“Yes, but that is for tomorrow. Magic is time sensitive—its effects diminish quickly. Three days before it goes cold and needs to be recast. Curses can go longer, but curses and spells are not the same.” She stepped aside from the basin and motioned me over. I practically dove for it, wanting to scrub myself to the bone thanks to the tacky film soiling my fingers. Each dunk of my hands in water resulted in a pink pool, and when I was done, I opened the window to throw the water out. I’d wash the basin in the river in the morning, as I did every morning, and collect fresh water for Gran’s personal uses.
Gran shuffled around behind me, pulling on her sleeping clothes. She let the sun determine when and how long we slept, and with autumn’s chill came early nights.
“Gran, there’s one more thing. It’s probably stupid to ask.” She eyed me from her bed, her fingers adroitly weaving her gray hair into a plait. “Martyn, the young man from market—”
“The yellow-haired man,” she interjected, tilting her face to peer at me with her brown eye. “You do not have to keep identifying him. I know who he is.”
“Yes, him. He’s offered to teach me to read. Lessons. They’d be before supper, during the day so it’d be proper, and only after market time. I’m only asking because I gave my word to him that I would, but I know it’s not really—”
“Ask me after the blood moon.”
That was not the answer I’d expected. I thought she’d worry about the diddicoy’s influence, or that I longed for the company of someone outside our caravan. She’d forbid it for my own good. The logical, sensible part of me said that would be the right thing for her to do, to sever the tie before it tightened. The other part—the part that whispered fanciful promises and tingled when Martyn flirted with me—secretly delighted that she’d left the door open.
Heat flooded my cheeks. “Thank you.”
“Do not thank me yet, girl. It is not a yes.” Shivering, she pulled her blankets up to her chin. I took that as a sign to pull out the winter furs. I knelt before one of the storage trunks, sweeping the sundries aside to burrow for the blankets below. Gran had packed them away with lavender sachets, so they weren’t overly musty, but I’d hang them out the next day, weather allowing, for good measure.
I laid one over her and tucked it tight around her feet. They were often cold, something she attributed to age and poor circulation, so I leaned over her to rub them. As I stood there, fingers pinching and kneading over her socks, she reached for me and gently squeezed my wrist.
“Sit,” she said, motioning me to her side. It wasn’t a big bed, but with enough wriggling I was able to perch beside her legs. Her thumb swept over the back of my hand, as close to a loving gesture as she’d ever come. Gran wasn’t the type to pull people to her bosom and smother them with affection. She expressed her love in other ways—small touches, hard-earned smiles, and pats on the back. For her to be warm like this was a rare treat, and one I’d appreciate while I had her grace.
“Your parents. Your father. He was not one of us. Did you know that?”
“Yes.”
She nodded and her eyes closed, her tongue flicking at the corner of her mouth. “He loved your mother very much and was willing to give up his own people to be with her. She loved him, too, and would have followed him to the ends of the world if he had asked. By clan tradition, she should have been outcast for her choice, but she was a well-loved drabarni and the people needed her healing skills too much to send her away. They did not welcome him, though, despite his efforts to learn our customs. Men like Silas are rare, but not rare enough, and they made your father’s life difficult. He stayed for your mother. Loyal, true, never complaining, though he often came home with bruises he refused to explain. The fights were never fair, but he survived.
“Your mother felt terrible about it. She often told him he should go, leave her and find another, but he said he could bear it as long as he had her. Her one regret…” Gran paused to look at me, peering for a long time. She wore a strange expression, her customary hardness replaced by something I didn’t recognize and couldn’t name. Uncertainty, perhaps. It was in the creases of her brow, in the slight gape of her mouth and the wideness of her eyes. Seeing it made my heart heavy, and I stroked her gnarled, frail fingers despite the ache in my palm.
“I know—the chieftain told me,” she added, almost as an afterthought, “that your mother’s one regret was putting a good man through this life. She died proud of you, proud of what she and he had made, but she regretted what this life had done to the man she loved.
“And your father, for all that he was good, could not raise you. Without your mother to soften the blows, without her station as drabarni to ward off the less emboldened, he would die, and so he left the thing he wanted most in this world: you. The last piece of her he could claim. This is how you came to me as you are. Not because a gadjo was scared of your markings. The choices we make in life stay with us, Bethan. There are few opportunities for second chances.”
I’d fallen into a listener’s trance as she talked, letting her story lull me, but I was shaken fully awake when she suddenly dug her fingernails into the tender meat of my hand. “Tell me you understand what I am trying to say! I am old. I do not have words to waste anymore. The things I have left to teach you—there is so much. Let us hope for both our sakes that you learn quickly.”
I swallowed past the lump in my throat and nodded. Not only was she reminding me of her mortality, but she’d drawn parallels between my mother’s life and my own. In her descriptions of my father’s pain, she made me see Martyn’s beaten face. I’d have been stupid not to see the danger, for him and for me. A smart person learned from their mistakes, but a smarter person learned from other people’s mistakes, or so Gran liked to say.
“Say it, Bethan,” she barked, giving my hand another hard squeeze. “Say what I want to hear.”
“I understand, Gran. I wish I didn’t, but I understand.”
