Foxfire in the Snow

by J. S. Fields

  My dreams, when they came, were not of Magda, but a tall woman in the trees, a tainted guild mark on her throat, beckoning me to follow her.

  Eleven: Fire

  Magda was gone when I awoke. I hobbled from the bed and dressed quickly, fingers fumbling the wrapping of my binding so that it slid too far down. I tugged it up, and when it refused to budge, I unwrapped the entire thing in frustration and wound it again. I wished, not for the first time, that I didn’t have to wear the suffocating cotton. It wasn’t that I didn’t like my breasts—they were there, and aside from making it difficult to sleep on my stomach, I didn’t mind them.

  Not anymore.

  It was the way people looked at them, and then me, and the assumptions they made, which were just too exhausting to deal with. My binding dealt with a lot of that, so I was willing to put up with the lightheadedness and poor breathing that came along with it. It was probably a good thing I didn’t know how to fight or use a sword. I never could have managed the movement with my chest so constricted.

  Mercifully, the rest of the clothes were easier, and I warmed immediately when I fastened my cloak around my shoulders. My hair… The room had no mirror, so whatever state my mop of black curls was in, they would simply have to stay that way.

  I’d thought I’d see Magda in the main room, but when I entered, there was only a young man in the corner, sipping tea. He had no guild mark, so he wasn’t one of the people from last night either. I scowled. She’d probably already spoken to the guilders or headed out to find them. If she could do this on her own, then why had she forced me along in the first place? I could have been elbows-deep in a cauldron right now, instead of shivering in the Puget mountains.

  I stomped from the inn into air so cold it chilled my nose and mouth. I pulled the collar of my shirt up over my nose and hunched into my cloak. It was still early morning, and the sun was not yet over the roofs of the houses. Unsure where to go, I scanned hanging signs as I walked, paying little attention to the frozen dirt road. An apothecary. Another inn. A baker. So many stupid little shops that should have been selling guild wares, that should have been enough to support at least one guildhall. My feet skidded across the frozen dirt as I headed north and turned into the square. Not paying any attention to the road in front of me, I walked directly into the spirit house the town had built last night. The structure was barely taller than my thigh and very pointy, but curtains hung from the tiny windows, and the roof was covered in green felt.

  “Gods take this thing,” I muttered as I rubbed my bruised shin. “Probably trade-made anyway.”

  “I’m going to take that as a compliment since you aren’t guilded.”

  I spun around and ended up nose to nose with a man almost my exact height, with the same loose black curls falling into his eyes. The lace man from last night. He was as bundled against the cold as I was, but his eyes were sharp and distinct. He didn’t back up, and I couldn’t back up because of the spirit house, so I sidestepped, shoving my hands into my pockets as I did so.

  “I’m sorry,” I said as I took another look at the house. “It’s…”

  It was exceptional, now that I really looked at it. I couldn’t help myself, so I knelt on one knee and ran a finger over the green roof. Each tiny felt shingle was separately made and edged in a delicate lace. The walls of the house were sanded smooth and lightly coated in tar, and the ends all met in gapless joinery. The curtains held a mosaic of patterns I had no name for, and couldn’t begin to guess how they had been made.

  “You’re a master of textiles?” I asked, turning my head to him. “I guess I thought all the masters had fled.”

  He offered me a hand, and I took it.

  “I was on my way out, actually.” He pointed to a leather pack near his feet, tied to a narrow-headed axe that was toothed on one side. “I journeyed in the glacial towns, but my master’s house was just past Miantri, up until about five years ago. I always come back to help for tii, but I don’t live here anymore. I’m Sameer, master of textiles.”

  He turned his head and pulled his cloak down far enough to show me the small cotton boll tattoo on the right side of his neck. It was almost hidden by the thick fur lining of his purple jerkin and the clasp of his heavy wool cloak. He had the same leather pants I was used to seeing on anyone who did guild work, and that brought a relaxing sense of familiarity to the cold.

  “I’m Sorin, and I’m a—” I paused, remembering Keegan’s warning about unbound guilds. “I was brought up in woodcutting. I know skill when I see it. The house and its textiles are magnificent.”

