Elmwood #3
When Elmwood awoke the next morning, he lay on the straw-bolstered bed and listened to Rollo’s snores until the sun poured through the window.
He had not had enough of the Wylderuckus cider to be ill, and even his much-abused hip seemed to be screaming at him less than usual, which was odd, given his activities the night before.
Taking stock of his spirits, to his immense surprise, he found that he was eager for the day to come.
Rollo loved the little farmyard around the cottage, with its chickens and single red pig.
He kept discovering new and foul things to roll around in, then running over and wriggling onto Elmwood’s lap and getting said things all over him.
It should have been annoying, but instead Elmwood found it oddly endearing.
Lady Croft came by in the early afternoon, saying she was there to feed Rud’s animals, but he suspected she had really come to keep an eye on him.
This suspicion was confirmed when she lingered, sitting on the steps with him and pulling out a book that he realized was for sketching.
She might not have any interest in being the object of his desires, or even like him very much—in truth, he had the impression she (rightfully) thought him rather pointless, despite their pleasant chat the night before—but he was grateful for her company nonetheless.
When Rollo showed off his new trick of befouling himself and then rubbing it all over Elmwood’s lap, she laughed uproariously. Elmwood became breathless watching her, as if he were the one laughing.
She was sitting on the lower step and leaning back with her elbows on the threshold.
Her hair was up, but little wisps of it fluttered around her face where they’d come loose.
She had the sketchbook and a charcoal pencil in her lap, open to an abandoned sketch of a tree.
It, like all of her artistic work, was evocative.
Her paintings belonged in the National Gallery in Neck, not hidden away in the Gaze.
She was so good, he wondered if it might be more than simple talent, and his curiosity was still itching him after their brief discussion of old tales the night before.
“I think it’s my turn to ask a question,” he said.
“Are we still taking turns?” she replied, a little dreamily.
He paused, uncertain if he was being foolish, then plowed ahead anyway.
“What’s your Charm? Do you use it when you draw and paint? Vicious rumor has it that Raph Comwyth, the king’s favorite sculptor, has a Charm that softens marble and molds it to his will.”
“What makes you think I have a Charm?”
“Come now. The Charm thrill doesn’t lie.”
She worried her bottom lip with her teeth. A Charm was always a carefully guarded secret. It might not cost you your life in Eldmere like it would in Relance, but people who had a Charm did not discuss it.
“I know about the thrill,” she said at last, “and how they used it to root out most of the Charmers and set them against each other.” She paused, considering. “I always thought it was a special kind of betrayal, to save your own neck by informing on other people like you.”
“It’s hard to know what horrors you’d be willing to commit to save your own neck, when it comes down to it,” he said, unable to stop himself. It sounded so bitter, even to him. He supposed the bitterness was there to stay, and he’d best add it to his lengthy list of personal shortcomings.
There was another pause. He could see her considering.
“In any case,” she continued, “I’ve never experienced the thrill before. Or, rather, I hadn’t.”
“You’d never touched someone else with a Charm?”
“Not until you,” she admitted. “It isn’t as though there are many of us left.”
“Surely you know by now that you can safely confide in me. Do you think I’m going to rouse the rabble in your little village and set them on you with pitchforks and torches? Come now, tell me what you can do, Lady Croft.”
“It’s nothing to do with drawing or painting. I think of it as freshening. If something has started to rot or decay, I can Charm it fresh again.”
He whistled. “That’s useful. It must tempt you often.”
“I can’t say that I am tempted by it. If I need it, I use it. I don’t subscribe to the common sentiment that Charms are inherently wrong.”
“Does everyone at Croftholde share your radical views on the morality of Charms?”
She bristled ever so subtly, and he saw there was some sort of wound there, beneath the surface. Of course there was. You didn’t walk through life with a Charm without some sort of hurt as a result.
“Of course not, but in my experience, most people aren’t paying enough attention to notice that the harvest lasts just a bit longer in Croftholde’s root cellar than it does anywhere else, and on the chance that they do, they’re happy enough to look the other way if it means the onions stay fresh.”
Goodness, things were astonishingly easygoing here in the Gaze. No one had ever wanted to look the other way from the results of his Charm.
“And what’s your catch?” he asked.
“Catch?” Her brow wrinkled adorably as she frowned at him. “What do you mean?”
“There’s always a catch. Something that’s a bit off about the results in some way.”
“Hmm.” There was no good reason why her quiet, thinking noise should make him want to run his thumbs along the sides of her throat to feel it humming there, but such was life. “You used that word yesterday, didn’t you? Your catch is the fixation, when they come back?”
All his thoughts of touching her vanished, as though someone had dumped a bucket of cold porridge over his head.
