Chapter 22 The Leyfarer #2
“Hedgewitches?” whispered Osric.
“Yes,” said Fairhrim.
The witches were dressed in green-brown tunics and trousers attached with oddly placed belts at the forearm and below the knee.
Their boots were high, muddy, and tightly laced.
At their waists hung curved silver billhooks.
Every one of the witches was tattooed; thistles and marigolds and mint climbed up their forearms and necks.
Some had nicknames inked across their knuckles, which Osric read as they passed; Mycoslut and Bulbbabe and Dirtdiva.
He caught glimpses of their Order’s tācn of three green hares. Some bore it on their left hands, and others on their right.
He eavesdropped on a conversation between Fungifae and Dtchbtch.
“I should like to be buried in a bluebell wood.”
“Tch. No. Feed me to my mushrooms.”
The witches fell into a discussion about the Kentish queen, whom they called the Kentish Quim.
Every table in the pub featured a low, wide bowl with coals in it on which the patrons grilled oil-drizzled potatoes and other veg. The drinks were served in hollowed-out vegetables, which, Osric surmised as he watched a Hedgewitch munch upon a pepper, you were expected to eat afterwards.
He and Fairhrim went to the bar and chose drinks haphazardly.
Fairhrim ended up with a grapefruit with a cucumber straw poking out of it, decorated with curling pea tendrils.
Osric received a large mushroom cup. A sniff of the cocktail therein hinted at dark rum and fig.
A few delicate white oyster mushrooms clung to the rim.
Osric and Fairhrim attempted to pay. The barkeeper said, “On the house. You both look as though you need fibre.”
A remark that Osric registered as offensive.
He and Fairhrim retreated to their table with their botanical beverages.
“Why do they dress like that?” whispered Osric. “With the belts and buckles all over?”
“I don’t know. They’re extremely secretive,” said Fairhrim. “I never got a straight answer.”
“Even from your lover?”
“Even from her.”
Speaking of whom—
Another Hedgewitch strode into the Rummy Thing. Her knuckle tattoos proclaimed Lchnlgnd.
The usually impassive Fairhrim dropped her drink.
“Aurienne,” said the Hedgewitch.
“Amagris,” breathed Fairhrim.
It was Fairhrim’s former lover.
Fairhrim was pathetically starstruck as Amagris approached. “You—you look well.”
Amagris was uncannily attractive, even among the witches in the pub.
Osric understood why Fairhrim had fallen for her.
Her skin was brown; her eyes were ocean blue, bracketed by fine crow’s feet.
Those eyes were a pull—her every glance was the wild sea.
Something about her flickered at the edges; black hair curled and blurred, as though she wasn’t quite in this world.
Like the other Hedgewitches, her clothing was tied on strangely, with belts and straps at elbows and knees.
She strode towards the table. Her bearing was that of a wild thing, savage, deadly; she put Osric in mind of a hawk.
Fairhrim drank her in, wide-eyed. “H-how are you?”
“Well.”
“I’m pleased to hear it.”
Amagris tilted her head. The ocean eyes glimmered. “You’ve done a bit of Pathworking.”
“I have?” asked Fairhrim.
“I can tell,” said Amagris. “But you’re still seeking happiness.”
“I’m trying,” said Fairhrim.
“What are you doing here?”
“Attempting a healing.”
“Where?” asked Amagris, as though the place mattered more than the what.
“The Isle of Stígr.”
“For this creature?” asked Amagris, and Osric understood her to be referring to him.
“Yes.”
The Hedgewitch looked at Osric. She didn’t blink. She stared straight at him, through him, past him. Her interest in him was fleeting. He might as well have been a worm. He was, for once in his life, unoffended by this. He felt it was safer this way.
Amagris turned back to Fairhrim. “I hope you heal yourself, too.”
“Er—I’m not sick,” said Fairhrim.
“You’re the one with the deeper wound,” said Amagris. “I would know. I made it.”
The acknowledgement was made neutrally, tinged by neither regret nor sorrow—only, perhaps, a bit of pity. (And Osric had thought Fairhrim cold. Fairhrim was downright cuddly, compared to the Hedgewitch.)
Fairhrim looked at her drink.
Amagris caught sight of the worn leather strap peeking out at Fairhrim’s neck. “You ought to get rid of that. You mustn’t let the past tether your heart.”
Fairhrim pressed her hand to the front of her dress, under which the hagstone rested upon her breast. She made no answer.
“I’ll leave you now. Merry meet, merry part, and merry meet again,” said Amagris, but there was nothing merry about it.
Osric observed Fairhrim warily. He wasn’t certain what Amagris had just done: was this the beginning of some sort of closure? Or a reopened wound?
Amagris joined another table. Fairhrim made moon eyes at her all the way there.
Pathetic.
