Wren shifted, turning toward Tamsin. “Like what?”
Their faces were so close. “Like maybe I’m not as terrible as I always thought.”
“You’re not so terrible,” Wren murmured, her eyes drooping, her words thick with sleep.
Tamsin rolled over before Wren could change her mind.
Lying there in silence, listening to the wind whistle through the cracks in the walls, they worried their separate worries. They feared their separate fears. Tamsin felt something else, too. Just a flicker, like the sparks she had shot from her fingers. She hadn’t been so near another person in years. Certainly not someone as good as Wren.
For Tamsin begrudgingly had to admit that Wren was not only a better person than she, but also someone who made her want to dissect her words, to think about her actions.
Wren made her want to be better.
“Tamsin?” Wren’s voice was soft in the darkness. Tentative. She sounded breakable.
Tamsin tensed, certain that if she spoke, Wren would ask her to move to the floor. She couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Tamsin needed the warmth radiating from the source’s skin. She needed to believe she was truly smelling lavender each time Wren shifted beside her.
Wren, forever describing sunsets and explaining smells, gave Tamsin a glimpse of the world the curse had taken from her. Wren’s touch offered the warmth that had once been so elusive. Tamsin needed Wren, much as she didn’t want to admit it. And so she lay still and did not reply. When Wren did not speak again, Tamsin exhaled softly, letting her mind run circles around itself, letting it wonder and letting it want, until the rise and fall of Wren’s breathing became a lullaby that sent her off to sleep.
EIGHTEEN WREN
Wren woke with her back against the wall, her cheek on Tamsin’s shoulder, their legs tangled together. Inevitable, she told herself, when two people share one small bed.
Still, logic couldn’t tame the fluttering in her chest.
Tamsin smelled of salt and sage, her skin surprisingly warm for one so cold. Wren reached up to brush Tamsin’s hair from her face, and her fingers hit the ribbon around the witch’s neck. The butterflies in her stomach stopped their fluttering. Wren was indebted to the witch, to every cruel, cold facet of her. Perhaps Wren didn’t even care about Tamsin so much as envy her and her cavalier attitude, her absolutely infuriating propensity to keep secrets, her refusal to consider the feelings of anyone who wasn’t herself.
Wren fingered Tamsin’s silky curls as she pushed them out of her eyes. It was true that Tamsin was brash and complicated. Still, there was no denying there was something soft about her, something sweet that she took great pains to disguise. There were moments, glimpses of a grin, the sparkle of her dark eyes, when Wren saw again the person behind the curse—the girl Tamsin was but couldn’t show. The girl Tamsin might have been if she could have loved.
When Tamsin spoke about her sister, it was clear how much she still cared, curse be damned. Last night, even, as they had maneuvered through the awkwardness of sharing a bed, it was almost as if… No. Wren wouldn’t let her imagination run away like that. She had always been a dreamer. An idealist. Even now, Wren was fairly certain she could live forever on those tiny glimpses of Tamsin. That even the barest hint of the witch’s true heart would be enough to sustain her.
Pathetic, she told herself as she extracted her other arm from beneath Tamsin’s head. The witch sighed deeply and rolled from her back onto her side, so that she faced Wren. Her eyes were still closed, her face relaxed in sleep. Tamsin was undeniably beautiful, always, but without the ever-present tension and anger she held in consciousness, she looked different. Younger. They could hardly have a year’s difference between them, but the load Tamsin carried aged her. Wren could help, if only Tamsin would trust her. But of course it wasn’t that simple.
Wren wanted to cry at the irony of having fallen for a girl with a useless heart.
Carefully, so slowly she thought she might pull a muscle, Wren climbed over Tamsin’s sleeping form. She didn’t want the witch to wake, didn’t want to have the necessary yet awkward conversation about sharing a sleeping space and how it meant nothing at all.
Nothing, Wren knew, could still mean so much.
She stepped across the shack and pulled on her father’s boots. There was a pang in her chest as she thought of him, tossing and turning in their tiny cottage. She tried to picture his face but to her horror found that the image was fading. She had already lost the color of his eyes to Tamsin. When her father’s face was meaningless to her heart, she would have no reason to hold on to the rest. He would slip soundlessly from the forefront of her memory, just another person she had passed in this great, wide world.
