Chapter 12 #3
It was just the kind of place I might have envisioned for myself, back at Josef’s when I and Dacia would lay awake.
The grove was open, free from the oppressive growth of spruce and firs.
A thin trail of smoke rose from the hut’s chimney and clung to the eaves of a roof heavy with moss.
Around it, a lumpy garden of some kind slept under a blanket of white.
I loved it. Hope reared in my chest that one day, when I did not fear the forest and had finished my training with Lord Death, a place like this might be waiting for me. The old woman opened the door and shuffled herself inside, beckoning hurriedly for me to follow.
“Come quickly and shut the door,” the old woman said.
She did not look like Valerie to me anymore, but I could not shake the feeling that she was someone I had once known or had once known me—me as I was before Valerie had been taken. Maybe it was because of that that I shut the door and leaned against it.
Inside, the hut was small and rather sparser than I imagined—bare except for a bed and a few supplies on the shelves.
But it was neat and tidy, and there were two chairs waiting by the fire and a small worktable pushed to the side, as if it had been prepared and waited patiently.
There was a feeling that it was insulated from the rest of the world, unable to be found.
But in the same moment I felt that comfort of safety, I found myself nearly overcome with exhaustion; my eyes heavy and arms limp—my body recognizing a place to rest even when my mind could not.
Coals smoldered in the hearth, but with one glance from the old woman, they leapt into flames and flickered cheerily, lighting the inside of the hut with warmth and light. “Let me see your injury,” she commanded with a snap of her fingers.
It was hard to argue against my weariness—not that I had ever won with Valerie either. I undid my cloak and pulled down my tunic and shift, baring the purple bruise. It looked better than it had. The spring had done some good. “It feels better,” I said.
“Hmm,” the old woman said, leaning in under my armpit to inspect it closely. “It doesn’t look poisoned, but you never know in his house.”
In his house? I frowned and a strange kind of jealously awoke in my chest, pulling me out of my stupor. “Have you been trained by him?”
The old woman looked so confused that it made her eyebrows nearly reach her hairline and each other, all at once.
She had once been a great beauty—but her wrinkles were deep and her hair gray, and there was a rough energy that interrupted the elegant strokes of her face.
The effect in her old age was almost repulsive—the kind of face you scared children with.
She snorted and turned away. “I should have been here sooner.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
But the old woman didn’t respond. She put her kettle on the small table across from the hearth and looked into its empty depths with a sigh.
I kept expecting her to explain, but she stood that way for some time, staring into its bottom, seeming as if she wrestled with herself or her thoughts, I did not know which.
As the minutes passed, I grew more faint, and the warmth of the fire brought numbness.
Nothing seemed to hurt anymore. I could not feel at all.
Finally, she lifted her head. “Take off your cloak and I’ll teach you how to make a poultice for that injury,” she said in a tone that filled the little hut with sadness, though I did not understand why.
I undid the cloak with clumsy fingers and managed to sling it on the hook. “I’ve made poultices before,” I explained. “With my … mother.” I knew the words fell from my lips, but it seemed as if I were listening to someone else’s story.
“Yes, well, at least we won’t be starting from scratch,” the old woman said.
What was this old woman going to do that I could not do myself? I heard his words, in my own voice, criticizing me for getting too distracted, too turned around. I should be back at the chateau, working through the tasked rooms I had been assigned.
“Before you start, you want to set yourself to the task,” the old woman said, pulling me from my thoughts and a knife from one of her pockets.
She picked up a willow shoot and closed her eyes, knife still.
“Before we begin, you must try to gather yourself back in. You’re leaking magic everywhere right now. That’s what drew them.”
“Drew … who? Is my magic leaking out of this wound?”
“No, it’s leaking because you do not know your own shape.
” She put the knife to the shoots and began whittling off the first thin layer of bark.
“I forgot how … I forgot how it was, I guess. I don’t remember it quite like this.
” The wrinkles in her forehead deepened.
“This is going to be more work than I thought. Ahh, what vanity, vanity. All is vanity.”
She expertly peeled back the bark and carved the pale green flesh of the willow. “For willow bark, it is better to dry and crush so you can concentrate the healing.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I know that. I don’t have time to dry it. I barely had time to gather it.”
“The doors,” she said. “He set you to the first of his tasks?”
How did this old woman know so much of Death’s doings?
But then I remembered the way she’d stirred the fire with only a look.
Of course, they must know something of each other—they both seemed to exist in a world that sat half in shadow and half in the blinding sun of mortality.
A world I wanted to belong in. “Yes, but I woke up this morning barely able to get out of bed.”
“That’s what happens when you don’t know how to hold your own shape. Your borders.”
