My great-aunt takes the knife to my wrist.
Maud means well.
I catch glimpses of my cousins and grandmother behind her, four figures not too close, but jostling for a peek. Hoping to catch the moment when what’s meant to happen does. All of us equally anxious – gods know the others proved themselves well before this. At eight, I’m a very late bloomer.
Around us, the stone circle, the sacred place, deep in the woods. If it’s going to happen, it will – must! – happen here. Above, bright blue sky, summer-solstice warm. Beneath me, the cool smoothness of the sandstone altar. Birds singing somewhere, the murmurings of my cousins, the jingling of Maud’s silver chatelaine at her waist, our grandmother Gisela calling her sister’s name.
However: nothing.
Still.
My forearm’s littered with cuts, mostly shallow, all red. I feel no pain and I’m urging Great-Aunt Maud on because I share her belief that if I just surrender enough blood to pay the red price, my magic will – finally – manifest. That I will be like my family. That I’ll belong.
And she slashes again – a little frenzied by frustration – and I think she’s done it because I’m getting dizzy. The menhirs are beginning to spin, I’m light as a feather, lifting up, flying, and at last – at last! – I’m a witch.
Except Gisela isn’t calling anymore; she’s yelling and doesn’t sound relieved. Sounds panicked. ‘Too deep, Maud! She’s bleeding too much!’
And after that I don’t remember a thing about the days that followed, nothing except the cold and miserable disappointment of knowing I’d failed yet again.
* * *
The autumn sun on my face is gentle, shining red through my eyelids, and the scar on my wrist feels like thick silk under my fingertips.
Such a deep cut, no less noticeable than it was eleven years ago. Malice was absent from the act – or mostly – although vexation at my lack of ‘development’ ran high. Maud had been trying, I believe, to shock something out of me. Or into me. To awaken the magic that should have been lying just beneath my skin, or deep in my bones, or growing
at the roots of my light-brown hair – but was clearly missing from any part of me.
It serves as a reminder of my basic flaw, that ridge of healed flesh; hastily pulled together with cousin Eira’s neat stitches even though she was only a year older than me – because everything’s a learning experience – but her magic wasn’t quite good enough to leave no cicatrice. Every morning, my family take their fine silver knives and make small cuts in arms and hands and thighs, release a little blood, offering the red price, the crimson tithe for any magic they might do during the day. A ritual from which I’m forever excluded.
Out past the hedge-fence that surrounds the Briar House, Silverton bustles at its usual afternoon pace, the particular sort of babble a town of almost two thousand souls makes. People going about their days, working hard, preparing for what comes next. For life. For tomorrow night. Not me, though. Not at this very moment, no.
I think about Great-Aunt Maud’s little office with its shelves filled with account books, banking records, rules and regulations and procedures, letters patent of the guilds, applications and permissions for various activities, records of censure and acclamation, maps, schedules for civic maintenance, rolls of citizens and their businesses and what they owe to the Briars, lists of those who wish to access the communal stores in the tithe-barns, and what others have contributed to them. Neat as a pin with everything in an ordered fashion, notebooks and pens aligned perfectly on the large blotter, two stained-glass desk lamps perfectly positioned at each corner for symmetry. And her leather-bound grimoire in green and gold lying on the carved wooden lectern in one corner – admittedly with a covering of dust because I’ve not been near it since she died. I do my best to keep it as Maud did.
A perfect little office for a steward.
The little office that’s been mine for the past six months, give or take, and has been suffocating me in the days and weeks leading up to tomorrow night. Which is why I took the opportunity – when the banker’s clerk had delivered a message that Mr Aberwyn was unwell and could we reschedule? – to sneak outside and hide in this corner of the garden. And to contemplate my major failing, wondering if it will lead to A Terrible Thing.
It was lovely and quiet for all of ten minutes before an avian screech came from above and almost immediately after a screech from Grandmamma Gisela. From the clarity
of the sound, she could only have been standing on the front veranda.
‘Ellie Briar, where are you?’
I stay very still and quiet. Gisela may well be a witch – the witch – but she doesn’t know everything and can’t see through hedges or walls, nor can she sense the presence of those who might be staying out of sight for reasons of their own.
