At the backdoor, Snow sat down on the rock slab next to the wild rose bush while the other dogs ran off to the beach. Tripod, a three-legged mongrel, lay in the kitchen on a cushion by the cold stove. Clelia filled the black kettle with water and lit the gas for Erwan’s tea. She laid the table with baguette, butter, and mulberry jam. When the water boiled she turned off the gas and poured it over tea leaves in a pot. She first fed all the animals and then went upstairs to her attic room to get dressed. She washed her face and brushed her teeth in her ensuite bathroom cubicle. Her straight, black hair reached her shoulders. She made a braid and tied it with a ribbon.
She stared at her Asian features in the mirror, the dark slanted eyes that were too big, dominating her heart-shaped face and pale skin, and the curve of her eyebrows that showed just under the curtain of her fringe. She looked nothing like the Larmoriens who inhabited the islands or Larmor-Baden on the mainland. Her physical appearance had always set her apart, reminded the villagers that she didn’t belong. She was an outcast and people her own age were weary of her. They disliked her, teased and degraded her, because of who her mother was. Even if her mother had been dead for twenty-three years, the tradition-fast Brittany people remembered. No, there was no chance of her being accepted through the slow process of forgetting. They were a community who held fast to their roots, who told the same tales their pre-Celtic ancestors, famous for erecting their standing stones, had. To a people who had held onto their culture for more than six thousand years, twenty-three was a drop in the ocean. Only a few of the older people had learned to live with her, had managed to look past who she was.
From the window in the tilted roof, she saw Erwan’s red boat approaching from the east, from the direction of Île Longue. Quickly, she pulled on denim shorts, a pink T-shirt, and white flip-flops. She went downstairs and through the sea-facing door of the kitchen to watch Erwan remove his rubber boots on the stone steps of their veranda. His boat was already anchored. He had no net, no crates. He rolled up the legs of his blue pinafore and left the pipe that always seesawed in the corner of his mouth in the astray on the garden table.
“Mat an traoú,” he said by way of greeting.
Erwan still maintained the Breton tongue and encouraged her to keep the language of the ancient ways, even if everyone else her age in the village spoke French these days.
“Ya, mat-tre,” she said.
He patted her with a weathered hand on the shoulder as he entered the house, his shoulders stooped and his wrinkled face yellow from the long days on the salty water.
Clelia followed and poured the strong tea he liked into his breakfast bowl.
“You didn’t go fishing Erwan,” she said.
“Nah. I didn’t go fishing.” Erwan placed his palms on the table and lowered his body with a flinch into the chair.
Clelia watched him with fondness from under her lashes. He was getting too old for taking out the boat, even if he wouldn’t hear anything of retiring. She had never called him grandfather. She didn’t know why. It wasn’t because he wasn’t her biological grandfather. She just grew up with his first name always on her lips. She put the bowl in front of him and waited until he cupped the warm brew with both hands, sighing approvingly.
“Where did you go?” she said, even if she knew the answer.
He blew vapor over the edge of the bowl. “Larmor.”
Clelia closed her eyes fleetingly. “There was another fire, wasn’t there?”
Instead of answering, Erwan slurped his tea.
“Which one was it this time?”
He took a while before he answered, and when he spoke, he didn’t meet her eyes. “The mayor’s house.”
She inhaled sharply. “Was anyone hurt?”
“It started on the kitchen side of the house. Brendan and Petrounel woke up before the flames got near the bedroom.”
“And the house?”
Erwan only shook his head.
Clelia took a shaky breath. “At what time did it happen?”
“Four. I saw the glow from across the water when I went out to get the boat.”
She turned her back on him so that he wouldn’t see the anxiety in her eyes. Standing on tiptoe, she opened the overhead cupboard and removed a mug. It was hard to ask her next question.
“Did you check on me before you left?” she said softly.
There was a long silence. When Clelia finally faced Erwan again, she saw compassion in his eyes.
