by S G Dunster
Magicks, she told herself. It’s magicks that’re turning my insides soft. You’ve got Loredan, and he cares enough for you to marry you despite the fact you’re a wytch.
And considering all that’s happened, this is a great concession.
Of course, he knows not all that’s happened.
Thessaly chewed her lip and rested little, gazing out the window at the dented circle of the moon, interrupted by the spires of trees that hung over the Dda’s longhouse.
Brian had come home after the rest of the family dropped off, dusted black with mine-dirt and tired. He went to the table and took the bowl of stew his wife had left, ate it silently, and climbed into bed next to her, throwing his long arm over her.
Brian supposedly had this same Dda magick Eseld had talked of. Why didn’t Thessaly turn to water at his shadow?
She thought of Rosalie. Guzal. Beatrice. She hoped they didn’t worry too much. Perhaps she could see them the next day, let them know she was fine.
Rye, Hodge. Robert. Thom, even . . . she worried. What did they think of her? She ought not to care, but she did.
As to how she thought of herself, Eseld had said it was because of what she’d taken from the coven. But she had wished for power before. She had savored it, before that. She was like them. She had done it, danced with them, drank from them. She had almost scythed an innocent.
She lay there, her mind racing with thoughts, and Hywell raised up on an elbow and looked at her. “Do I have to sing ‘out on the mountain’ for you, to put you to sleep?”
“I doubt it’d put me asleep.” The words escaped her lips without her mind’s permission.
He grinned—an expression that, in the firelight’s flicker, looked like a devil bred a sprite and had a siren son.
Thessaly frowned at him. “I’m being quiet.”
He tapped his head. “Not in here. I can feel your thoughts’ ripples from across the room.”
“It’s not polite to listen to others’ conversations.”
“I’d like not to, and yet I hear. Not words, just,” he spread his fingers, “ripples.”
“Fine,” Thessaly snapped. Hywell glanced at his parents’ bed and brought his fingers to his lips.
“Fine,” Thessaly said, more quietly. He nodded, walked over to her, and sat on the floor next to the bed.
The song was silly, eerie, and melodic, and it did seem to calm her. Her mind smoothed out, and thought only of trolls, mountains, and curly heads. She drifted, and the sleep was warm, full. She woke to sunlight streaming through the chinked-mud window, cloth flap pulled away to let it in.
“Mornin’,” Eseld said pleasantly. “If you’d like, I’ve an extra shift you could wear, and an apron. I’m expecting a few today.”
“A few what?”
“Sickly souls in need of cunning. Come. Lend some of your fire to this pot.”
Thessaly stood, took the shift—a garment gathered at the neck, sleeveless to let the arms of her cotton shift show through—and slid it over her head. She pulled the apron around her waist and took the spoon from Eseld’s hand.
A woman came with a baby who snuffled and cried and coughed like sucking mud. Eseld tsked over him, made a poultice, and sent them home with some of the stew Thessaly was stirring. Fire went into the poultice, just a breath of it. Breath and fire, Thessaly thought. An old man came with a feloned toe; Eseld lanced it, wrapped it, gave him a poultice of sheep’s ear, and sent him home with stew. As Thessaly stirred the liquid, there was blood in it—blood and fire. Another woman came, this time with two children coughing. Poultice, herbs to drink in tea, and stew. Breath, blood, fire entering the flesh as the paste went on the babes’ skin, and Eseld’s careful fingers letting only a little of each in. Not enough to burn, not enough to drown.
Thessaly wanted to know. She wanted to ask.
“Must be full of magicks,” Thessaly tried, giving the stew another good stir, as it was starting again to stick to the bottom.
“Carrots, celery, cackling cheat, and a little salt and sage,” Eseld replied.
“Sage for cleansing? You think there’s magicks in these illnesses?”
Eseld gave her a look. “Sage for flavor. And yes, cleansing.”
Thessaly wondered. Did Eseld not know what she was giving? Did she not see, not feel the floes she left in everything she touched?
The day went by fast, and Thessaly felt no desire to return to the abbey. Hywell was playing there for supper, she knew, and he could likely tell Rosalie and Guzal how she fared. She did not feel like facing them.
