Chapter Three
CHAPTER
THREE
IT WAS GOLDEN and warm in the Witch’s Wood, a sleepy summer’s day entirely at odds with the cruel winter still clinging to Warham.
Dust motes drifted lazily in the air, and a curious bee bumbled around Lyssa’s head as she stepped through the stone archway that acted as a gate between this place and the world she had just left behind.
Brandy barked happily and bounded ahead, the magic already beginning to leech away the ache of old age from his bones.
Lyssa breathed in the heady floral aroma of the woods, sun-drenched and green, and felt her own pains begin to subside—the soreness in her muscles from weeks of tracking and eventually killing the river troll; the ache in her heart that visiting her brother always brought on, the old wound made worse by the confrontation with her father.
By the time she got to the clearing where the witch Ragnhild had built her home, Lyssa felt stronger. Steadier. Shove your pain down deep, where no one can see it, and keep going.
Ragnhild’s cottage was a quaint, thatch-roofed thing, with a deep covered porch and diamond-paned windows propped open to let in the breeze.
Behind it, just before the tree line resumed, was the smithy where Lyssa worked and slept whenever she wasn’t out on a job.
In the mortal world, she would rather sleep on a city street than next to a forest, but Ragnhild had long ago killed the faeries hiding in the Witch’s Wood—she and Lyssa were of a mind when it came to that—and had deemed it safe.
Lyssa climbed the porch steps, careful not to knock over any of the little ceramic herb pots crowding them, and let herself into the cottage. Brandy had already made himself comfortable in his straw-stuffed bed by the hearth, and was working on the beef-hide chew he had left behind.
There was a foul odor clinging to the air in the kitchen, sour and bitter and burnt.
Ragnhild’s apprentice, Nadia, was crouched on one of the rickety wooden chairs around the table, knees pulled up to her chest, her long black hair hanging around her face as she tied knots in a silk cord for one spell or another.
Her face was screwed up in concentration, dark eyes darting between the cord and the open book lying on the table.
The pages were covered in scrawled symbols and cramped handwriting in a language Lyssa didn’t know.
“You smell,” Nadia said without looking up.
“So do you.” Lyssa dug into the pocket of her coat and pulled out the chicken bones she had saved, slapping them down on the table.
“What are those?”
“Bones.”
“I know that,” Nadia said, with the perfect eye-roll that every teenage girl seemed to master instinctively when they hit puberty. “Why are you giving them to me?”
“To practice with.” Lyssa hefted her drawstring bag up higher on her shoulder.
Nadia looked at her with disgust. “I can’t practice on your leftovers,” she sneered. “Carving bones is a sacred art form. Your saliva will desecrate it.”
Ragnhild trundled into the room, stray leaves sticking out of the steel-gray thicket of her hair, the soles of her bare feet dark with dirt.
The witch’s wizened face split into a smile when she saw Lyssa.
“The brute has returned, which means she has coin in her pockets! Ooo! Chicken bones!” She swiped them from the table and held them up, squinting at them.
“These will be perfect for Nadia to practice on!”
Lyssa grinned at the apprentice, who glared at her in response.
“How much did you bring me?” Rags asked as she stowed the chicken bones in a jar by the sink, to be cleaned and dried before they went into the cupboard where the rest of the witches’ supplies were kept.
Lyssa pulled out the pouch of coins and tossed it to her. Ragnhild tested its weight in her palm as if she could count the number of coins by clink and heft alone.
“Is that all?” she asked with a frown.
“Minus expenses.”
“Expenses, expenses. Are the fancy chocolates you never deign to share with us considered expenses, hm?” Rags tucked the coin pouch into one of the pockets of her apron. “It’ll feed us for a little while, anyway. Nadia, I want you to go through the Gate soon.”
“Why doesn’t Lyssa ever have to go get groceries?” Nadia grumbled.
“Because I bring in the money,” Lyssa told her. “If you want to spend an afternoon hacking off a troll’s head, be my guest. I’d be happy to do the shopping for a change.”
“Sit, sit,” Rags said, ignoring their bickering. “Let me brew you some tea.”
“No, thank you. I just came to drop off the coin.”
Ragnhild’s face fell. “I see. Well, we’re having roast lamb for dinner, if you’d care to join us.”
“Thanks, but I have food in the smithy.”