“Did it happen again, grandchild?”
“Yes. I woke up in the woods this time.”
“I see.” He stared intently at his tea.
She gripped the edge of the table. “What if it’s me, Erwan?”
He looked up. “You didn’t start that fire. You were fast asleep when I left.”
“But I could have gone before, taken the dinghy and been back before you noticed the flames.”
“Clelia, grandchild, it was a long time ago. You haven’t started a fire since you were three.”
“But who’s to say it’s not starting again?”
Angst tied her stomach in a knot. In the past month, fifty houses had been burned mysteriously. The village was swamped with police, firemen, and forensic experts who couldn’t determine the cause of the fires. The villagers suspected arson. If they had known about her supernatural ability to involuntarily set objects alight, even if it only happened to her as a small child, they would have had her on the proverbial stake in the blink of an eye, condemned as the witch they accused her mother of.
“Clelia, it happened twice. You were just a baby.”
Clelia bit her lip. She knew Erwan wanted to believe it as much as she did. Once, while playing on the beach, she saw a boy kicking a dog. When she told him to stop, he laughed and picked up a stick, starting to chase the helpless animal. She couldn’t exactly remember everything, but Erwan said the stick in the boy’s hand caught fire. He had a fright, threw it down and ran away. The second time was when she was almost trampled by a horse while visiting the stables with Erwan. Then the hay had burst into flames. Erwan told the bystanders that he had dropped his pipe.
Now, one house after the next was burned to ashes, from the same time her sleepwalking had started. And the dream. Clelia hadn’t told Erwan about her dream. Deep down she knew that the dream, the sleepwalking, and the fires were somehow connected, but she was too petrified to voice the thought for fear that it might be true.
She became aware of Erwan watching her, and when she met his gaze, he said in a quiet tone, “They say Josselin de Arradon is back in town.”
Clelia’s body went colder than the icy Atlantic. Although she had never said anything about her feelings for Josselin, Erwan wasn’t blind. He was a wise old man who didn’t need words to see the truth. Clelia reminded herself of this as she carefully pushed her emotions back. She tried to show nothing of her shock. She even managed to keep a straight face when she said, “Really? When did he get back?”
“Yester night.”
“That’s a surprise,” she said, not quite succeeding in sounding casual.
“They say he’s not alone.” His voice held a measure of sympathy and warning, Erwan’s way of preparing her for bad news. “He’s with a woman.”
She lowered her eyes and started wiping bread crumbs from the table into her hand. “I thought he was in New York.”
“Ay. That’s where he came from.”
Swallowing her hurt and disappointment so that she could speak in an unaffected tone, she said, “Why would he come back, after all these years?”
“Who knows? Maybe he’s finally ready to face his demons, or maybe he brought the woman to make her mistress of his home.”
“Mistress of his home? You still speak as if he’s royalty.”
Clelia disapproved of social casts, something Erwan had not completely let go of. Actually, a lot of the villagers still honored their ancestral barons and earls.
“Our predecessors may have chopped off the head of the kin
g, but the lad’s got a duke’s blood flowing in his veins, and nothing can change that.”
Clelia dared to glance at her grandfather. “And you think he found a wife and brought her here, to make a home in his childhood house?”
Erwan looked at her regretfully, as if it pained him to say, “A woman can heal a man in ways doctors and therapists sometimes can’t. But don’t forget, there is still his castle.”
Yes, of course. Josselin de Arradon was heir to his grandfather’s castle that stood in near ruins in the forest of Brocéliande. When his mother married his father, a high-ranking officer with a poor income, the family didn’t have the means to sustain the expansive land and the enormous stronghold. Instead, they moved into the big house near the sea. After Josselin’s grandfather’s death, his gambling addiction having financially crippled the heritage, the castle was left to waste away in that enchanted forest. Could it be that Josselin had found the means to restore it back to its former glory? Or did he find the means to heal his heart? Clelia found herself suddenly envious of the woman who had such magic at her disposal.
