Chapter 25
Leave it to Ma to dash cold water on my daydreams. I fumed all the way up the road, muttering things I wished I had the guts to say to her.
I’d assumed Ma had gotten over her initial wariness of humans after spending the majority of the week with Edmund.
She hadn’t said a thing about Christabella dancing with Maddox.
Why did she have a problem with me and Edmund?
Was it because she figured that I was so repulsive that Edmund couldn’t possibly harbor any genuine positive feelings toward me?
I gritted my teeth, alarmingly close to tears.
I wouldn’t let Ma make me cry. Not again.
The house and the First Oak came into view as the incline leveled out. Just as I reached for the door of our cottage, leaves rustled overhead. I paused. There was no breeze tonight, nor did Witch Village have any squirrels or birds.
Instinct told me to look up.
A familiar, hideous patchwork skirt was draped over the branch. Hidden behind a few oak leaves was a woman, pasty skinned with a thin face, gaunt cheekbones, and limp, dirty blonde hair. She froze when our gazes met.
“Who are you?” I asked, bewildered. Sometimes witch children would climb up the oak for games, but this woman was far too old, and everyone was at the village square celebrating, save for the most reclusive of witches who preferred to stay home.
The latter certainly weren’t in the habit of climbing trees.
The woman muttered something under her breath and shook her head.
“Caught, then.” She swung her legs, her ugly skirt swishing with her.
I suddenly recalled the times I’d seen that garment.
She had brushed past me in the fields, then I had seen the skirt hanging up in Maude Greenwood’s front yard, next to Maddox’s breeches after he had walked through the jinxed fence.
Ma and Shauna had said there were three humans in Witch Village, yet I had only brought two.
“How did you get down here?” I demanded. Something told me she hadn’t been invited.
The human woman looked up. To my surprise, a rope with some sort of harness hung down from between the branches, but seemed to extend infinitely upward. I blinked hard, but I couldn’t make sense of it. The rope disappeared right through the night sky.
“Did you know the distance between this tree and your false sky is only one hundred feet?” she asked.
I rounded the house until I was at the base of the oak. “What do you want? What are you doing here?” Wariness sparked in my chest. Whoever this woman was, she was up to no good. “You had better confess or—”
The human trilled a laugh. “Or what? You’ll use your coercive magic on me?”
I startled, taken aback. “How did you—?”
“Oh, I know all about you, Giselle Phula,” the woman said, crossing her arms and leaning languidly against the tree.
This human was a stranger to me, yet she knew my name and my magic, the latter of which I had tried so hard to keep hidden even during my Witch Committee days.
I tried to recall what Shauna had said about this mysterious third human.
She had come by her candy shop to buy roasted peanuts.
There had been peanut shells littering the backyard of Maude Greenwood’s cottage near the kitchen window.
Maddox had said his family was deathly allergic to peanuts.
Then the light in the village had gone out with the death of Manuel Greenwood. ..
I widened my eyes when I took in her features again. They were sharp and familiar. I had spent many months with the older version of this face.
“You’re Mrs. Lewis’s daughter,” I said in disbelief. “Prilla Lewis.”
She clapped slowly. “Clever.”
“What can you possibly gain from terrorizing us?” I asked, incredulous.
Prilla Lewis spat, a glob of phlegm hitting the leaves on its way down. I grimaced. She was as bad-mannered as her mother, evidently.
“What can I gain?” she asked. “It’s not just about me. I’m not so selfish as to abandon my family for my own pursuits.”
I stiffened. “Don’t act like you know me. Answer the question.”
Prilla narrowed her eyes. I was struck by how similar she looked to Mrs. Lewis—it was as if my crotchety landlady had traveled back in time, into a younger body to better torment me. “Have you ever wondered why my mother stopped being a milliner?”
“Because of her age and terrible disposition. I doubted she attracted that many customers to begin with.”
“My mother was the best milliner in Delibera,” Prilla Lewis hissed. “In her day she served King Humphrey himself.”
“Ah. The king who banished us all to live in a hole underground,” I said flatly. “Terrible man. I suppose like calls to like.”
“That was until a witch on her street opened another millinery shop and worked faster than she ever could,” Prilla said.
