Chapter III.21 #2
“What? No tender feelings for your old home? Did the witches strip that all away from you?”
Miria spun around, but she already knew who she’d find before the spellcaster emerged from the shadows. She’d only heard that voice twice, but it made so many pieces fall into place.
“Rosmilda,” Miria said, staring down her father’s second wife.
She looked younger here than Miria recalled, possibly a trick of the spell.
Sunlight that did not exist in Miria’s memory illuminated her hair, cast her in a fake golden glow.
Perhaps she thought it made her appear more beautiful or powerful, but Miria did not conflate those two things like the bards did in their songs and stories.
Power was her nana’s wizened, spotted hands.
Beauty was Adaline’s unrestrained laughter.
“So you’re the witch who’s causing me trouble,” Rosmilda said. “I always thought the witch in the Shadow Wood was old. Imagine my surprise when I learned it was you.”
“You speak like you know me,” Miria said.
As she talked, she moved around the table, placing it between her and Rosmilda.
Let Rosmilda believe she was using the table like a shield.
Beneath the tabletop, Miria’s fingers danced over the spell’s threads of magic.
Since she understood the pieces that constructed it, she stood a chance of tearing it apart.
“Oh, I do know you, the parts that matter.” Rosmilda tilted her head to the side, studying Miria. “I can even see bits of your father and brother in your face. Did you think I couldn’t put it together? You were in my house.”
Miria was too surprised to adequately hide her scowl.
So she had been seen that day. She wasn’t certain how Rosmilda could have figured out who she was, but she wasn’t certain of many things.
Like how Rosmilda could do magic in the first place.
She was no witch, and she’d possessed no power that Miria had seen.
“And, now you’re attacking my home?” Miria asked. “That’s a rather strong retaliation. You could have simply asked for the saltcellar back.”
Rosmilda laughed. “You can keep the saltcellar. Once your brother has married Lady Adaline, such a paltry item will be meaningless. You can’t hide her forever.
As long as Adaline is near you, I will always be able to find her, because I will always be able to find you.
The blood bond between a parent and child, or a brother and sister, is strong enough that I don’t need your own blood to scry for you. ”
Blood. The word jostled a memory.
It was her third autumn in the cottage in the woods. Miria had been mending the winter clothes Yali had brought for her—wool tunics and leggings that promised to be warm and luxurious when the weather changed—and her thumb was bleeding.
“Not yet,” Yali had said when Miria asked (again) to learn a mending spell. After placing a fresh log in the fireplace, she held out a hand, and with a brush of her own thumb, she soothed Miria’s injury. “The strongest magic comes from sacrifice. What do you think that means?”
What do you think? was the question Yali often asked when she wanted Miria to understand something. As though learning wasn’t just supposed to be Yali putting information into Miria’s head or showing Miria how to do a new task, but something Miria was supposed to figure out on her own.
“Blood is a sacrifice?” Miria guessed. Nana had explained that the most powerful magic required blood, and the way Nana had healed her thumb was certainly meant as a clue.
“Blood is a form of sacrifice, yes. It is not the only form, merely a convenient one. Time and energy are sacrifices, too. What that means is that the more effort you put into your work, the stronger the magic you produce will be.”
“So that’s why people are wrong when they tell tales about witches taking people’s blood for magic,” Miria said. “That’s not how it works.”
“It’s not how it should work,” her nana said.
And then, seeing the way Miria’s brow pinched, she added, “A witch who knows what she’s doing can take magic from others’ blood if they have any magic at all in it, but spells cast that way will never be as powerful as those cast by a witch who sacrifices herself. ”
Miria chewed this over, wondering why a witch would ever bother using someone else’s blood when she had her own.
None of the spells Yali had taught her so far had required blood, and she’d assumed that meant the stories about the witch stealing blood were completely false, but apparently it was a half truth at best. Since coming to live with Yali, Miria was discovering that the truth was always far more complicated than what she’d been told.
She glanced down at the sewing basket and sighed. “But why does that mean I need to sew?”
Her nana removed her magical cloak from the peg next to the door, and Miria inhaled sharply.
“The power in my cloak’s magic comes from me stitching it by hand,” her nana said.