That night, there was a sudden pouring of people into the yard and the surrounding woods. Brian Dda came back from the mine early.
Thessaly had not seen much of him. It was the first time they had met that she hadn’t been abed or senseless. He saw she was up and washing out bowls from the day’s work. He came to take her hand for a moment as he bustled about, finding clean hose and braes and tunic.
He had a fierce face; bearish, cut sharp and haggard. His brows were menacing, dark, and shadowed his face like a cliff. His hair was long, dark, straight down his back, and his beard touched his chest. But his eyes.
That’s where the charm is, Thessaly thought, as he grinned at her, and those eyes glowed. “Meetin’ ye at the last,” he said. “And two days ye’ve been in my house.”
“Thessaly d’Ainestille,” Thessaly said, tilting her head a little, then wondering why she was announcing herself as if at the Sforza court.
“Brian Dda of the Ddas,” he replied, and laughed—his more a belt that rang the rafters. “Will ye be joining us at the damhsa this night?”
“Damhsa?” Thessaly said, looking at Eseld.
“Dance,” Hywell answered, swinging through the door. He went to the chest where all the neat-folded garments were. His little sisters, Lowenna and Kerenza, came running in, giggling, behind him. The older looked like her father: jutting brow, wide cheekbones; it rendered her frightening and glowering, but still handsome. The younger, curled and fine-featured, was her mother’s child.
“I don’t know,” Thessaly replied carefully.
“You can,” Eseld said.
“There’s . . . magicks there. Last I went, I saw . . . I felt a lot.”
Eseld regarded her for a moment. “Aye, and I think ye see and feel more than some of us, cunning or no,” she said. “Do you think you can manage?”
Thessaly watched as Hywell pulled out a fresh white linen shirt, clean hide hose, and a leather vest, and went through the door into the small stables attached to the house to change.
“Aye,” Thessaly said. It was an impulse, a following of feelings she knew were not really relevant, but she did want to, suddenly. Be in the music. Hear the fydol. Feel again what it was to be in that mass of warmth and energy, floes and familiarity. Happiness, Thessaly thought.
“Well, and good,” Eseld replied. “You can wear your finery—“
“No,” Thessaly said hastily. She looked at the two girls, drawing out lace-edged linen underdresses, pretty dyed-linen bodices.
“They’re too small still, to trade with ye,” Eseld said. “I’ll take the velvet, and you can have my embroidered overdress.”
“Aye,” Thessaly said immediately.
Eseld looked lovely in the velvet, over the bleached-white, crisp, carefully ironed sleeves and gathered skirt. Brian stared at her a long while, then went to her and gave her a lingering kiss on the neck. Thessaly looked away, feeling odd, and caught Hywell’s quick, laughing look. “Come,” he said, bending an elbow for her. Thessaly took it, and the feeling frissoned through her. She gave him a smile in return—it burst through. Lowenna grabbed at his other arm, and he teased her raising it so she couldn’t take it. She jumped to try to grab it, growling like a small cub, and finally he took her hand.
They walked up the line of hills that separated vale from town, along a well-worn path, and found the flat hill.
Old, Thessaly thought, shivering a little as they came
again to the circle of torches. And it reaches far into the earth. Breath, she decided, sinking into flesh. Loose, penetrating the bound.
Powerful magicks.
She closed her eyes as Hywell took her and Lowenna through, and it was like dipping through a barrier of wind, stirring her mass of tumbled waves a bit. Hywell gave her a keen look, and she shrugged. “It is well.”
“Aye,” Hywell agreed, and let her arm go.
“You’ve not brought your fydol,” Thessaly said, noticing suddenly.
“I mean to dance,” Hywell replied.
The music was still a great deal more than Thessaly was used to, even in the Sforza courts. Wild, sweet, running up the legs and setting them moving. She saw Hywell go to the dark-haired girl from the shop, Meraud, and bow gallantly, Meraud’s face broke out in a smile like sunshine and she whirled into the dance with him. Thessaly watched, feeling an odd pressure inside. They were lovely, and matched perfectly, the two of them—dark, slim, sparkling, and full of energy. Meraud’s laughs harmonized with Hywell’s, and his face lit with fun as he whirled her high.
