To Kill a Kettle Witch (Novel of the Mist-Torn Witches) (14 page)

“What will you do?” I asked. Until then, I’d not allowed myself to be drawn into actual conversation with the people who came to me, but I wanted to know.

She opened her eyes as if considering my question. “Nothing. I will do nothing. I will say nothing.”

Standing, she nodded to me once, but her face was still lined with pain. “Thank you.”

She left, and I wondered how I would be able to carry on for the rest of the morning. I somehow managed, and later, Uncle Gaelan was stunned when he counted the contents of the single pouch alone. He kissed the top of my head. His action made me feel guilty, as if we were profiting from the suffering of others.

For the remainder of that autumn, I spent mornings doing readings, and for the rest of each day, I was petted and spoiled, and I had no other duties whatsoever.

When the fair broke up and we pulled out, heading southwest, I could hardly contain my relief. While traveling at least, I would be given a reprieve. My parents’ standing had improved greatly among the family, and our wagon now rolled second in line, right behind Uncle Gaelan’s.

That winter, we followed the same path as always, passing from one town or village to the next—always invited, expected, and welcome. My reputation grew during those cold months, and I did more readings than I could count. I never ceased to be surprised by how many people wished to know what was happening in the moment in a different location, but most of the reasons were similar in nature: checking on an ill relative or friend, checking crops or livestock on a family farm some distance away . . . or attempting to learn if a spouse or lover was faithful.

I seldom felt the nag again, as this only appeared
to occur during an emergency of which I must be made aware.

And anyway, Uncle Gaelan was more interested in the money I earned by reading people.

In the spring, we headed east, and I was given a true rest.

As we rolled into the meadow beneath the castle of Yegor, my life returned
almost
to what it had been before. Though word of my new standing spread quickly among the other families, most of our people would not require my abilities, and I once again returned to daily duties like any other Móndyalítko woman. As opposed to feeling resentful, I welcomed the mundane tasks: cooking, tending chickens, washing clothes, and cleaning the wagons. Alondra and I chatted away like the sisters we were, and I was thankful not to be sitting in a hard chair reading strangers all morning.

Soon, we were harvesting strawberries, then raspberries, then blueberries, and finally apples. We fished in the streams and snared rabbits, and some of the other families’ shifters brought down the occasional deer to be shared. Life was good.

In the autumn, we rolled out of the meadow and headed back for Kéonsk.

By the time of our arrival, just as always, large numbers of farmers, merchants, and other Móndyalítko converged for the fair, far too many to be allowed inside the already crowded city.

Wagons, tents, and market stalls were set up outside, overseen by a city administrator called Master Rolfo. He was lord of the fair back then, but this position altered every decade or so.

Just as Uncle Gaelan had predicted, we learned that Master Rolfo had kept a prime spot for our five wagons, just outside the west entrance of the city. Nobody could miss us there. Rolfo didn’t do this out of kindness, but after the previous year, I was now considered quite a draw. It was clear that a number of people would come to see me and then would spend money at the merchant stalls.

The city took a portion of all money earned at the stalls.

Once again, I became “the seer” each and every morning. I can remember being called “the great Helga.” I had no duties. I was petted and spoiled and served dinner first. The lure of this had worn off, though, and my mind kept drifting back to the days of summer when I’d stood in the sunshine picking blueberries.

I earned a good deal of money that autumn.

In early winter, we left Kéonsk and began our winter visits.

For the next five years, nothing much of note happened. Then in the autumn of my twenty-fourth year, we took our place in Kéonsk once again for the autumn fair. By this point, I was resigned to my fate. The family thrived with fine clothes, good food, new wheels for the wagons, and several new horses. Most of our comforts were entirely due to me.

It never occurred to me to try to alter the arrangement.

One evening, I was resting in our family’s wagon when a knock sounded upon the door. Surprised, I got up to answer it and found myself looking out at a
solider wearing the red tabard of the Väränj—the city guards. He was of average height and build, with short brown hair and brown eyes. There was nothing about his appearance to make him stand out . . . and yet when his eyes held mine, I sensed an old soul inside him.

