Strange Grace

  Gasps come from where the youngest girls sit, gape-mouthed on blankets spread over the grass. Each of them here for the first time to bless a saint shirt. Older women are shocked, amused, and some even approving—it was the saint’s last chance, some must be thinking. Her mother’s sharp eyes are full of worry. Hetty Pugh laughs bright and loud, and Haf giggles through her hands and murmurs Mairwen’s name.

  “This shirt is doing something,” Aderyn says.

  “It’s not enough,” Mairwen replies.

  “Come inside and get yourself presentable,” Aderyn says, more testy than most are used to hearing from her. She sweeps up and into the cottage. Mairwen follows—she needs new lacing for her bodice, after all—but glances back surprised when Hetty follows as well. Mairwen nearly crashes into her mother, stopped in the center of the cottage’s ground floor.

  “Hetty, close that behind you, please,” Aderyn says, and Hetty shuts the house up. The women both study Mair. She feels their cool gazes like the pressure of fingers on her neck and arms and chest.

  Hetty speaks first. “You’re scaring the girl, Addie.”

  Aderyn presses her lips in a line. “Takes more to scare my daughter.”

  Mairwen says, “I wanted him to know he’s loved. I wanted him to see my heart. Bind his here, so he’d come back to it.”

  The two older women share a glance, and Hetty says, “So his can’t be bound to the forest.”

  Aderyn says, “That’s dangerous magic.”

  Mair barely stops herself from flinging out her arms. “Why? To love a boy? To bind our hearts together? Sex isn’t dangerous.”

  Her mother makes a disgruntled noise.

  Hetty says, “I don’t think your mama is ready to be a grandmama.”

  “I don’t want him to die,” Mairwen whispers. “He’s so good and we need him here. I want him to grow old while I’m old.”

  Aderyn says, “What did you imagine before now? We’ve known, most of us, for years that Rhun would be the saint when it was his turn. He knows his heart so well, and he’s never hidden from anyone that he believes he’ll follow his cousin. Did you not think you would face this moment?”

  “Eventually, I . . .” Mairwen shakes her head. “I had four more years. I didn’t have to be afraid yet. It’s too soon! The bargain is broken, or cheating us, and it’s not worth Rhun’s life.”

  “You never questioned whether the bargain is worth it before,” Hetty says. “When it didn’t threaten a boy you love.”

  Mair bites her bottom lip, gouging the skin hard enough to hurt. She sinks into a chair. “You’re right, I feel it sharper now, but shouldn’t I?”

  Aderyn sighs and kneels at her daughter’s chair. “It’s true, when Carey Morgan died the valley’s beauty lost some brightness to me. And when Rhun dies, you’ll carry it with you. Every spring you’ll feel it, an ache when the flowers bloom rainbows across our hills. When you taste our year’s meat or sip the brews. You’ll feel the pain, and that pain makes everything around it brighter. That is what the bargain is: death for life, a sacrifice that makes it all sweeter and sharper. Without it, how could we appreciate what we have? We love our saint, and he runs for us, and everyone here knows exactly how precious life is, and love itself. Everybody dies, Mairwen, but the saints of Three Graces die for a reason.”

  Mair grips her knees, bunching the fabric of her skirts too tight; she won’t let herself be dissuaded. “Then what is the reason it came early this year? What did we do wrong with John Upjohn? He was the saint, and he ran. He survived. We met the terms of the bargain, didn’t we?”

  “As far as I know,” Aderyn says, pushing to her feet again. “Have you eaten breakfast? There are leftover pastries.”

  “How can you not be curious? The devil owes us an explanation.”

  Hetty snorts, but Aderyn frowns hard. “First we must crown a saint and do our part, or Rhos’s baby will die. After that we can try to understand.”

  Mairwen presses her knuckles into her eyes. She doesn’t want Rhos’s baby to die, but nor can she stand Rhun throwing his life away if there’s something wrong. How can they not see it? “I have to do something. Can’t you feel it? Something changed, and we shouldn’t ignore it.”

  The Grace witch pinches her mouth in a thing nearing despair.

  Leaping up, Mairwen makes to grab her mother’s hands, but stops and draws a deep breath to show she can be calm. It evens out the pain in Aderyn’s expression. Her mother says, “You know how to make charms.”

