“I couldn’t… I can’t remember what color his eyes are.”
Tamsin clucked her tongue. “That’s normal.” She waved off Wren’s frantic expression, turning away. “It’s not like you know what color my eyes are.”
“They’re brown,” Wren answered automatically. The witch turned back to face her, eyebrows raised, her brown eyes wide.
“So, what?” Wren demanded, trying to calm the panic buzzing in her brain. “You take my love, and I get… what?”
“My company.” Tamsin lifted her lips in the pretense of a smile. “I accompany you with the intention of seeking the dark witch and securing the Coven’s boon. Once the hunt is complete, either by our hand or another’s, you will give me the love you hold for your father. After that, we won’t ever have to see each other again.”
Wren swallowed thickly, her mouth dry. “Okay,” she said finally. “Where do I sign?”
Tamsin frowned. “Sign? You don’t sign anything.”
“What, so we’re just supposed to trust each other?” It was Wren’s turn to raise her eyebrows.
“Of course not.” Tamsin looked disgusted. “All pacts dealing in the future trade of love must be sealed with a kiss. The kiss serves as your promise.”
It was, perhaps, the last thing Wren had expected. She squirmed beneath the witch’s stare, a hundred emotions rushing through her head. She had shared one awkward, teeth-knocking kiss with Farmer Haddon’s eldest son, but she had never kissed a girl. She certainly hadn’t imagined it happening for the first time like this.
“Trust me,” Tamsin said, misinterpreting her hesitation. “I get no pleasure from this either.” She let out a little laugh, light and musical, like a flute. “Get it? Because of my curse?” She trailed off, frowning, as though surprised by herself. She gave Wren a searching look. “Your love was stronger than I thought.” Then Tamsin’s face darkened again, the corners of her lips slipping back into a small frown. “Don’t look so frightened; it’s just a quick peck. Surely you have kissed someone before?”
Wren’s curiosity at the witch’s changing moods quickly soured into resentment. She heaved a giant sigh, her expression dour. “Go on, then, let’s get this over wi—” But before she could finish her sentence, the witch stepped forward and silenced her with a kiss.
SEVEN TAMSIN
Technically, Wren was a very good kisser. It was a shame that it sparked absolutely nothing in Tamsin—no butterflies, no warm glow, no fire burning deep and dark within.
She knew what she was supposed to feel, had felt those things before with Leya, their lips pressed together behind the stacks in the dustiest corner of the library next to the books with magic so ancient they practically snored.
There was a second—one single second where the tiny glimmer of love tried to slip out of her grasp—when Tamsin thought she felt a flutter in her stomach. But just as quickly as it struck, the feeling was gone. She pulled her lips away from Wren’s and sent a black ribbon winding around the girl’s pale throat.
Wren clawed at the magic, her voice high and breathy. “What’s happening?” the source shrieked. “What did you do?”
Tamsin merely stood still, letting the magic wrap a ribbon around her own neck and tie itself neatly into a bow. “It’s just a ribbon,” she said, blinking blankly at Wren’s outsize panic. “If you stop pawing at it, you’ll find that it hasn’t actually harmed you.” She swept her hair away to show Wren her own throat. “See? I have one too.” She tugged sharply on the end of the ribbon, but the knot didn’t budge. “It’s not going anywhere, so don’t waste your time trying.”
Wren shakily sucked in a small breath. “But… why?”
“Just in case.” Tamsin swept around the table, lifting a basket from the floor and hanging it on a peg by the door. “Should you choose to deny me my due, the ribbon will strangle you.” Her shoulders quirked up slightly, almost like a hiccup. It was a simple enough explanation. She thought she ought to take it slow with Wren. Despite being a source, she didn’t seem to be particularly versed in magic.
Wren did not take the news very well. She was breathing too quickly, air escaping her mouth in little gasps. A tiny bead of sweat dripped down her temple. “You’ve got one too,” she finally managed. There was accusation in her voice.
“Yes, well, it’s a pact,” Tamsin said flatly. She really thought it should be self-explanatory. “It took two of us to make it, which means it’s possible for either of us to break it.” She waved her hand unconcernedly. “Think of it as security. Don’t forget: I’m bound to you, too.”
