Chapter II.16
Chapter Sixteen
Two Years Before the Wedding, Continued
Miria had never had anyone to show off to before, and she quickly discovered that her delight in Adaline’s admiration for her magical skills was surpassed only by Adaline’s delight in seeing them demonstrated.
Adaline gasped, clapped, and screamed with unrestrained enthusiasm for spells Miria had come to think of as mundane, and her heart swelled with every exclamation she elicited from Adaline’s lips.
She knew she ought to keep her head about her and be discreet, but she’d never had an audience so willing to be pleased.
Encouragement and compliments from Yali were different somehow.
Miria wished for her nana’s approval, but Yali’s appreciation was couched in her mentorship and it grew Miria’s confidence in her skills.
She liked pleasing Yali because her skill was a reflection of her nana’s skill.
Likewise, thanks from the townsfolk and farmers for her assistance were different, too.
Miria required no such praise from them, and their fear often made them loath to give it.
Still, she liked helping them because helping people was a good thing to do.
She liked pleasing Adaline because … She liked Adaline. Making Adaline happy made Miria happy. She would lie in bed at nights thinking of new ways to accomplish it.
Not all those ways were magical. Sometimes it was as simple as making her favorite cake to share or picking Adaline a bouquet filled with the colorful flowers that only grew in the cottage garden.
But her other thoughts tended toward magic—spells that wouldn’t simply impress Adaline but delight her.
A tea Adaline could take with her to relieve her monthly pains, a charm to place beneath her pillow to ensure sweet dreams, a needle that would guide her stiches and help with the dreaded embroidery.
Miria would have cast any spell Adaline requested, but Adaline never asked anything of her that way.
All she wanted, she said, was to spend the rest of her days with Miria, and there was no spell to make that possible.
Today, Adaline had brought Miria another book of stories for her to share with her nana, and that meant Miria wanted to share something equally exciting—showing Adaline how she could fly.
She kept her flight short so as to not unduly tire herself, and she shifted back to her human form as her feet touched the ground. For once, Adaline made no sound as Miria demonstrated her spell; she sat motionless, her eyes wide and jaw hanging slightly open.
“An owl?” Adaline said at last when Miria took a bow. “That is the most amazing magic you’ve shown me yet. Can you change into anything else?”
Miria shook her head. “The spell allows for only one form. Once it’s cast the first time, that is all.”
“That’s …” Adaline jumped off the log she’d been sitting on. “I can’t actually say it’s disappointing because it remains anything but.” She sighed. “I wish you could teach me spells like I’ve been teaching you how to fight.”
“I wish I could, too,” Miria said, meaning it. “But it’s a rare talent. My nana says it’s about as common as having blue eyes.”
“Which neither of us have.” Adaline bit her lip. “Though yours are such a pretty green, like the moss after it rains. Mine are just a dull brown, like my hair.”
The compliment made Miria flush, although she couldn’t say whether it was at all accurate.
“Your eyes are a beautiful brown. They’re the color of honey.” And large and kind and … simply breathtaking. As was Adaline. Miria wanted to say all of that, but she couldn’t bring herself to form the words, so she switched the topic. “You need not covet magic when you have so many other skills.”
Adaline blew a strand of hair out of her face. “But not enough skills until my embroidery impresses my grandmother.”
“If that’s your concern, you shouldn’t worry. I don’t think magic would impress your grandmother either. Even those who benefit from what it can do fear it often as not. There’s a reason why I live in the woods rather than in town.”
“That’s unfair. It’s ridiculous. Rude.” Adaline kicked a twig and sent it flying into the underbrush.
“Why can’t we be allowed to live our lives how we are?
You should live wherever you like and be compensated for your skills and the work you do to help people, and I should be allowed to follow my own interests, whether that’s music or dueling or embroidery. ”
Miria understood the sentiment, but upsetting Adaline was the opposite of what she’d been aiming for with today’s demonstration. “You don’t need to get worked up on my account. I like living in the woods, and I have no need for much money.”
“But it’s not fair that you’re denied the choice,” Adaline said, not calming down in the least. “None of us are allowed choices. We’re told that the world is supposed to be a certain way, and we must all twist and mold and shrink ourselves to fit it.
