by J. S. Fields
I took the berries and held them in my hand, letting their desiccated forms roll about my palm. “Walerian is…a witch? He healed me?” I asked, not meeting her eyes.
She evaded, as skillfully as ever. “A woodcutter can’t have just one hand, Sorin, especially not a master.”
I looked up sharply and frowned. Heir or not, that wasn’t how the guild system worked. I was surprised at her for even suggesting it. “I’m not even an apprentice. I’m not a journey. I’ve not earned a mark, much less a title.”
“A child can declare at twelve, Sorin, or after one year of service to a master. You are well past both. This mark is your birthright.”
“But what does that matter?” I dug my fingernails into the ground. “You must have seen what happened in the capital. You must have met some of the afflicted guilders. What about the machines? What about the woodcutter’s guildhall, the smiths, the textile workers—all those empty guildhalls? What about…what about Sameer?” That last part tumbled out uninvited. I mumbled then, for my throat was tightening with emotion. “You’ve got a firstborn son who wants this. A son who is already a master. If you want to carry on a dying tradition, he should be the one you guild, not me.”
Mother’s voice held a familiar cord of tried patience, though her left eyebrow arched. “The guilds aren’t lost, just changing. The guilders are changing, too, although slower than one might like. And Sameer is a textile worker, Sorin, and he is a man. He can be a master or grandmaster through skill and training, but he can never be my heir. Of my two children, you were the one fit for woodcutting. I’ve too much work invested in you, and your skill level is above my own with veneer work. Female or male, or lurking on some other axis as you do, you will inherit from me, regardless.”
Mother’s words sliced me as expertly as a fretsaw. I’d always thought her accepting of my identity, but here we were with her casual rejection of Sameer and coveting some base part of me over which I had no control. Just like Magda.
There was nothing left inside me to break.
“Is the queen dead?” I snapped. I would not fall apart in front of her. I would get the information Magda needed to save the guilds, and Sorpsi, and I would leave. There were no ties anymore, between Mother and me.
Sameer would be so proud.
Mother blinked, then laughed. It came out a thin, tinkling sound that felt at odds with the conversation. “A few days with the royal daughter has you making demands.”
“Damn it, Mother. The queen will cripple Sorpsi with her absence! Where is she?”
Her eyebrow raised. “Hardly, child. Calm down.”
I threw a rock at Mother’s midsection that she sidestepped without a second thought. She tsked, but that same damn smile stayed on her face.
“You’ve never been one for a temper, Sorin.”
I fumed. I had every right to be angry, especially considering I’d been abducted in a swirl of flower petals and was currently sitting in a ring of enchanted, false foxfire.
“I’ve been calm for too long. You’ve cost me apprenticeship after apprenticeship, and now you and the queen are, what? Lurking with witches in the northern forests? Doing…hurting, guilders?” That was a jump, perhaps, but she had to give me something, anything, before my mind spun so far I became unhinged. “You can’t just—just muddle about in state affairs like this!”
Mother shook her head. “I had thought both of us proficient at muddling about in areas we shouldn’t be. You should be at home, in Thuja, and well away from all of this business. I don’t begrudge you alchemy, Sorin; I just wish you had explored more than wood finishes. A dual affiliation could suit you.” Mother smiled, and it chilled me. “Rather, it does suit you.” She turned at a sound I did not hear and pointed.
A man approached from the north, two thick leather bags slung over his shoulders. “Get dressed. Walerian will have brought the inks. We can finish your guild mark before sundown. Tomorrow we depart. I’ll take you home myself, to ensure you don’t wander back.” Her voice had returned to that separated coolness that I loathed. I bristled, more out of habit than anything else.
I wrapped a hand around my neck, making sure to keep the blankets up around myself with the other. “I don’t want a tattoo,” I stated as Walerian dropped the bags at Mother’s feet and grunted.
Mother pulled a roll of cotton from the first bag and handed it to me. A flash of softness swept across her face before she turned away.