“And have you seen him?” she said, busying herself with rinsing the teapot.
“Nay.”
After the de Arradon family tragedy, no one ever expected Josselin to return. A shiver ran down Clelia’s spine. Snow cried softly at the door.
“I’m late for work,” she said, drying her hands. “I’ve fed the animals and there’s Pintade Chouchenn in the oven for lunch.”
She kissed Erwan on the cheek, threw her flip-flops into her backpack and pulled on a denim jacket and her red rubber boots that stood by the backdoor. Their veranda steps gave access to the beach at low tide when their boats would be stranded, but at high tide the stairs were flooded and they could take Erwan’s fishing boat and the dinghy straight out to sea. Outside, she tossed her bag into the motorized dinghy and untied the rope from the metal peg. She climbed in, started the engine, and steered the boat across the Gulf in the direction of the mainland. At low tide, she had to take her bike and pedal across the bridge that connected the Presque Isle to the village, but across the water was quicker, and navigating the dinghy always had a calming effect on her. As she looked back, she saw Snow standing on the steps. She could hear his howl over the roar of the engine.
At Larmor-Baden she tied the dinghy to the jetty, changed into her flip-flops, left her rubber boots in the boat and made her way through the small harbor and past the luxury tourist hotels to the town square. For some time she stood watching the black frame of what used to be the mayor’s house, still steaming in the fresh morning, smelling of melted plastic and wet wood.
A few people who passed by greeted her by name and some stopped to verbally ponder the mystery of the pyromania that was sweeping through their quiet village. The bakery opened at seven, and by then a small crowd of elderly people, talking in hushed Breton had gathered at the tables on the pavement with espresso and croissants to watch the firemen go through the debris.
Clelia followed the tar road away from the smell of destruction and walked toward the bus stop in front of the library that would take her to the stables in Carnac where she worked. She more helped out in the tourist office that offered horseback rides than what could be called a job, but it was all that was available in a village with nine hundred inhabitants.
It was on the bend of the long stretch of road between the square and the library that she paused to lift her eyes to the abandoned house. She hadn’t looked at it in nine years. For three-thousand-two-hundred-and-eighty-seven days she had walked this road, first to school and then to work, never turning her head as much as an inch. Not because of the horrific nightmare that had played out behind the shuttered, sad windows, but because of him. Because of Josselin.
For as long as she could remember, she had been in love with Josselin de Arradon. Secretly. All through school, she had watched him, so strong and defenseless at the same time. Josselin was four years her senior and the most beautiful being she had ever seen. He had bronze skin with black hair, and eyes so gray they glowed in his head. Those eyes had captured her with their pain and intensity. While she admired him from a distance, he wasn’t aware of her existence.
Josselin had only spoken to her once. It was on a summer day after school. She had wandered to the dense forest at the back of the schoolyard because she knew that was where she would find him. She stood behind a tree and watched him–studied him–the movement of his hand as he smoked a forbidden cigarette, the manner in which he pulled his fingers through his dark hair, and the way he laughed loudly into his gang of friends, even if his eyes cried, or blazed.
That day, however, he wasn’t with his friends. He was with a girl. Her name was Thiphaine and she was the most popular girl in school. She was blonde, slim, and beautiful with blue eyes and red painted fingernails. Clelia watched from her hiding place as Josselin slowly backed Thiphaine up until her body pressed against the trunk of the witch tree. It was a thuja occidentalis but the townsfolk had baptized it so because of its twisted and crippled branches. The setting was eerie for a romantic adventure, and yet, it suited Josselin. He seemed right at home, while Thiphaine looked around nervously. His hand went to her cheek, his palm huge, dark, and rough against the porcelain paleness of Thiphaine’s face, while his other hand slipped under her blouse. His gray eyes looked like melted steel when he lowered his head.