She gave me a long look—a heavy look—and I knew without asking that she was searching my eyes for far more than just my agreement. Whatever she saw must have satisfied her. She released me and settled back into her blankets. Her eyes fluttered closed and she let out a chest-rattling sigh.
“Good. You are not as silly as I thought. Sleep, and sleep well. Tomorrow will be a long day for both of us. Far longer than any before it, but we will prevail. One way or another, we will prevail.”
I twisted and turned beneath my blankets for hours, sleep as distant as the stars. Gran’s proclamation for the coming day had sounded so ominous—as ominous as when she’d given the initial portent—that my mind raced with terrible possibilities. When she nudged me before dawn, I was exhausted, my eyelids leaden with sleep, my bones weary.
“Up for food. Up for enchantment. Up for market,” she said. I burrowed deeper into my warm nest, but she ground the tip of her cane into my shoulder, the pressure increasing the longer I dallied.
She would not be denied.
By the time I’d put away my bedding, washed downstream, dressed, and collected our breakfasts, Gran was already seated at the table with her tarot cards in one hand and a silver coin in the other. The coin was old and foreign, the stamp on the top side too worn to reveal its origins. She flipped a card and scowled, only to flip another, then another. Twelve in all were displayed on the table, many of them swords, some wands, with the Devil, the Tower, and Judgment sprinkled throughout for flavor.
“Worthless,” she griped, pushing the cards away and motioning me to my chair.
“You saw nothing?”
I put her food before her. She stabbed into it and lifted her spoon only to turn it over, a lumpy, mealy spoonful plopping back into the mix with a wet smack. “No. I had hoped to spark more vision with the cards, but it is the same. The shadow, the crow, the snake.”
“I can stay home if that will help.”
She took her first bite, cringing. The better breakfast would be at sunrise, with spicy sausages and eggs and
coffee, but she’d likely skip it on account of her lameness. “My experience tells me we are better embracing what we know. You can change fate once it is cast, but Destiny does not appreciate thwarting. She can be cruel. Whatever it is that comes for you, you make it through. I have seen that, but I cannot say the same if we alter the course of your stars.”
We ate in quiet until our bellies were full. I did the washing up, and then Gran was motioning me to her side.
“Come.”
I hovered by her elbow. Her fingers reached up to dance along the hawk’s eye charm, her lips murmuring words I couldn’t understand. I wished she’d speak more clearly, but she was too lost in her private thoughts. The silver coin flitted back and forth between her fingers, glinting in the early-morning light.
I didn’t expect her to toss it at me. It bounced off my chest to roll across the table, and I slapped it to stop it from plummeting to the floor, scooping it into my palm.
“Many magic users have a focus—a trinket, a charm, something—that they keep with them always. It is a tool to channel the will, and the longer you use it and keep it, the more powerful it becomes.” She snatched the coin back from me. “I chose this because I carry it always. It is always near when I need it. What you choose is up to you. It does not have to be costly, just something you keep close and value.”
She looked at me expectantly, but I didn’t own much of anything myself—I didn’t wear much jewelry beyond my earrings, and the things I held dear were largely immaterial. What should have been a simple decision felt disproportionately complex, and I cast my eyes around, desperate for something to put forth.
I must have looked lost, because Gran pushed herself from the table to shuffle to the corner, rifling through her things until she found the black cat figurine with the chipped paint. “Take this. It is my old focus, a toy from my childhood, and it served me well. If you want to replace it with something more personal later on, that is fine. Sometimes our foci change as our priorities change.”
It was a personal gift, a caring one, and I smiled as she slid it onto the table before me. “Thank you, Gran. I am touched.”
“Good. Now pick it up.” I did, and she laced her gnarled fingers with mine, the cat token between one set of joined palms, her coin between the other. “I want you to think of the eye of the hawk and how it can see prey from miles above. I want you to will that sight into the charm. Banish all other thoughts and distractions until I speak. When I say the words, repeat after me. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“ ‘Yes’ what?”
“Yes, Gran. I understand.”
“Good.” She closed her eyes but I did not, too curious not to witness my first real magic. There was no sound beyond Gran’s deep, even breathing. I followed suit, embracing a deep, trancelike stillness where nothing existed but the hawk. I pictured it soaring on the wind with wings spread, its body gliding above treetops. I imagined its eyes scouring the ground, able to see any and all things as it searched for its next meal. I imagined the feathers in jars, ripe and ready for magic, and the blood drizzled on the one Gran had chosen to bind us.
I don’t know how much time passed—a minute, two, ten—but when Gran finally spoke, it felt intrusive, like she’d shattered a sacred quiet. “For one day and for one night, grant to me your hunter’s sight. The blood is tithe, the task is true.”
The spell sounded strange. Perhaps it was because the first sentence rhymed and the second did not, or perhaps it was because doing magic evoked images of mighty sorceresses conjuring with dramatic monologues, beseeching everything from the ancestors to the elements to God himself.
