Chapter 16
PRUDENCE, OLD BOOKS & brOKEN GLASS
Pru went through the last two days as if she was the one sleeping.
Nothing seemed real and yet everything was.
Between Victoria, Seren, and Ceridwen, her bookstore had stayed open.
A steady stream of covered dishes, casseroles, and swaddled loaves of warm bread would periodically appear on the kitchen table, whether she was there or not, whether she ate anything or not.
Because the next morning, fresh provisions would spring up as if by magic.
Well, and then there was the actual magic. She sat in the deep and comfortable leather chair by Rhiannon’s bedside and reveled it. Emanating like waves from the prone figure, caught in her own world, Pru drank it by the mouthful. Inhaled by the lungful. And grew addicted to it by the heartful.
What in her waking hours Rhiannon suppressed with a steel hand and ironclad will, her dreams set free. Pru wondered if Rhiannon knew and if the release was due to her exhaustion and her pain.
She tried not to think about the dead crow, the small bones lifeless and broken. And she tried to shy away from the look on Rhiannon’s face as she buried it. The devastation was so profound, Pru’s tears threatened every time she remembered.
And then there were all the books. Rhiannon’s home, like her workshop, was filled to the brim with old manuscripts, new editions, leather spines, and torn-apart pages that gentle hands were carefully gluing back together.
Pru marveled at the patience and the skill that it took to slowly and meticulously bring back to life ink and paper, teasing out words where none would show anymore, breathing meaning into tomes old and new again.
She leafed through several left open in Rhiannon’s study, attentive not to misalign edges. The ancient ones seemed to be history books. One in particular stood out. A Compendium on Dragons Island by Elizabeth Crowhart.
Printed and drawn pages interspersed with handwritten notes on the margins that Rhiannon’s careful hands were halfway through restoring.
Some wore ashes, others glue and mold. And yet Gwendolyn’s sufferings stood in sharp relief to all the debris that cluttered the battered pages.
Pru, heart in her throat, read the last page that Rhiannon worked on.
The hunters of and the bird-catcher found her, bringing the law and the damnation. Among dark brick they held her trial. “Hang the witch,” they screamed. Hang the witch they did.
When Mother was gone, I was alone. Waiting. My cell small, the basement moldy. Fear choked me and hunger ate at me. Above all, I knew the men would come for me, like they did for Mother. The men always came.
Prudence dropped the magnifying glass and clasped her hand over her mouth to stifle the sob. For the woman who died, for the daughter who watched. For all the Crowharts who had been followed by the curse for ages.
For Rhiannon, who was carrying hers in silence.
And above all, Pru felt the tug of recognition. The woman from her dreams, so like Rhiannon, yet not. Scared and alone. Helpless. Her head spun and she left the study, shutting the door tightly behind herself. She was grateful the dreams didn’t follow her that night.
She didn’t dare to share what she had found with Ceridwen, who stopped by with herbs and tinctures after closing the flower shop on the first night.
“Valerian root. For sleep and to allay anxieties. Even like this, she is a bowl of tension.” The voice was steady even if the hands were not. Ceridwen dripped a little of the yellow liquid in the small bowl. A linen washcloth was then applied to Rhiannon’s forehead.
Pru eyed the large bag where smells played hopscotch with each other. She recognized some, scrunched her nose at others.
A familiar one was placed next to Rhiannon’s wrists and to the beating pulse points on her throat.
“Lavender. For calmness.”
“These are… ah…” Pru worried her lip, wondering how to word her observation without offending.
“Simple? Common? They are, Pru. Our mothers, our sisters have used them for centuries. The wisdom of the Earth is often simple. And common sense. And confused for something it isn’t. These remedies came into wide use from our people. And for these common-sense remedies, we were put to the match.”
This time, when she pulled out the third tincture, Ceridwen’s hands found their steadiness.
“Lemon balm. A few drops in the candle by the bedside.” Ceridwen tsked when her search for one did not reveal any.
“I can’t believe she stopped lighting them.
” With a shake of her head, a simple white wax candle from her satchel was placed by Rhiannon’s head.
A sharp, sulfurous odor filled the air as the match ignited before being replaced by the soothing citrusy aroma, subtle to not feel cloying yet distinctly there.
Pru lifted her knees to her chest and watched Ceridwen putter around the bedroom, every touch both meticulous and superfluous. Finally, when the book stack was moved for the third time from shelf to shelf, Pru gathered her courage.