  I smiled, hoping the praise might undo my rude comments from earlier, but every trace of friendliness had disappeared from Sameer. The temperature hadn’t changed, but Sameer’s icy stare made me shiver as he scanned my face, my hands, every centimeter of exposed skin. I crossed my arms over my chest, certain I knew what had prompted this change in attitude.

  “I’m sorry,” I said as I tried to sidestep. “I really need to get to—”

  “Sorin,” he said in a sort of high-pitched, stilted voice. “Of Amada the master woodcutter.”

  I wrinkled my nose in confusion. “Yes…”

  “You ended up her heir, then? She kept you and trained you?” The way his brows knit together and the sourness of his mouth blended into a familiar face, but I couldn’t place it.

  I bit my lip as I tried to remember where I had met this man before. “Yes, I mean, she trained me, but I’m not a woodcutter. I refused the mark. I found these fungal pigments—”

  Sameer snarled, grabbed his pack, then spit on the ground. “Go run yourself through with a sword, and take Amada with you. Get out of my town. Seeing you once was enough.”

  I blinked several times.

  “I’m Sameer and I’m a master of textiles. Fourteen wasn’t that long ago, Sorin, when you and Amada visited our guildhall. Are you simple?”

  “I…” The memory iced across me. I remembered traveling with Mother—one of the only times we traveled—to the Sorpsi/Puget border. Mother had shopped. I’d gone to find the other children, and there’d been a boy with black hair, only a year older than me, named…Sameer. I remembered him asking who I was, and I could still hear our voices in my head, so sharp was the memory.

  “I’m Sorin. I came with Amada.”

  “Amada is a master woodcutter and doesn’t take fosters. So, who are you?”

  My arms started to itch, both in the memory and in the present. The glare on child-Sameer’s face was the same one I saw now on the adult version.

  “Who are you?” he had insisted before pushing me to the dirt. The thought of dust tickled my nose. “Amada doesn’t take fosters.”

  I couldn’t escape the memory. My binding felt too tight, the air, too warm. The skin on my arms burned, here and on my fourteen-year-old self. I remembered scratching, tearing, shredding, wanting to dig to find the body of mine that had once been there. The body that people understood.

  The memory kept playing.

  “Well?”

  “I’m…I’m her heir.”

  In my memory, Sameer sneered and kicked dirt at me. I didn’t look away. I didn’t wipe my face. I didn’t stop tearing at my skin.

  “You’re a boy. A boy can’t be an heir. Tell the truth.”

  But I hadn’t been able to tell him. I didn’t have any words that made sense. I had whispered “her daughter,” though the words made me shiver. Then, now, I wanted to bury my face in the dirt, let the earth consume me so I wouldn’t have to look him in the eyes.

  “I’m not a boy. I’m Amada’s daughter.”

  But he hadn’t stopped. Young Sameer had tackled me and pushed my face into the dirt. I could still hear his scream, could still feel him punch me once, twice. Someone had tried to help me up, but I stayed limp, preferring to watch blood drip from my arms onto the floor streaked with dirt and lacemaking bobbins than say those words again.

  The sun beat on my face now as the ice of memory melted away. Yet the a
ir felt colder. I breathed deliberately, in and out, letting the memory of the textile shop, the taste of blood and dirt in my mouth, the fear and shame, chill me to the bone.

  “What?” Adult Sameer demanded as I stared at him, unmoving.

  “I…” What did I have to say to this man who carried such a long, unclear grudge? I rubbed at my arms and tried to push the memory back to wherever it had been hiding these three years. It was best to find Magda and leave. I didn’t need to get beaten into the snow, not with a witch following me.

  Sameer sneered. “What do you want here, woodcutter? You can’t possibly have business with our factory.”

  My arms went slack, and my fingers lay still. “A…factory? There’s a factory?”

  “Is that why you’re here? Digging around other people’s business? If that is what it will take to get you out of Miantri, fine.” He threw his pack over his shoulder, the strange axe bobbing precariously from the side, then grabbed me by my arm and proceeded to pull me down a street lined with frozen straw. His fingers dug into my jerkin and the skin underneath, and I winced. There would be bruises tomorrow.