“Yes?” I asked for lack of anything else that came to mind.

“Are you the seer?”

I wanted to sigh. “I only do readings in the mornings. Come back tomorrow.”

“I can’t. I’ll be on duty. Please.”

His voice held an edge of desperation, and I couldn’t send him away. Stepping back, I let him in. I’d never done a reading in my own family’s wagon before.

“What is it you need me to see?” I asked.

“My family lives to the south. I received a letter from my sister this morning, telling me my mother was ill, dying, and that I should come. But the letter was delayed, and it’s now weeks old. If my mother is still ill, I’ll request leave and set out tomorrow. If she is well . . . or if she has died, I’ll remain here at my duties, write back to my sister, and go home when I can. But I need to know.”

As with his appearance, his request was nothing out of the ordinary, but I could hear the emotion in his voice. He was torn between family and duty.

We both sat, and I took his hand. His fingers felt warm and weathered in my own. I focused on the spark of his spirit and on his home and on his mother. The mists closed in.

When they cleared, I found myself standing by a
small family graveyard. A fresh grave had been recently dug, with a wooden marker that read
ELIZA PORTER,
LOVING MOTHER
.

The mists closed in again and faded, and I sat looking at the soldier.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I was sorry. “If your mother is Eliza, I saw her grave. She has passed over.”

He drew a ragged breath and closed his eyes.

His hand was still in mine, and I gripped down more tightly on his fingers. Something about him moved me.

“Don’t go back into the city,” I said. “You shouldn’t be on your own. Stay with us and have dinner. There’ll be music afterward, and you should have others about you.”

His eyes opened. “What’s your name?”

“Helga.”

He nodded. “I’m Saul.”

I liked his name.

He did stay for dinner, and I sat with him, offering whatever comfort I was capable of, which wasn’t much, as by nature I am not a giver of comfort.

The following night, he came back and brought me a bouquet of late-season roses. No man had ever brought me flowers. The next night, he brought a small box of almonds rolled in sugar and cinnamon.

I was being courted.

We walked among the wagons and closed stalls in the darkness, talking softly of small things, and soon we found ourselves drifting through the trees on the edge of the encampment until we reached the meadow where Gustavo had been kicked those years ago.

Slowly, Saul sank down to sit on the grass, and I sank down beside him.

He kissed me gently, and I kissed him back. There was no question of what we both wanted. With the same gentle movements, we removed each other’s clothes, and I lay back in the grass.

I loved the feel of his hands and his mouth.

I was in love.

That was a sweet autumn of stolen moments. We both performed our duties by day and slipped away at night whenever possible, exploring each other’s bodies and whispering soft words to each other.

Even then, we both knew it was the fleeting love of a season. I would never be a soldier’s wife, and he would never resign his post and join a band of traveling Móndyalítko.

That is not to say that parting didn’t cause us sorrow, but when winter set in, I kissed him good-bye, and our wagons rolled southwest, leaving him behind.

I hoped to simply hold the memories in my heart.

But Saul left me with a good deal more than memories, and about a month later, I began throwing up my breakfast. Before long, it was clear I was with child. Thankfully, among my people, this caused a woman no shame, and a new life was reason for celebration. My mother and Alondra both sought to care for me through the most difficult months as my body grew more unwieldy. I found that I didn’t like being pregnant and vowed to never put myself through such an ordeal again.

In early summer, just as the raspberries ripened in the fields of Yegor, my pains began.

I was lucky, and my labor was brief, and with the help of my mother and Alondra, I delivered a baby girl into the world with a fair amount of ease.

I named her Renata, and her birth was the last moment of ease she ever gave me.

She came out screaming and didn’t stop for nearly a year. Even with other women helping when they could, I got little sleep and neither did anyone else in my wagon. I felt worn and exhausted much of the time.

Almost as soon as she could form words, Renata used them to tell me when she didn’t like something—and she didn’t like much. She was picky about food and clothing and the blankets on her bed.

