by Terah Edun
He was avoiding the most impacted area because that would come last and take most—if not all—his focus. Mae understood all this because when she wasn’t lurking in the back hallways of the holding like a thief in the night, she was volunteering her time in the sickroom.
Lately as an alternate attendant to the sick girls. So she saw every shiver of pain that rippled across their faces as they tried to be brave and not scream. She saw the relief in their eyes as they slowly drifted off to sleep and briefly escaped the pain of a waking day. She saw the bile on the floors that had just missed the bucket and that she and her aunts wiped up without blinking. She saw a lot of malaise.
But she also something magical.
Actual, innate magic—the gift of the male line of Mae’s family that showed up in wondrous and unique ways. She had learned to bite her tongue and wait in the shadows to watch as uncles, second cousins, her grandfathers, and even a third cousin once removed—from a weaker line—did every day what could only be construed as minor miracles had a female done it.
That third cousin’s ability to work the innate magic especially stuck in her craw.
It wasn’t that Mae was petty, but for god’s sake—he was as dumb as a box of rocks, and he was from offshoot of their line that the Darnes didn’t really acknowledge. His mother’s mother had lain down with a foreign grifter who had shown up one night and been gone the next. The descendants had always had a funny relationship with their magic. It worked as often as it didn’t, and the women—Mae shuddered. The only two female cousins she knew of who had been banned from the holding were from that offshoot.
They had to have done something heinous, Mae thought.
No matter what the women did, though, their relative—the third cousin—had shown up as soon as word went out that the girls were suffering from the wasting sickness. And he had done his part to calm their ague and ease their suffering. They couldn’t be cured, not with any of the castings that had been tried in so far. But the two youngest females of the Darnes household were never alone and never without someone from the bloodline by their side. To grip their clenched hands, wipe their sweaty brows, and whisper soothing nothings over their wrenched faces.
Mae included.
So as she stood now with her uncle by her side giving ministrations to a separate wound for her sister—a minor ailment but a wound regardless—Mae did so with the confidence that no matter what, family stood together. Even the weird outcasts you only saw every other year, if that.
Her mouth moved into a wry smile at the thought of seeing the third cousin more than that outside of the sickroom. The long winter would have to freeze over and he be trapped here in their holding instead of his remote homestead for that to happen. As she thought about him and others in their family, both distant and near, her mind settled on the youngest of them all.
Bright, precocious, and always into mischief—Gareth.
Mae would have said he reminded her of herself. Except for one distinct difference. Gareth, even as a toddler, could do more with a wave of his hand when interested than she could do while sweating and concentrating so fiercely that a headache bloomed.
Speaking of headaches, Mae’s eyes slid over to the tome lying just in the shadows of the eave so innocently. She had wanted to kick it there when she and Ember had first noticed her uncle coming toward them. Now that it had made it, thanks to Ember not ratting her, Mae eyed it nervously—barely hidden by the bit of cornerstone and visible for all those who cared to look. But their uncle’s attention was caught up in the nose he was repairing, and if Ember remembered the cause of their fight…well, she wasn’t seeing fit to bring it up.
Mae determined that she would just have to retrieve it later.
After all, she needed it, because an incantation from its dark pages was the only way she could access magic powerful enough to heal the youngest of her siblings. And even then, it wouldn’t be guaranteed to work. What would be guaranteed was that she had one chance and one chance only at initiating a spell. After one cast, she would be laid up in her own bed recuperating from the exertion.
Which was why she looked with envy at her uncle exerting almost no effort to heal Ember’s face. He could call up his magic without breaking a sweat. Use an incantation and not fall to his bed in grave illness. But she knew as well as he did that even his powers, and those of others like him, had their limits. Those limits prevented the men from wiping away the internal illness that plagued the youth of their family. As invisible as it was to their naked eye, their magic couldn’t trap it. Couldn’t replace it with good and bountiful healing.
Magic had rules. Rules that prevented the women of her holding and—so Mae had heard—her kingdom from casting it without severe penalty. But that just meant it would be an improbable use of magic, not an impossible one. Which was why Mae had turned to the dark arts.
Where light couldn’t go, shadows could.
And if she could save a soul in her holding from further suffering, she would.
By any means necessary.
As if the focus of her gaze had roused Gareth’s father from a stupor, he flicked a sharp glance at her.
“Well, don’t just stand there—be useful,” he instructed her.
She automatically reached forward to join hands with him. It was something she had seen her relatives do dozens of times over the bedside of the girls. Sometimes it was to lend energy. Other times it was to just give support. She didn’t know what exactly she had to give, but she dared hope that he could unlock something within her that even she didn’t know existed. So she reached forward naively, almost as if she was in a dream, only to see him give her a mocking laugh and flick her hand away dismissively.
“I am more than capable of completing this work without your interference,” Uncle Brandon snapped. “I meant help clean up the mess you made, and do it quickly.”
Mae blinked. “Oh! Of…of course.”