  “Sameer, wait!”

  He growled and kept going. “This is my town, Sorin, and I’m going to make sure you leave it.”

  At least we were in agreement on that. I wanted to pull my arm away, to curse at him in similarly coarse language, but I stopped myself, biting my lower lip as I did so. A factory. Probably Magda already knew about it and had gone there this morning. It’d be very Magda-like. It could take me another hour to find the factory on my own. Sameer was a cumbersome, slightly painful guide, but he was still a guide. He hadn’t run me through yet, or drawn blood, so that was something. And we weren’t children anymore. I could handle a few taunts.

  “You didn’t see a woman in a blue cloak this morning, did you?” I asked as we passed a run-down smithy with boarded-up windows and a tailor’s shop with a simple treadle sitting abandoned outside the door, half covered in snow.

  “Would you shut up?”

  “Sameer—”

  He stopped at the door to a bakery and pulled me up to him, so close I could smell the sweetbread on his breath. “Stop. Talking.” He whispered it, his breath hot on my ear. The smell of sweet buns tickled my nose and stirred another amorphous memory. Mother loved sweet buns. She’d made them often when I was very small. I couldn’t remember why she’d stopped, but it had been around my fourth year.

  The year my older brother had been fostered.

  My insides felt heavy. I stared at Sameer. His skin was the same reddish, sepia brown as mine, which wasn’t so uncommon in Sorpsi, but his dimples were the same as mine, too, a light pinprick of skin in full cheeks. His eyes were dark brown—almost everyone in Sorpsi had brown eyes—but his had the same orange flecks around the pupil that I remembered from my father, though he’d died when I was very young. Men didn’t always stay with the same family, anyway, in Sorpsi. Sameer’s nose had a shorter bridge than mine, but was exactly the same width, and ended in the same rounded button shape as Mother’s.

  “Sameer, your master—”

  “Shut up and walk.”

  It wasn’t worth arguing about, not if he wouldn’t discuss it. I had more pressing issues. We resumed, though his grip was looser this time, more my sleeve and cloak than my arm. We passed through the business area and finally into more residential construction, with A-line roofs that blended together in the snow. Just beyond the last house was a three-story structure of wood and brick, elongated and rectangular.

  I cursed under my breath at the building, forgetting, momentarily, Sameer’s grip. Though no smoke billowed from the chimneys, the ground around the building was worn, and the number of outbuildings told me the factory was well used.

  Sameer released me at the front door, painted bright green with a cotton boll etched into center.

  “Sameer,” I began, but he cut me off.

  “Get whatever it is you need and leave,” he spat. “Here.” He turned the doorknob and pushed. The door swung inward on groaning hinges. The inside was dark and smelled smoky as if a fire had just extinguished.

  “Hello?” I called in hesitantly. “Magda?”

  No one answered.

  I didn’t like how it smelled—like overcooked cauliflower. I wrinkled my nose as I stared into the darkness, then turned back to Sameer. “Is the factory maybe—”

  “Just go in,” Sameer hissed. “There are plenty of people in there. I can hear the machines.”

  I couldn’t hear anything, except the faint sound of a chair tipping over.

  “There’s nothing here except rot,” I said.

  Sameer took my shoulders and pushed me into the room, into the dark and the damp cauliflower smell. His hands dropped away, and I shivered, though Sameer was clearly toying with me. Maybe it was time I spoke with him instead of worrying about a factory that clearly wasn’t operational.

  Before I could turn, the door slammed closed behind me, clipping my backside.

  “Hey!” I yelled as I jumped. My cloak caught in the door and pulled from my throat onto the floor. I grabbed the frozen metal doorknob and tried to twist it, but it refused to move.

  “Sameer!” I kicked the door while my eyes adjusted to the dark. The interior of the factory was dim, although light crisscrossed in through the shutters. It wasn’t any warmer inside, but there wasn’t a breeze either. I cupped my hands near my mouth and blew on them as I looked for the source of the chair noise, or some of the rumored machinery, or Sameer maybe gawking at me through one of the narrow little windows.

