Chapter 24 Becoming Strangers #2
Peeking out of Mrs. Parson’s rolled-up sleeve was faded inkwork: a delicate rose in flower, running up her forearm.
As she busied herself with teacups, Aurienne stared at her damaged left hand.
Mordaunt had said the injury had been caused by a meat-grinding accident.
She had lost fingers. Her palm was a mess of old scar tissue.
An accident?
No. That was the aftermath of a tācn excision.
“You—you were a Hedgewitch,” said Aurienne, in a voice hushed by realisation.
Mrs. Parson’s kind eyes went from her teacups to Aurienne. Her acknowledgement was quiet: a slow blink.
“This explains so much. Your skills in the kitchen. Your garden. What happened, if I may ask? Why did you lose your tācn?”
“I loved a man,” said Mrs. Parson.
“They took away your tācn for that?”
“No. It was my choice. The Hedgewitch tācn is not like yours. It comes with gifts far beyond mastery of seith. Some of those gifts are double-edged.”
“What do you mean?”
“I cannot speak the Order’s secrets,” said Mrs. Parson.
“I understand,” said Aurienne. Amagris had been adamant on this front, too.
“But you saved Osric’s life. I will give you one piece of information. It might clear your attachment to that hagstone. Will you promise to keep it to yourself?”
“I promise,” said Aurienne.
“One of the gifts of the Hedgewitch tācn is longevity. Centuries of life sounds wonderful—and it is, until you’ve lived four or five human lifetimes and lost an equivalent amount of people.
You love mortals and you watch them die.
It would be wisest for those of our Order to only fall in love with other Hedgewitches.
But you can’t always choose who you love. ”
“No, you can’t,” said Aurienne. Bitter truth.
Outside, Mr. Parson was clipping a hedge. Mrs. Parson regarded him through the window with eyes made soft by pure affection. Mr. Parson spotted her and blew her a kiss with a green-stained hand, then went back to his clipping.
“I’ve lived enough lives and lost enough loves,” said Mrs. Parson. “So I had my tācn removed. I want to be with him, in the end. When we both go Below, one final time.”
Below was said with significance; it meant something else.
“Some Hedgewitches prefer to cut things off before they bloom too beautifully,” said Mrs. Parson. “I think that’s what happened with you. The witch who gave you that hagstone preferred to say goodbye to you alive, rather than at the side of your tomb.”
Aurienne reeled with sudden sense-making of something that had haunted her for years.
She staggered with understanding—why Amagris had never made long-term promises, why she had kept Aurienne at arm’s length, why she had ended things so coldly.
Aurienne was a mere mortal. Amagris had centuries of life before her.
“I wish—I wish she could have told me,” said Aurienne.
“She couldn’t have. It is forbidden,” said Mrs. Parson.
“Thank you for sharing with me,” said Aurienne.
Mrs. Parson handed her a teacup. Aurienne wrapped her hands around the cup and its heart-healing root. It tasted melancholy, like fading roses, rosemary gone to seed, the last cup of tea your mother made you, before you knew it was the last one she’d ever make you. “It tastes of—sadness.”
“Love is the beginning and end of grief.”
Aurienne drank.
There was the sound of a fight in the sitting room. Mordaunt and the stolen diffractor were having words.
“I suppose we ought to join him,” said Aurienne.
She and Mrs. Parson found Mordaunt in the sitting room. The diffractor wriggled temperamentally in his arms. His tācn flashed as he strove to catch its wires.
No tea, no Hedgewitch lore, could change that tācn.
“You still have healing to do,” said Mrs. Parson in a voice low and full of pity. She returned to the kitchens.
Aurienne sipped at her tea as Mordaunt undressed. He offered for her to stay—to celebrate, to eat, to sleep, to do anything she might want, after they finished with the diffractor. She said no. She must go back to Swanstone.
She wiped Mordaunt down with hlutoform for the last time, attached the diffractor for the last time, and, for the last time, illuminated the wall with his seith system.
Her seith markers punctuated the figure in bright intervals.
“Would you like me to remove my markers?” asked Aurienne. “They’ll fade away eventually, but you know they’ve got ulterior uses, so I understand if—”
“Leave them,” said Mordaunt.
The diffractor’s imaging confirmed what Aurienne had seen on the beach: there wasn’t a trace of the rot anywhere. Mordaunt’s seith system had made a full, miraculous recovery. It wasn’t medically possible. And yet, there it was—a robust, shining seith system, where once had been a rot-riddled mess.
“Well—you’re completely healed,” said Aurienne. She could barely choke out a congratulations: he was healed, and her heart felt happy and broken all at once.
As for Mordaunt, he ought to have been triumphant.
Saying I told you so. Crowing about how he had been right to bully her into this fantastical treatment protocol.
Celebrating his escape from death. She had counted on it.
It would have made everything easier. But he did none of those things.
He pulled his shirt on in silence. He sat next to her, his silver hair dishevelled, his expression sombre.