She was a little disappointed, she had to admit. For a moment, she had thought he would teach her something promising. Something that would erase the barrier between her gender and his and allow Mae the same magic that he so effortlessly called upon as easily as a shepherd would pump a well for fresh water. In fact, it was even easier. But no—Uncle Brandon just motioned for her to move along and “wipe up the blood with something.”
So she bit her lip and looked around the hallway for anything to use.
Spying the lump of still-presentable bed linens she’d carted up here as an excuse to hide her more nefarious intentions, Mae quickly grabbed the stringiest one of the bunch, began to tear it into strips, and nudged the basket she’d been carrying them in—in front of her tome.
Then, with a quick look over her shoulder to check where they stood—Brandon was oblivious to her machinations, but Ember was staring directly at her—Mae went back down the hallway in a hurry to the chamber. There was soap, lye, water, and hopefully a small bucket for her to use there.
After finding what she needed, she returned, set down the bucket, and began to clean up the blood that had spilled on the floor beneath Ember’s feet. When Mae had been walking, she had gripped the bucket so tightly that if it had been made of any material but wood, it would have cracked. Instead, it took in her anger and…soothed her. The walk gave her time to think and maybe even come to the realization that her uncle’s punishment was only fair.
She had been the reason her sister’s blood had spilled, after all. So Mae would do what she had to do to make it right.
But as she came back to get on her hands and knees to wipe and scrub, she had one ferocious thought, and it had nothing to do with the actions that had precipitated the blow. No, it went back to what made her intrinsically different from her uncle in the first place. If she had only been born a boy and not a girl…
Maybe she wouldn’t be wiping blood from a dark, dank hallway floor.
Maybe she’d be the one setting a broken nose with nothing but her will.
Maybe she would be the on
e to heal her sisters where others had failed.
And maybe I still will, Mae thought determinedly as she scrubbed.
She wasn’t a fool to think that she was special, that she could have somehow used innate magic where others failed. But others hadn’t been willing to come up with a desperate ploy to use dark magic. And she had.
So she may not have been born a boy, with all the magical rights such a gender possessed. But she definitely had the ingenuity and grit of her own gender. And that was something Mae wouldn’t trade for all the magic in the world.
7
Looking down after she had dipped her rag in the bucket and watched the lemony water she’d mixed turn red with blood, Mae wrinkled her nose. The sharp scent of fruit was acidic, but worse was watching the water swirl and feeling like she could lose herself in its depths. Which was silly. Who drifted off while staring into bubbles and water? Not her.
Shaking her head, Mae snapped out of it and raised her head to watch her uncle finish his work. She wasn’t just watching his hands move and feeling the vibrations flow through the hallway. As time had passed, the itching burn along her collarbone had died down, and an almost-haze over her vision had taken its place. She could almost see an aura around his hands now.
She blinked, wondering if there was something wrong with her eyes. Then she blinked again, and it was still there. The hazy mist swirled around his form in a thin cloud. She wanted to ask Ember if she could see the same, but her sister’s eyes were closed, and even if they were open, catching her gaze and communicating thoughts without alerting their uncle to the unfeminine desire to learn magic would be all but impossible.
Before Mae could get too deep in her thoughts, Ember asked, “Do you plan to scrub or just stare?”
Mae glared at her sister, and Ember gave her a pointed look back. Mae shifted her eyes slightly to their uncle, who still seemed lost in his own world but would be aware soon enough…and notice she hadn’t done much of anything but make a mess of blood and soapy water on the floor.
Mae sighed. Her sister was right. Again. She detested it, but she got to work, leaning forward and scrubbing, but she kept her head raised so she could keep watching the mist about his form—and, increasingly, Ember’s—as she worked.
She watched until it dissipated, and with it, the worst of the itching burn around her neck.
It was still there, but that sensation had died down enough finally that at least she didn’t feel like was going to have to claw her skin off to have some peace.
“Thank heavens,” Mae muttered as she shifted to a spot on the wall with blood in the mortar gaps of the bricks. Too bad the old parts of the holding were built of pale rock and not dark stone. She could have ignored it and no one would have been the wiser.
Uncle Brandon’s focus on Ember, however, didn’t stop him from continuing to flay Mae alive with his words.
“I’ve never seen something so uncouth from a girl before. What are young people being taught these days?”
“How to milk a cow,” Mae muttered resentfully.
He ignored her and continued his rant, now too caught up in his own self-importance to realize she might be mocking him.
“In my opinion, you all should be set to work doing what’s best for the holding, not getting into mischief in the back hallways.”
He had no idea what she had done, what she was risking, being back here, and whom she was risking it for. He just assumed she was up to no good and trying to avoid doing her part for the holding.
If only he knew, Mae thought.
But she couldn’t tell him. Not without risking him confiscating her illicitly gained tome and stopping her before she’d even really begun.
Instead, she said, “How’s the front of the house treating you?”
It was said innocently, but Uncle Brandon and Ember caught the awkwardness of her words. Ember’s eyes opened wide, and she looked at Mae with startlement. Bringing it up was a gamble for her. Everyone in the holding knew his position, and its lack of prominence, was a sore subject for Uncle Brandon.
