Chapter I.5 #2
Miria scooped him up and set him on the garden wall so they were closer to eye level. “You will obey me,” she told him, though she knew he would do that anyway, as she was his creator. “You will also obey my nana.”
The golem bowed his head. Yali’s golem could communicate verbally with her, but Yali had warned Miria that she might not have the same experience. Each bond between a witch and her golem was personal, but Miria hoped that day would come later.
More specific instructions could come later, as well. As would, perhaps, a hat. Nana would remind her that he wasn’t a doll, but Miria would argue that sewing tiny clothes would help her practice her stitching.
“I will call you Tulip,” she decided.
“What?” Yali asked.
As with all the other practicalities for creating a golem, Miria had given this one much thought. “There are two. They need names so we know who we’re talking about. Mine will be Tulip, and yours will be Azalea.” They were two of her favorite flowers.
Her nana shook her head. “Golems don’t have names, child. They’re not people.”
Yali had made the same argument before, when Miria had tried wrapping Yali’s golem—Aza, as he was becoming in her head already—in a blanket before he went to fetch more firewood during a snowstorm.
Logically, she knew the golem didn’t feel the cold, but it had only seemed a kind thing to do.
She would make him a hat, too, if she could.
His head would require a lot more scrap yarn than Tulip’s.
“Dogs aren’t people either,” Miria pointed out, “but we name dogs.”
“Yes, but dogs are family. Our golems work for us.”
“Dogs work for people, too, and so do servants. And they both have names.”
Nana rolled her eyes, but she smiled. “Fine. They are so named.” She started to say something else, but the breeze shifted, and her face turned toward the east.
Miria felt it, as well. A sensation on the air that tickled her mind, unlike anything she’d felt before. Birds fluttered about in the trees, their songs changing to unfamiliar tunes.
“Someone nearby is in trouble,” Nana said. She lifted her hands and cast the spell for the trees to part. The cottage’s path lengthened, stretching out into the forest and dredging up memories that Miria preferred to keep buried.
She had no time to dwell on them, though, as the golems needed to be sent behind the cottage so as not to scare a potential visitor. Azalea already knew this, but Tulip did not, so it became the next instruction.
Miria had just finished seeing them off when a girl appeared far down the path.
She was dressed simply, but her skirts, shoes, and shawl were new-looking except for mud around the skirt hem, not an unexpected finding during a spring walk through the woods.
Her blonde hair was pulled to the side in a braid, and her face had the round softness of someone who hadn’t had to suffer through an empty larder in the winter.
For all that, though, fear was written on her face.
When her gaze landed on Miria, some of the fear lifted, as though Miria’s presence made her situation less frightening.
Nana had gotten her cane again, and she made a show of leaning on it. By now, Miria had learned that the cane was mostly an affectation. Nana rarely needed it when they were alone.
“Welcome, child,” Nana said, and it was odd to hear her refer to anyone else that way.
But it was also odd to think of the visitor as a child.
As she’d gotten closer, Miria’s thoughts on her age had changed.
She would have guessed her to be an adult.
Not an old one, but old enough. Perhaps to her nana, though, anyone without wrinkles was a child.
The visitor glanced around, and her brow furrowed. “Are you the witch?”
“I am.” Yali nodded toward Miria. “She’s my apprentice. Come inside. Let’s have some tea and talk.”
Miria started the water boiling while Yali cleared off a spot around the table.
Seemingly dazed, the woman simply sat where indicated, and she stared at her hands until the tea was ready.
Up close, Miria could see signs of struggle that she’d missed previously—bruises on the woman’s arms, dirt beneath her nails, a cut on her cheek near her ear.
Questions bubbled on Miria’s tongue like the water in the teapot, but she held them in, letting the silence stretch out.
“What’s your name?” Yali asked at last, sliding a cup over.
“Betra.”
Yali, Miria noted, did not offer her name in return. “And what is it about the child you’re carrying that I can help with?”
Miria’s eyes opened wide along with Betra’s. How had Yali known that?
After another breath, Betra burst into tears. Silently, Yali handed her a handkerchief from the pile of clean cloths while Miria stood awkwardly by, unsure of what to do.
Finally, Betra wiped her face. Her hand trembled as she folded the handkerchief into a neat square.
She didn’t speak again until she’d finished and her breathing had slowed.
“The merchant guild-master’s …” She lowered her head, as if even those few syllables had been a challenge. “I was his wife’s personal maid.”
“And you are no longer because of the child?” Nana asked gently.
“I am no longer because her son …” Betra squeezed her eyes shut.
“I see.”
Miria frowned, because she did not know what her nana saw, but this didn’t seem like the moment to ask questions.
“You spoke of this to your employer?” Nana asked.
Betra shook her head. “No, I spoke to no one at first, but the cook guessed. She told me her former assistant, who had been fired last year, was let go for the same reason. So I found her, and I spoke to her, and I learned there were others, too. And then I got so angry, I did something foolish—I went to the magistrate. I thought, if there were many of us, they must believe me and would help.”
