Page 16 of The Wand of Lore

“What’s that?”

“The coffee. I shouldn’t have come at you in Loews Hollow the way I did. I didn’t know about the baby, that you could help a woman like that. It was wrong of me and I’m, I’m sorry.”

“Marvin, you’re apologizing? Have you ever done that before in your life?”

“I never will again, that’s for sure!”

“Nonsense! You did fabulously.”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Well, are you going to accept my apology?”

Gwenneth was quiet for a moment. She watched his brow furrow as she considered. “You want me to forgive you for what? Hunting me down in my home village and threatening to have me arrested and potentially killed while simultaneously threatening my baby sister? Does that sum it up?”

“Well, yes, I guess. But you make it sound really bad. I was just trying to help the village and the kingdom with the Devil’s Plague.”

“Marvin, why would I cast an actual plague on the kingdom, or my own village, or my sister, for goddesses’ sake? I love my people. My life’s work is to protect people from harm.”

“I didn’t understand the village folk were your people.”

“Who did you think they were to me? Did you think I just wandered into the village and started casting spells one day? That cottage has been in my family for as long as anyone remembers. Loews Hollow is home.”

“I didn’t think about it at all, to be honest. I just thought about the sick and assumed you were an outsider.”

“Why did you come for me, then? Without really knowing what you were after? You were targeting me, I’m sure.”

“I—I—I just heard rumors of a witch.”

“Those rumors can damage real people, you know. You can’t throw out accusations of witchy things without people getting all crazy.”

“But the Devil’s Plague is real. And people are asking, if you can cast magic, why not just spell away the whole thing?”

“I wish I could. Really.” Gwenneth looked down and thought of her sister, alone in their cottage. “We’re not all-powerful, at least I’m not, and we can’t help anyone when we’re hiding because a mob is trying to get us.” She looked up and saw those eyes burning into her. How different he seemed now, chagrined and curious. Kind. The scowl that usually sat on his face looked downright sympathetic.

“I’m sorry.” He reached his hand across the table and put it atop hers.

She smiled at the warmth of his fingers, and when she looked again at his face, she saw that he was smiling back. The warmth of his hands reminded her how delightful it was to be wrapped in his arms on the horse, how he held her against him as they rode across the countryside, and how nice it was that he did little things for her. Carried her pack, helped her onto the horse, had a cup of coffee ready for her. It had been a very long time since another adult had cared for her. She had been only sixteen when her mother had been ripped away from her, and though the Owenses looked in after them, Gwenneth had grown up the day her mother never came home.

But. This man was dangerous to her, and to Nayla. This man was arrogant and rash and would see her dead if he could do it conveniently. She didn’t know anything about him. Where was he from? Why was he here? Why her? He had committed the worst offense she knew when he showed up at her home accusing her of dealing with the Devil. She had built a life of secrecy for her little family. She lived in the village, helped the villagers, attended their births and deaths, encouraged theircrops, but she kept herself apart from them and nurtured a home to which she and her sister could always escape at the end of the day. He had crossed the threshold into their very home and threatened everything she held dear. She didn’t permit friends for herself or her sister, and this man would not be the first. She removed her hand from the table.

“I’ll go gather my pack. We should be on our way,” she said, and when she stomped up the stairs, this time it was her turn to scowl.

“Wait!” he shouted, but she shook her head and kept walking.

In truth, she was not angry with him, but at herself. He had held a baby, and it had tugged at her heart to see him tear up with the child in his arms. She liked riding a horse with him, and she didn’t completely despise his companionship. He had nice arms.So what?

She was on a mission. This man was not welcome in her life except to show her the way to Gorenth Castle. He would not take away the quiet life she and Nayla shared of potions and scrolls and the warmth of her hearth, and above all, no outsiders. He was dangerous, even as he was attractive, with muscles in every place they ought to be, and Gwenneth would not allow him to whisk her away from her homey little cottage and her sister.

She had built this life to insulate them from the dangers of the outside. It was not easy being a witch; she was available as a scapegoat for any unfortunate goings-on in the village, or even outside of the village.

Gwenneth had only to recall the memory of her mother to know the truth: people could not be trusted. If the village could turn on Sarri after she had spent her entire life working toward their good health, they could turn on anyone. Worse, unlike Gwenneth, her mother had been charismatic, friendly, and much more powerful. She wielded the ancient wand. Otherwomen frequented their cottage for long chats over chamomile tea, and some accompanied her during her walks around the village, where she would care for the ill and tend to the crops. Under her watch, potatoes grew into large bushes and were dug up to reveal bulbous tubers. Gardens were full of pumpkins the size of bobcats, and wildflowers sprouted along every path. All shared in the bounty of the village.

Sarri was loved until she was not. Gwenneth did not know what evil aroused the townsfolk that fateful day so long ago. She didn’t know what ill fortune caused them to start looking at her mother out of the sides of their eyes. Sarri used to tell stories of her own girlhood, how she had grown up different from other children and resentful, but those stories of ostracization were hard to reconcile with the village’s later love of the witch. Perhaps the suspicions began when Sarri was a young maiden of less than twenty-five years, bearing a child out of wedlock, the father unnamed and unmentioned. Gwenneth still had no guesses as to who had sired her, and her mother had never offered an explanation. Or perhaps hatred began to fester in their hearts when war visited the village that long-ago gray winter when whispers of rebellion made their way to Loews Hollow. Eger’s men came and collected men and boys from the village, handing them ill-formed weapons that were cold to the touch. Time stopped in Loews Hollow as the women and children, mothers and daughters and elderly, all waited for their boys and men to come home. Gwenneth had been a little girl, but she still remembered visiting the ill during the war, when mothers sat alone in cottages, crying and hoping for the day when their beloveds would ride through the village, bringing home sweets for the youth and stories of glory. Instead, goblins came in the fall telling of a day so dark that few in the regiment would return home. Regards and thank you for your sacrifice. Then the villagers had to restart the clock and raise theirremaining children and tend to their farms. Eger was crowned king, and talk of the deposed crown was treasonous.

Perhaps that was when the villagers began casting sideways glances at Sarri. They no longer invited her over for dinner and stopped praising her for their bountiful harvests. They cursed her behind her back during the long years that followed as if they were the ones favored with power by the goddesses. Gwenneth grew older, and Sarri bore another daughter, and the village grew poorer. Over a decade later, the spaces that the men and boys had occupied remained an open wound in the village. One day, Georgia Burnett declared she would leave the village to find a husband. Georgia was the beautiful and charismatic daughter of the village leader at the time, only a few years older than Gwenneth, and should have had no trouble finding a match, but there was nobody left to marry. This was too much for the villagers. All of the women of the village came together to see her off, and their sorrow bled to anger. She shouldn’t have to go. Something was being taken from them. Darkness festered in their hearts and spread like contagion after they had borne so much loss.

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