Page 64 of Strange Grace
Rhun notices Mair stop eating, and takes the rest for himself. He eventually joins the Sayers around Baeddan, and Mairwen slips away, glad Rhun chose to seek out the comfort of his large family. She searches for Haf Lewis and finds her with her husband-to-be, Ifan Pugh, sharing a bowl of food too.
Ifan swallows awkwardly when Mair arrives, and balances his knife across the lip of the bowl in order to touch the back of Haf’s neck.
Haf leans toward him, probably without realizing it, and Mairwen smiles very slightly. She says, “What do you think, Ifan? What happened to the surviving saints?”
“If you hadn’t gone into the forest, I’d say your family drags them back in to that altar,” he answers, and Haf gasps in the closest to fury she’s capable of.
“Ifan Pugh!” she hisses.
He stands his ground silently.
“He’s right,” Mairwen says. “If it were me, at least I’d have all the answers.”
Sheisthe one receiving the most suspicious glances, the one apart tonight. If they only knew she was transforming, they wouldn’t even listen. They’d assume she was corrupted by the forest at the very least.
Maybe she is.
Mairwen Grace has never felt more like a witch. But what to do about it? How to behave? What does she evenwantto do? Save the bargain, but also save the saints. It doesn’t seem possible.
How does Aderyn fit in so smoothly? she wonders, looking for her mother. Aderyn the witch, husbandless mother, has never stood so apart as Mairwen has always done.
The best way to look for Aderyn has always been to look for Hetty Pugh’s tall frame, and sure enough, the two women and Bethy, too, and Nona Sayer and Cat Dee stand together. Aderyn is staring back at Mairwen.
She starts for her mother without parting words with Haf and Ifan, but three steps on, she hears her name.
Rhos Priddy waits there in the torchlight, a bundle of baby quilt in her arms. Tiredness is plain in her eyes and poorly braided hair, but Rhos smiles prettily. “Thank you, Mairwen,” she says, dropping one shoulder so Mair can see into the shadows of the bundle where Rhos’s baby sleeps. “She’s alive because of you. I know you’re upset—everyone is upset—but I can’t help not being so.”
It warms tiny pockets of Mairwen’s heart she hadn’t realized had gone cold. Lips parting in awe, she touches a finger to the baby’s nose, then one hairless eyebrow. The baby is so small, so soft. Mairwen thinks of those terrible hours rubbing her warm, touching thin cheeks and ignoring the sunken little eyes as best she could, and the gasping, choking breath.
“We did the right thing,” she says quietly, and Rhos Priddy squeezes her elbow.
“Mairwen, may I have a moment?”
To her surprise, it’s Lord Vaughn. He offers a soft, comforting glance for Rhos, who curtsies and goes. Vaughn gestures toward the cemetery wall, and Mairwen attends, studying the flash of torchlight in his paler eye. At the edge of the square, Vaughn says, “I hope you’ll come help me look through my family books. You might see something I don’t. Since you’ve been in the forest.”
“I don’t remember very much.”
“Really?”
“Part of the charm, I think, is to make us all forget.”
“But why?”
“If the saint survives, and remembers, he’ll remember the face of his devil is the same as the last saint?”
Vaughn purses his lips. “Would that make a difference? Are you sure there isn’t something else to forget?”
Mairwen closes her eyes and sees the girl in the white veil again. “Maybe. Ghosts or old spirits. The first Grace? There was a girl in a veil, and I don’t know who else she might be. My imagination. Or myself, even.”
The lord touches her shoulder. She remembershimsuddenly, when she was a very small girl, picking yarrow at the base of the mountain. He helped her for a moment, crouched there, smiling at her as if she were the sun. Curling hair, young brown eyes.
It couldn’t be him, twelve years ago: It was his father, the last Vaughn. Both eyes in her memory were brown. “What was your father like?” she asks.
Surprised, Vaughn hesitates. “My father?”
“He looked like you. Do I look like my father?”
The lord pinches the end of a curl at Mairwen’s jaw. “His hair curled, too. He liked the forest. He wanted to go in. I remember that much.”
