Lili Crow - Wayfarer

The door even locked, but she didn’t find that out until later. Ellie dropped onto the deep gray velvet quilt on the narrow single bed, its iron scrollwork glinting in the bright moonlight—strange, that there was moonlight coming in through the window, because it was a cloudy night . . .

She fell asleep.

IT WAS PRETTY MUCH HEAVEN.

Each morning began with strengthening sunshine spilling through the glazed windowpanes. There was no tapping of lacquered talons on the door or lunging into terrified wakefulness thinking she would be late for school. The bathroom was small, but she didn’t have to worry about the door creaking open or a false-honey voice bouncing off the tiles right before the madness started.

Instead there was the clink of thick glass milk bottles on the front step—Auntie was old-school, and had morning groceries delivered at dawn. She could probably afford it—she could charm rings around just about any teacher Ellie had ever had. Still, she never left the house, so maybe she was retired? She must have saved and invested a pretty penny to be so reclusive, but it was rude to pry. As early as Ellie tried to get up, she never caught the milkman.

Auntie always made a big breakfast, floating around the kitchen with her thistledown hair braided into a coronet. The scarecrow rustled each time Ellie sat down at the table, but when she glanced at it, it stilled. Maybe it was an experiment, maybe it was just sensitized material reacting to the fact that there were two active charmers in Auntie’s house now.

Because the old woman didn’t want her to leave. Stay, and learn. Auntie offers sanctuary, she does.

After so much bad, Ellie was finally getting a little luck. It was, as far as she was concerned, about damn time. If only she could stay here until she was eighteen . . . but that was Too Far Ahead. Maybe all that planning really didn’t do anything, since every single one she’d had turned into a worthless jumble.

After breakfast, Ellie washed the painted dishes and Auntie dried, moving in companionable silence except for the old woman muttering the name of a charm symbol and Ellie lifting a soapy, drenched hand to sketch it in trembling air.

She hadn’t missed one yet.

Auntie didn’t charm in a workroom. Or rather, the whole house was her workroom, and the garden too. She didn’t seem too concerned about stray Potential breaking things or mutating. “Must flow, yes yes,” she would mutter. “Like water, or oil. See, little dove?”

The empty space still opened inside Ellie’s head whenever she charmed, but it didn’t matter. Auntie taught her how to set her feet in the ground before it flowered, toes sinking in like roots, and it was amazing how such a simple thing made the emptiness friendly instead of scary. There was a fuzzy sense of what was occurring when she did it, a sleepwalker’s sensibility of the earth moving around her.

“Watch the rose, Columba,” Auntie whispered, and Ellie would sink down in front of a single flower, barely breathing as she studied it, until the world became bright frilled petals and a saffron heart, a slim green stem and whirling universes inside the unfolding of a blot of crimson. The old woman’s touch on her shoulder would wake her from a burning reverie, and the roses would explode with vigor, charmlight under the surface of the garden’s blossoming all but blinding her.

The days were long seashore-curves of charming, with plenty of food to fuel the Potential. Round loaves of sweet or rye bread, spiced honey, apples, eggs always spun on the counter before being cracked into a bowl, wild rice, seeds and nuts, cheese tangy-yellow or mellow white. Auntie didn’t eat meat, and Ellie didn’t miss it. For once there was nobody watching every bite as if it cost cash, nobody bringing extra and pretending it wasn’t charity.

Auntie herself only ate bread and honey. There were weirder diets, and Ellie had seen Laurissa on a lot of them. Besides, Auntie was old, let her eat what she wanted.

After lunch there was cleaning the cottage while Auntie bustled through the garden, charming and weeding and snap-pruning. The bees followed the old woman, circling her white head while their hives near the back fence murmured a song Ellie didn’t dare get close enough to decipher. She’d never been stung, and Auntie said the little buzz-cousins wouldn’t, but why take a chance?

Auntie never gave a room the white-glove treatment once Ellie was done with it. She merely glanced about and nodded, mumbling in that odd way, as if singing along to music nobody else could hear. Once in a while she would smile, pleased, and that white V-shaped smile did something funny to Ellie. It made her shoulders clench but her chest loosen, and she found herself standing straighter every time it showed up.

The old woman never yelled or threw things or told Ellie she was worthless. Instead, she was downright pleased . Sometimes she even said the magic word, and Ellie’s heart would get two sizes larger and several ounces lighter all at once.

Apprentice . There wasn’t any paperwork to make it official, but that could come later. For right now, this was enough.

Juno was walking distance away, but why risk the Strep finding her there? Or risk the Sisters insisting she go “home”? Her schoolbag, broken and reknotted strap looped back on itself, hung in the closet. No homework, no Babchat. She rose when she felt like it and went to sleep when she was exhausted and charm-drained. It was a good feeling, to work hard and fall into the soft gray bed. No bruises, no scrapes, no flinching at every shadow or sudden movement. Auntie was halfway to apprenticing her already, and that would be enough to get Ell a license. More importantly, even half-batty as she was, the old lady could charm . Apprenticing with her would be worth something; Ellie learned more in a week here than she had in a year of Juno’s careful, mind-numbingly safe classes, where you always had to wait for the slowest damn idiot in the room to catch on.

The early evenings were the best, because as Auntie made dinner Ellie practiced charm-symbols, looking through her battered thick paperback copy of Sigmundson’s. The blue-jacketed scarecrow rustled, but she was used to it by now. The entire house was friendly and familiar, no sharp edges or cold stone. No screaming, no slaps, no steady drip of venom.

Sometimes she still heard Laurissa, though. Worthless, lazy, stupid, slut, bitch, HATE YOU.

Thinking about it made her hands shake a little, but she took a deep breath and the trembling retreated. It was getting easier. “Auntie?”

“Mh. Barley tonight, the soup must be thick.”

Vegetables and barley. Toni would add meat. Had the cook found another job? There was no way of telling. Had Ellie been the problem all along, and Rita and the Strep now nice and cozy because she was gone? How was Rita dealing with the Strep’s attention all on her? Did she like it?

We all have to swim on our own. Tentatively, Ellie tried a question. “Have you ever been afraid of Twisting?”

The old woman waved a wooden spoon, absently. “Why does the dove ask, hmm? Does Auntie seem tumbled-about to young eyes?” A flash of white teeth, and a small branch fell from her tangled white head.

“I’ll comb your hair tonight.” Ellie pushed her chair back. “And no, I just wondered. I’ve always been afraid of Twisting.”

“Little Columba will not Twist.” Auntie nodded, sharply. “Comb Auntie’s hair with quick fingers, yes. Sarbirin .”

Ellie’s hand leapt up, the tiny stick in her fingers sketching a fluid charm-symbol with eldritch light. Pale in the lowering sunshine through the kitchen window, it still fluoresced just fine, and the smile that filled her cheeks didn’t feel like a mask anymore.