middle of the night, my heart pounding, my hair plastered to my temples with sweat.
It took me a moment to remember where I was, that the soft sound of breathing across the room was Bri.
Wind was teasing a spindly branch across the window, eliciting a low squeal from the glass.
A small sliver of light peeked out from beneath the door.
Someone was still up, and I desperately needed a glass of water.
I found Marcail in an armchair by the fire, darning a torn stocking. “Willow,” she said, without looking up. “Having trouble sleeping?”
“Just a bad dream.” I couldn’t remember it, but Marcail’s uncanny demeanor did nothing to relieve my sense of foreboding. “Can I get some water?”
“Help yourself.” She glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “If you’re not ready to go back to sleep, I have plenty of mending here.”
I got myself a cup of water from the pail and drank it in one long gulp. I was still knackered, but I went to join Marcail anyway, taking a seat on the rug before the fire. I couldn’t help noticing that while she lived alone, she didn’t seem lonely at all.
Wordlessly, she handed me a blouse missing a button and gestured toward her sewing basket. I was no stranger to mending, and I didn’t mind doing it, so I found a suitable replacement in her button box and got to work.
“What was your dream about?” she asked.
“I don’t remember, exactly. But I know I was frightened.”
“Sleeping in a strange place can do that.” She was quiet for a while, nothing to fill the silence between us but the crackle of the fire. “Jack told me a bit about Finlay and how he’s helping Bri search for a grimoire, but I didn’t get any information about how you fit into all of this.”
Wasn’t that the million-pound question? “I promised to help Bri look for her grimoire in exchange for help with my shoppe,” I said, leaving out the part where I’d practically blackmailed Bri into working for me.
“Och, aye. The Cabinet of Magical Curiosities. Bri mentioned it.” I could feel her studying me, her eyes almost unnaturally green in the firelight. “A mite young for running your own shoppe, aren’t you?”
“I manage well enough.”
She chuckled, no doubt seeing me as a know-nothing wean. “Can’t say I have much respect for artifact collectors, not when most of them have little respect for the artificers who created them.”
“My father was a salesman, not a collector,” I said, feeling defensive on his behalf. “I think he liked the idea of matching a buyer with the perfect magical object. Besides, he never had anything against witches.”
“No, I suppose not.”
It was a cryptic thing to say, and I wondered if she had known my father.
“And Finlay?” she asked, completely derailing my train of thought. “How do you two know each other?”
I pretended to be intrigued by the button I was working on. “Ardmuir isn’t all that big of a city. I met him while he was working at the print shoppe.”
“You stayed friendly with him, it seems.”
There was a pointedness to her words I didn’t like. “He’s a friendly person.”
“Mm. Loyal, too, to make all this effort for Bri.”
I had to bite my lip to keep from growling. Peerie, perhaps sensing my annoyance, squawked at me from Marcail’s shoulder.
Several minutes of silence ensued, and while I knew I should mind my own business, that same curiosity was filling my head with questions and a burning desire to ask them. Maybe I should want to change that part of me. It had gotten me nothing but trouble lately.
“Go ahead,” Marcail said with another of her pointed looks. “You can ask me anything.”
I’ve found that people don’t really mean it when they say such things.
Why should this woman be so open with a girl she didn’t know?
But Bri hadn’t divulged much of their conversation, and I couldn’t help wondering if Marcail had given her false hope.
“Do you really think you’ll be able to help Bri tomorrow? ” I pressed.
“Depends. There is much she doesn’t know about herself, and without those answers, it will be difficult to guide her.”
“Things about her family, you mean?”
“Aye, and about her magic. But I’ll certainly do my best.” She smiled at me. “What else?”
“Do witch bones have magic?” I asked, surprising both of us. I hadn’t known what I was going to say until the words were out of my mouth.
Marcail laughed. “I thought you were going to ask why I’m not married or if I can make you a love potion.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Why would I ask you for a love potion?”
“It’s a typical request from people your age,” she said with a grin. “So, you want to know if witch bones have magic. Can I ask why?”
I chewed my lip, wondering how much I should tell this woman.
She seemed to know more than anyone else we’d spoken to about Bri’s curse, but I decided it was better to be cautious, especially considering she’d sedated us with her witch tea.
“I heard someone say it, and I thought if it was true, then people like you would be in a lot of danger from magic collectors.” I reached for another item to mend in her darning basket, avoiding her gaze.
“I suppose, if a witch were powerful enough, they could be in danger. The bones of magical beings do possess some magic.”
“Like dragons,” I ventured.
“Yes, like dragons,” she said, still grinning, as though everything I said were amusing. “But Bri is not a dragon, and neither am I. Besides, it’s illegal to possess a witch’s bones. It hasn’t happened in at least a century.”
I ruminated on that. “Can I ask a stupid question?”
“There are no stupid questions, Willow. Not if they arise from a genuine wish to understand the world.”
Once again, I had the unsettling feeling she was reading my mind. But if that were the case, she already knew what I was going to ask, and she wasn’t trying to stop me. “How did you become a witch?”
