4. Four
Chapter 4
Nobody, as a rule, came to see me. They just didn’t.
Sometimes people came for Eudoria, if they had a missing child to find, or a dead relative they wanted to see again. When the kingdom of Colynes conquered the isle of Doregall, all of Nis-Illous turned to her for news, panicking over whether we’d be next. As if a bloodthirsty war-king would want a backwards island that wasn’t worth a pig snout. I could still remember painting patterns on my mother’s pottery and hearing the words the seer says it’s over, they captured a prince and the war-king called back his ships. Back then, I could never have guessed I’d be living in Eudoria’s tower.
People came for Kalcedon too. They always had a wary and regretful look about it when they did, as if they were nervous he might decide to turn them into soup. So they only really came for Kalcedon if things were especially bad: if it looked like they were about to lose their entire harvest, for instance, and they didn’t have the money to turn to fishing or raising goats or pottery or anything else that could keep them from knocking on the door of a storm-gray half-human man, the closest thing to a true faerie in some three hundred years.
In any case, nobody came to me for help. My scholarly achievements wouldn’t be of much use to potters and fishermen. And until I could convince Eudoria I had worth, nobody outside the tower would even know about them.
“Is it my brother?” I asked, rubbing my suddenly sweaty palms against my skirt. The kitchen’s warmth—real, not magical—was starting to flush my skin.
I couldn’t think of any other man who’d show up at Eudoria’s for me, but Dareios would have written a letter if he just wanted to say hello. If he’d come all this way, it meant bad news.
But the seer only shrugged and settled back down at the table, taking a sip of water. I wrung my hands and trotted to the entryway, bracing myself for the worst. Kalcedon gave me a concerned look as I went.
The door was wide open. I could see as soon as I stepped out of the kitchen that it wasn’t Dareios, or any other of my relatives.
It was one of the village men. He stood in the doorway with a pathetic little assortment of wildflowers clasped in his grimy hands. I didn’t know his name, but I recognized him. Missaniech town was only two miles below the tower, where the cliff tapered down to meet the sea. We went to the merchant ship whenever it came in, to haggle over books and seeds and household goods.
He had a round face, eyes that were too small and a guarded smile he was always ducking his head to hide. He looked about twenty-five. I’d noticed him in the past not because there was anything about him to notice, but because I’d caught him staring at me more than once.
“What do you want?” I asked, my voice a little sharp. I was relieved that it wasn’t Dareios with horrible news. Still, I somehow doubted the man in front of me was about to ask for my help crafting a contortion shield or placing barrier holds.
For a moment he didn’t answer. He just gaped at me, at my dark curly hair and olive skin, a body so broad and strong I’d have made an excellent fishwife or kiln woman, if I could bring myself to care about those things—and if any man could look past my oddities. I was about to ask if somebody had cursed him into not being able to speak, except then I remembered he’d been talking with Eudoria moments before.
At last he seemed to find his footing.
“Theo is marrying Chare’s daughter tomorrow,” he said in a wobbling voice. He paused again, as if this was supposed to mean something to me; as if I were supposed to know who those people were, or to care, or to understand ah, so that’s why he’s come . Only then he thrust out the bouquet of scraggly flowers and I did understand. A sickening feeling took over my gut, pity for him. “Would you go with me?”
He didn’t know what he was asking. He’d regret it, immediately, if I agreed. Nobody who got to know me wanted to know me much longer than that.
“No,” I said, and I shut the door in his face.
I could hear Kalcedon and Eudoria talking softly, but their conversation cut off abruptly the moment I entered the kitchen.
“So that’s a no, then?” Eudoria asked.
“Of course it’s a no,” I muttered, as I grabbed a knife and the bucket of snails and set to work. It was my least favorite kitchen task, but Kalcedon hated it even more than I did. Even though I noticed he was taking his time finishing the beans, I said nothing about it.
“It’s one night. You could give him a chance,” Eudoria said.
“I’m not interested.”
Why had he asked me? Did he think a witch would make his life easier? Or maybe, worse, it was like the men in my home village all over again, and he thought a moon-eyed idiot would be easy to take advantage of.
“God’s peace, Meda. He hiked two miles just to ask you to spend time with him. Four miles, by the time he’s home,” Eudoria lectured.
I curled my hand into a fist, biting my nails into the flesh, and tried to keep from exploding. The words came out angry anyways.
“How’s that my problem? Why in horns should I want to be courted by some trawler’s son who smells like fish guts and doesn’t even know how to read?”
Kalcedon choked back a laugh, his shoulders quivering as he bent over his task.
“Meda,” Eudoria said. She sounded exasperated. “It would do you well to spend time with some of the villagers. Or you might wake one day and realize you’re too late.”
I scraped my knife against one of the shell openings with a frown. I’d been an odd girl back in my home village, awkward and bad at friendship and interested in nothing but magic. Everyone there had given me a wide berth, except those who realized I struggled with the word no and liked that about me.
“Did you put him up to it?” I said to her at last.
“Of course not. I have better ways to spend my time.”
“Well, so do I.”
“You ought to have friends. You ought—”
“Kalcedon’s my friend,” I lied, mostly to annoy Kalcedon.
“I am absolutely not,” Kalcedon told me.
“Marriage,” Eudoria continued, as stuck on the subject as a burr tangled in the washing.
“How come you’ve never gotten after him about it? He’s almost forty.”
“You think anyone’s ever come here with flowers for me ?” Kalcedon asked dryly, glancing over his shoulder.
Of course they hadn’t. Not with his fae looks. It didn’t matter how pretty he was. Kalcedon was terrifying. His kind were the beasts our grandmothers told night-tales of. Even the grandmothers who had traces of fae blood. Most of the time, that blood hadn’t gotten there peaceably.
Monster, we used to call him in my village, when I was still a child. That monster in the seer’s tower. Thank the Veiled One they don’t live close.
“ Kalcedon has a future as a great witch. You do not.”
“Oh, please. I’ve probably learned in three years what it’s taken him —”
“Even if you won’t give the tiffe a chance, at least come with us to the wedding,” Eudoria interrupted, holding a lightly wrinkled hand up to stop me mid-sentence.
“Really? You’re going to that?” It seemed a waste of time.
She fixed me with her terrible seer’s gaze. “I need a break. And you do, too. Both of you.”
Kalcedon shrugged and glanced my way, as if to say, why not . But I shook my head.
“I’ll stay here, thank you.”
We had a few more minutes of silence after that, and I felt satisfied that I’d won. I wouldn’t be forced to parade down to Missaniech and pretend I was a part of something that would never want me back. Better yet, I’d have the tower and its books to myself. But at last Eudoria sighed.
“I do worry about you, you know,” she said quietly. “What happens when you don’t become anything, Meda? What happens when the power you’re throwing your life away for is too far away for you to reach?”
My face burned as I swirled the snails around in a dish of water to rinse them.
“Good thing I’ll never have to find out,” I told her, and that was the end of that.