Chapter 3
CHAPTER
Three
It was a tale as old as the gods and every bit as cruel. Thea brewed a pot of lavender tea as the girl poured out her story. Of a master of the house whose attentions she
did not want but could not refuse for fear of losing her position and the salary that she and her bedridden sister relied upon.
Still in her livery, she twisted her apron in hands which were reddened and raw, either from washing clothes or dishes, Thea wasn’t sure, but she slid a jar of thick calendula and night-blooming rose cream into the girl’s pocket. It was the least she could do.
The back room of the apothecary, huddled between the shop floor and Thea’s jungle of plants, was a witch’s cave of ingredients and trinkets.
Herbs and flowers hung from the walls to dry, feathers were stuffed into glass jars, and everywhere you looked, you’d be sure to find a curious object.
River stones polished smooth as glass, a bird’s skull that stared directly at you, a twig shaped like a crooked finger.
And, in pride of place, a large tome, propped open to a double spread of recipes for ink-making.
But Thea didn’t need to consult her Compendium of Magic for this.
‘I can make you unappealing to him,’ she said when the girl had finished speaking.
The relief that passed over the girl’s face was intense.
It made her look younger than the seventeen years she’d claimed, piercing Thea with fresh guilt.
She stared at the girl, wondering if she had a daughter herself out there somewhere.
What if I had carried her in my womb for months and months, feeling her quicken and dart about like a quick-silvered fish, slippery with life and all my hopes and fears?
What if now she was almost a woman, standing in the back room of an apothecary, begging for help? What then?
The girl clasped both of Thea’s hands in hers. ‘Really? Are you serious?’
‘Yes. He’ll be discouraged from pursuing you,’ Thea told her.
The girl gnawed at her lip, in a manner so similar to Thea’s own, she jolted, automatically searching the girl’s face for her own features.
They both bore hazel eyes, and perhaps there was something in the shape of her nose – but perhaps she was just searching for the impossible.
‘But what if he dislikes being around me and I lose my position that way?’ She sat heavily down on a wooden stool.
‘There’s no need to worry.’ Thea smiled at her. It was bittersweet. She wrapped the cloak she’d pulled on over her nightgown tighter around herself. ‘He won’t find you distasteful – he won’t think of you at all, in fact. You’ll blend in with the house as if you were part of the furniture.’
‘Thank you.’ The girl smiled back. ‘Our mother left us seven years ago, it’s been just us since then. I don’t know what we’d do if you didn’t help us.’
Thea froze. Seven years – surely that was just a coincidence? Surely, she couldn’t be this girl’s mother? Surely the girl would have recognised her? But memories faded and people changed, and the possibility that they were linked in some way rattled in Thea’s head.
‘I will help you.’ She forced the words out over the lump in her throat.
Her vision blurred as she tapped into her weaving power.
Became a conduit for fate itself. The air in the apothecary vibrated, shimmering as threads appeared all around her, visible to her alone, in every shade and hue she could name and thousands more she could not.
Revealing the tapestry of the world in its infinite connections and possibilities.
Present and future; the past was not available to fate-weavers, much as Thea wished it was, so that she might glimpse the life she’d lived but could not remember.
Thea located the girl’s thread, a rich auburn, here and there lanced with scarlet where a second thread entangled it.
Her master’s, Thea presumed. As the knowledge of what to do slid through Thea’s thoughts like scissors through silk, so did the price that such a service would necessitate.
Only, this thought was sharp and hard, the shearing edge of the scissors, forcing itself into the forefront of her mind like a particularly nasty headache: shaping fate interfered with time, so in order to maintain a balance, to stop the strings of fate and time from collapsing in on themselves, Thea took time from her customers.
Sometimes it came in the form of memory, sometimes a dream.
But for this untangling, such delicate work would cost more. An entire year.
The girl seemed to sense Thea’s shifting mood. ‘And the payment?’ she asked, her nervous energy returning threefold.
Thea swallowed thickly. ‘One year of your life.’ She braced for the girl’s reaction; this was the worst part of Thea’s contracted service to Lord Stiltskin. The part that prowled through her sleep, nightmares coming thick and fast in the deepest part of the night.
