Chapter 55
Avice
The following afternoon, Avice sat cross-legged under one of the apple trees in her garden. She was contentedly threading Trewoofe’s gift, making a handsome shell amulet for his horn. She held it up for Ashling to see – who was perched on the rim of her hat – and he let out an approving chime.
“Lovely!”
“What do you think, Bramble?” she asked.
Her familiar responded with a loud snore.
He had fallen asleep in a bed of calendula and chamomile blooms while she had been crafting.
Avice chuckled and shook her head. She was about to put the finishing touches to the piece when she felt a light weight on her thigh.
She glanced down to find the Pillywiggin Princess there.
Avice smiled tenderly as she played with the remaining shells piled in her lap.
The little Good Neighbour still wore her purple cloak and held her ruined wings haphazardly behind her back.
“Good afternoon!” Avice greeted.
The Pillywiggin scrabbled around and showed her a particularly pretty pink shell. “Bargain,” she squawked.
“I can hear you.” Avice blinked in surprise. “How can I hear you?”
The power from the ground hummed its way up her spine as she sat. Her tattoo twitched and writhed, but it did not hurt. In the past, whenever she had pulled power from the Good Neighbours, it left her exhausted and aching.
Is it something to do with what I can feel from the earth?
The Princess stomped her foot and the shells clattered loudly.
“Bargain!”
“You can just have it,” Avice replied. “A gift.”
“No,” she insisted. “First bargain. It is important.”
“Alright, alright.”
Avice scanned her garden, searching for something she could ask the Princess to fetch for her.
She finally landed on her belongings piled neatly under the eaves.
She had, in her enthusiasm, packed and repacked her medical satchel, stuffed some clothes in a sack, and filled another bag with a variety of fruits from her garden.
“Fetch another mulberry for me and place it with the others.” She tipped her chin in the direction of her bags.
The Pillywiggin squirmed excitedly and disappeared with a crackle of blue magic. Avice grinned as the Princess reappeared under the eaves with a mulberry – larger than her – and dropped it into the sack she perched on. She vanished again, and Avice felt her weight on her lap once more.
The Princess held up the shell she wanted. “Bargain.”
“Take the offering, and consider our bargain done,” Avice replied, wanting to make it very official for the Pillywiggin’s first. The Princess awkwardly clambered down from the midwife’s skirted lap. Before she could disappear into the bushes with her prize in hand, Avice called after her, “Wait!”
She stopped, turned, and cocked her head curiously. “What?”
“Can you tell me more about what happened the night I found you in the blizzard?”
The Princess clenched her tiny claws around her shell. “Bad green Faerie. Tried to take me.”
Avice fidgeted with the shells in her hand. “How?”
“He called to me. He sounded like the Pillywiggin friends from the woods. Different flock that likes to play,” she said. “I followed his voice outside the garden.” Her little face scrunched. “He tried to make me go with him. He said he needed Spriggan females to look after Eostre.”
Avice furrowed her brow. She stitched the pattern together in her mind with the information from Trewoofe and the little Princess.
Why did the Spriggan need females? If it was only females he needed, then why did he mark Boarden?
Where was his Queen? Where was his flock?
Who was Eostre? But, all the same, one Faerie could not be changed into another. So, was the Spriggan simply idiotic?
“Who or what is ‘Eostre’?” Avice asked.
The Pillywiggin shrugged. “I do not know.”
The midwife knew it was an outside chance the Good Neighbour would know, after all, she had never heard of ‘Eostre’ either.
“I am so sorry this happened to you,” Avice said. “How did you get away?”
She flashed her needle teeth. “I bit, hard!”
“You are very brave, my Lady,” she complimented with a tip of her hat.
Ashling let out a chime of surprise at the movement. Avice giggled at his alarm; she had forgotten he was up there.
The Pillywiggin Princess dipped her head in agreement. “Yes, brave!”
With that she disappeared in a crackle of blue magic.
“What do you make of that?” Avice asked Ashling, who had resettled on the brim of her hat.
“It is concerning,” he stated. “More Good Neighbours will have younglings now with Spring here and human babies will eventually come. This Spriggan will come to claim more females to care for whatever or whoever this ‘Eostre’ is.”
Avice sighed, tossed up her project, and caught it again.
“I think it would be wise for Trewoofe and I to seek more information in the Underneath. We can find out where he is coming from and put a stop to it. Perhaps find out who or what this ‘Eostre’ is.” She continued tossing and catching as she mulled.
“I cannot help but think it is all threaded together in some way.”
“How so?”
“The long winter, the babies, the Princess, Eostre, and now this…” She looked around the paradise of her garden. “Eden.”
“I agree with you,” Ashling agreed. “I have lived too long to believe in coincidences.”
“Trewoofe and I will—”
“Miss Avice!”
The midwife startled at the shout. She had not been anticipating any visitors today, nor did she want any. The alarm in the voice was enough to have her jumping to her feet, sending the unthreaded shells flying, and shoving on her boots.
She peered over the towering flora. “Nell, is that you?”
“Yes, Miss Avice! John is hurt. He needs you. Please come quickly.”
A lump formed in her throat. Surely Treth had not hurt him? The Morgowr seemed as dedicated to John’s safety as Trewoofe was to hers. If not the oceanic Sidhe King, then who? A fishing injury perhaps?
Ashling darted over to rouse the snoring Bramble while Avice grabbed her medical satchel.
She stuffed Trewoofe’s gift inside it as she waited for the plants to bend and let her through.
She glanced over her shoulder. Her familiar was still rousing himself, so the midwife took the lead and marched up the – now clear – garden path.
She spied Nell just outside of the ward.
The girl was wringing her hands, and her lips were tugged down.