‘It’s no use hiding, Ellie Briar.’ She mutters, ‘I know where you live.’
Indeed.
Still, I keep my mouth shut. Eventually, there’s the clip of footsteps and a door closing. My fingers seek the scar again. Forcing my muscles to soften, relax, I lean back on the bench. Another five minutes, I think, calculating how far I can push it. Ten. Fifteen at the most.
* * *
‘The letters,’ begins Grandmamma Gisela, but I’ve heard this all before and am staring out the library window.
The owl is large, with a tawny lace pattern for camouflage, limned with gold; the feathers appear delicate as spider webs. My grandfather, on one of the rare occasions when he told me anything interesting, said they have no oil on their plumage; this makes their flight silent, much to the detriment of mice and rabbits and even runty lambs. This one, early roused, sits in the yew tree that’s grown up too close to the house. Round eyes wide in a blankly pretty face. It notices me at the open window, shivers, chest puffing, doing a discontented little dance on the branch. Doesn’t take off, however, merely calms its feathers, gives me a haughty stare. It had best hope Nia’s not around with her hunting bow.
‘The letters,’ repeats Grandmamma Gisela loudly from her desk, ‘are very important. They keep the ecclesiastical wolf from the door. After I’m gone, make sure they continue.’
‘Uh huh.’ Behind me is a room lined with books (far more interesting than those in the steward’s office next door), and in it the grandmother I adore − she who raised me − but I’m staring out the tall broad window because she’s talking about matters I don’t want to discuss.
‘Ellie, are you paying attention?’ A sharp tone, something I seldom hear because – unlike some in this
house – mostly I am biddable, mostly obedient. Mostly because I feel a need to make up for what I lack.
‘Not really, no.’ An honest answer which makes Gisela laugh. The heavy polished ebony chair scrapes on the floor − almost a throne, with roses and apples carved across its arched top − then her steps pad light and sure as she crosses to me.
‘My mother,’ says Gisela fondly, ‘insisted on politeness to the owls because they might be more than they seemed. She didn’t hold with shifters − rash creatures, most like to get themselves and others killed − and you never knew with whom you were dealing until they revealed themselves. Owls, she said, were wiser than most, though they are knowledge thieves. Mind your manners around them until you know if they are feathered both inside and out.’
Proper witches, Gisela’s always said, don’t take other shapes – although I’ve read of some who do – and shifters are our cousins at best, generally with no inherent ability to cast spells. They’re too close to the beasts they turn into, inclined to either fight or flight, nothing in between. As a result, they are most commonly caught.
And yet still closer to true witches than I.
The owl gives us one final flickering glance – strangely irritable – then unfurls its wings and takes off with a great displacement of air and evergreen leaves. I feel a quick tug of envy, though I can’t say precisely why: its freedom? That it might take another form? I press the ache down, shove it under my other jealousies, all the things I know to be foolish and pointless, and watch the bird’s flight. Over our front garden, over the high hedge-fence, then the market square busy with customers, stallholders and shopkeepers clustering around the fountain and its bronze sculpture of the Three Brothers Bear. Over the roofs of the shops (butchers and bakers and candlestick makers), businesses like solicitors and coffin-makers, fabric merchants and carpenters, tiny modistes, perfumiers and jewellers, and the church, the townhall, the bank, the papermill and one of the flourmills, the smithy and the tearooms and coffeehouses. The big houses of grey stone and black wood and thick shining glass, the smaller ones and smaller still until they become tiny cottages out at the edges before Silverton bleeds into fields and the forest that hides the stone circle. The owl, no more than a speck now, continues on towards the deepest part of the mountains where the river begins. I wish my resentments onto its back, that they’ll be taken far
away, dropped into a ravine, lost somewhere I’ll never find them again.
My grandmother nudges my shoulder with her own, nods downward. A small, neat figure darts from Prothero’s in Butchers Byway around a corner and into Eldin’s Bakery. Beres Baines in a bright pink dress, wicker basket hanging heavy, filled with treats. Not for the festival, I suspect, but to tempt an appetite that’s fled.
My stomach swoops. Once more I’ll try; once more before I admit defeat and speak to Audra. Ask for help.