  “Yes.” Mair tries not to sound too eager.

  “Life, death, and blessing in between? That’s the recipe.”

  “Always a balance of three pieces.”

  Hetty joins them, so they stand in an intimate triangle. But she says nothing, knowing already, Mairwen suspects.

  “The bargain is a charm, but a very powerful one. Life, death, and blessing in between.”

  Mairwen sees it. “Life in the valley, death in the forest, and . . . we’re the blessing in between. The Grace witches.”

  Aderyn touches Mair’s cheek, sorrow in her eyes. “Our bloodline, our hearts, set originally by the youngest Grace, whose love and sacrifice started it all. We bind the saint. We anoint him with blood. A Grace witch.”

  Mair has always felt in between, been drawn to that edge of shadows, because her blood is already bound up in the charm. It’s so simple. Except . . . “The saint doesn’t always die. There’s not always death in the forest, yet those four times before now, the bargain has held just the same for the seven expected years.”

  “What was the last charm you made, little bird?”

  “A healing blessing for the sick horse.”

  “And how did you make it?”

  “His living mane, a fox rib, and my song and breath.”

  “Nothing died for that death; it was only a piece of death, the promise of it.” Aderyn smiles grimly.

  “I see,” Mairwen says, mostly meaning it.

  “The saint must choose to die, but he does not need to truly die. But you cannot say those words to Rhun Sayer.”

  “Why?”

  Hetty pushes her hair out of her eyes once again, lifting one brow. “If a saint knows he doesn’t have to die, how can he choose to die? The one thing is paradoxical to the other.”

  Mairwen has nothing to say, only a smog of thoughts.

  “You need food,” her mother says, going for the bread basket hanging from a hook by the hearth. She digs in and pulls out a pastry so perfectly pinched it must be one of Bree Lewis’s.

  “Let me do it,” Mairwen says. “I want to anoint the saint shirt with my blood and go up the mountain to crown the saint. It’s the ritual. It’s what the witches do, so let it be me!”

  Aderyn pauses, pastry in hand. It has been her duty since her own mother passed it on. She looks to Hetty, and Hetty shrugs.

  “Wait,” Aderyn says, and vanishes into her bedroom.

  Hetty Pugh wanders to Aderyn’s kitchen table and begins picking at a spread of bowls filled with water to steep herbs. She dips a finger into one floating with wrinkled rose petals and tastes it. Unease ticks at Mairwen.

  Her mother shoves aside the curtain separating her bedroom from the main cottage and emerges with a voluminous layer of blue and cream cloth folded over her arm.

  A dress.

  Mairwen touches her mouth to keep quiet her surge of hope.

  Aderyn holds up the dress, handing one part to Hetty. It’s a long bodice and overskirt, dyed indigo. Hetty spreads her arms to display the soft linen shift, embroidered at the cuffs and hem with delicate green vines Mair recognizes as her mother’s own hand. The bodice has oversleeves that tie on and are slashed to display bursts of undyed silk.

  It’s too rich, too beautiful. “Mother,” she breathes.

  “I’ve been putting it together since last spring,” Aderyn says briskly, brushing invisible dirt off the fine wool skirt. “There’s stockings and ribbons, too, and a cream belt. A new shawl Hetty and Beth
have woven for you. I was waiting for some fine boots Lord Vaughn helped me arrange to have made in the city, but you’ve grown so much these past months, and hardly fit yourself anymore.” Aderyn purses her lips for a moment, eyeing her daughter’s undone bodice. “It is a proper dress for a witch.”

  Mairwen throws her arms around her mother, crushing the dress between them.

  The women help her out of her older clothes. Hetty brings the bowl of rosewater and tosses it across Mair’s bare back, while Aderyn grabs a chunk of blessed thistle soap and scrubs. Mair only stands, arms up to hold her heavy hair off her neck, and takes it all, cold and hot in waves, embarrassed and thrilled to have her mother and Hetty washing her as if she’s their peer. She closes her eyes and whispers Haf’s name. Hetty goes to the door and snaps for the Lewis girl, returning with Haf hurrying at her heels. The girl asks no questions, but squeezes Mairwen’s fingers as she holds bowls of water and oil.