“Do you think it was Lisa? Is it my fault—”
“Don’t even go there, Prudence.” The halting word was sharp, cutting Pru’s thread of thought like scissors. “Moreover, the note appeared before Rhiannon introduced herself to Lisa anyway.”
She lifted her eyes to Ceridwen, but the oldest Crowhart was lost in her thoughts, watching Rhiannon slumber.
“I wanted to think it was Lisa.”
“Why, Ceri?”
“Because anything else is unthinkable.”
When Ceridwen added nothing, Pru simply waited. A beat, two. First came the sigh, then another.
“Tell me, Ceri. Please.”
“It’s not my place, Prudence. She will wake and then the two of you should probably talk.”
Pru turned away, unable to meet the knowing green gaze.
“Well, I can’t say that catching my sister in flagrante was on my year’s bingo card…”
Pru closed her eyes and shook her head, only to be met with a low chuckle.
“You are so easy, it’s not even sporting to tease you. And despite the world beating it out of her, you are both naive in exactly the same ways.”
“Oh?” Pru held her breath.
“That.” Ceridwen pointed at Pru’s face. “That right there, the eagerness, the curiosity, the—dare I say—naiveté. I miss that in her.”
Pru bristled, but Ceridwen waved her reaction away.
“No, she is neither eager nor naive. Not anymore. But she had been once. And now she is also older, if not wiser. She’s cautious.
” Ceridwen sat down on the bed and took Rhiannon’s limp hand in hers.
“And she is scared. The fear is more palpable than any emotion from her. Scared and in denial about the horrors in her head.”
Pru set her chin on her knees, the slacks material slightly scratchy, the friction anchoring her in the present and keeping her away from the memories of the terror in Rhiannon’s eyes.
“I wish she’d come to me with what ails her, but she won’t, Prudence.
And so here we all are.” Ceridwen lips twitched.
“But to spare you the embarrassment, I didn’t see anything.
It was sure funny, though, to watch you scramble to hide and her…
” The pause was so long, Pru unfolded from her chair and laid a hand on Ceridwen’s forearm.
“And Rhiannon?”
“Rhiannon did everything to cover you. And I’ve never seen her care.
Not this much. Not about any other woman.
And Goddess knows she had them all in school.
So many, Mother despaired. Victoria found this amusing.
And I… I was impressed. I was the oldest, and my sister was the most popular girl in school once she was old enough. Certainly outshined me.”
Ceridwen’s smile was small, but the light of it brightened the room better than the candle. Outside, a night owl hooted low. The dusk had settled, its fingertips poking in the cracks in the heavy drapes.
The intimacy of the conversation blanketed both of them. Pru did not lift her fingers and Ceridwen didn’t seem to notice them, her thoughts unspooling.
“She thought I would be jealous. And I believe she went out with as many purely to spite me. She never had to prove anything to me. She was always…more. Stronger. Certainly more stubborn. And more powerful. Prudence, if you could see her winds, her storms.”
“Tell me about them?”
“Her storms were unforgettable. Sometimes when it was safe, Mother would allow her to let loose, and it was always such a sight to behold. I always felt…unworthy, I guess is the right word, and I am not prone to that feeling very often, Pru.” Ceridwen shivered even though the air around them was warm, slowly filling with the herbal aromas.
“That’s why whatever she is doing now, renouncing the gift, is so asinine, so utterly foolish and self-destructive.
Because no matter what happened today, more than anything she has seen, this she did to herself. ”
Ceridwen let Rhiannon’s fingers fall out of hers to the steel-colored satin sheets.
“Power needs to exist, and it cannot do so in a vacuum of one’s soul. It will destroy it. Seeing her suffer the shielding spell and do this to herself, enduring this? I can’t imagine the pain. And maybe away from here she had it much easier.”
“Away from you? From Victoria and Seren?”
“From us and from the power the island holds, the power grown on blood of my ancestors and all the other women who sought refuge here, in town or at the school, on the cliffs. I can’t imagine what it feels to try and keep the craft from seeking its own when it’s literally surrounded by all of this. ”
“So why is she doing this, Ceri?”
Ceridwen’s shoulders lifted as if in a shrug but fell helplessly in a poor imitation of one.
“Has she ever told you about her wife?”
Pru felt her hands go numb.
“She has a wife?” Her own voice was foreign to her. The owl outside flapped its powerful wings and was gone, the evening sinking in silence.