Perhaps that was for the best. Surely, it would be easier not to remember what she had lost.
Wasn’t that the reason Tamsin seemed so defeated? Every day she had held the memory of her sister. Of the classmate who had died because of her. No wonder the witch was so closed off and cold. There was no room within her for anything but guilt and resentment and fear. Her entire life was a reminder of her failure. Of the rash mistake of a child.
That should not be enough to define her. She needed the chance to forgive herself. To make things right. But to do that, they had to find Marlena. Wren glanced at Tamsin, who was still snoring lightly. She pulled the witch’s green cloak from the foot of the bed and pushed the door open slowly so it wouldn’t creak. She made her way through the darkness to the inn, hoping to warm her cold hands with a cup of tea. Tea always had a way of helping Wren think.
This inn was not nearly as nice as the other, but the one thing both places had in common was that they were littered with witches. Keeping her head down, Wren slipped into a chair at the head of a mostly empty table. Tea poured itself into a metal tankard, hints of bergamot and cardamom tickling her nose. Wren took a long sip. The tea went down easily, hot enough to soothe her but not so hot that she burned her tongue.
She set to work sifting methodically through the pockets of Tamsin’s cloak. She found string and buttons in one, in another a rind of cheese so hard it might have been stone. A third held a small brown pouch of dried herbs; another housed a round, pink crystal. None of the items glowed warm in her hand. None of them were magic. The pile of trinkets kept growing, new pockets appearing as soon as she thought she’d found them all. But none held Marlena’s diary.
Wren paused, frustrated. Took a sip of tea. She had wanted to do something, to take action herself. Tamsin was so cagey when it came to Marlena’s diary, as though it had secrets that might reveal themselves to Wren, secrets Tamsin didn’t want shared. She never would have given it to Wren voluntarily. But if they were going to find Marlena, they needed a place to start.
Wren wanted to do that for them. She wanted to contribute, to do more than offer up magic when they needed to eat. She wanted to prove to Tamsin that they were a team, that the witch needed her as much as Wren needed Tamsin.
But to do that, she first had to find the diary within the depths of Tamsin’s cloak. Not to read it, for that would be a violation of a perfect stranger, and if Marlena was anything like her sister, Wren knew better than to invite her wrath.
Rather, she hoped to get a sense of Marlena and her magic. If she knew the scent, the feel of Marlena’s power, perhaps she could follow that trail to the real person.
Wren took another sip of tea. She was searching like an ordinary person. She wasn’t searching like a source. She put the tankard down and spread the cloak out on the table. She closed her eyes, hands roving slowly over the thick fabric. She paid attention to the sensation, waiting for warmth, waiting for a hint that something enchanted was near. Her mind was so busy worrying about what to expect that she almost didn’t notice the taste of honey on her tongue. She stopped, her hands hovering over a fold on the left side of the cloak. She lowered her fingers and felt the ghost of a pinprick. There.
Wren pulled the thin volume from its pocket, the leather cover soft and worn, t
he paper’s edges stained and torn. At first she was unable to pry the cover open. Then, when the book finally fell open in her hand, she was met with blank page after blank page.
“All right,” Wren muttered. “You don’t want to reveal yourself to me. That’s fine. You don’t know me.” She felt rather silly talking to a book.
A summoning spell whizzed past her right ear. Wren startled, glancing around the room at the witches immersed in their craft. One witch chanted softly over a book filled with scribbled runes; another stirred herbs into her teacup. A group of boys no older than twelve were summoning things from across the room, competing with one another to see whose spell could reach the item first.
None of them were shying away from their magic.
It’s like you’re fighting too hard against what you are, Leya had said. Give in.
Wren opened to a blank page at random. She slowly rubbed the paper between her thumb and pointer finger, freeing the traces of magic so that she could read them. She brought the parchment to her nose.
First came the overwhelming stink of sulfur. Wren gagged but forced herself to breathe through it. It was the same smell that had flooded her nostrils as they walked through the bog, the same smell that surrounded the victims of the plague. It was the stink of dark magic. She was on the right track.
