Chapter Sixteen. In Which a Witch Offers Some Useless Parting Gifts
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
In Which a Witch Offers Some Useless Parting Gifts
After staring at Risa for a long, hard moment, the witch’s glow returned in full force.
Now she bustled about her abode in a frenzy.
Assorted teacups floated out of a cushion, half a chess board unfolded itself from a treasure chest, and a dented hollow gourd with several ridged lines running parallel down its body somersaulted in the air.
The witch hummed to herself while she scraped a mangled root against the gourd, bits of it falling into each teacup. She summoned a bright yellow lemon from thin air, which she cut into slices with a piece of a broken plate. She dropped a slice in each cup, then poured water from her kettle.
“Here, you’ll feel better,” she said, and handed each of them a steaming cup.
She gestured vaguely in the direction of several wooden chairs placed around what might have been a table, if a table were made with a pile of discarded, rotting crates.
“I’m a healer,” the witch explained before anyone could question her. “And my name is Linda.”
“This doesn’t look like tea,” Javi said, eyeing the floating bits of root and lemon with a distrusting eye.
Linda looked affronted at the accusation. “I changed my mind. This is a tisana. It isn’t made with camellia leaves, like proper tea.”
Risa was too thirsty and tired to question what constituted tea or a tisana. She should have questioned the cleanliness of the items, but the warm, spicy aroma that rose from her cup quieted that thought very quickly.
She took a careful sip. An immediate sense of relief swept through her.
Her stomach warmed, and what remained of the ache in her shoulder melted away.
With a sigh, she settled in a seat with a missing leg and found herself pleasantly well supported, no doubt by some carefully placed trash and magic.
The others followed her example, taking sips from their cups. Javi hummed in approval and dropped into the empty chair beside her with far too much confidence in its ability to hold him up. The Wolf sagged with relief, tension melting from her shoulders.
Brunie, who did not get a cup of not-tea, sauntered off to mope at the edge of the cavern with the patiently waiting horses.
Once settled, Linda the witch took the last seat. “Now, what are you all doing here traipsing through my tunnels?”
Nothing about Linda suggested she had ulterior motives. If she did, they were probably lost somewhere in her piles of trash, to be found at a later, more inconvenient date.
“We venture to Monpira,” Javi answered, clearly coming to a conclusion similar to Risa’s.
Linda nodded thoughtfully. “Oh, Monpira is a wonderful little place. I was last there one … two centuries ago?” She looked regal and beautiful, despite being surrounded by her pile of trash and being over two hundred years old. “Are you planning on attending their carnival?”
“No,” Risa interjected immediately.
“We’re off to San Cirilo after that. Then I am off to…” Javi scrunched his eyes, as if doing so might help him recall that pesky word they kept forgetting. “To get married,” he finished lamely.
“Oh, a wedding!” The witch clapped her hands giddily. “I love weddings. Where is it? Is it going to be a big wedding, beach wedding, vineyard…?”
The Wolf answered, “Madros.”
Risa had been nursing a steady suspicion about why she and Javi couldn’t remember the name of that blasted kingdom, but it took Linda blanching at its mention for her to connect the dots. Or at least, to identify a singular dot.
“Magic,” Risa said, nearly dropping her cup, the realization quite obvious once she said it aloud.
Javi blinked at her with dazed gold eyes. “What?”
“There’s some kind of spell making us forget about”—it took everything in her power to utter the word—“Madros.”
Linda looked like she was searching for an escape route, eyes frantic and wild.
The Wolf refused to look at either of them, torchlight cloaking half her face in darkness.
Unease grew in the pit of Risa’s stomach the longer she stared, because for the first time, she could see the tangled vines of the Wolf’s curse twisted around her.
Large thorns dug deep in her skin and clung to her hood.
Tendrils of weeds obscured most of her face, trailed down her body, and led away from her, snaking an impossible path for miles.
The Wolf’s curse was a small root in a large, tangled mass.
“Your curse—” Risa said, surprised by how she could keep an even tone, “it has to do with Madros. You’re connected to it, or it’s connected to you.”
The Wolf did not respond how Risa had expected her to. When the girl finally met her gaze, terror reflected in her one visible eye.
Risa turned to the witch, desperate for answers the Wolf was not going to provide. “How do you remember?”