Gisela pulls the windows to, not completely closed, the pigeon’s egg ruby ring glinting on her wedding finger – no promise to a husband, but to her family and home. The symbol of the Briar Witch. There’s a fire in the grate but Grandmamma has begun feeling the cold more and more. A sign that time is marching on her, when we’d have it otherwise. We must prepare, she keeps saying, for a passing of the old and a herald of the new; we insist she’ll be with us for many years. It’s also the reason I’ve come to hate these conversations, these preparations for when she’s no longer here. Gisela wishes to make me consider things I cannot change. And in truth, the loss of Great-Aunt Maud is still too fresh.
‘I trust you’ll listen to me now it’s gone, lovely distraction though it was?’ Gisela asks mildly.
I smile. ‘Of course, Grandmamma. The letters.’
Except whenever Gisela mentions the letters I feel adrift and uncertain; the clicking of the grandfather clock in one corner doesn’t help, feels like a reminder. Tempus fugit.
‘Heed me, Ellie Briar. No matter what else Maud forgot or ignored, she always sent the letters.’
For all the good such diligence did her.
Gisela purses her lips as if reading my thoughts, then gestures to the sofa. It could fit four comfortably and is set in the middle of a colourful silk rug that’s been worn by too many feet; until there are actual holes in it a replacement is considered an unnecessary expense. As if we are paupers. We sit, and I nod, show her I’m taking it seriously, just as I do every time she mentions Maud and the missives. She doesn’t mention other things about her sister, however.
‘Have you been practising?’ Unconsciously, she plucks at her long, thin fingers. A small silver vial of unguent hangs from the chatelaine at my waist (once Maud’s, but unlike her I wear it to the side, tuck it into my pocket so the jingling doesn’t give me away), and I take her hand; the ointment helps with the arthritic chill. Blood warms beneath
her papery skin as I massage. She smiles. ‘Thank you, sweeting. But: have you?’
‘Of course. Maud had me write the last few. She trusted me.’
The letters are a twice-yearly annoyance. Reports to the Archbishop of Lodellan, written in the script (or an excellent approximation thereof) of Father Tobias, the last god-hound to grace Silverton with his presence. He was also, by the by, my grandfather and Gisela’s paramour for quite some time. Such reports assure said exalted princes of the church that the Briars are behaving themselves. ‘Never fear, Grandmamma, I’m well-trained and careful with my calendar. I may not be a witch, but I am a clever little steward. I’ll not fail in this, nor in any other task you set me.’ I sound sulky. I am sulky.
She’s beautiful still as she smiles, with silver hair and violet-blue eyes, cheekbones sharp and high, lips with no sign of wrinkling or subsidence of the teeth behind them. Though none of us are by any means ordinary-looking, only Audra can truly hold a candle to her.
‘I nag, my dear, because this single task is the one to keep us safe. You are sensible, if stubborn, and your cousin will need you, when the time comes, Ellie. Audra has talent for many things, but administration is not one of them. She can be hot-headed as you well know and a little autocratic’ – a little! – ‘but I’m teaching her to lead. Audra’s had her wild times, but she’s settled now. However, it will be you who keeps the wheels of Silverton spinning. People need to know her power is here for their protection, but you’ll be the one who makes their lives bearable.’ She clears her throat, corrects: ‘You already do so. You’ve stepped into Maud’s shoes admirably.’
When the time comes, we cousins (Nia and Eira and I) will bend to Audra’s will as those before us bent to Grandmamma’s, and so on back to when Gilly Briar was the very first Briar Witch. When the time comes, I will toil away with no more acknowledgement from Audra than Gisela gave Maud in her lifetime; in death, Gisela’s praise of her sister is effusive. I’m the steward and I’ll serve with nary a glimmer of glory. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if Audra wasn’t already so favoured…
I love her and know bitterness is foolish when I could never have been the Briar Witch anyway – not without any kind of eldritch power. I’m good with brewing potions, making medicaments, my powders can calm fevers, cure headaches and coughs, speed up recovery, even drag the
sick from the doors of death. Yet no matter my intent or how closely I adhere to a spell-ritual, I can’t make any sort of enchantment work, cannot perform miracles of any stripe, either good or ill, small or large.
There’s not a scintilla of magic in my bones.