It was enough to steady my fingers so that the binding went on properly the first time. The other clothes were leather, and the cape and boots trimmed with a fur I didn’t recognize. Still, the thought of the tattoo ate away at all that brash confidence I’d had moments ago. “Mother, are you all right? Really?”
“Hmm?” She looked up at me finally, then wiped dirt from my pants with the back of her hand. “Yes, and so are you.” She gestured with a fragment of bone she’d pulled from one of Walerian’s satchels. “The life you want is right here. You went out looking for it, and it’s found you. Excellent work, and well worthy of a journey piece. Now sit.”
Too many years of bowing to those words and that tone froze me to the ground. The heaviness from the Thujan lake, from Magda’s eyes, and Master Rahad’s words, settled across my lungs like a wet blanket. I couldn’t sit. I couldn’t run. I could only stare at Mother, and that piece of bone.
Walerian placed the ink container on the ground and grabbed me by the arm.
“Hey!” I startled into action and yelled, images of the not-guards from Thuja slamming across my vision. Walerian’s fingers chilled my skin even through the layers of leather. I hissed at him and yanked my arm from his grasp. They couldn’t force this. There were rules.
Walerian moved to grab me again, but Mother raised her hand.
“It’s time, Sorin. No more running.” Mother tilted her head and raised her eyebrows. “You can still get an alchemist tattoo one day, should you find a suitable apprenticeship. Making one choice does not preclude you from making another, later on.”
My heart pounded. It was one betrayal after another, but this…Mother couldn’t.
She stepped toward me, and I stepped back in tandem until I backed into a jack pine. The narrow trunk dug into my back, but Mother was close enough to me now that I could smell the sawdust on her clothes. I hated the way the familiarly helped me remember to breathe, even as I thought my heart might break through my chest.
Mother stroked my cheek, the bone still in her other hand. “It shouldn’t be like this, but it is. You will need to trust me. You know yourself, but I know your skill.” Mother’s fingers trailed down to my neck and thrummed on the spot where the guild mark would be placed.
I needed to run, or scream, or stop this entire chain of events, but the pine felt too big to get around all of a sudden. Mother was a woodcutter, and a woodcutter only. She supported me. She loved me. She’d chosen me. I was her heir and…and…
The tip of the bone, now black with ink, hovered just over my skin. The wetness dripped down, cold and slimy, and made my skin crawl.
“A mark can’t be placed without consent, Sorin. You know that. You’ve earned the mark, and your place with the woodcutters.”
Again, the ink dripped onto my skin, and in the damp, I saw a future of saws and veneer, dust and glue. I saw my pigments used to dye royal crests that Magda would wear as she sat on her throne, ruling with a regent by her side—a regent with black curls and wide hips, but who wasn’t me. I saw Sameer in his textile shop, curling ribbon between a thumb and forefinger and dreaming it was veneer. I saw the factories come, the machines, and take it all away.
I didn’t want this future, not for any of us.
“Stop.”
I met Mother’s eyes. In them was a childhood of strong guidance, of directed patience, of love and partial abandonment. I saw her guide my hand as I cut my first veneer, and her strike me across the face when, in an act of defiance, I threw her favorite knife into the fireplace. That same unyielding
love was on her face now.
“I don’t want it,” I whispered, finally. I moved my head, so the wrong side of my neck faced her, and felt the bone tip smear ink across my skin.
“Hold Sorin down.”
I jerked against Walerian’s hands as he pulled my arms back around the tree trunk. He held my wrists with one hand and my head with the other, forcing it back to face Mother. I pulled against him and screamed, but he had my wrists smashed into the bark.
“Stop! Please!”
Heat flared near my feet. Mother stepped away from me, leaving footprints of burnt sorrel in her wake. Desiccated leaves puffed from existence in a flash of sparks. Vines slithered from the ground, from the base of the tree, and wound around my body, cementing me to the jack pine.
Mother smiled but did not speak, and in her smile, I saw no warmth.
And it had been warm when she’d found me last night, though we were in the middle of winter.