After the scent of rotting eggs had dissipated, Wren caught a hint of salt. Her hair ruffled, as though catching a soft breeze. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out the traces of magic in the room and listen to what the paper revealed.
A crunching, like the snapping of twigs. The crashing of thunder, a bright flash behind her closed eyelids like lightning. Her mouth tasted bitter, like charred wood. And through it all, Wren was lulled by a rhythmic roaring, though she knew not where it came from. Perhaps it was the earth itself.
“What are you doing?”
The magic died as quickly as it had come, the images fleeing so quickly that Wren began to wonder if they had ever been there at all. She opened her eyes to find Tamsin looking between Wren and the diary with apprehension.
“It wouldn’t let me read it,” Wren explained sheepishly, showing Tamsin the blank pages. “Not that I would have, even if I could,” she added quickly. The witch’s face relaxed. “But I can smell magic.” She tried to hold on to the salt, the lightning, and the bitter ash. “I just thought—”
“That’s right.” Tamsin settled herself in the seat across from Wren and leaned forward on her elbows. “What does mine smell like, then?” She was staring right into Wren’s eyes, her lips twisted in a mischievous grin.
Wren froze. It was oddly intimate, describing a scent to the person it emanated from. “Fresh herbs,” she finally managed. “Rosemary and sage, mostly. Sometimes basil. Dill.” Her face flushed. Wren resented her body for so mercilessly betraying her feelings.
“Huh.” Tamsin was still staring at her intently. “Well, then, what did you find?”
Wren told the witch what she’d tasted, heard, and felt. Tamsin’s expression softened with each detail, her eyes far away.
When Wren mentioned the rhythmic roaring and the smell of salt, Tamsin’s focus snapped back to the present. “I know where Marlena is.”
“You do?” It was Wren’s turn to lean across the table. She had expected her clues to help, not to solve. “Wait, I actually did something right?”
Tamsin frowned again. “What do you mean?”
Wren squirmed, suddenly self-conscious. “I just… tend to not be very useful. I can sell an egg and make a broth, but other than that, my skills are rather limited.” She shrugged, fiddling with the corner of Tamsin’s cloak.
“Stop that,” Tamsin scolded. Wren’s hands stopped moving, but Tamsin shook her head. “Not the cloak. Your lack of self-appreciation. It’s very irritating. You have power most people can’t dream of. Start acting like it. You matter.” Tamsin locked eyes with Wren, sending a jolt of energy through her blood. “Now come on.” Tamsin pushed back from the table, gesturing for Wren to hand over her cloak. “We’ve got quite the walk ahead of us.”
* * *
Wren had never been one to fear the dark, but the never-ending night had changed that. She clutched tightly to her lantern, the little blue flame dancing like the dread in her stomach with each step she took. The strange sounds of the endless night—shrieks and howls and scrapes—kept her close to Tamsin. So close that she kept stepping on the heels of the witch’s boots, earning herself dark looks and weary sighs.
They followed a narrow path that took them far from the Fickle Fare, into a dense patch of woods. The air was thick with magic, making it difficult to breathe. A fine mist clung to the trees, dressing them with droplets as big and round as pearls in the lamplight. Between the tight-knit trees were endless patches of briars, the thorns so sharp that Wren and Tamsin had to pause and pick their way around for fear they would be caught forever.
It was quiet, save for the snapping of branches and the rustling of their clothing as they worked to extract themselves from the forest’s clutches. Wren nearly cried with joy when the trees opened up to a glen, all rolling hills and rings of thick grass. The moss beneath her feet hummed softly, one solid, solitary note, which reverberated in her chest, taking the place of her heartbeat. She became the sound.
The glen was filled with rock formations: giant spirals, wild zigzags, tall towers, and careful clusters. Wren made to pass beneath a slab of rock balanced on two tall stones, but Tamsin pulled her back.
“Better not,” she said, “unless you’d like to fall straight into the sky.”
“At least then I’d have some idea where we’re going,” Wren muttered, but her heart wasn’t in it.