I repeated Gran’s words, willing the hawk to grant Gran its sight, and then…magic happened. A thick, pulsing heat blossomed between our joined hands. The warmth intensified, surging to a scalding heat, but I refused to pull away, gritting my teeth, groaning as the power leaked from the sides of our hands, shining over our bodies, glimmering across the wall. I tingled from fingertips to elbows, the energy inside me rushing the blood through my veins and quickening my pulse. My fatigue was gone. I could have danced for hours or run around the vardo until my legs gave out. It was too much, too fast, but it was ecstatic, and I never wanted it to stop.
“It is done,” Gran said.
Her words were a hammer crashing down, the spell bursting apart on the anvil upon impact. The inferno fizzled to a tepid throb, the light no longer painting us ethereal. The lightning left my body, my pounding heart the only evidence that anything had happened at all. I pulled my hand away from Gran’s to touch the charm, but it felt the same as it had before—sticky and crusty.
I frowned. “But can you see through my eyes?”
“The mirror and my sewing. Bring them to me.”
I slipped both before her as she settled into her chair. She pawed through her sewing basket, pulling a wooden needle from her pincushion and stabbing the tip of her finger with it, squeezing her flesh when the crimson dollop didn’t ripen how she wanted.
“Push the mirror closer,” she barked at me.
As soon as the copper frame touched her chest, she tipped the finger so she could splash blood across the mirror’s smooth surface. A ripple passed over the glass, like she’d disturbed a very small, very still pond. I stood transfixed as a hazy fog formed in the middle, swirling like a storm cloud before dissipating and revealing a faint, but clear, image. The mirror’s reflection showed the interior of the vardo, from the perspective of the charm.
“It works. It really works,” I whispered.
“It does. This is your work, Bethan. I would have aided had you needed it, but your will alone was enough. You have an affinity. It is good.” She looked so proud of me, like I’d finally earned the apprentice’s mantle she’d thrust upon me all those years ago.
It felt good to please her, to be accomplished on my first try. My eyes stung, emotion threatening to overwhelm me, but I sniffed it away and stood taller, my spine made of iron. Perhaps I should have been afraid, but I wholeheartedly trusted Gran. She’d kept me safe for seventeen summers. I expected no less despite the omens.
“Do not bask too long, silly girl. Bind your face and get to market. Sell what you can, but do not tarry. The blood moon is upon us, and the nearer I am to you, the better I will feel. I do not trust this night.”
I collected the herb bags and headed for the door. As I was about to step out into the cold, she called for me to wait before draping her own old, knitted shawl over my shoulders. It wasn’t much to look at—the yarns were sky blue, the edges trimmed in silver–but it was thick and comfortable and would keep me warm against the cold.
“I—” Gran peered at me, her brown eye coursing over my face, worry crinkling her brow. “You are strong. You are mine so you are strong. Remember this.”
“Yes, of course. I understand.”
I didn’t, not truly, but neither did she. The vision hadn’t been kind. She squeezed my shoulder and told me to go.
I ran to town, my fast pace keeping me warm. When I walked through the front gates of the market, it was a ghost of the town I’d come to know. The empty tabletops shimmered with morning dew, and the shelves sported the shimmering labors of a few industrious spiders. I could have grabbed any position in the square I wanted, but I went back to the table next to Martyn’s stand. My drawing curled at the edges, thanks to two days’ exposure to the elements, and I took it down and smoothed it out, bending the corners into shape. I’d just tacked it back into place when Martyn appeared, a crate of apples perched on his shoulder.
“Good morning.”
I smiled at him, moving around behind my table to display my herb bags. “And to yourself.”
“How are you? You look nice. Warm.”
“Thank you.” My hand strayed to the hawk’s eye, my instinct to tuck it beneath the collar of my shirt so he wouldn’t behold something so ugly, but I wouldn’t be stupid. Gran and I had made it to protect me from the blood moon, and that was more
important than looking pretty. “I’m well. And you?”
“Good! I have something for you.”
“Enough presents, Martyn. It’s too much.”
Gran might see…
But he didn’t know that, and so he smiled, abandoning his crate on the counter to stand by my side, close enough that our elbows touched. He pulled a scroll from his pocket and offered it to me by tapping it against the tip of my nose. I snorted and tore it from his grasp. “I won’t be able to visit much today,” he said. “Market’s closed tomorrow for the Sabbath, and people tend to stock up. I wanted you to have this, though.”
I unrolled the thick, cream-colored paper, smiling at the new portrait. It was black chalk, but there were touches of color here and there, too—a peach flush along the cheek, a dash of red on the lips—and he’d captured the sepia of my eyes almost perfectly. I was looking far away, my scarf pulled down, like he’d caught me in the middle of a daydream. I was glad to see he hadn’t shied away from drawing my birthmark, using a wine color to trace out the curve over my eye and down along my jaw. He even showed the splash of wine freckles on the column of my throat.
There were words above and below the picture again, which suggested he expected me to hang it beside my table. I wanted to, but I didn’t dare. There was a reason I wore a scarf to market every day. Advertising how different I looked from everyone else wouldn’t do me any favors.
“Thank you, but I can’t. Hang it, I mean. I can bring it home, though.” He looked disappointed, and I rushed to explain. “I love it, but you know I’ve had trouble. I cover myself to avoid it.”
The Hollow Girl Page 8