Avice stepped through Trewoofe’s protection magic. “Alright, now tell me —”
She let out a blood-curling scream as rough hands grabbed her from behind. More men appeared from the greenery. There were four in total, including her captor.
Men she recognised.
Men from the village.
Men who she had healed, and whose children she had brought into the world.
Simon the blacksmith, Tristan the tavern owner, and Jacob the farmer all closed in on her.
“Let me go!” she snarled, bucking and kicking against her assailant.
The man – she could not see who it was – grabbed her hair and yanked her head back. She caught Nell’s tear-stricken face as one of the men shoved her away.
“Go back to the village!” Simon ordered. “You are expected there when we bring the witch.”
“I am sorry, Miss Avice!” she sobbed from somewhere in the green. “They said they would let John go if I helped them get to you.”
A savage snarl ripped through the trees.
Bramble corporealized in the middle of the fray, hackles up and red eyes blazing.
Her familiar lunged at Tristan. His fangs chomped down on his arm, and he let out a shriek.
Ashling zoomed into the fight then, flaming the tavern owner’s face with a short, sharp peal.
Her captor’s grip loosened, and Avice used the opportunity to yank free from his grip, spinning on her heel to face him.
Robert Shepherd.
She reached for her iron knife and panic clawed at her throat.
She did not have it.
Avice had not needed to wear it in the protective boundary of her garden.
“Little hag!” he spat.
He grabbed her bodice and yanked her towards him.
He snapped the strap of her satchel and ripped off her key and pendant as he grappled her to his torso.
A sharp yelp made Avice flinch. Robert spun her around.
His forearm squeezed her throat. The other crushed her diaphragm, making it hard for her to breathe.
She shuddered at the press of his body. The way he crushed her made her stomach twist, and bile caught in her throat.
“Watch as we kill your hell hound!” he crooned savagely.
Bramble was pinned under a heavy iron net. He whimpered and writhed in agony beneath it. Avice watched on in horror as trailing whisps of shadow evaporated from his body. Simon lunged towards the Grim, brandishing an iron dagger. Ashling dashed around again, brightening his flames.
“Ashling! Get Trewoofe! Tell him—”
Robert squeezed her tighter, and shadows darkened the edge of her vision. The Wisp charged towards the dagger-wielder and set his fingers alight with roaring flames. He screeched incoherently before Jacob poured water over him.
“I will get the King!” Ashling chimed before bolting into the woods.
Avice knew she was no fighter. She had always managed every situation with her sharp mind and considerable healing skills. But there was no way she was going to go easily or let them kill Bramble.
She just needed air.
With air, she could use her voice.
Avice dropped. She flung her body down as hard as she could, knocking Robert off balance.
His grip loosened, and before he could grapple her again, she elbowed him in the groin.
Robert let out a hideous scream and shoved her away so he could cup himself.
Avice scrambled away. She pointed her finger at the farmer, who had been advancing on the thrashing Bramble with an iron dagger in his hand.
Avice pulled.
Not from a Good Neighbour, but from the magic that had been thrumming from the earth and into her since the night of the Equinox.
“CUT YOUR THROAT!”
He did.
And the magic did not hurt her.
Avice saw the flash of silver and a river of crimson.
Jacob dropped to his knees, his eyes wide in terror while he let out a guttural gurgling sound. He opened and closed his mouth, as though he were trying to get air, despite carving his own windpipe. Avice sneered at him as he collapsed to the ground.
She darted over to Bramble and tried to free him of his prison.
The links of the iron net were impossibly heavy, and each was thicker than her wrist. She braced and yanked, managing to free Bramble’s sizzling head.
He reeked of burning hair, and the whisps of shadow burst away from his body in increasingly bigger flares.
His pelt was soaked with his night-sky blood, and his muzzle was marked with a criss-cross of deep gashes.
Avice, run! he whimpered, trying to wriggle free as she strained to yank back.
“I am not leaving you!” she panted, managing to tug the iron back over his muscular neck.
Bramble’s eyes widened. Look—
She did not hear the rest as she was tackled to the ground, knocking the air from her lungs.
Something cracked.
Avice screamed.
Agonising, white-hot pain pulsed from her side.
She bucked and writhed under Robert’s brutal grip. Before she could pull more power from the earth, he slashed her side with his dagger. It added to the agony that throbbed from her ribs. He pinned her down beneath him, dagger tip on her throat.
“Be grateful…” he growled, sweat dripping from his forehead and onto her face. “…that I am not cutting out your witching tongue. You need it to repent.”
His weight crushed her. The torture from her cracked ribs and stab wound addled her mind.
Do not freeze. Do not falter.
Just as she opened her mouth to use her voice, Simon – his burnt fingers raw and weeping – stepped forward and shoved a gag in her mouth.
He pulled it tight around the back of her tossing head and tied a complicated knot, ripping her hair from her scalp.
Tristan – his eyebrows scorched off and flesh red – appeared again and offered Robert his hand.
The shepherd batted him away and sat up.
He straddled her, pinning her beneath him.
His knees squeezed against her, trapping her arms to her sides.
His restraint made her sob beneath her gag.
He tugged free the length of rope that hung from his belt.
Robert wrenched Avice’s hands out and bound her wrists tightly together in a knot that immediately numbed her fingers.
Robert lurched up, heaving her up with him, and she managed to slip from his grip.
Avice tried to run.
Simon caught her before she had even made three strides. “You are not going anywhere but the village, witch.”
Simon stepped forward with a sack in his hands. Panic clawed at her chest as he shoved it over her head, completely stifling her senses. Beneath the suffocating linen, she fought back the urge to freeze.
Not the cellar. Never again.
Someone shoved her.
“Get moving! You have an appointment,” Robert chortled.
Avice dug in her heels. “Make me!” she snarled around the gag.