It had been warm, and petals had floated in the air, and I had fallen to unconsciousness at her unspoken words.
She had been alone and unharmed despite being sought by witches.
And the sorrel burned at her feet.
And her voice called from my memory, telling me to stay away from unbound guilds. I remembered her warnings. That if I left Thuja, a witch might find me and take all my extraction knowledge and the guild secrets she’d trusted me with. I remembered her chilling words. “There are witches everywhere, Sorin,” she’d whispered into my hair. “They are everywhere, and they don’t need to impale you with a magic sword to take your skills. Not anymore.”
Gods, I was an idiot. A sheltered, unguilded moron.
I pulled against the vines, against Walerian’s hands. I screamed. “NO!” It was a plea—a childish, desperate plea—to the woman who had sheltered me, taught me, cherished me when I hadn’t been a girl. It wasn’t a plea for a witch.
“Calm down,” Walerian said.
A shiver coursed down my body. It was the voice from the glacier. The voice from the guildhall. I froze like a hare. My witch tormentor was here, now, and he worked with Mother! Betrayal intertwined with confusion. She’d worked so hard to keep me away, just to end up here? Forcing a tattoo for a guild I’d never wanted? It didn’t make any sense!
“Sorin has not consented,” Walerian said gruffly.
Mother met my eyes. We stayed locked together for several long breaths. She’d had him follow me the whole way here. She’d tried to send me back, but even then, we’d have ended up in this place, Mother and I. There was a stifling inevitability to this moment, bred from being her heir. I could run, or reject the mark outright, but I could see in her eyes that she would follow me, witch or not, and she would keep asking until my answer was yes.
I let my head drop forward.
“All right.”
The vines fell away.
“Steady now, Sorin.” Walerian’s grip tightened on my wrists, and his other hand forced my head back against the trunk. The bone, when it pierced my skin, felt like the nails from our roof as they rained down upon me, except there were thousands of them now, and they would not relent. I swallowed screams, and pleading, and I yelled at myself to stay still, to not toss my head and pull at Walerian’s hands. A poorly done guild tattoo was grounds for execution under suspicion of forgery, so I forced the shaking from my body and thought of being at home, or at the alchemist’s fair, or back in bed with Magda and her bluntness.
“Halfway done now, Sorin. Just a bit more.” Wetness dripped down my skin and stained the white leather on my shoulder. I pressed my back into the tree bark. I wanted to draw blood there to rival the pain in my neck. When that didn’t work, I tried to imagine what my life would be like after this. What would it be like to enter a guildhall with my mark? Would eyes fall on my neck and smiles return, instead of frowns? Would there be warm greetings and invitations to join tables, instead of aloofness and fear?
I searched for some joy in the images but came up empty no matter how I brought them together. What should have been a mark of pride, earned and submitted to willingly, instead corrupted and tainted my flesh. Each prick felt like a deep stain that even a solvent could not remove.
“It’s done.” Walerian released me as Mother pulled back. She tossed the bone and the ink tray to the ground, where the black spread across the snow. I took a step from the tree and prodded the swollen area of my neck with two fingertips, wincing at the pain. When I brought my hand down, it was stained black and red, the colors swirling into teardrops.
“It hurts,” I managed. They were a child’s words, but what else was there to say? It felt almost like a burn, the skin around the area raised and too warm despite the temperature. It throbbed, it seared, both on my skin and deep inside me, but saying as much would not change its presence on my throat.
“Take care to let it scab over properly, and let the scabs come off on their own,” Mother instructed as she cleaned her hands in the snow. “Otherwise, we shall have to do it again.”
She stood back up and pointed west, farther into the woods. The sun had fallen beneath the canopy, and the forest beyond loomed dark. “We’re less than a kilometer from my camp. We will spend the night there, and you can meet the queen. Tell her about Magda if you like. Show her your tattoo. Tomorrow, we will return home.”
Walerian held out his right hand. The snow around his boots melted, and the bite to the air fell away. “Follow me,” he said as he turned and headed farther into the forest.