“Oh, good,” Wren said darkly.
Tamsin closed her eyes as she exhaled her frustration. Wren was being quite dramatic. After all, the decision to hunt had been her idea. Tamsin hadn’t asked for any of this. This was not a game, not something to be taken lightly. Dark magic was out there, and if they could not find the witch responsible, it was impossible to tell what might happen, both to the world and to them.
The banging of a cupboard pulled Tamsin from her thoughts. Her muscles tensed, her body flooding with panic as she waited for the weight of her sister’s diary to come barreling forward. She couldn’t handle another entry. Not here in front of this ridiculous girl. Not now, knowing what they had to do. Where they had to go.
But it was only Wren, rummaging through her cupboard and pulling out an armload of objects.
“What are you doing?” Tamsin asked, bewildered, as Wren dumped feathers, crystals, a bundle of dried sage, and a tarot deck onto her kitchen table.
“Packing for you, since you seem incapable of doing it yourself.” Wren pointed to the spot where Tamsin still stood frozen. “Do you have a bag?”
“Incredible.” Tamsin shook her head in amazement.
Wren scowled. “What’s incredible?”
“How someone filled with so much magic can know so little about it.” Tamsin gathered up the objects and shoved them haphazardly back into the cupboard. “Those are trinkets to trick the simple minds of ordinary folk.” She let her eyes rove over Wren, who was appearing more and more ordinary with each passing moment. The girl squirmed beneath her stare.
When Tamsin finally grew bored with making Wren uncomfortable, she fluttered her fingers, and a small rucksack packed itself with a change of clothing and several bundles of herbs. For a moment she considered summoning the diary, but the panic she’d felt had not fully ebbed. She’d read the entries it had asked of her. She knew how her sister had felt, could taste the bitterness dripping from each page.
Marlena had resented her, and Tamsin had never known. But she did now, with her sister’s loopy handwriting seared into her memory, frustration and pain preserved in the pages Tamsin had read. She didn’t want to know the side of Marlena that the diary showed.
And so she sent it burrowing beneath her mattress, throwing a sticking spell on the book for good measure. As a consequence, Tamsin coughed until her throat went raw. Wren watched it all, openmouthed, her eyes sweeping across Tamsin’s body, not like she was looking at her but like she was looking through her.
“What?” Tamsin slung the bag over her shoulder, suddenly self-conscious.
“Sorry.” Wren shut her mouth. “It’s just that I’ve never actually seen magic coming from a witch before.”
Tamsin took a step back. “You can see my magic?” It felt vaguely intrusive, as though Wren knew more about Tamsin than Tamsin knew about herself.
“I can see all magic.” Wren offered up the ghost of a grin. “I told you, remember? I can help with the hunt. I’m not the burden you’re making me out to be.”
Tamsin highly doubted that. Still, if they were going to find the dark witch, the ability to track magic was likely to come in handy at some point, although she had no intention of telling Wren that. Tamsin wiggled her fingers again. The fire doused itself; the shutters sealed themselves. The house went quiet and still. Quiet, save for Wren, who sniffed loudly, her nose wrinkled with effort. Tamsin stared at her suspiciously.
“Are you smelling me?”
“No,” Wren snapped, turning away quickly.
“You are,” Tamsin said, barking out a laugh. “You’re smelling my magic.” Leya had been distractible too, more attuned to the world around her than Tamsin, but even she hadn’t been as obvious about it as Wren was.
“I wasn’t.…” Wren trailed off, her shoulders hunched, her body stiff.
“Sure you weren’t.” Tamsin sighed deeply, the ribbon around her neck tightening ever so slightly, as though mocking her impulsivity, mocking her decision to accept this impossible quest with this ridiculous person. “Let’s go,” she snapped, pulling her cloak from its peg and striding out the front door into the gray afternoon air, Wren at her heels.
As they walked from her cottage to the town square, Tamsin had to glance over her shoulder every few moments to make sure Wren was still there. The girl’s eyes clung to the sky, squinting up at the roof of every cottage they passed. She stopped more than once, biting her lip so hard she drew blood.