“The same way all of us do. My mother was a witch, and her mother before her, and so on.”
I had suspected as much, but it was still hard to imagine being born to such a weighty inheritance.
If I’d learned anything in the past weeks, it was that magic, whether present at birth or acquired unwillingly, was not the simple gift I’d once believed it to be.
“Then a witch is a witch, whether they choose it or not?”
Marcail held a finger to her shoulder and Peerie hopped onto it. She whispered something to the small bird, which took off out an open window. I supposed it wouldn’t be so bad to have a familiar, particularly one that could fly. Just so long as it wasn’t a bat.
“I can choose not to practice,” Marcail said.
“Just as I can choose to dye my hair black. But I can’t choose to be unmagical any more than I can choose not to be a natural redhead.
Eventually, the truth of who we are will rise to the surface, and any witch who buries her magic is likely to cause herself far greater harm than she realizes.
” She gathered up the mending and rose from her chair.
“Now then. I think it’s time we get some sleep.
I can make you another cup of tea, if you like. ”
I stood next to her, handing her the blouse I’d been fixing. “No, thank you.”
“Is there something else?”
“I just … I don’t need to worry about Bri, then? Even if we don’t find what she’s looking for, she isn’t in any real danger?”
Marcail furrowed her brow, assessing me. “I’d say that since parents seem to be in short supply around here, it’s a good idea for both of you to look out for each other. Danger comes in many forms, usually when you least expect it.”
I woke to the smell of baking bread, and for a minute I forgot about last night, my almost-kiss with Finlay and the rejection that followed, my strange conversation with Marcail that had done nothing to assuage my fear that Bri was in danger. It certainly hadn’t assuaged my guilt.
Finlay was already seated at the table when Bri and I arrived. His hair was neatly combed like he was a schoolboy, his plaid shirt buttoned all the way to his neck.
“You realize we’re not actually attending university, don’t you?” I whispered as I sat down next to him.
He turned his warm smile on me, and I wondered if he had chalked last night up to the fact that I was a coward, or if he truly believed I didn’t have feelings for him.
Either way, I couldn’t help thinking this was for the best. Finlay deserved to be with someone who could freely express their emotions the way he could, whose heart wasn’t buried under piles of rubble.
Someone who didn’t lie to their friends for their own gain.
“I’m aware,” he said, raising a small porcelain bowl to me. “Blackberries? They’re delicious.”
I helped myself to a few of the tart purple berries while Marcail scooped porridge into my bowl, topping it with a heaping spoonful of brown sugar and a dollop of heavy cream.
Once again, I was convinced there had to be magic in the food, because never in my life had I asked for a second helping of porridge.
Marcail merely sipped her tea and watched the three of us gorge ourselves on porridge and berries until I was contemplating loosening the laces on my bodice.
When we’d finished, Marcail ushered us to the front door and into our boots and coats. “Willow, perhaps you can do something with your hair. The university is a stodgy place, as I told Finlay. I’ll expect you all to be on your best behavior.”
I shot Finlay an angry look for not relaying Marcail’s message. “I can help,” he offered. “I brush my mother’s hair.”
“Don’t you dare,” I growled. He backed off after I tried to bite him, and soon we were following Marcail like dutiful ducklings down the road to the University of Abundance. It was less than a mile, and Fergus was happily eating hay in one of Marcail’s two stalls.
It wasn’t until we’d reached the university, however, that I really began to regret not combing my hair this morning.
The students that hurried past us were all clothed in suits and skirts as prim and proper as Finlay, their leather satchels slung importantly over their shoulders.
The university itself, a towering gothic monstrosity, cast the entire courtyard before it in shadow, and I shivered as I followed Bri and Finlay inside.
Marcail led us through the building to the library. Several students greeted her as we passed. “My botany students,” she explained. “We have an excellent program.”
“I’d like to study here,” Bri whispered to me. “It feels so grand and ancient.”
“It feels pretentious,” I hissed back, earning a sneer from a boy passing us in the long hallway.
We entered an enormous room lined floor to ceiling with books. I hadn’t read much for pleasure since Da died—I hadn’t done much of anything for pleasure since then—and I stopped in my tracks, overwhelmed by the sight. I forgave it its pretentiousness. The library had earned it.
“My goodness,” Bri breathed. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Light from stained-glass windows bathed the room in soft reds and blues, and our footsteps were muffled by elaborate carpets in matching tones.
Gleaming wooden tables were lined up in rows with individual green lamps for reading, where more smartly dressed students sat in silence, gleaning knowledge I could only guess at.
I’d never considered studying at university. Higher education cost money, after all, and an expectation of a certain kind of future. Not to mention enough free time to attend classes, which wasn’t feasible for even the most negligent business owner.
My eyes fell on a girl with long blond hair in a neat braid, her delicate ankles crossed under the desk.
If I squinted, I could almost pretend she was me in another life.
One where Da was alive, running a proper shoppe while I studied business.
Hell, in this other life, maybe I studied botany. Or mathematics. Or geography.
In another life, I could have been anything at all.