A man asked Thessaly to dance. He called himself Margh, was shorter, pale, with shadowed eyes, and had the smell of deep air and dirt on him. A miner, Thessaly thought. He turned her gracefully, and stepped along with her, but he was tired. She almost just did it—gave him a bit of the fire inside her, and then remembered, again, what her Aunt Margarida had said. What Eseld did. She could ask, couldn’t she? And perhaps, like Eseld, she could give him just a trace, something to heal. A small thread of floe, in her touch. She could see, inside him, the need. The sickness. Her fingers itched to take it away, to fix it.
Thessaly thought to herself during the dance, as the desire burned in her. “Can I . . .” she hesitated, concentrating on the complex steps they were doing.
“And aye?” Margh said, when she didn’t continue.
“You’re hurting. May I help you? I’ve got a bit of . . . the magicks.”
He stopped for a moment, brows coming together. “You are cunning-folk?”
“Aye, and Eseld’s been . . . teaching me.”
“Dda, of the Ri? Brian’s woman?”
“Aye,” Thessaly said, though she didn’t understand half of what he said.
“I’ve been meaning to see her. My breaths come shorter lately. Aye.” He stopped and stood to the side. Thessaly closed her eyes, touching his shoulder.
She could feel it, the way his breaths were stilted. Something black, something foreign collected inside, where the passages joined. It felt, Thessaly thought, like old blood, or soil.
Blood, Thessaly thought. Magicks loose. But she channeled fire, to burn it away.
She brought a bare edge of the mass that was caged inside her with Hywell’s floes, just a thread. It trembled and wanted to force past her, to flow like a furious river, but with Hywell’s dam, those cool floes keeping her contained, she could carefully thread just a little through. She let it flood her fingers, passed it into the man’s flesh where she touched him.
Immediately she was flooded with thoughts, feelings. He liked her. Thessaly. He found her face strange and lovely, her too-skinny body birdlike and in need of squeezing.
Thessaly took her hand away, and he gasped.
Thessaly’s face was warm. Floes, or embarrassment? She did not know. “Did it pain you?” She asked.
“Nay,” he said, looking at her oddly. “No, I just felt it . . . the blessing.”
Blessing, Thessaly thought. Well.
She touched him again. The feelings came, his—foreign, a road to ride on as she found her way to where the trouble was. The thread she fed into him was hungry to burn, the fire fueling the blood, fresh and good, to stir up what was old and break up what had soured in his body. She contained it carefully, and as she burned, she felt that fierce jolt of pleasure she had before. It frightened her, but she kept a tight grip on it.
When she’d pulled herself out, opened her eyes, he had more color. He was shaking a little. He sat on the grass for a moment.
“Are you . . . fine?” she asked.
“Aye, and better than fine,” he replied. He gave her a fierce smile. “I’ve not been kissed quite like that before.”
Yes. To go inside a person, to feel it. It was a closeness that was odd, intimate. And the thoughts she’d read were not exactly meant for her to hear.
But she had done it. She’d taken the trouble away, given him new strength. She felt giddy, full of a sudden, fierce hope.
He touched her head, that odd familiar gesture that seemed common among men of the Dumenon. “I thank ye,” he said. “And I’ll caution thee.” He nodded at Hywell, who stood to the side now, talking to another of the men—he was younger, with a bare feathering of beard along his chin and neck. “He’s for Meraud. They’re promised.”
Of course.
He’d heard her feelings, too. “Aye,” Thessaly said. She smiled at him, though something stabbed oddly inside. “He’s got charm, and I’m not falling into that deep pool. I’ve a man of my own.”
“You’re wading the edges,” he said, his brows arching slightly. “But take another dance with me, and may be you’ll forget.”
Thessaly agreed, feeling strange, invaded. She minded only little—he was nice, and kindly. He meant no harm to her. But not all were so gentle. Was there a way to touch another without revealing all of herself? She had to ask Eseld, but she wasn’t certain Eseld would have an answer. She was an oddity; even Umbra found Thessaly’s collection of magicks beyond her skill to teach.