But who was Osric to judge?
Fairhrim sat in piteous silence. She drank nothing more.
Osric interceded, not because he was jealous but because it was so sad to witness.
“Fairhrim.”
“What?”
“Snap out of it. You’ve got more sense than this.”
Fairhrim looked as though being credited with sense displeased her. She did snap out of it, however, and excused herself to go to the loo.
Osric thought that he was done being upstaged by absurdly attractive people, but his hope was in vain, because that was when the Leyfarer walked in.
He was not at all what Osric had envisaged when Fairhrim’s deofol had mentioned him. Osric hadn’t much of an opinion on Leyfarers—they were useful in the way road workers are useful; they made ley lines passable and convenient, and when they didn’t, he cursed them heartily.
He had imagined today’s Leyfarer as a skinny man with prawn-like eyes and ears like Sweet Aedan’s. Ill proportioned. Geeky. Overexcited about cartography.
But no. The Leyfarer was a bit shorter than Osric but more muscular, and he moved with the quiet swagger of the man who knows he is good-looking. Though his expression was mellow, the set of his jaw told of ruggedness and grit. He wore a lambskin jacket with a large shearling collar.
As he walked into the pub, he pulled off the jacket and flung it over a shoulder. He wore a short-sleeved shirt beneath it, which revealed tanned arms covered all over with tattoos of maps and sea monsters and anchors and things.
Most offensively of all, he had Good Hair.
The Leyfarer pulled out a cigar. He slipped it behind his ear when the witch behind the bar advised him that he’d best be keeping it unlit.
“Wouldn’t dream of vexing you, love,” said the Leyfarer with a wink.
The Leyfarer glanced around the pub and identified Osric as his likely client amid unimpressed Hedgewitches. He approached with a dark gaze full of appraisal, as though he, too, had formed a judgement.
There wasn’t much to judge. Because Leyfarers were Bright Path walkers, Osric had taken precautions to be forgettable and inconspicuous and as un-Fyren-like as possible.
He had made himself unobtrusive (other than, obviously, his striking looks): his hands were clad in black leather; he wore a nondescript greatcoat; his boots were coated in mud.
Given that the Leyfarer was arrogant and attractive, part of Osric now wanted the Leyfarer to suspect that he was a Fyren, just so that he would Know His Place. Fairhrim, however, would kill Osric if he mucked up their ride to the Isle of Stígr.
Fairhrim returned from the loo. She was wet about the face and hairline, as though she had put her entire head in the toilet. Osric made a note to tell her about sinks.
She was distracted and glassy-eyed, and almost collided with the Leyfarer as she returned to the table.
“Aurienne, good to see you again,” said the Leyfarer—as though he had been permitted use of Fairhrim’s first name. Where was her title? Where was the respect?
An outrage.
The Leyfarer’s deep voice was accented by the melancholy, un-English cadence of īrland.
So he was handsome and he had a charming accent. Wonderful. Perfect. Osric wasn’t sure if he was attracted to the Leyfarer or jealous that he might be attractive to Fairhrim, and pouted in confusion.
He paid particular attention to Fairhrim’s expression as she took in the man before her, but she was impassive. Perhaps Amagris still engrossed her.
Good.
“Ruain,” said Fairhrim. “Hello again.”
Ruain (idiotic name) shook Fairhrim’s hand and gave her a gorgeous grin, and Osric did not suplex him into the table, but he wanted to.
“This is—” Fairhrim began to introduce Osric, but Osric interrupted her:
“Mr. Hungwell.”
Ruain’s eyes flicked to Osric’s crotch to verify the accuracy of the nomenclature.
“Pleasure, Mr. Hungwell. Sorry I’m late,” Ruain said, addressing Fairhrim again. “The best things take time, they say.”
Notwithstanding the fact that this was exactly the sort of remark he himself would make, Osric decided that Ruain was an oily twat. Where was Amagris, and could she return and regain possession of Fairhrim’s heart?
“May I sit?” asked Ruain.
He availed himself of the permission before it had been granted and sat between Fairhrim and Osric faster than either of them could say yes. Or, as was Osric’s inclination, no.
“Would you care for a drink?” asked Fairhrim, who, unfortunately, was minding her manners.
“I’m all right,” said Ruain with a doubtful look at the mushrooms sprouting from Osric’s beverage. “Need to keep a clear head to go leyfaring.”
“Thank you for agreeing to help us,” said Fairhrim.
Ruain held up his right palm. The bronze compass tācn glittered with seith. “This works thanks to you—it’s the least I could do. So you want to go to the Isle of Stígr? Bit of a slog. What for?”
“Research purposes,” said Fairhrim. “I can’t give you more details than that; it’s confidential.”
“Well, I’d recommend pushing off early tomorrow. I’m not liking the forecast tonight. Stormy.”