But there were only so many council openings in a family-run holding, and unless he took himself and his family out into the greater kingdom to hunt for their fortune, that was all there ever would be. Until a new elder died of course.
To Mae, that was the worst life sentence—mediocrity. A life of humble nature and bored years passing. But she didn’t have her own little family to support, and she certainly wasn’t being forced to make a choice about it now.
Flinching a little at the hurt in his eyes, Mae said, “I just meant…it must be cold now. With winter setting in and all.”
He took the out she gave him. Not without a cold look, but he took it.
“It is,” Uncle Brandon muttered as he proceeded with his work.
Mae swallowed heavily and decided to go back to doing what she did best: being invisible.
After wringing the cloth in the water to give one final wipe, she proceeded to make sure the floor and walls were cleaner than they had been in years, then she rinsed the rag, folded it neatly, and kept a watchful eye on her uncle. She wanted to learn…even if he had no interest in teaching her.
“You’re lucky my specialty is mending broken bones,” Brandon said gruffly as he set to work, not even bothering to move Ember from where she had collapsed in the middle of the hallway.
“Patching the herd during sentry duty, you mean,” Mae said as she leaned back across the hall and observed him reverse her handiwork.
“It’s good enough for the herd, isn’t it?” Brandon said as he tenderly felt along Ember’s nose ridge for the break points and where, Mae assumed, he needed to do his most delicate work.
“Humans need to look a bit better than your average dairy cow,” Mae said dryly.
For once, Ember looked like she agreed. “Just make sure it looks good. I don’t want a crooked nose.”
Their uncle snorted. “Maybe you two should have thought of that before you ended up in fisticuffs in the middle of the hallway.”
Mae and Ember exchanged irate looks, but he was right, so neither girl could retort much.
Finally, with a stretch of his arms and a crack of his neck, he stood up and was done.
“Thank you, uncle,” Ember said.
“You’re welcome,” Uncle Brandon said. Then there was an awkward silence that dragged on just a bit too long.
After a sharp look from Ember, Mae quickly said, “Yes, thank you.”
But whereas Ember’s words were sincerely voiced, Mae was just hoping he would clear out of the hallway and leave her to her own devices expediently.
Uncle Brandon nodded. “As enjoyable as your company has been, I have my own tasks to get to.”
“Of course,” both girls said automatically.
“I’ll ask that you tell your parents yourselves what this fight was about,” Uncle Brandon said, holding up a warning finger.
“But—” Mae said.
“By tonight.”
“Yes, uncle,” both girls grumbled.
And that was that. They couldn’t wiggle out of it without being assigned punishments far worst. Mae knew just how their parents would react if they found out about the fight between Ember and herself from anyone else. Their reaction would pale before the retribution inflicted if Mae and Ember didn’t tell.
So, unfortunately, Mae had to chalk this up to one more way this morning was shaping up to be one of the worst in a long, long while.
“And I don’t want to hear any complaints about this before then,” their uncle said, oblivious to the fact that Mae was already miles away in her head, wondering about how she could spin this…and if Ember would continue to stand up for her. Because Mae hadn’t exactly been doing something that was right when she’d been discovered. Add on top of that the fight had been started by one girl, but decisively finished by the other, and you could see why Mae was feeling a little nervous about her possibilities at the moment. But it couldn’t be helped. Not now, anywa
y.
“We won’t, uncle,” Ember said.
Tuning back in too late to hear what they had agreed to, Mae asked, “Won’t what?”
Ember nudged her harshly—a warning to be quiet. Apparently her uncle hadn’t heard Mae’s outburst or was ignoring it, because he kept talking.
“Good,” Uncle Brandon said. “It’s the right thing for you to take responsibility for your actions.”
And so the tables have turned, Mae thought with dark amusement, barely escaping rolling her eyes.
It was bittersweet but also amusing, because she’d just about laid out the same threat to Gareth minutes before.
Speaking of Gareth, her uncle said, “Now, if you two don’t mind—where did my little boy run off to?”
Silently, they both pointed down the corridor in the opposite direction from whence he’d come.
“Of course,” grumbled Uncle Brandon.
As he prepared to step away, he apparently couldn’t leave them before dispensing one final bit of sage wisdom.
Turning back as he wiped his hands down thoroughly with a wet cloth he’d fetched from his pocket, Uncle Brandon said, “You know…it wouldn’t hurt you two to get over your petty differences.”
“Nothing about me is petty,” Ember said—and this time she earned a censuring look from their older family member for petulant language.
“Nevertheless, you are sisters, siblings,” he said. “You have far more in common than you think.”
Mae again barely avoided rolling her eyes, and Ember found a corner of the corridor that needed her attention.
Still, he pressed on.
“One day the other might be all you have left,” he continued sagely. “So start acting like family instead of enemies.”
Mae scoffed. “We have dozens of relatives, Uncle Brandon. There is no chance of that.”