Gisela changes tack: ‘Did you hear, Ellie? Edgar’s tale this morning?’
The tinker – or ‘gentleman-merchant’ as he prefers – had recounted it as he laid out his wares on our kitchen table, fine and strange things from far-off places. Gisela adores histories of ill-fortune visited upon the godly: a fire in an abbey that hoarded its profits and let peasants starve; a cathedral collapse while a grand prelate delivered a fire-and-brimstone mass; a bishop’s palace overrun by rats and locusts (‘There’s one of our kind behind that, you mark me!’). Best of all, some crashing catastrophe such as the one Edgar shared.
The Monastery of Saint Ogg’s-of-the-Way (far from us, close to the tiny hamlet of Jago’s Rise) would allow nothing female within its walls, neither human nor animal. The hens and nannies and geese, the sows, cows, ewes and mares were all penned outside the compound and attended to by three laymen from the nearby village so the holy brothers would not be tainted by contact. When word came of a fearsome group of bandits bearing down upon the area, the villagers presented themselves at the monastery gates, seeking sanctuary. Men and boys were admitted; women and girls were left outside to await inevitable violation and death that accompanied such events – because compassion could not be allowed to bend the rules.
However, something unforeseen happened: the rogues and ruffians had other ideas, perhaps because, to a man, they were women. Retribution was their intent − the abbot was notorious for giving absolution to murderers, rapists and men who denied their own children − and these women came with fire. As the monastery burned with each and every heartless monk, each and every traitorous man and boy inside, the leader of the troupe made an offer to those who’d been left to fend for themselves: Join us.
And if we do not? asked one of the newly widowed.
The robber-in-charge shrugged. Then do not. Go your own way; if you must marry again, be more particular in your choices.
The raiding party, Edgar reported, was much augmented that day.
We’d all laughed heartily and Audra had described the loss of priestly life as a good start.
‘Yes, Grandmamma, I heard it as well as you did. Have you forgotten I sat by your side? Does your memory slip from you so soon?’ I ask archly and she slaps my wrist.
‘My point, facetious child, is that you never know what the future brings, and what looks like certain death from one angle may well be salvation from another.’ She gives an exasperated huff.
‘Edgar also said that there were whispers of other bandits setting up camps in the forests not so far to our north,’ I point out. ‘I’d suggest sending—’
‘I’ll discuss reconnaissance with Nia.’ She raises a finger. ‘Now, the letters…’
I roll my eyes.
‘Ellie Briar, you’re the only one I’ll trust with this task. I have raised you all to be mindful of your duty to your family, to the Briar Witch, and to the town. Promise me you’ll stand by your cousin and support her in all things.’
I should simply answer Yes, but instead I choose to be a brat: ‘As long as I am able.’ And she who’s known my voice longer than my own mother did hears that I feel obligation hung around my neck like a noose.
Gisela lowers her lids until only slivers of violet-blue show. ‘And what might make you unable?’
‘Death,’ I say defiantly. Confess: ‘Love. Marriage.’
‘Ellie…’ Gisela’s expression is pained; her head drops back, the silver hair falling over her shoulders. I count the beats before she gives me the full strength of her glare. This is a performance I’ve seen many times (not always directed at me) and I’m keen to its nuances. ‘Ellie, that boy—’
‘He’s the one I want,’ I declare, then with less certainty, ‘and he wants me.’
‘Does he?’ she demands. ‘Do his eyes rest only on you? Or are you too busy mooning over him to notice that he watches others? Are you drinking in his face, Ellie Briar, when he’s drinking in another’s?’
I go cold all over and hate her. Years of adoration and loyalty swept away in seconds as I feel I’ll never love my grandmother again, before remorse rushes in and makes me despise myself more than I ever have her. There’s a pricking in my mind, a questioning that my desire for Dai Carabhille could have made me loathe the one to whom I owe everything. I push the thought aside.
Gisela says more gently, ‘He’s a boy, Ellie, and not fit to marry a Briar.’
‘Dai will marry me when the time’s right.’ I say this with more conviction than I feel.