“To create one for yourself, you must be able to sew the leaves together and infuse each bite of the needle with your magic.” She returned the cloak to its peg and clasped Miria’s hand.
“And if you jab yourself with a needle and lend it the magic in a drop or two of blood, even better.”
Miria strove to keep her face neutral, but her mind buzzed. Though she still did not entirely understand how Rosmilda was doing this, the memory had given her an idea.
“Perhaps,” Miria said absently in response to the scrying problem Rosmilda raised.
There were ways to block scrying, though they took effort.
Surely, Rosmilda knew that. Or maybe she didn’t.
Since Miria couldn’t figure out where Rosmilda had learned magic, it was best not to make assumptions, and wiser to say little lest she give away something Rosmilda didn’t know.
Frankly, Rosmilda already knew more than Miria liked. She needed to keep Rosmilda talking, though. Long enough to distract her while Miria undid her spell. Long enough that maybe Miria could finish piecing together the rest of the puzzle Rosmilda posed.
“You make an awful lot of assumptions.” If Rosmilda knew anything about witches, she ought to know that helping women and children to safety was what they did.
“Like that you will keep Adaline close?” Rosmilda asked, taking the bait.
“Of course, you will. A witch would never harm an innocent woman, no matter what the stories say. Ironic when it’s so easy to blame you all for the harm others do.
But no, you will not harm Adaline, and you can’t let her go if you mean to stop the wedding.
That means it’s a matter of time before I help her uncle get her back. Save the poor lady. Be their heroine.”
Save her? Of course, the men had assumed Miria had bewitched Adaline.
She’d heard them say it yesterday. More interesting were some of Rosmilda’s other words.
The jibe, the attempt to taunt her, dredged up more memories that Miria hadn’t thought about in a while.
They clicked in her head, like another piece of the puzzle snapping into place—and this one was a puzzle Miria had been thinking about for years without seeing a connection between the pieces.
Heat rose in her blood. The slow, simmering anger that someone would dare attack her home began to boil into fury. This wasn’t just about her. Not anymore.
Miria did not have all the threads of Rosmilda’s spell untangled yet, but the horror and rage that was dawning on her gave a boost to her power. She’d untangled enough. She could rip.
This was her memory, her head. Rosmilda had made a mistake (one of many, Miria noted in the back of her mind).
Miria controlled what existed in this space, and she summoned an image of the supplies she needed.
Thread and a silvered knife manifested in her palms. Beneath the table, she wrapped the thread around her hands, pulling it taut.
Rosmilda seemed to realize what Miria’s hands had been up to beneath the table, but she was too late.
Focusing her power on the knife, Miria cut through the summoned thread—the threads of Rosmilda’s spells—and broke them in pieces.
The image of her old home snapped away with a violent shudder, and Miria stumbled a few steps in her cottage, reeling physically from the force of her own power and Rosmilda’s colliding.
She took a deep breath, then another, willing away her disorientation. Adaline, Adaline, Adaline. Miria silently repeated her name until she could focus once more, fully back in her body.
Something crashed outside and jolted Miria’s heart. She scrambled for the spell supplies she’d been gathering before Rosmilda had interrupted her and threw open the door, fearing the worst.
“Adaline!” But it was not Adaline on the ground, nor Tuli.
Her golem was a little worse for the battle that had raged while Miria was bespelled.
A chip was missing from his head, and his left arm was only partly attached—both injuries Miria would fix once this ordeal was over—but Tuli didn’t notice or care (Miria wasn’t sure which, or either).
The golem swung his tree branch with one arm, further flattening the abomination into the dirt.
Adaline stood off to the side, holding her sword at the ready. Luckily, she seemed in better condition than Tuli, though her braid had come loose and her skirt was half shredded. She wore a victorious smile and flushed cheeks, and she glanced in Miria’s direction as Miria charged forward.
“Where have you been? You missed me being your gallant knight.” Adaline jumped as Tuli whacked the abomination again, then turned back to Miria. “With help, I mean. Tuli and I make a great team.”
Feeling half as dazed as she had when Rosmilda magically attacked her, Miria dropped her hands to her side. “Cut off its head.”
“Happily.” Adaline held up a hand toward Tuli. “I’ve got this part, Sir Tulip.”