Lili Crow - Wayfarer

How long could she keep that up? Laurissa was a wide gaping maw; how much would it take? Where was all of it going ?

Between her hands, velvety grass sent up a crushed green reek. Thin green blades tickled her wrists, softly, and she could almost hear them singing a piping little chorus of water and light and rest, roots a matted tapestry in damp earth. The roses answered, a high sleepy buzzing that almost— almost —made words.

I could just collapse right here. Oh wait, I just did. There were charm-symbols flashing through her brain, awful ones. Those tables in the back of even the paperback copies of Sigmundson’s weren’t supposed to make sense to anyone whose Potential hadn’t settled, but she could see them clear as day. Charms to seize a victim’s breathing, shear metal and splinter wood, blight a tree or a small animal. Any charm that black carried the risk of Twisting, but would you care about that if you could, say, work up enough reflected Potential to stop your own heart?

Suicide by charm. Just because the books never talked about it didn’t mean it wasn’t theoretically possible , right?

The thought wasn’t scary. What was scary was the ease with which her brain began to bubble with calculations.

“What have we here?” Soft as the breeze through the twisting elm branches and fluttering leaves.

Ellie jerked in surprise, and glared up at the white picket fence.

Behind it, among the roses, was a brown face, its lower half splitting in a very white V-shaped smile. The eyes were large and liquid-dark, and for a moment they seemed simply black from lid to lid, like Marya the Vultusino house fey’s. Marya’s gaze was kind and absent, though, and this was a piercing stare.

Then the split-second seeing was gone, and she found herself looking at a perfectly ordinary old woman with scant white thistledown for hair and a kind tilt to her thin mouth. She was small and round, and her housedress was splashed with violently blooming orchids on a pretty horrendously bright blue background. Miz Toni would have loved it.

Immediate hot, reeking guilt filled her mouth. She had to swallow another retch.

That thistledown hair had bits of leaves stuck in it, as if the old woman had been gardening and run her dirty hands back through it, and her weathered skin said she spent a lot of time outdoors.

Ellie was lying right in front of her fence. “I’m sor—”

“She’s storm-eyed, this wanderer,” the woman continued, in a chirrupy leaf-whisper. “Pale-haired too, and burning like a candle. What brings you to Auntie’s house, wayfarer? She looks hungry, yes she does.”

She’s a charmer . Ellie felt awake for the first time in days. Awake . . . but terribly worn, scraped thin like an old-timey hide window. The ones they used to paint with ochre to keep evil out, before the Age of Iron. The Potential flowing around the woman was a little odd, sure, but Ellie had been seeing a lot of weird things lately.

The old woman’s roses leaned around her, drinking her in. Their frilled petals throbbed, redder than red, and the picket fence shimmered, too. There was a hazy murmur of bees, and all of a sudden Ellie smelled flowers and crushed grass and spiced honey, and a tang of black freshly turned earth. Her nose was waking up just like the rest of her.

Ellie took stock. Her shoe was never going to be the same. Even a mending on the buckle seemed like too much goddamn charm to scrape out of her weary body. Hunger knotted in her stomach, and everything on her ached.

“Perhaps she doesn’t know?” the charmer continued. “Lots of them don’t know why they come see Auntie. The lonely and the wanderers, they are all Auntie receives.”

She’s crazy, too. Most charmers got a little eccentric by middle age. She didn’t seem to be Twisted, though. “I’m sorry.” Ellie finally managed to make her mouth work. “I just . . . I ran.”

“As if the white hounds were after her, yes. Yes yes.” The thistledown head nodded, bobbing like one of her flowers. “Come in. Auntie will make tea.”

“I really should—” But what was there to do? Figure out how to get home, certainly, and deal with the Strep wanting her to charm until her head broke, and there was homework and Babbage chat with Cami and Ruby, who would not be happy with her.

Well, tea. Why not? It was just an old charmer woman. A low-level one who wasn’t part of a clan or the social climbers who showed up during the season. Maybe she liked her privacy. There were a lot of solitary charmers; even Sigiled ones sometimes retreated from the world.

It sounded like a great goddamn idea.

“Tea. And she is hungry, this little wayfarer. Be nice to Auntie, lonely old Auntie.” The old woman’s tone brooked no refusal. “She’s hurt.” She pointed, and Ellie realized her palms and knees were skinned. Pavement burn, probably, before she’d tumbled onto the grass.

“Yeah, I guess I fell.” She levered herself up painfully, and the sapphire ring flashed once in the mellow leaf-shaded light. The old woman didn’t notice; she had already turned and was picking her way toward a gate Ellie hadn’t seen before. The posts were striped with vivid red paint, sort of like the peppermint sticks hung on traditional trees every Yule. The trellis arch overhead was sticky-white like the fence, though, and the roses were beginning to climb it lazily. By the end of summer they would choke it with greenery and frilled blossoms. “I’m Sinder.” Awkwardly, but she had to offer something.

“Sinder, a burning name. It matches her, yes it does. Auntie greets you, Sinder. Come inside.”

A burning—oh, yeah. Not the first time someone’s said something like that. She examined the white and red wooden gate, and when she was satisfied there wasn’t any bad charm on it, she stepped through. It was so thickly painted it felt a little soft under her fingers, and as soon as she stepped onto the crushed-shell path the air felt warmer. Summer, instead of spring, and the shells made little crunching noises underfoot. The spiced-honey smell intensified, her stomach rumbled, and now she could see bees, zipping drunkenly from flower to waxen flower.

The walk led up to the brownstone’s fudge-colored door, painted to match the stones. Between them, the masonry oozed creamy white, and the chimney was a darker stick, a thread of white smoke issuing from it. Why have a fire on such a nice day? Charmers didn’t usually work around open flame. Hopefully her workroom was insulated; Potential behaved oddly around live fire.

The steps were weird quartzlike stone, almost translucent and freshly washed by the way they gleamed. The fudge door was open, and through it came the most heavenly smell.

Brownies. Not just any tiny little chocolate bars of goodness, though. These had a slight bitter undertone and a dot of bright cinnamon, and the smell pulled Ellie irresistibly forward.

Just like Mom’s , she thought, and followed Auntie into the house.

That first afternoon remained full of light for a long time, a bright island in a sea of ink.

The foyer was floored in licorice black and whipped-cream linoleum squares, polished until they shone. Stairs went up along the right side, but a parlor opened off to the right as well, comfortable and overstuffed, all in shades of peppermint and cherry. The smoke from the chimney came from the kitchen toward the back, the dining room a tiny nook, with a round wicker table draped with a cinnamon cloth.

It was what Laurissa would sniff at as “ country chic, you know,” and for a moment the stuffed scarecrow in a blue velvet coat, propped against the dining room’s wall, seemed to twitch, its sad painted eyes eerily lifelike as it gazed over the table and the two noodle-colored wicker chairs with eggplant cushions.