And I realize I say that as someone who has luxuries that many people would kill for, but I am not immune to those pressures.
My cousin, the queen, is not immune. Her entire purpose in life is to produce royal babies, and perhaps she likes that purpose but perhaps not, and she will certainly enjoy every comfort while fulfilling her duty, but the point is that it doesn’t matter whether she likes it or not—she had no choice. ”
Miria said nothing, for she hadn’t ever considered that a queen’s life might be chosen for her in much the way Miria’s life had been chosen when her father had abandoned her.
Or more so really. Miria could have died in the woods if she’d been unlucky, but ultimately, she’d chosen to become a witch.
Perhaps she’d been given more freedom and power than a queen.
Adaline had no trouble filling the silence.
She pulled her sword from its sheath and swung it as though she were doing battle with an invisible enemy.
“You are the only person I can even express my frustration around. If I object too strongly at home, no matter what the reason, I’m scolded for my tone.
” Swing went the sword. “A lady doesn’t raise her voice.
” Thrust. “A lady doesn’t contradict her superiors.
” She returned to her starting stance. “A lady does not indulge in something as base as anger.” Swing again.
“Or wish for violence.” Thrust. “She just puts up with whatever shit life throws at her, apparently.” Adaline jabbed a killing blow into the forest floor.
“My nana told me that society doesn’t want women to indulge their anger because there’s power in it.”
“My power is supposed to be in my station,” Adaline said. “In my ability to control and manipulate those around me. That is what a lady does.”
“It is a form of power.”
Adaline retrieved her sword. “Yes, to be fair. But it’s also restrictive. Sometimes I just want to scream, too. Or stab something. It all comes back to how we’re denied choices.”
“Well, you have choices here,” Miria said. “Here, you get to be in control. What would you do if you had all the choices in the world?”
Adaline sheathed the sword, and she froze abruptly. “That’s the thing—how can I know? I’ve been exposed to so few options. But I would tell you what I would not do.” She stuck her hands on her hips.
Miria couldn’t help but smile at her change in attitude. “And what’s that—embroidery?”
Adaline snorted. “Yes, true. But also I would not be married off for the most suitable offer.”
Something dark and unpleasant twisted inside Miria’s gut. Some part of her had known that would be Adaline’s future, but she’d managed to avoid thinking of it. Avoidance, however, was one luxury Adaline was denied.
“Would you marry at all?” Miria asked, and then she mentally smacked herself for probing a path that only left her feeling poorly.
Why was she feeling this way? (She knew why.) But why had it never occurred to her to think so much about this topic?
(She knew that, too.) It was because there was nothing she could do to alter this fate.
To be a witch was to push, but a witch could only do so much.
Adaline would leave at the end of the summer, and Miria might never see her again.
To even hope for more than she had now was silly; it was setting herself up for pain. Her nana had warned as much.
“I might marry,” Adaline said, interrupting Miria’s unwanted thoughts.
Her mood shifted again, her face taking on a dreamy expression.
“If I could marry whomever I chose, which I cannot. So I guess, no, I wouldn’t marry.
But if I could choose anything, then I would choose to change what makes marriage impossible.
Then it wouldn’t matter that I wasn’t like the other women I know.
It wouldn’t matter that I don’t think about kissing men like they all do. ”
Miria realized she hadn’t breathed for a moment, and she slowly let out her air. “All? You know me, and I have never dreamed about kissing a man.”
Adaline’s gaze sharpened, and heat crept up Miria’s neck from the way Adaline watched her. “Never?”
“Honestly, I never thought about kissing anyone until …” Until just now. Just now, when it had occurred to her to think about kissing Adaline, and Miria’s pulse took off at a sprint, leaving her lightheaded.
“Until?” Adaline pressed with increased intensity, and suddenly, like magic, she was standing so close. Miria didn’t understand how it happened.
“Until today when you started me thinking about kissing,” Miria said, which was truthful, if not the entire truth.
She was half a breath from taking a step back, from fleeing as though her life depended on it.
But she couldn’t. Her feet were rooted to the ground, and her heart felt tied to Adaline’s.
If she ran, it would tear from her chest and she’d collapse.