She also had been able to once. Back in Barrow. The Bosque. It wasn’t until they were free from the loom of the woods’ trees that Risa had fully started to forget.
Linda made a sound like a strangled birdcall. Brunie did not help when he leaped onto the precarious surface of the not-table to swat at the witch’s cup, which clattered against its saucer.
The witch crossed her arms. “Witches can see through spells and magic most of the time, though we can’t always tell how they work, and we certainly cannot dismantle them. We can only recognize that they’re…” She waved her hands in the air in a big circle. “In action.”
“So there is an enchantment,” Risa breathed, the brief joy of being right eclipsed by the gravity of that kind of power. The magnitude of it, being able to affect an entire kingdom and warp the minds of so many without anyone being aware.
That had to be why the rumors about Madros that people heard in Barrow were so vague and distorted.
By the time any news about the desert kingdom reached them, the magic was well underway.
It explained why no one knew anything, why it had taken years for the Kheadish king to finally agree to give up his youngest son for marriage.
She looked toward the Wolf again. Tried to slot the pieces into place as they fell on the table in her mind.
The girl’s regal bearing, her accented speech, how the formality of her words was briefly set aside when she wasn’t cloaked.
The nasty scar. All the trappings of a well-to-do person with a physical memento begging for revenge.
“How old was the eldest princess of Madros?” Risa asked Javi in a whisper, blood roaring in her ears. “I mean, when she and her family disappeared?”
The Wolf’s eye widened as she leaned away from the table, hands gripping the edge so hard her knuckles whitened.
Risa could practically hear the cogs turning in Javi’s mind.
It took a long time before he answered. “Eleven, I believe. She was two years younger than me.”
A child. Forced to flee her kingdom, cross the desert, and spend five years plotting a way to return to a place where no one could remember her. It all made sense.
“You’re the princess,” Risa said to the Wolf, so sure of it that she couldn’t believe no one else had realized it before she did.
She focused on the scar. Noticed another peeking beneath the knot at the Wolf’s neck, a few inches above the high collar of her black tunic.
“You’re supposed to be dead, but instead you’re cursed. ”
Risa didn’t know what she expected. Certainly not for Linda to accidentally overturn her teacup on Brunie, who leaped and snarled at Javi, or for the Wolf to spring back from the crates as if scalded, hood dropping away to reveal her fathomless face.
Javi remained seated, staring at Risa with something akin to admiration.
But Risa hardly noticed the mayhem. She was finally seeing the Wolf for the first time.
One night, nearly a decade ago, Risa had locked herself in her bathroom, where she stared into a gilded mirror in hopes of catching sight of her curse.
As if it could be drawn out by the dark.
Instead, when her eyes adjusted to the unlit room, she saw her distorted reflection in fragments.
Contorted and swapped with other parts. It was like something out of a nightmare. A monster conjured out of desperation.
That was the Wolf. A mangled reflection of what should have been a young girl, the twisted vision of a person trapped beneath the rippling surface of water or a misshapen piece of glass.
“You should have told us,” Risa said, hoping her tone wasn’t accusatory. She didn’t blame the Wolf for guarding secrets.
She was only upset because it made her own distrust of the Wolf unfounded.
“It does not matter if I tell you,” the outlaw said, lowering her hood and then hiding her face in her gloved hands. She didn’t cry, didn’t take a gasping breath. “You’ll forget. Even now, if you look away, you’ll forget I am here. It’s why I wear this cloak.”
Risa dared not look away. “I remember how you helped with my shoulder. Javi remembers not being able to see your face.”
The Wolf seemed to sway with shock.
“You really are the princess,” Javi said, awe coloring his voice. He leaned forward. “What happened?”
The Wolf placed a hand at her throat and took a steadying breath. “Five years ago, General Sur killed my family.”
It was a strange sensation to hear the words—to understand them and process them—and find them already eager to disappear into the ether.
Risa had to cling to the Wolf’s voice, straining to keep her thoughts gathered at the forefront of her mind, repeating them like a mantra as the girl continued to explain.
“He said he’d discovered a treasonous plot and took us down to the dungeons. Where it was safest. Where, besides the stairway, there was no means of entering—or escaping.”
Risa held her breath, scared that any movement might break the spell and whisk the words out of her head too quickly.