  But I could see nothing out the windows, not even the roofs of houses or the partially overcast sky. The room around me had no furniture, not even a chair. Someone had scrubbed the brick floor clean and washed the bare, cedar plank walls. No footprints, no embers in the fireplace, and no stairs or other doors. It seemed ghostly familiar, though I’d have preferred the scent of lemon to what was currently assaulting my nose.

  “Gods,” I whispered. Moats of dust hung in the air, and my breathing, which should have been erratic, came depressed and too even. Then the scraping came again, sounding just to my right. I spun to face the whatever, but again, I saw only emptiness and wisps of smoke…though the smoke quickly solidified into a human shape.

  The hair raised on my arms. “Please, let it be another sending,” I whispered. “Not a witch. Not a real, living witch.”

  Again came the sound of wood scraping brick.

  “Let me out,” I whimpered into the cauliflower air. “I’ve no business with witches.”

  Warmth blossomed from the smoke, and my skin tingled as the cold burned away.

  “Leave me alone!” I tried to scream it, but my words caught in my throat and came out garbled. So much for bravery. But I wasn’t afraid. It was just a witch. I was an alchemist. Alchemists were better than witches. Stronger. More…something or other. I’d defeated the magic in the royal forest. Queen Iana had defeated a king and all his magic with just a short sword and bravery. I had alchemy.

  But I was definitely still afraid.

  “Stay away,” a voice hissed. The sound curled inside my head, scalding as it went and flushing my skin. The smoke defined into arms and legs, but no head, and stood in front of me, wisping and curling in the silence. A laugh bubbled from my throat because a shadowy smoke person was plenty creepy enough. Missing a head seemed unnecessary.

  “Stay away from what?” Now I did sound brave. Or overconfident. I didn’t care. At least I was speaking.

  “Stay away from the country of Puget!” said the headless figure. A fire surged into the fireplace, blasting heat toward me and shaking off more of the chill. A moment later, it died to ash, and the smoke person dissolved into nothingness. The room was once again bare, but the edges of my vision blurred as though reality had two layers, and the one I could see was curling back to reveal…I didn’t know what.

  “Stay away from me!” I yelled at the fireplace, not knowing where else to direc
t my words. I was tired of being cold, and scalded, and tormented by some magical ghost in a fairy story. Coming to the factory had clearly been pointless. This town was pointless if it only had a dead factory and none of our missing masters.

  “I’ll go where I like,” I hissed at the room and the witch and the magic. “Stop this game.”

  The edges of the fireplace softened. The room fell out of focus as rips—there was no better description for them—of light spilled through what had to be some sort of magic veil the witch had placed around me. Laughter erupted from the center of the room, and I heard hands slapping onto a wooden table and a faint hum that sounded almost like a treadle lathe, but higher-pitched. The sound slivered through me. I spun around, looking wildly for the curling smoke that was my witch.

  Other voices rose up, of people talking and jeering, sounds of water being poured. I caught the distinct smell of cotton. Patches of brightly lit floor formed near my feet. I saw swatches of leather boots and cotton pant legs as the magic veil peeled back like veneer from a log.

  I felt the warmth of a fire.

  I heard Magda yell.

  Twelve: Fixation

  Damn it, why couldn’t I see her?

  “You don’t know what you’re doing!” I heard her say, both pleading and admonishing. “I know you’re angry, but this isn’t how we deal with low trade. You can’t destroy every other guild just to provide for your town. I’ll speak to the queen about your concerns when I return, but you need to shut this down. Now. These water frames will destroy the textile guild!”

  My chest tightened. “Magda isn’t a part of this, whatever there is between you and I. Leave her alone.”

  The deep voice whispered around me, and the air rippled. A human form coalesced again, some four meters in front of me and well away from the widening tears in the magic veil. “Go home, Woodcutter’s Daughter.”

  Bile rose in my throat. Booted feet scuffled over bricks, and a chair fell over. Magda growled. “Don’t. Put those away.”