“You’d rather eat tinned sardines than my roast lamb?” the witch said, sounding flabbergasted.
“You never use enough salt.”
Rags waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, pah! Salt is expensive, and doesn’t deserve the lofty reputation it enjoys. Just wait until you try the mint jelly!”
Lyssa sighed. “It’s been a long couple of weeks, Rags. I just want to be alone.”
“But—”
“Oh, let her go,” Nadia said with a smirk. “Lyssa has her own life, you know. She’s far too busy cutting out newspaper articles and reading romance novels to have any time for us.”
Lyssa scowled, her face growing hot with anger. “I told you to stay out of my smithy.”
Nadia stuck her tongue out at Lyssa. “It’s not your smithy, it’s Ragnhild’s smithy, and she asked me to clean it. Absolutely filthy. The cobwebs, I mean, not your books, though they did seem a bit—”
“Rags,” Lyssa started, but the witch didn’t let her finish.
“Stop it, you two!” Rags snapped. “Nadia, don’t be a pest. Lyssa, if you don’t want us going in there, you have to keep it clean. I will not tolerate filth. The cobwebs, I mean—read whatever books you want to, dear.”
“Ungharad’s flaming sword,” Lyssa said through clenched teeth. “I don’t even know why I bother staying here when I could rent a room in the city and not have to deal with you two.”
Ragnhild’s face softened. “Oh, don’t be like that. It’s just that we’re worried about you.”
“I’m not worried,” Nadia muttered, going back to her cord-spell.
“You work so much,” Rags said, ignoring her apprentice. “You deserve a nice meal and some rest, once in a while.”
“I’ll rest when every last faerie is dead,” Lyssa said.
Nadia muttered something under her breath as she picked at a difficult knot in her cord, scowling at it like she was trying to disintegrate it with her eyes. But Lyssa didn’t care about whatever snide comment the little witch had made. She turned on her heel and strode to the door.
“It’s okay to live for something other than revenge, you know,” Rags said, and Lyssa’s hand froze on the knob. “Not every last minute has to be spent fulfilling that oath of yours.”
Lyssa stiffened. Turned. “I seem to remember a certain witch making a bargain with a distraught child, promising to make her into a weapon of vengeance. And now that that’s exactly what I am, you’re … what? Having second thoughts?”
Ragnhild’s eyes shone with something like sorrow. “I never meant for it to consume you.”
That was what grief and anger did, though—they consumed. It wasn’t something Lyssa expected Ragnhild or Nadia to understand.
But it didn’t matter what they thought. There was nothing left of Lyssa but her oath, and she had made peace with that.
She didn’t deny herself small comforts, like her sweets or her books—she needed something to get her through the long nights, after all—but building a life, a future, when Eddie’s had been stolen from him … it didn’t seem fair.
Besides, she had tried making room for something other than revenge in her heart, once, and it had ended in betrayal. At the time, it felt like a sign from the Blessed Lady, a reminder that Lyssa had one purpose in this life, and deviating from it was not an option.
“A sword is only a sword, Rags,” she said. “I can’t be anything else.”
“Even a sword spends some time in its sheath.”
Lyssa rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ll eat your damned roast and stay a few days. I need to go through these anyway.” She patted the bag full of newspapers and letters.
Ignoring Ragnhild’s invitation to sort her mail at the kitchen table, Lyssa headed out to the smithy.
Brandy followed with his beef-hide chew, and together they climbed up the creaking wooden steps to the loft above the forge.
The space was big enough for her bed, a tiny writing desk and chair, and her crates of tinned food and books—some romance, as Nadia had teased, interspersed with several of the newer detective novels.
She had read them all a hundred times, and would probably read them a hundred more, taking comfort in the happy endings—a mystery solved, a killer captured, the triumph of good over evil.
Fiction was so much tidier than real life.
Justice always prevailed, and the heroes were always victorious.
Brandy resettled himself on the bed while Lyssa tossed the drawstring bag down on the desk and stripped out of her filthy clothing.
She inspected the cuts and bruises riddling the hard planes of her body, then undid her braids and combed out her hair with her fingers.
She needed a proper bath, one that involved soap and vigorous scrubbing.
Or at least a soak in the hot springs, to heal her cuts and ease what aches the magic of this realm hadn’t been able to soothe.
But first, she had work to do.