“Can you think what yours might be?” he pressed, desperate to keep the conversation on her Charm and not his own.
“I suppose that whenever I Charm something, it becomes more…itself. More intense. Vegetables taste stronger, for instance.”
“Huh. Do you only use your Charm on vegetables, then?”
“Food is what I use it for the most, but it also works on things like wood that are starting to rot. I can keep the memory of life vibrant, but I can’t bring things back to life.” She looked down at her hands. The silence became uncomfortable.
“You used it on him, didn’t you?” Elmwood said, as gently as he could manage.
“Yes.”
“I did wonder how he was so…well, fresh.”
“I don’t know how long my Charm on him will last. I’ve never tried a Charming that significant before.”
He had tried a Charming that significant. He shivered as his mind tiptoed up to the edge of it, then shoved himself forcibly back. He wished he hadn’t asked her about her Charm. Why was he such a fool?
“I hope you will not come to regret it. But I always do,” he said, embarrassed by how shaken he sounded.
Lady Croft seemed thoughtful. “I must maintain that a Charm is like any other personal attribute,” she said.
“Someone who is clever with words can use that ability to comfort or to hurt. Someone who is large can use their size to protect or to bully. We are taught to revile Charms, but truly, they have no inherent morality. A good person can use one to do good in the world.”
“I suppose I’m not a good person,” he said, and it came out very sharp.
He wished she would stop. The more she talked about Charms, the more he found himself slinking back into the shadow that her brightness had been chasing away.
The worst of it was that he could see the hope behind her words.
She still thought he might help her. She had not given him a place to stay and taken him to the Wylderuckus and spent time with him because she liked him.
She still only wanted his Charm. He saw that now, as plain as day.
“Do you know, Lord Elmwood, I don’t think that’s true.”
“What?” he snapped, only half paying attention.
Then she reached out and took his hand in hers, stilling its slight shaking.
The thrill tingled, then settled. Once it passed, there was just the sensation of her warm, lightly calloused palm pressing against his own.
Inanely, he wanted to kiss it, to press each finger to his lips until their Charms were so well acquainted that their touching caused only the normal, human sorts of thrills.
The impulse made him queasy. This woman was trouble.
She addled his mind with her beauty and gestures of kindness, but it was an illusion, he told himself—a blatant calculation on her part.
“I think you are a good person,” she said, squeezing his hand.
“Look, your dog loves you. Dogs are excellent judges of character.” Rollo had fallen asleep pressed against Elmwood’s calf and was snoring lightly.
Elmwood closed his eyes. He knew it would seem as though he were taking her words to heart, but he wasn’t.
The plain truth was that he was a terrible, irredeemable, selfish person, and no amount of praise from this woman would change that.
He withdrew his hand from hers, too roughly.
“Dogs are unreliable judges of character. This one loved my father, so he clearly has a fondness for the worst sort of people. And despite the false impression I have somehow given you, I most certainly number among their ranks as well. Understand that I won’t bring back your husband, no matter how much you try to twist the Charm out of me like a washerwoman wringing out the linens!
” She drew back, clearly hurt. He had to get away from her.
This was untenable. “I’ll go back to Merewyth first thing tomorrow,” he said.
“Will it be safe?” she asked. She offered him a hand to help him rise, but he ignored it and used his cane.
“Safe enough.”
“Would…” She paused, grappling with something. “Would you like to come for dinner again? Tomorrow? I promise not to blackmail you this time.”
“It would be unwise for me to be seen at Croftholde again. I swore to Win that I would lie low, and I’ve already strained the bounds of that promise.”
“We could dine at Merewyth, then? Put Mr. Nimsby’s cooking to the test?”
“I think not, Lady Croft.”
“I had thought…that we were, perhaps, becoming friends of a sort,” she said.
Was that disappointment in her voice? What right did she have to be disappointed, when she was the one with the ulterior motive? If she was disappointed, it was only by the lack of having further opportunity to convince him to help her. It certainly wasn’t because she would miss his company.
“We are not friends, Lady Croft. I was making use of your charity, and now I have no further need of it, or of you.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, as if she could tell he was using unkindness to distance himself, and she was disinclined to cooperate. He needed to be cruder, to truly end this.
“Unless you’ve changed your mind about fucking me?” he added. “I can think of a few remaining uses for you, if that’s the case. Otherwise, our acquaintance is at an end, I think.”
She looked away from him then, and he was grateful he could not see her expression.
“Perhaps you are right,” she said. “Perhaps you are not a good person after all.”
He turned away from her, facing into the cottage.
“At last we agree. Farewell, Lady Croft.”