Tamsin hated the idea that there was something Wren could see that she couldn’t, that the world kept secrets only Wren could reveal. She knew she was more powerful than Wren, who couldn’t actually do anything with her magic besides house it. Still, after so many years of being the best, Tamsin did not enjoy the feeling of inadequacy that came from knowing the source could do something she could not.
“Wren,” Tamsin finally snapped, shifting her bag to the other shoulder. The world Within was already nearly five days’ trek from Ladaugh. At Wren’s current pace, it would take them closer to ten. “Can we at the very least get outside the village before the sun goes down?”
Wren jumped, startled. “Sorry, what?”
Tamsin sighed exasperatedly. “Walk. Faster.”
Wren hoisted her bag higher on her shoulder and hurried to catch up. She glanced backward. “It’s getting worse,” she said, her voice hushed. “The plague, I mean.” She pointed at something Tamsin could not see. “What kind of person casts a spell that steals memories?” She stared at Tamsin intently, as though she expected an answer.
“Someone with something they want to forget,” Tamsin said darkly.
“It’s evil,” Wren said, and chewed on her bottom lip. “To strip away everything that makes a person human. And then to steal their life? What’s it all for?”
Tamsin didn’t know. It did seem mercilessly cruel. To prolong death by first taking the things that made life worth living. There was a difference between existing and living. That was something Tamsin knew well.
“I can’t imagine what kind of monster chooses to use dark magic.” Wren shivered. “Surely even witches have morals?”
Tamsin went cold. Despite the fact that Wren couldn’t possibly know about her past, it still felt personal.
“You really do walk extraordinarily slowly,” she snapped. “If we’re going to end the plague, we need to first actually leave Ladaugh.”
She looked pointedly at her companion, who shut her mouth and turned her eyes to the dirt below her feet.
When they reached the square, Tamsin stopped walking abruptly, causing Wren—who was still watching the ground—to barrel right into her, sending a spark of heat across Tamsin’s shoulder.
The town square was surprisingly bustling for a gloomy afternoon. A small group of villagers watched as fifty-some strangers moved about it, drinking from the fountain, bartering with one another for bread and nuts. Wooden carts were loaded with armchairs, barrels of water, and even beds. Women corralled children, shouting instructions to the newcomers, their sharp consonants catching on the wind. Their clothes were covered in dust and dirt, their faces sunbaked, their eyes weary.
Tamsin examined their goods, richly colored and gilded, things fine enough to have come from Farn, the queen’s city. It would account for the group’s weariness. Farn was the final city in the Queendom of Carrow before the Wood that led Within. The caravan had come from the place where Tamsin and Wren were set to go. The Queen’s Road would bring them to the city of Farn, but first they had to journey through the mazelike caverns below the mountains that divided the country. Some travelers hated the dark dampness of the caves, but Tamsin much preferred the ease of an existing path over the idea of actually climbing a mountain.
They watched the procession in silence, gloom settling in Tamsin’s gut as she took in the tired faces of the endless parade of people. She caught snippets of their conversations as they passed. The word “witch” was always accompanied by a scowl.
“What happened to their horses?” Wren’s eyes were stuck on the carts, which, though harnessed for the giant animals, were each drawn by several men instead.
“Spiders,” said a voice to their left. Wren jumped, and Tamsin adjusted her cloak so as not to give away her own surprise. It was a wizened old woman, hunched over nearly double, draped in a worn brown cloak.
“What’s that, Mother?” Wren’s tone was unflinchingly polite, despite the fact that the woman was more of a crone than a kindly grandmother.
“Spiders,” the woman repeated. Her voice was brittle, but a sparkle behind her eyes betrayed the joy of spreading gossip. “Came from the great caverns beneath the mountain two days past. Took the horses in the night.”
Tamsin tensed with understanding, but Wren frowned. “That doesn’t seem right,” she said, eyeing the woman suspiciously. “It would take millions of spiders to carry away a horse. There’s no such way. They were likely just frightened off.”
“Oh, they were mighty scared.” The woman gave Wren a pitying grin. “But no, dear. It only takes one spider if that spider is big enough.”