His shoulder-length black hair fell forward when he pressed his lips to Thiphaine’s and he moved his hand from her cheek to brush it back behind his ear. Clelia remembered the deliberate movement of his jaw, the way the muscles dimpled in his cheek, the hand under Thiphaine’s blouse, all the while maintaining his composure while Thiphaine came undone under his caress. The beautiful girl made low moaning sounds. Her knees buckled, but Josselin, without breaking the kiss, grabbed her waist, pulling her so tightly into him that her back arched, keeping her up with his arm while he made her weak with his touch and his tongue.
Watching them ignited both yearning and pain inside of Clelia. The hurt she felt speared her heart. The aching in her soul was suddenly greater than the heat in her pores and on her cheeks, but she couldn’t tear her stare away from the forbidden sight. It was Iwig, a boy from her class, who broke the painful spell when he discovered her behind the tree.
“What have we here?” he said.
His eyes darted to the distance where Josselin and Thiphaine were embracing. He knew what she had been doing. He was a tall, blond boy with a strong build, and Clelia disliked him for his habit of hunting abandoned cats with his pellet gun.
“A peeping tom,” he said, taking a step toward her.
When she tried to back away, he grabbed her long braid and tugged it roughly, causing her to yelp.
“Not so fast, witch.” He grabbed her arm and hauled her so that she stumbled into him. “You like to watch, don’t you?” He grinned. “How about a taste of the real thing?”
She opened her mouth to scream, but he had already brought his down and kissed her so hard that his teeth split her lower lip. In reflex, her free hand shot up, aiming for his cheek, and collided with its target. The force of the blow shot Iwig’s head back and froze him in his action, but only for a second, before Clelia saw his arm lift. Not able to free herself from his grip, she cowered instinctively, but instead of his fist coming down on her, another pair of arms grabbed Iwig by his shoulders and flung him to the ground.
When she looked up, she stared into the face of Josselin, and what she saw was frightening. His features were twisted into a terrifying expression, and before she could say anything, Josselin bent down and lifted Iwig by his jacket lapels. Iwig’s legs dangled, flapping like fish on soil, while his arms flayed in the air as if swatting flies. Josselin let go of one side of the jacket, his fist arching and hooking under Iwig’s chin, while at the same time unknotting his other hand from the fabric of the jacket. The impact sent Iwig flying through the air. When he hit the ground, she could hear the loud thump as the ai
r was knocked from his lungs. Josselin moved forward, his arms away from his body, his fingers flexing, his shoulders pushed forward, until he stood wide-legged over the submissive body of Iwig. Iwig lifted his hands in front of his face, mumbling pleas for mercy.
“If you ever touch a girl in that way again, I’ll hang you from a tree under a pack of wild boars and watch them eat you from your feet up to your useless dick, until they rip your stomach open and your insides fall out,” Josselin said.
He spoke very softly, but the woods had suddenly gone quiet. His voice all but echoed in the absence of the sound of birds and wind. From the corner of her eye, Clelia noticed Thiphaine who stood to the side, hugging herself.
“And if you ever lift your hand to a woman again, I’ll cut off your balls and make you eat them and then I’ll feed you to the boars. Do you understand?”
Iwig tried to scurry away on his elbows, but Josselin stepped on his jacket.
“I asked if you understand.”
“Yes. Yes,” Iwig said. He had started crying.
When Josselin lifted his boot, Iwig scrambled to his feet. He didn’t look at Clelia before he ran down the path in the direction of the school. Only then did Josselin turn to her. She shook from head to toe while Josselin studied her quietly. After a moment, he walked to her, took her chin in his hand and tilted her head.
“You’re bleeding,” he said, trailing his thumb over her lower lip.
Then he did something that shocked her wildly. He brought his thumb to his lips, slowly, his gray eyes locked onto hers while he slipped his finger into his mouth and licked it clean, tasting her blood.
Clelia couldn’t move. She stood still, unable to speak or blink.
Scapulimancist (Seven Forbidden Arts Book 7) Page 30