As the years passed, and she turned six, this only grew worse.

She looked a good deal like me, with a stocky build and thick dark hair, and my mother often said, “Oh, Helga, don’t be hard on her. She reminds me a good deal of you.”

“Of me? Was I so difficult?”

“Don’t you remember?”

I did not. Did Renata take after me?

Somewhere in her childhood, though, I came to realize how much I loved her. I loved her small hands and her serious face, but she also caused me great trials. Renata was born to be disappointed. She often looked at me with great expectation, as if waiting for me to do or provide or produce something wonderful, and I never had a single clue what she wanted or expected. For her tenth birthday, I made her a beautiful doll, and she only sighed when she saw it.

“My friend Onya’s mother gave her a new dress for her birthday.”

“Did you want a new dress? You should have asked.”

She sighed again. “You know I’d never
ask
for anything.”

This was the way of our life together, her looking at me in expectation, and me never once living up to whatever it was she wanted—as I never knew what it might be.

When she reached the age of sixteen, she began to prove very useful to the family. Renata worked hard. She was a fine cook and seamstress. She sang like a dove and helped with performances. I was proud of her.

She was prone to bad dreams, though, and would sometimes crawl into bed with me and let me hold her. These moments filled me with love. But in her waking hours, she never stopped looking at me with a challenge of expectation that I could never understand or meet. Perhaps the fault was mine.

However, in her twentieth winter, she proved to be an anchor for me in time of tragedy and change. We stopped, as always, at a town called Salihorsk, only to be told that an illness had struck, and we must be careful. We settled our wagons outside town and only went in to conduct performances.

We should have moved on.

Within days, my mother fell ill with a fever and a red rash on her face, and my father followed soon after. Mother died first. Other members of our family fell ill, and in the end, it was the youngest and eldest we lost, including Uncle Gaelan.

Griffin was now our leader. By then he’d been
married for well over a decade, with two young sons, Gerard and Gersham.

I was so lost in mourning my parents, especially my mother, that I didn’t think much on the change in leadership. Alondra was no better. She had loved our mother so. It was Renata who cooked meals and cared for us and kept her sharp eyes open.

“You look out for Griffin,” she whispered to me one night. “He does not value you as Uncle Gaelan did.”

She was right, and I paid mind to her words.

Everything was different now. One generation had been wiped out in a single winter and replaced by the next. In the end, though, Griffin’s disdain for me proved not such a bad thing, for I had no interest in pleasing him, either.

When we reached Kéonsk for the following autumn fair, he came to me. “You can do your readings in the morning, but I see no reason why you should be excused from other duties or be treated any differently from anyone else.”

I nodded. “Fine. If I’m like anyone else, then I can decide when I wish to do readings and when I don’t. And I’m not doing them every day.”

He frowned, but he was the one who’d started us down this path.

After that, I set my own schedule and spread word for when people might visit. I had less privilege under Griffin, but a good deal more freedom, and I much preferred this.

I never forgot Renata’s loyalty and how she’d cared for Alondra and me over that dark winter.

Then, in Renata’s twenty-second summer, in Yegor,
I noticed a change in her, and she was not as attentive as usual to her duties, often distracted. I wondered about the cause until I came around the side of a wagon one day and saw her holding hands with a young man from the line of Kaleja. The expressions on both their faces could not be missed.

They were besotted.

I was happy for them, happy for my girl. After that one autumn so long ago, I never saw Saul again and heard later that he’d been reassigned, but the glow of those months never left me completely, and I was glad for my Renata to bask in the same happiness.

I wondered where this would take them. Her falling in love with a young man from one of the families was different from me falling for a Väränj soldier. Renata’s attachment could end in marriage.

As the summer ended, though, I noticed Renata becoming agitated and looking around a good deal, as if seeking him out and not finding him. I saw them together one day, and he appeared uncomfortable, but then I made out her face. She looked at him with the same demanding expectation with which she so often looked at me. Only a person already lost in the throes of great love can endure that look on a long-term basis.