Yali said no words, but her grunt said much.
“The magistrate refused to believe me. He told me Wilmur—that is the guild-master’s son—is a good man, and I was wicked for accusing him of such an awful thing.
So I went to the chapel, but the priest told me the same.
He said Wilmur would never violate the Divine Order in such a way, and I was only feeling guilt for my own transgressions.
” Betra’s hands curled into themselves. “The magistrate and the priest—they spoke to my employer. And now I’m fired, too, and no one will hire me because they believe I would lie about a good man. ”
Her voice quivered, but Miria saw fire in Betra’s eyes.
She wasn’t quite following this tale, but she thought she knew what Betra was feeling, and she wanted to scream on her behalf.
It seemed unfair to Miria that children were allowed to scream their rage, but adults were expected to shed it more quietly. At least, adult women were.
“He is not a good man,” Betra said, looking at Yali a little wildly, as though afraid she, too, would disbelieve her.
“He has done this three times, perhaps more, and he will again now that he has confirmation he can get away with it. But meanwhile I cannot find work, and this child …” She rested a hand on her stomach.
“Miria,” Nana said, and Miria startled out of her thoughts. “Fetch me a chrysanthemum blossom from the garden. One will have bloomed this morning, aware that we may need it.”
Miria nodded. She was reluctant to leave the conversation, but Nana wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t to help Betra, and Miria wanted to help.
She raced to the garden where she found a single chrysanthemum was blooming, just as Yali had said it would.
Its petals were such a dark purplish red they almost appeared black, and Miria would have sworn she hadn’t seen it last year.
Still, Miria thanked the plant for its offering, then she hurried back to the cottage.
“I don’t blame the others for their silence, given what happened to me,” Betra was saying. “But would it have helped if they’d spoken?”
“Hard to say.” Nana took the blossom from Miria.
While she’d been gone, her nana had brought two jars to the table.
One contained what Miria knew to be some kind of healing potion—Yali had taken it to town for women before.
The other jar was one Miria had never seen, black with an unbroken wax stopper.
Yali arranged the two jars and laid the chrysanthemum down behind the black one.
“You have three decisions to make,” she told Betra.
“Do want to keep the child? Do you want to stay in town? And do you want to make sure Wilmur never again does what he did to you, no matter the price? You don’t need to answer immediately, although I suspect you already know your mind, or you would not have found your way here. ”
Miria suspected that Yali also knew the answers, and that was why she’d been sent to fetch the chrysanthemum, although she didn’t know what it was for.
“No and no,” Betra said. “And yes. No matter the price, I will not let him ruin another life if there is something I can do about it.”
Nodding, Yali opened the first jar and poured a drop of bright red liquid into Betra’s teacup.
“For the first answer. Drink this, then you will lie down on the bed for the afternoon until it works. For the second, while you are resting, I will make preparations. And for the third.” She broke the wax seal on the black bottle with a knife and dropped three petals from the chrysanthemum blossom into it.
Purple smoke rose from the jar before forming into a beautiful sphere that shimmered in the air.
It settled on Yali’s hand, and she placed it on the table.
“Before we leave tonight, you will cast this into the wind with Wilmur’s name. ”
Betra drank her tea, and Nana showed her to the bed while Miria cleaned up the tea accessories. While Betra slept, Miria inspected the sphere. It was much larger than the wish spell and looked infinitely more fragile, like the finest glass she’d ever seen.
“Do not touch,” Nana said, and Miria jumped back.
“What is it?”
“A very dangerous spell in the wrong hands. Not your hands,” she added when Miria glanced at her palms, “but you’re too young to burden with this kind of magic. It is nothing that should be used easily or without strong reasons. That’s why I do not keep it fully prepared.”
“What will it do to Wilmur?”
Yali pressed her lips together, considering. “Justice. Of whatever type Betra chooses, as is her right.”
Miria filed this away without comment. “Where are you taking Betra?”
“To another town, far from here where no one will know her past.” She unlocked the small chest near the hearth and added several coins to a purse.
Miria counted them and guessed the journey must be far if Nana was taking so much money. Then again, despite how simply they lived, Nana had no shortage of coins. “Will you be gone long?”
She heard the way her voice wavered, and so did Yali, for her nana playfully flicked her braid. “No, child. Do not worry. I won’t be gone more than an hour. Another witch in that new town will help Betra settle when she arrives.”
Miria had heard Yali talk about other witches before.
Yali said there were witches near all towns of sufficient size and in all countries, if you knew where to look.
Miria had never met any of them, yet she knew her nana corresponded with some.
Letters would arrive, sometimes by birds and other times seemingly out of the air.
“Can I come?” What was happening here today, though she might not understand it fully, struck Miria as exceedingly important. Nana had said a witch’s job was to help, and so she needed to learn how to do this, whatever it was.
Nana kissed the top of her head, which was becoming difficult. In another year or two, if she kept growing, Miria would be the taller of the two of them. “Not this time. When you are older and ready. You have much to learn first.”