  The women braid and pin Mairwen’s hair up. They clean her fingernails and the backs of her knees, her elbows and hips and ears, and even wash her feet, then rub an oil Mair has never before smelled into her skin. The women’s firm fingers work Mair’s muscles and soothe her, until her head nods despite the cool air and her stiff pose standing with her arms up in the middle of her mother’s house.

  When they finish, they dress her in her long new shift, stockings, bodice, and overskirt. They tie on her sleeves, and the new shawl at her waist is of the softest cream wool she’s ever known. Hetty puts a bracelet woven of her own and Aderyn’s hair around Mairwen’s wrist, whispering a blessing. Aderyn kisses her daughter and whispers, “All my strength is your strength. You are everything I am.”

  Then Aderyn Grace and Hetty Pugh leave the two girls alone in the sunny kitchen. Aderyn pauses before closing the cottage door. “Come out to bless this shirt when you’re ready, Daughter.”

  Mairwen breathes with care. She smells thistle and rose and evergreen and pungent sage. Her skin tingles. She longs to find Rhun and show him how Hetty and Aderyn have made her into the Grace witch for his Slaughter Moon. It almost feels powerful enough to matter.

  Haf takes both of Mairwen’s hands and shakes her head wonderingly. “Mairwen, you look amazing, and seem so . . . ready.”

  “I hope this is how Rhun feels when the men are finished with him,” she murmurs, drawing her friend nearer. She embraces Haf, touching her cheek to Haf’s soft black hair. This way, Haf can’t see her face, or the tension pinching at her eyes. “When I put the shirt on him and lay the horse saint’s head upon his like a crown, I pray he feels all their strength behind him.”

  Haf hugs tighter. “I hope it’s enough.”

  “Rhun says he’s ready, Haf. With me binding the charm . . . he can do it. Give himself up and also survive.” And then, if he has to leave the valley, I’ll leave with him. So will Arthur, she thinks.

  But Haf says, “I meant enough for you.”

  “I love you, Haf Lewis.” Mair wants to say it to everyone she loves today.

  Haf kisses the corner of her mouth. “I love you too, Mairwen Grace.”

  When the girls emerge into the front yard, where the town’s women remain circled about the fire, drinking and talking and sewing, there’s a collective exclamation at Mairwen’s new attire. She imagines it as armor. She lifts the shawl to show off the overskirt and holds out her arms and spins lightly until every woman is satisfied.

  Mairwen’s appearance relaxes Devyn Argall’s shoulders and allows smiles to slide across the Perry sisters’ mouths. They read the dress and Mair’s face as proof: It will be Rhun Sayer, not their sons, sent into the forest.

  It rankles her insides, and she holds their relief against them, thinking of Arthur’s bitterness when he said, I’d survive it.

  Joining the circle of women upon a stool so as not to muss her dress, Mairwen nibbles at leftover cake from the bonfire as Haf kneels beside her. Bree and her friend Emma kneel with them, and as she waits her turn with the blessing shirt, Mair leans over to whisper to the three that yes, she spent the night with Rhun Sayer. Heat snakes up her neck and throat as she relates finding him half naked, kissing him, and her near begging, but then only sleeping at his side, nothing else. Emma sighs romantically, insisting Rhun must be the noblest man in all Three Graces, while Bree claims Per Argall would’ve acted the same. Haf says she knows her own Ifan Pugh would most certainly not.

  Mairwen laughs as she’s expected to, and presses her cheek to Haf’s fine hair, remembering Arthur Couch say the same to her, as if he wanted her to hear it. She wishes Arthur were here with them, with the girls, to put his fire into the saint shirt where it could protect Rhun. Competing with the boys is a waste of his time. His power is more suited here, because he knows a thing about transformation. Or he should, if he’d admit it to himself.

  When the blessing shirt comes to the girls, they let Mair take the lead. She touches the fine gray wool, imagining a ferocious lion or a quick rabbit to lend him strength or speed. But thinking of the Bone Tree, of the monster she and Arthur killed, thinking of the youngest, first Grace witch who fell in love with a beautiful devil, instead she chooses a deer, for the old god of the forest. Needles quick and sure, the four girls embroider it there at the shoulder. Em and Bree create tawny legs, Haf a sleek body, and Mairwen the crowning antlers. When they finish, Mair takes bright red thread and stitches a bloody heart to the stag’s chest. She pricks her finger and anoints the heart with three drops of her blood.