“My mother spent endless sleepless nights trying to compete with that creature. That witch sewed like a demon. Mother said her needle was but a blur. A multitude of hats and gloves, all completed in less than a day. She looked a lot like you, coincidentally.”
Grandma had opened a millinery shop back in her day.
Could it possibly be the same one Prilla spoke of?
Did Mrs. Lewis’s grudge go further back than I’d thought?
Reeling from this revelation, I put my hands on my hips, hoping I looked more composed than I felt.
“What about it? It’s hardly our fault humans can’t keep up. ”
Prilla’s eyes flared with rage. “It’s because of your kind that my mother lost her love for her life’s work.
It was a blessing to us all when King Humphrey banned you creatures from the kingdom.
She was happy again. We didn’t have to scrounge up coins for meals.
Then, everything fell apart when that fool King Maximus decided to end the Non-Magic Age. ”
“I don’t think it’s wise to call your king a fool,” I said.
Prilla scoffed. “The crown has failed us. We deserve a new crown, one made by the people,” she said haughtily. “A crown that serves justice and promotes equality. We vow to drive you witches out of Olderea again, and this time, we’ll clear you out underground.”
I narrowed my eyes, recalling that Mrs. Lewis had met with a strange man in the alleyway who claimed that she was no use to the crown.
They weren’t talking about the royals. It was the name of an organization.
“So,” I said. “There’s another anti-witch group.
You dare to call yourselves The Crown when you’re actively against it? ”
Prilla smiled, though there was no humor in it.
“We do not go against the laws of our king. Our operations are perfectly lawful. Perhaps we rent a crumbling building to an entrepreneurial witch girl that grows more and more inhospitable by the day. Perhaps we erase her achievements with misinformation in the press. Perhaps we make an emissary’s experience in Witch Village a living nightmare. ”
I curled my hands into fists, as her words sank in. All this time I had blamed my bad luck when in fact it had been Prilla Lewis and her odious organization that had caused so much trouble. “You had no right,” I seethed. “I worked hard to get where I am—”
“So did my mother,” Prilla shot back. “And yet she was outdone by a witch milliner who had no consideration for any of the humans around her.”
“You’ve interfered with a royal assignment,” I said. “Edmund de Clare was supposed to experience Witch Village as it is, not as you caused it to be. You pushed him. You broke his ankle and made him sick. You murdered Manuel Greenwood and caused the blackout.”
Prilla barked a laugh. “You give me too much credit, witch girl. I only placed a handful of peanuts in a stew. That old man and his wife were careless, leaving their window open. You witches are quite loose-lipped, so it was not difficult to find out about his allergy. The rest? Your precious emissary must’ve had terrible balance,” she said, a nasty smile on her lips.
“And the fever was a delightful surprise. Though I figured you witches were diseased in some way or other.”
I felt my magic roil under my skin. “What do you intend to do, then? Prevent Edmund from going aboveground?”
Prilla shrugged. “I’ll do no such thing. When your emissary turns in his report to the King's Council, he’ll do most of the work for me.”
“Did you write your own slanderous report and switch it with his?” I demanded.
Prilla laughed again, this time doubling over with so much mirth that the branches around her shook.
“Witches just love to blame everyone but themselves. No, Giselle. How can you possibly think that your emissary will submit a glowing report of Witch Village when his time here has been nothing but miserable? The darkness, a broken ankle, a fever, inhospitable living arrangements, rude hostesses...the list goes on. Did you even try to give him a good experience?”
I fumed, unable to come up with any words to refute her. “You’re coming with us to confess your crimes to the crown prince.”
“Crimes?” Prilla clasped her hands behind her head and scoffed. “Haven’t you been listening? I did nothing in contempt of the law.”
“You murdered a witch,” I said.
“I put peanuts in his stew,” Prilla said. “I didn’t force him to eat it.”
Hopelessness washed over me. There really was nothing I could do. There was no evidence I could give that proved she deliberately poisoned a witch—not without her direct testimony, which I doubted she’d be willing to give.
Prilla straightened and jumped down from the tree, brushing off the loose leaves on her patchwork skirt. “Well, I suppose I should be off now. It has been interesting to see these unfortunate events unfurl for you, but I do miss the fresh air.”
She began to walk past me, but I grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back with more force than I knew I possessed. Prilla gasped as I spun her around.