On hearing their price, some cried. Some bargained, others raged. And some, like this girl, gave a stoic nod. ‘Will it hurt?’ Her voice trembled, betraying her fear.
‘You won’t feel a thing,’ Thea assured her.
None of them did. They only missed what was taken when they needed it most; then, it would return to haunt them.
If she’d taken dreams, they would be remembered when at their lowest and loneliest. If they’d paid in memory, they’d spend the rest of their lives prodding that blank space like a missing tooth.
Had it been a lost love? A great passion?
A talent that they could no longer recall?
Then there were those who needed more. Who paid in years.
Whose regret would fester when their deathbed loomed closer than it ought.
Fate gave and it took. Thea was not a master of fate, only the holder of the scales.
And this strange power she’d borrowed from Lord Stiltskin determined the price.
She didn’t know how she knew, only that she knew it as certainly as she knew that grass was green and the sun would rise tomorrow.
An innate knowledge. Perhaps other people would find it magical, but for Thea, it was more akin to a curse.
‘Then take it, quickly.’ The girl stood, bravely facing Thea, all big hazel eyes and pointed chin and one large freckle perched beside her nose.
With a nod, Thea placed one hand above the girl’s heart.
Silvery strands, luminous as lost starlight, emerged from the girl’s chest. Thea pinched them between her fingers.
Pulled them out. The girl inhaled sharply, not with pain, but with knowledge; agreeing to pay a year of your life was a different matter to seeing that life dragged from your body.
Thea pulled harder, sweat sliding down her collarbone.
The girl whimpered. Had Thea made a similar sound when she’d stood in this room and allowed Lord Stiltskin to take her memories?
Had it hurt when he’d removed her heart?
Had this girl, with those familiar mannerisms, been someone she’d walked away from?
Had she done something terrible that had necessitated her paying such a steep price?
Could this girl be a daughter or a niece or someone she’d forgotten?
Thea’s hand shook. And she let go.
The silver strands snapped back into the girl’s chest as Thea slumped back against the table.
‘What happened?’ the girl whispered.
Thea closed her eyes. She’d never broken her agreement with Lord Stiltskin before, never not taken a price to tweak another’s fate.
Fear turned her palms slick, but whatever consequences she might bear for this, she knew she couldn’t take a year of this girl’s life, not now that she’d noticed something familiar about this girl with a missing mother.
Seven years ago. ‘Don’t ask questions,’ Thea whispered back, her heart-spell thrashing in her chest.
She reached into the tapestry of fate, disentangling the thread that kept strangling the girl’s lifeline, until it ran clear and unhampered, into the future.
The girl made to thank her.
‘Do you know where your mother might have gone?’ Thea interrupted, sweat running down the back of her neck. No consequences seemed to have occurred yet, but fate could be tricksy like that.
The girl’s hazel eyes turned sorrowful. ‘She died. Tuberculosis.’
‘Oh,’ Thea managed. She’d broken her agreement and risked upsetting the delicate balance of fate for nothing more than a coincidence.
Night had advanced by the time the girl departed. Thea blew out the candles, save for a single lantern, which she held.
Before Thea turned around, she knew that he was standing behind her.
His presence was impossible to ignore, even when you weren’t looking at him.
The apothecary crackled with his energy, with the ancient dark power of the fate-weavers rippling through his veins.
She hadn’t heard him enter the apothecary, she’d been so immersed in her own thoughts, but now they halted.
She turned and set eyes on the man who’d taken her heart. Her name, her life.
Jasper Stiltskin stood in the centre of the back room, shadows falling over him like a cloak.
He was tall, imposing in a quiet way that drew the attention of a room, somehow sensing his silent strength.
Lanternlight illuminated the planes of his face as if he’d been sculpted to life, with a sharp jawline and sharper gaze, his eyes an almost unnatural shade of blue.
Thea couldn’t remember ever seeing the sea, but Jasper’s eyes looked the colour she imagined the sea would, a blue so potent and wild it could not be tamed. A cold depth rippling with danger.