I gave a wry laugh, thinking of how difficult it had been to let Lord Death reach my magic. “You’re mistaken, I have too many borders. I am sick from trying so hard to overcome them.”
“Oh saints,” she laughed. “You see the ground and you call it the sky. But that will only leave you digging a deeper grave. Start mashing these cuttings. Try not to spill power over it all, but think only of the healing, the purpose. Don’t think with all your might either, it’s just a poultice.
No need to expend enough power to resurrect a corpse. ”
I took the pestle, trying to make sense of the old woman’s instructions. “I have trouble finding my magic.”
“Is that what he said?” She harrumphed and went back to her whittling. “Well, let’s see.”
I began to crush the green willow. A sharp, bitter smell rose from the pale flesh.
Trying to find the rush of magic somewhere inside myself, I felt like a dog circling to catch hold of its own tail.
And yet, in the convent I’d had to kneel and pray until my knees were bloody to keep myself contained.
Rochelle had never understood. No one had.
Except Death, who seemed to understand me even more than I did.
Distracted, I crushed the pestle into the mortar with so much sudden force the stone bowl cracked. At the terrible sound, I jumped.
“I’m …” I stared in horror at the cracked bowl, hearing Death in my head, that a talent for destruction was not the same thing as talent. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “That’s the only thing I seem to be capable of.”
“Power is not the same thing as strength,” the old woman said gently as she collected the pieces of the broken bowl and held them in her hands. “You will only ever be crushed if you see power as crushing.”
Her touch seemed reverent in some way. Like an offering.
With a soft murmuring of words, a fine slice of silver suddenly appeared through the cracks and the smell of something both familiar and foreign filled the air—like the scent of lightning or stars, though I couldn’t say I’d ever smelled either.
“Here, daughter.” She handed me the bowl for me to resume.
Numbness washed over me again—from the magic, from the intimacy of being called someone’s daughter, from the deep well of aching loneliness inside me—all of it. I stared at the silver seams. “How did you do that?” It was all I could manage to say, and even that seemed to take effort.
The old woman laughed. “Healing is the strongest kind of power. I’ve always struggled with it, but I’ve had a lot of time to practice. Better get busy, daylight is fading.”
I took up the pestle and set myself back to the task of grinding the willow bark. This time I tried to keep my mind only on my work, not on the desperate search for my power or the many memories that desperation wrought.
The more I worked, the more I relaxed. Underneath my fingertips the feeling of my work came alive—the grain of the stone pestle, the curve of the bowl, the thread of silver flashing through the brokenness.
The smell was green and sharp, and it built higher and higher—of a toothed spring, a wavering willow in a summer night, and river gods that rose out of their foaming to make love under the curtains of green.
The air was so heavy with the smell, I could almost taste it on my tongue, but there was bitterness too.
The kind that I both recoiled from and longed for all at once.
I thought of my wound, the way it spread purple and black across my ribs, and it seemed like I could already see the smell and smear of the poultice across my ribs, the way it soothed the swollen flesh and subdued the welts, knitting the flesh back together.
I finished the work with the pestle, but didn’t know how to stop, how to break away from what other I was doing, and I was suddenly aware of finding myself inside something bigger than me—like suddenly realizing I was high on a cliff’s edge.
“There, there. Stay calm,” the old woman said as if I were a spooked farm animal. “Here is the fat. Finish the work and then tie it off. Let it live, but apart from you.” She scooped a pile of animal fat into the bowl.
I kept mixing, kept both holding and not holding all the things in my mind. I thought of the reverence in her hands and tried to somehow hold my mind the same way. I didn’t know how to break away from it except to simply stop, but I was afraid to do that and have it all crash down and shatter.
“Carefully,” the old woman said. “Ease away.”
I tried. But I tore myself away, and it felt rather abrupt and savage, a swinging and cutting off of my own arm. But then it was done. The poultice was made. Made and pretty well, I thought, staring down at its contents. But it had not been an easy end. “I didn’t do it right.”
“You’ll need to take extra care of yourself. Ending it so abruptly will drain you. Magic always costs, but there are ways to make it easier.”
“I don’t feel drained.”
“You will tomorrow morning.” She scooped the contents from the bowl, slathering them expertly into a small tin. “Take this. And keep trying to hold your own shape. Otherwise …” She trailed off and turned to the fire, adding logs and muttering to herself about food as she brought out her kettle.
I kept waiting and waiting for the old woman to finish her thought, but it seemed she had forgotten I even stood there. “Otherwise?” I prompted.
“Otherwise,” the old woman said to the fire, flames reflecting in her dark eyes, “you will have no shape to hold.”