Gisela, with her witch’s sense, knows it. She knows, too, that I’ve been enamoured of him since first I laid eyes on him, when we were both small and I would follow him at a distance, too shy to do otherwise. That I’ve loved him so intensely it’s like a pulse in my veins. Yet I still have no certainty that he’ll be mine. My bottom lip begins to tremble, and I look away.
Grandmamma hooks two fingers under my chin and makes me meet her gaze. ‘Ellie Briar, Dai Carabhille is all well and good. Fine men are few and far between. He may well be one in years to come, but he’s definitely not now – and I have my doubts about his future prospects, my darling.’ She pauses as she always does when she’s about to say something hurtful. ‘I’ll not trust our safety to some blow-in boy even when − especially when − you’ve got your nethers all in a tizz for him. And certainly not for some boy who’s not yet done with others.’ She shakes her head. ‘Mark me, my girl: you need a partner who supports you in what you do, doesn’t take your attention from your duties – like Eira’s Sally. We Briars must choose our mates carefully, it’s how we survive.’
And I want to hurt her in return, so my tone’s as mean when I say, ‘And did you? With Grandfather Tobias?’
The barb strikes home. She clenches her hands into fists in her lap. I shouldn’t have said that. My grandfather’s actions scarred us all.
When Gisela next speaks, her voice is rough though even. ‘If you need a lesson in choices, child, then let my example be your warning.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say quietly.
‘You’re nineteen, Ellie Briar, old enough to make bad decisions as well as good. And old enough to bear the consequences − but do not let those consequences affect your family.’
I bite at the inside of my mouth; the grip of teeth on tender flesh helps me focus. I swallow and say what I could have said in the first place to avoid all of this: ‘I will stand by Audra no matter what.’
‘Good girl.’ Grandmamma nods. ‘We need a little discontentment in life, Ellie, for how else would we recognise joy but by contrast? Remember to put the family first, Ellie, in all things, even ahead of your heart.’ She pulls me into a hug, speaking against my hair, tawny as hers once was; she smells like old roses. ‘We are so few these days,
my girl. I’ve not schemed and kept us safe all these years for the Briars to go up in flames through carelessness.’
She holds me a moment longer before pushing me gently away. ‘The last report was sent just before… before. The next letter is due for despatch in a few weeks, yes?’ I nod. ‘Edgar will collect it on his return journey.’
‘Yes, Grandmamma.’
‘Tomorrow is your first Balefire Eve – yes, yes, as you well know. Remember: it must go smoothly.’ She’s silent for a moment, letting me chew on the comment. ‘Make sure your cousins are doing their parts’ – utterly unnecessary, as if any one of us would shirk this duty, as if the others have not done their parts for years, but she’s giving me busywork so I don’t fret, or no more than is reasonable – ‘And don’t forget the lanterns. We’d never live it down.’
‘Yes, Grandmamma.’
‘And, Ellie?’
‘Yes, Grandmamma?’
‘Someone will come for you. The one you need.’ She gives me a serious look. ‘I don’t ask you to forgo the pleasure of a husband, I don’t ask you to be as your great-aunt was – as she chose to be. All I ask is that you wait and are wise.’
When I nod she smiles and rises. Remaining on the couch, I stare at the three items above the mantlepiece: a black obsidian mirror, a woodcut, and a framed document. The mirror is meant for scrying but no one’s got the knack of that anymore. The woodcut shows a couple, she sitting, he standing behind her chair (the same chair that’s at Gisela’s desk even now). There are drawings of them, too, in some of the books on the shelves, but I’m partial to this carving because of its fineness; their features are clear, as are their expressions. Gilly and Sandor Briar started here – or rather, they fled here, found a place to call home, a foundation, and we remain three hundred or so years later. The wood’s tinted so I can tell that Gilly had blue eyes and golden-brown hair turning to silver at the temples, her mouth in an obstinate set; Sandor’s mid-brown hair is mostly greying, but his eyes remain a light green, his expression sweet. I wonder if I’d be a disappointment to them. The document, the dispensation with its purple script and a gold and purple seal, is our guarantee of safety.
Shaking my head, I stand to leave. Gisela giggles as I close the door behind me. It’s not directed at me. My grandmother’s still thinking about St Ogg’s; it will keep her
amused for days. I’ll seek out my cousins soon, but first there’s another visit I must make.
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