  Haf and her sister try not to frown at the dangerous addition, and Emma whispers, “It looks a bit like fire, doesn’t it?” The girls each take a drink of wine, then pour the final sip into the earth.

  • • •

  IF THERE IS A PIECE of the Slaughter Moon ritual Arthur Couch dreads deepest, it’s the long afternoon fast and vigil each prospective boy is expected to keep in the rough terrain near Sy Vaughn’s manor, alone—except for the company of his father.

  Gethin Couch is as long and lanky as his son, with similar blond hair, but the rest of Arthur came from his mother. Gethin’s got a hard jaw and a wide suntanned face, with soft green eyes, and his hands are stubby but talented with leather. He makes the best gloves in town, and any leather piece that requires detail work and dedication. Last year, the decade anniversary of his wife leaving Three Graces, he went through a carefully constructed un-marriage ritual with Aderyn Grace. It was the least they could do to help him move on, with no proof that Arthur’s mother was alive or dead. Arthur had been invited, but he hadn’t attended.

  The two men sit three feet away from each other on a narrow outcropping of white chalk high on the mountain, entirely bared to the elements, for no trees grow so high and the scrubby heather and grasses offer no shelter even from the wind. Arthur stares out at the wide-open valley, eyes burning from the cold. He’s supposed to be receiving advice and support from his father, but there are too many expectations wasted between them for Arthur to want such from Gethin.

  He imagines the conversation Rhun and Rhun the Elder are sharing at the moment, and it relaxes him just enough to lean back against the rough mountain.

  “Well, boy,” Gethin Couch says, “your mother sure would be furious if she could see you now. Wish she could.”

  Arthur says nothing.

  “I wager,” Gethin continues, “she’s counting the years, and expects you to be up in four more. If she’s alive, she’s still afraid and worrying about it somewhere. I hope it chokes her. Makes her look old and ugly before her time.”

  “I don’t,” Arthur says, remembering his mother’s soft smile, and remembering too how terrible her mouth turned when she screamed at him, You may as well already be dead.

  “Bah,” his father says.

  “We don’t have to speak.” Arthur has yet to truly look at his father; he’s avoided the man for years, not finding any good reason to give thought or energy to somebody who turned him over to the Sayers without complaint. Better he be raised around so many men and b
oys now, was Gethin’s excuse, said knowing Arthur listened.

  “But you should know, son, I see what you’ve become. You may not be the best, but there’s no doubting you’re as close as anyone with your temperament could get. Nothing she did hurt you.”

  Arthur closes his eyes. Every word pains him, infuriates him. Maybe this is why the potential runners are forced to fast alone with their fathers: It’s no comfort, but a final test to discover what boy can withstand parental torture. “I don’t need your approval,” he says through his teeth.

  “You have it anyway.”

  “Approve of this, then.” Arthur stands up. “You’re no father to me, and haven’t been at least since my mother left, if you ever were before. You either were so blind and disinterested in a daughter you did not see what she did, or you agreed with her to do it, but blame her alone for all. So this is outside the spirit of the ritual. I’ll see myself away.”

  He steps off the stone outcropping and skids down toward the path that leads back to Vaughn’s manor. What a furious lie this valley is, he thinks. Perhaps the devil’s bargain keeps sickness and death at bay, but it certainly doesn’t make people good or keep families together.

  Or perhaps it’s only Arthur who thinks so. Everyone else is content and happy. Everyone else accepts the bargain and its restrictions. He’s the one who doesn’t belong, because his mother did ruin him. Who would he be now if he’d always been a boy? Would he be as good as Rhun?

  Who would he be if he’d remained a girl?

  A great wind blows at him, shifting him backward on the path: away from Vaughn, away from the valley. Arthur pauses and glances over his shoulder. The path pierces down that way, along a chalk ridge and toward the pass through the mountain, out to the rest of the world.

  He could leave.

  The thought sucks his breath away.

  The rest of the world appreciates ambition and fire.

  But Arthur knows too well what would be said of him here were he to leave. Coward. Better off without him. Too hot for his own good. Like they’d said of his mother. Never belonged here.