Wren let out a laugh that tipped toward the hysterical. “You can’t mean…” She waved her hands around, gesturing wildly. “That’s not…” She looked to Tamsin, her eyes widening with horror. “They couldn’t be…”
But of course they could. That was the trouble with dark magic. People always assumed that the stories were exaggerated, that the truth was not nearly so terrible, when in fact the opposite was true.
Even five years prior, twelve years old and filled to the brim with anxious dreams and an impossible imagination, Tamsin had not been able to fathom the consequences of the spell she had cast in hopes of saving her sister’s life. It had swept the world Within with a vengeance unimaginable in even her most paralyzing nightmares. The earth, drained of its magic, rocked like a ship at sea. Trees crashed to the ground like hammers to anvils. Lightning lit up the sky, turning it an eerie, deathly purple. Water flooded the streets, slipped through the cracks in windows, and filled the dormitories to the brim. Most girls got out.
One girl didn’t.
Now another witch had unleashed dark magic. The longer it remained at work, the more aggressively the world would rebel, which meant that spiders large enough to eat horses would be the least of Wren’s worries.
Tamsin, though, was worried enough for both of them.
Wren shot her a wary look. “Are we…” Tamsin shook her head sharply, trying to get the stupid girl to be quiet, but Wren didn’t seem to notice. “Will we pass through those caverns on our way?”
The old woman peered at Tamsin suspiciously. “What are two nice girls like you doing headed north? Nothing there but destruction.” Her eyes narrowed. “Unless, of course, one of you’s a witch.”
Tamsin tried to laugh lightheartedly, but it came out sounding more like a bark. “Of course not. We are going nowhere.” She shot Wren a sharp look before turning back to the woman. “Truth be told, I fear my cousin has started to show symptoms of the plague. Best be off, old woman, lest you catch the sickness too.”
The woman’s eyes widened warily, and she hurried away to rejoin the caravan, her cloak held tightly against her nose and mouth.
“Oh, now, that was awful,” Wren said mournfully. “She was so frightened.”
Tamsin elbowed the girl sharply. “You can’t go around hollering about heading north when people are moving south in droves
. The only ones going north will be witches. Calling that sort of attention to us will only make the journey more difficult.” Tamsin rubbed her left forearm absentmindedly.
She was taking a gigantic risk, the sort of risk that Wren could not possibly appreciate. But Tamsin was on edge, alone in a sea of judgment, a flurry of uncertainty and fear. She did not know if the place where she was born would welcome her back. She did not know if she still had a home at all.
Wren’s mouth was set. “You seem to quite like attention,” she said sourly, sounding for all the world like she was reading from Marlena’s diary.
Tamsin bristled. For the past five years she had done her best to serve the people of Ladaugh and keep her head down. To stay out of the limelight. To be nothing more than a common witch.
“Let’s go.” She tugged on Wren’s wrist, pulling her off balance as they moved away from the square. The road was still filled with people following the caravan. Tamsin wanted to walk in peace, so she led them to the cornfields. It took a bit of thrashing to move through the giant green stalks, but the lack of people made the effort worthwhile.
“Okay,” Wren muttered behind her, “this is ridiculous.”
Tamsin ignored her. Stumbling through cornfields would be the least of their worries as they followed the Queen’s Road to the north, beyond the spindly mountains that rose like spikes in the distance. Atop the tallest peak was the palace where Queen Mathilde held court. Below it lay the ruined capital of Farn. Beyond the city proper was the Wood.
The common folk told their non-magic children nighttime tales of the forest’s dangers—bandits, giants, and wolves alike, each deadlier than the last, depending on who did the telling—but in reality it was only a swath of charms and enchantments that made it impossible for ordinary folk to pass through the seemingly endless expanse of trees. The Wood kept them from traveling to the world Within. Within was for witches.
Witches who weren’t Tamsin.
In fact, she did not know if she would be allowed to pass through the trees at all. Perhaps the ancient spells would sense the mottled scar on her arm and refuse to part the serpentine branches. It was possible the High Councillor had placed a ward around the Wood to prevent Tamsin from ever returning. Every uncertain step she took might be in vain.
Sweet & Bitter Magic Page 8
