Page 40 of Strange Grace
“Yes,” she agrees. “Tonight we’ll be well enough, and tell our story.”
All around their friends, neighbors, cousins, families smile with relief, clasping hands, congratulating them and declaring wondrous predictions for the years to come. Nona Sayer touches her boy’s bloody brow, pats her hands against his curls, half tied back, half loose and flared in messy coils. She doesn’t smile, but her relief is palpable. She reaches for Arthur then, and more firmly than ever wraps an arm around his neck.
Arthur grins and catches Rhun’s hollow gaze, then Mairwen’s wild one.
The bargain is bound, for now.
•••
MAIRWEN REFUSES TO ALLOW HERSELFto be separated from any of the boys. No one argues with her, except her mother hugs her tight. “You should have me with you too, while you rest.”
“No, Mother,” Mair whispers. Aderyn smells like bonfire smoke and bitter flowers. Mairwen feels tears in her closed eyes. Her head throbs and her wrist, too, where the thorny binding pulls taught. After last night, she wants to sink into her mother’s lap and confess all her fading memories before they’re gone. But Baeddan is proof that the story the Grace witches tell is a lie, and Mair can’t be sure her mother didn’t know. Aderyn said the saint did not have to die, only choose to die, so perhaps this living monster Baeddan is exactly what her mother meant, and this was Rhun’s true fate.
And what does Aderyn know about memory charms?
With a small sigh, Aderyn touches the ragged ends of Mairwen’s chopped hair. “Will you tell me the story of this at least, daughter?”
“I did it myself,” she says, anger dragging at her mouth because she can’t quite remember why. A gift? A spell? There is hair in the bracelet on her wrist. “I’m sorry about the dress,” she adds, glancing down at the stained, torn blue skirt of her gown. The bodice is streaked with drying blood—scarlet and violet both, splatter from all four of them.
blood sprays her chest and neck, and she screams, “Stop!” Arthur falls to his knees, the devil—no, Baeddan—behind him
Mair shudders, then turns it into a shake of her head. She winds her fingers through Baeddan’s cold ones. He jerks his hand closed, too tight.
Nona Sayer leaves her hand on Rhun’s shoulder. “I’d have my boys in my home.”
“Mom,” Rhun whispers. He takes her hand and kisses her palm, leaning his cheek against it. “I’m just going to rest, and I’d rather with people who...”
“Who know,” Arthur finishes, when it’s clear Rhun won’t or can’t.
It makes Mairwen search the crowd for John Upjohn. Does he know? Does he remember? Her heart grows thorns of anger sharp enough to make her gasp. Baeddan says, “No one knows,” and bares his fangs for the first time.
The crowd gasps, even steady Nona Sayer.
Sy Vaughn says, “What a pitiful creature,” with what sounds like true pity.
Then Baeddan moans and covers his eyes with his hands, digs his fingernails into the skin of his forehead and drags down, cutting.
“No,” Mairwen says. “Stop.”
He stops.
Mair turns her commanding gaze out across the people, using only her eyes to part the crowd until there’s a path for her to take with the others. “We have earned our rest,” she says to all. “Go hold your most beloved and give thanks the bargain is sealed. Tonight I will tell you our tale.”
She holds her chin up as she leaves, Baeddan’s hand in hers, sticky with blood. She does not look for any other individuals, not even Haf, whom she longs to see. That will be for later, when her vision does not waver, when her mouth does not ache even as it heals. Baeddan is her priority, Baeddan and the devil.
What happened to the old god of the forest?
It’s her own voice in her mind, an echoing memory. She doesn’t know what it means. All she knows is: She trusts Baeddan, and this bracelet she wears—shemade—is somehow binding the bargain. For now.
The way home from the barley field is a narrow dirt path stepped through the sheep pasture by two hundred years of witches’ feet, and Mairwen keeps her heritage at the fore of her thoughts as she leads Baeddan and Arthur and Rhun across it. She feels strings of blood drawing thickly through her veins, curling and spinning like tendrils of vines inside her. She trips. Baeddan catches her elbow in his cold hand and presses her against his scoured chest.
“Mair?” Arthur says with quiet urgency.
She waves him away, giving herself a moment to lean on Baeddan. Her temple feels aflame against his neck, the entire side of her that touches him cooling as if she stands in shade. That brings a smile to the corner of her mouth, for how she used to stand half in and half out of the forest, warm in the sun and cool in the shade. She brought the forest out with her, the heart of it, the forest devil, and so wherever she goes now with him, she’ll have the shadows of the forest to block the sun.
The vines coiling through her blood slide smoother, calmer.
His breath rattles under her ear, and he touches his mouth to the crown of her head. Not like a kiss, more like a taste. Mair shivers and holds tighter to him. He is alive after ten years, and the heart of the bargain is a lie.