Adaline must have sensed her warring needs. She reached out and touched Miria’s bare wrists, further locking Miria in place. Her terror abated slightly, but her blood only raced faster.
“Who are you thinking about kissing?” Adaline asked. “Me?” Miria couldn’t form words, but she didn’t need to. Adaline frequently had words for them both, and Miria had never been so grateful for it. “I’ve been thinking of kissing you since the day you rescued me when I was lost.”
Miria drew a deep breath. The woods were alive around her, but all she could see were the way Adaline’s eyelashes curled, the smudge of dirt on her left cheek, the pink of her lips.
Her nose was filled with the honeysuckle scent of Adaline’s skin and hair, and she heard nothing but the way the blood pulsed through her ears.
Outwardly, she couldn’t move because her insides were flying.
“You can, you know,” Miria said once her mouth worked again. “If it’s not beneath a lady to kiss a mere woods witch.”
She expected some quip from Adaline, but Adaline, for once, abandoned words. She released Miria’s wrists and cupped her cheeks instead, drawing their faces together until together was all Miria knew.
Miria closed her eyes, and the sensation of flying did no justice to the swooping and rushing feeling that coursed through every part of her, but it was the closest comparison she could make.
The first time she’d lifted her wings, felt the earth fall away beneath her, felt her body catch the air and the giddy joy of weightlessness—it was much like that.
Miria coasted high above the trees, only she was not weightless at all this time.
She’d never been more in her body, attuned to every sensation, every tingle, every bit of heat and magic spreading through her.
I would change what makes marriage impossible, Adaline had said, and Miria wished for that power. Not that she could ever marry Adaline, a woman like her—a witch and an outcast who was happiest covered in dirt. But to have the possibility available if they’d met under other circumstances …
The church said marriage was reserved for men and women; any other combination defied the Divine Order.
Miria had never thought much of it. As a witch, her very existence supposedly defied the Divine Order, so why should she care what the church thought about anything else?
But now she couldn’t help but recall the way Yali always fumed over the convenience of the Divine Order being whatever served the church and (occasionally, though less importantly) the crown.
“Recall,” Yali had once said a few years ago, “the church says the Divine Order means men should have power over women, and so if women could join forces with other women instead of men, men and the church would lose their control over them. Any time someone with power says ‘Divine Order’ ask who it benefits. It’s always about the powerful maintaining or increasing their power. ”
“Or money,” Miria had added, feeling like she understood this.
“Money is a form of power,” Yali had said.
The memory flashed through Miria’s mind in the half second in which Adaline withdrew her lips, leaving Miria a swirling tempest of emotions. Elated and furious, she barely knew what to do with herself.
Then Adaline smiled uncharacteristically nervously, and it was so charming that Miria was compelled to throw her arms around her and kiss her again. Adaline laughed when their lips parted this time, and it was Miria who felt shy.
Adaline tucked the hairs that had fallen from her braid behind her ears, but she did not step back. “Do not take this the wrong way, but I need to correct you on one thing.”
A bit of the swooping sensation returned to Miria’s gut, but in a less pleasant way than it had a moment ago. “Did I do that badly? You’re an excellent teacher, and I would be happy to have more lessons.”
Adaline pretended to look shocked. “What are you implying? Do you think I have so much experience kissing other women?”
“I wouldn’t say for sure, but you certainly can’t have less than me.”
“That’s fair, seeing as you are a bit of a hermit. But.” Adaline held up a finger. “I was not about to critique your kissing, although I am happy to keep practicing with you. What I was going to say was that I object to you calling yourself a mere woods witch. You deserve a better title.”
Relieved that she deserved no critique and with the promise of more kissing in the future, Miria relaxed again. “I’m afraid titles are reserved for people like you.”
“An informal title,” Adaline said, “given by me, so it’s the only sort that counts. I hereby name you Miria, daughter of Yali the Wise, second Witch of the Shadow Wood, Sorceress of Gawfrid.” She solemnly pressed her palms to Miria’s cheeks and kissed her forehead. “What do you think?”
“It’s catchy. Perhaps I will make myself a family crest.”
Adaline grinned. “As long as you don’t ask me to embroider one for you.”