Page 99 of Witchshadow
Before Iseult could argue—or fight back—footsteps pounded close. Footsteps without Threads. Then Alma appeared, her face beautifully flushed. Owl’s face lit up. Her Threads too.
“They have Gretchya’s permission,” Alma declared, only slightly breathless. “Leave us.”
The hunter frowned. Alma’s eyes thinned. And finally the hunter cowed, slinking away into the trees. Alma didn’t wait for her Threads to disappear before rounding on Iseult. “Thank Moon Mother you aren’t gone yet.” Nothing in her face showed relief. “I ran as fast as I could.” Inone hand she held a small traveling satchel. “Take this. It isn’t much, but it will last a few days.”
She thrust the satchel at Iseult, without waiting to see if Iseult wanted it. “And these.” Alma held up her other hand, revealing wind-spectacles. “They’ll let you see without damage to your eyes. Oh, and this.” She fumbled something from her pocket. Vellum and worn.
It was the Hell-Bard map.
A sensation Iseult didn’t know wrestled to life in her chest. Both heavy and light at the same time. Both cold and warm.Confusing.
“Take it.” Gripping Iseult’s hand, Alma opened the fingers and placed the rolled page upon her palm. “You need it more than we do.” Alma released her, but Iseult didn’t lower her hand, didn’t close her fist around the map.
“Why?” she asked. “Why are you helping me?”
“Because,” she said, her gaze dropping to Owl. Kind eyes, thoughtful eyes. “Moon Mother always protects her own.”
But I am not one of her own.
“Thank you,” Iseult said, and she meant it. After shoving the map into her pocket and slinging the satchel onto her back, she repeated: “Thank you.” Then she did something she’d never done to anyone but Safi—and certainly never to Alma. She grabbed her in a quick embrace. Too fast for Alma to pull away. Too fast for Iseult to reconsider.
Then she released the other woman’s shoulders, grabbed Owl’s hand, and led her toward the Solfatarra. Owl’s Threads drooped with disappointment, blue melting off the sage Threads that build. But the child would forget Alma soon enough, just as she’d forgotten Zander and Leopold and even her precious Blueberry. At least this time she had the Painstone to numb her heart to any pain.
Strangely, Iseult wished she had one too.
They did not travel far before Iseult pulled Owl beneath a broad spruce tree, its branches a skeletal frame insulated with sharp, freshly scented needles. Iseult unpacked the satchel from Alma while Owl watched on curiously. With much drama—as if she were Safi opening a birthday present—Iseult withdrew item after item for Owl to see.
First, she found a roll of fresh linens and a small jar, which turned out to be a willow-bark salve. “This will help your wrist,” she told Owl in what she hoped was a cheerful voice.
Next, she withdrew a wheel of cheese (goat, judging by the smell) and bundle of smoked meat strips (also goat). She gave one to Owl for gnawing, even as the girl made a face and her Threads fluttered with disappointment. Two weeks ago, Iseult had discovered the child hated goat. One week ago, Owl had realized that sometimes it was all she got.
Next came a water bag, empty but still useful. And last, Iseult withdrew a wool blanket, thin and cream-colored. She draped it over Owl. “Tell me a story,” Iseult whispered while she opened the jar of healing salve and set to carefully slathering it on her neck, her hands, her collarbone. All the places the Solfatarra had bitten.
Owl obeyed, her words muffled by tough goat meat. “Long ago, when the gods walked among us, Trickster took pity on a little witch and her pet hedgehog.”
When she’d finished the tale and was singing the final refrain once more—Save the bones, save the bones!—she seemed to have forgotten the cold. Her little breaths still fogged, but the rich gray of discomfort was gone from her Threads.
So Iseult took her chance to steal away and fill their water bag. There’d been a small stream nearby, frozen over and possibly acidic, but worth examining. She reached it in minutes, the icy surface covered in fresh snow, and after crouching on the shore, she tapped gently at the ice. It reminded her of the Aether Well.Threads that break, Threads that die.
A single punch, and the ice cracked. Then Iseult swept it away, savoring the cold and the black waters now peering up at her. They did not burn her skin, nor stink of sulfur. Snow fell, vanishing on the water’s gentle roll. Iseult’s reflection was twisted, a shivering shadow that carved the world in two. She looked as she had two weeks ago in Praga… yet somehow completely different.
I look like Esme.Not in features—Esme had been one of the most beautiful young women Iseult had ever seen—but in energy. The softness of Esme’s face and body had been hardened by a frantic edge.
Iseult had that edge. Maybe because, like Esme, she had been run out of her tribe. Or maybe because, like Esme, her magic was an abomination of gray, gray, gray.
We are just alike,she used to tell Iseult.We must weave Threads when we can—and break them when we have to.Iseult had always shied away from those words. She had denied them and fought them and pretended they were not true. She was not like Esme; she was not a Puppeteer.
Until the day when there had been no more running. Esme had been right all along: Iseult did have the need to change things, and she did have the hate to do it.
She also had the tools.
She pulled away from her reflection and eased Eridysi’s diary into the afternoon’s light. The entire tome, hers for the reading. Hers for the learning. After a glance in Owl’s direction and finding the child safe and calm, she peeled back the diary’s cover. New leather creaked. Snow landed on the first page.
And Iseult began to read. It was like being handed a key to the universe—except better. This was a key to her own magic. A key to what she could become.
She began where the ripped-out pages ended: raising the dead. It was not true life such magic could create. Void magic had its limits; Portia had only created asemblanceof returned life. A reanimation with Threads that could not last.
But Eridysi had scribbled notes about what might be done if an Aetherwitch attempted the same spell. Her theories and speculations, her diagrams and details filled page after page. Not just on reanimation either, but on cleaving and death. On ghosts and the afterlife, and even on a young shadow wyrm Portia had found a way to kill.