Mother hesitated before following. There was no joy on her face, but pride crackled all around her. I wanted to capture it for my own, for her pride in me was seldom so visible, but my mouth tasted like ash and my stomach clenched into cramps.
“Sorin?” she asked. “It’s just a tattoo. The discomfort will soon fade. I’m… It was the right thing to do, for you.”
“I came here to find you and bring you home.”
Mother nodded and gave a terse smile. “And you have. Well done. If the pain in your neck becomes troublesome, you can think about how we can best rebuild the house. Walerian and I had…a discussion about his men’s tactics in trying to find me, so I do apologize for that. Come. It’s time to see the queen.”
She held out her hand to me. When I still didn’t come forward, she stepped in and wrapped an arm around my shoulder. I closed my eyes, unable to move. The queen. I didn’t care. All I could think about was the throbbing of my neck, and the woodcutting tattoo, and that it was over. Everything was over.
My choice had been made.
Twenty-Three: Multiplication
The queen was Magda, some twenty years older. She was stretched taller than the royal daughter, but without the musculature to fill her out. Where Magda was strong, the queen was elegant. Where Magda sneered and smirked, the queen’s face was sharp. Her lips still idled in neutrality as they had in my youth—neither smiling nor frowning, neither approving nor disdaining. She had far more wrinkles than I remembered, but that could have been due to the passage of time. Regardless, I still thought she looked, not burned, but desiccated, like Mother’s blueberries, and like the dry, browned sorrel that covered the camp.
A camp filled with guild witches.
Magic was apparent when we crossed the boundary line. Following Mother, I stepped toward an enormous ring of false foxfire—the same funny black candlestick structures from before—and into a forest of charred tree trunks and crunching leaf litter. Snow still hung and glistened on the pines outside the ring, and nuthatches called, and turkey tail fungi sprouted their blues and greens from the stumps of thin hardwoods. Inside the ring, everything was burned and hard, and while it was warm, I did not want to take off my cloak.
“Come along, Sorin,” Mother said when I lingered near the false foxfire, well away from the queen. My foot rose to comply, more habit than anything, and it took concerted effort to slam it back down onto the burnt sorrel. What was I doing, willingly walking into a fairy ring with witches? The tattoo still bu
rned on my neck, but it hadn’t addled my mind.
“I want to go back.” I took a deep breath, then added, “I am going back. To Magda.”
“She can wait a bit. Please come here, Sorin and Amada.”
Orders from the queen. My queen. My feet moved without my permission, but there was no magic involved. Years of listening to Mother, of doing what she asked so I might earn a chance to see Magda again, or go to the alchemical fair, overrode my common sense.
I walked to the center of the camp, which was small, perhaps sixty meters across. Scattered within the fairy ring were hide tents and short timber frames, and on the trees… I blinked, then sidestepped to a needleless pine. An old, transmuted amulet of oak swung from a low branch. I reached to touch it, but my hand couldn’t get close. The thing radiated heat so intense it scalded my fingers even three meters away.
“Sorin!” Mother said sharply.
I pulled away and kept walking. Amulets on trees. Mother, a witch. The queen in an enchanted foxfire ring. It felt like a dream, almost. Here, I was approaching a ruler I’d not seen since—since when? Since I was small enough to try on her shoes while Magda giggled from the queen’s bedchamber door. Since Magda had broken the queen’s favorite teapot while showing me some new sword maneuverer. Since just before I had started wearing my binding.
“You’re pleased with all this?”
“Huh?” I’d been smiling at the memories. It’d been enough to momentarily distract me from Mother, and the ache of the guild mark, but now both slammed back into my mind, and I flinched.
“Apologies, Your Highness.” I bowed and made sure to wipe my smile away. Did one bow to a runaway queen? Kidnapped queen? She didn’t look kidnapped, but then again, Mother didn’t look like a witch.
Mother came up to the queen’s side and inclined her head. “The healing took more time than Master Walerian and I had planned, Maja. Otherwise, we’d have come sooner.”