“I can’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner. I should have known.” Tamsin’s mournful expression told Wren that she was talking not simply about their destination but about Marlena herself.
“How could you have?” Wren reached out a hand to touch Tamsin’s shoulder, but Tamsin tensed. Wren pulled her hand away.
“She’s my twin sister.” Tamsin wrapped her cloak tightly around her. “I was supposed to know.”
Wren tugged at her braid. She knew nothing about being a sister, but she knew something about what it felt like to fail family. “It’s not your fault.” Wren kicked at the grass. “I know you don’t care what I have to say, but I hope you know it’s true.”
“I do, you know.” Tamsin’s voice was hesitant. Wren furrowed her brow. “Care,” Tamsin clarified, staring determinedly at her boots.
Wren fought to keep a smile off her face even as she rubbed at the goose bumps lining the backs of her arms. She didn’t want to scare Tamsin away with her emotions, especially since she knew Tamsin hadn’t meant her words the way Wren wanted her to.
She couldn’t mean them like that.
The witch led them up the side of a hill to level ground. They walked in silence together, Wren fighting the impulse to stop and collect bundles of wildflowers, their petals deep purple, bright blue, vivid pink. She didn’t want Tamsin to think her frivolous. She didn’t want to slow them down.
They did not speak again until they reached a roaring river, the water moving so swiftly and its magic so disjointed that it left Wren nauseated and shaky.
“Careful,” Tamsin said. “The stones get slick.” Then she was picking her way carefully across the flat stepping-stones that offered a path through the angry water. Wren exhaled sharply and followed, willing her feet to keep her upright.
On the other side was another forest, only this one was neither lush nor green. It was more the ghost of a forest, trunks and branches bare and blackened and burned. Ash settled on Wren’s tongue, the taste familiar. She felt a swell of pride, despite the dismal scenery. Her magic had led them there.
Wren was so distracted that she forgot to watch her feet. She tripped over a giant branch and sprawled out on the hard dirt, the wind knocked from her lungs. She scrambled for her lantern, which had fallen beside her, and held it u
p to investigate.
She immediately wished she hadn’t.
It wasn’t a branch she had tripped over at all, but bone. What had appeared to be gnarled, petrified wood was actually a giant set of antlers still attached to a sharp snow-white skeleton. There was a terrible stench of spoiled venison. Wren nearly retched right there in the grass.
And then, before their eyes, the bones began to move.
Tamsin yanked Wren to her feet. She was too startled to protest the pain that shot up her arm. The skeleton groaned, clanking and clattering as it rose to all fours. A song composed of three high, sharp notes reverberated through the trees. It sent a chill down Wren’s spine. It put her skin on edge.
“Okay, now listen to me,” Tamsin said, her voice so quiet it was barely a whisper. “I’m going to need you to stay calm.”
“I think we’re past that.” Wren had squeezed her eyes shut in hopes of staunching the tears that tickled at the edges. She had never seen anything so horrible. A deer without its skin—with nothing but the hard interior that gave it shape—wasn’t an animal anymore. It was a monster. “Is it dark magic?”
“Worse,” Tamsin said, her voice hard. “It’s one of Arwyn’s scouts.”
The name meant nothing to Wren, but the look of terror on Tamsin’s face said enough. She had no desire to come face-to-face with the sort of witch who would create such a gruesome creature. “Who’s Arwyn?”
Tamsin’s eyes flickered around the dark forest, the light from her flame casting strange, galloping shadows across the earth. “She’s one of the Coven. She’s, uh…” Tamsin trailed off, eyes lingering on the skeleton. “She’s the one who turned me in.”
Without thinking, Wren put a hand on Tamsin’s shoulder. The witch flinched slightly, but she did not pull away.
The horrible song echoed through the clearing again, much closer this time. The skeleton before them lifted its head in the air, rapt. Leather and oil clung to the breeze. The air rattled with the creaking and clattering of bones. Arwyn was coming, bringing a herd of skeleton spies with her. A large foot stepped on a branch, the snap echoing through the empty air.
Sweet & Bitter Magic Page 20