But the Dumenon were different from her aunts. More whole, more threaded through. Magicks, for them, Thessaly thought, as she danced and felt the floes strengthen, entwine, tighten the mass of those dancing, feeling flashes of joy, laughing, maybe disappointment and sadness as well, weariness and work—magicks are breath and blood. The earth they dig, the fire they use. It’s not a separate thing; it runs through everything.
Perhaps Eseld could help her.
Hywell did. Eseld already had.
Maybe, Thessaly thought, bowing to Margh in response to his graceful dip of head and bend of back, I’ve found my teachers.
Thessaly danced with another man, then another, keeping her thoughts on magicks.
She had burned those knights.
But she’d been told it was what she had taken in, and if she could purge it out, maybe she could have what she wanted. She could see, she could touch. She had just healed a man.
Her heart was racing, her hope rising like a great bubble. She saw her Aunt Margarida, walking along a sea bed, holy in her floating white shift, the rising sun a glorious pink halo around her as she scythed away golden threads. She saw her Aunt Umbra, fierce and dark, her velvets and jewels glittering as she strode into court and commanded.
She could have what she wanted.
She could.
Her feelings stirred, and she laughed as she was lifted, twirled, and the crack of a smile in the face of the man who held her widened.
She was happy, finally. And soon, she would be free.
She bowed and went to stand on the grassy edge of the group, torches burning over her, a great wall of glowing silver and gold bright in her sight, surrounding the crowd.
“Dance?” A grave, low voice broke her reverie, and she turned. Rye stood there, tall, dark, broad of shoulder.
“Rye,” she said. She gave him a smile and funned a courtly bow. “Aye, of course. Are the others here too, then?”
Rye pointed to Hodge, who had the little market girl by the arms, lifting her so high off her feet she squealed and laughed. As they joined, Thessaly also found Rosalie, who danced with Robert, and Beatrice. Thom was dancing with her. It startled Thessaly, seeing him here, but he seemed to be cheerful enough, and led Beatrice competently through the steps. He’d been before, then.
And Father Raymund. He stood, in his dark priest’s habit, talking with Brian Dda.
Curiosity stabbed her. “What is Father Raymund’s co
nnection with the Dumenon?” Thessaly asked, voicing her thoughts.
“He sponsors the young men who show promise in letters,” Rye responded. “He keeps counsel with Dda, who’s chief of the tribe and one of the shift managers at the mine. Mining is not an easy life. The Dumenon hope to allow some of their children to rise to professions that can give strength to the tribe. Aye, they are proud of their skill underground.”
“Proud of a lot of things,” Thessaly murmured. Hywell had joined the two, and all talked seriously. Brian seemed agitated. He gestured fiercely, and bent down, putting his face in Father Raymund’s, pointing.
Father Raymund shook his head, calm and grim.
“Debating the disposition of lands, no doubt,” Rye said. “The DuCarnes are gone, all. Dunne’s Tor’s holdings lie open for new stewardship. The Dumenon, as always, want their hunting grounds back. They have currently only what’s around the vale. They’re allowed venison.” He shook his head. “That is a great concession indeed from the king. If they stir themselves up they may lose that. Don’t bring a boon to a new king’s attention, that’s what I say.” He smiled down at Thessaly. “Are you well, sister?”
Thessaly nodded, and the feeling swelled in her again. “Aye, I think,” she said. “About to be.”
“Are you coming back to the abbey soon? I know the cunning woman’s healing you. We miss your sharp words during Father Bernard’s instruction. It has gotten dull. Hodge kicks me under the table every chance he gets.”
Thessaly laughed. “I’m not sure.” The thought of leaving the Dda’s warm home had her aching,
but she knew it would be best. She had things to learn from Eseld, but she belonged at the abbey. There were things to learn there, too.
And also, there was the trouble of being constantly in Hywell’s magicks. There he was with Father Raymund and his father, Brian, talking soberly, leaning his dark head slightly forward. Just looking at him, distant through a crowd, was enough to warm her.
Margh had been right. She was stepping into a pool where she did not belong.
“Aye,” she answered. “But not tonight. There’s still a bit of healing to do.”
