Page 80 of Strange Grace
“Part of the forest, I think. Like Baeddan was, before we pulled him out.”
“Is it because you’re a witch?”
“And daughter of a saint. And I anointed myself,” Mair confesses with a brief downward flick of her eyes.
Laughing breathlessly, Haf takes Mair’s hand. “I always wanted to be a witch, too. Because you are, and you’re so...”
“Weird?”
“But you don’t care.”
“I think you’d be a marvelous witch. If you weren’t so happy with Ifan, and it wouldn’t make Arthur cry, I’d convince you to be my witch partner, like Hetty and my mother.”
“Do they...?”
“They do.”
Haf squirms. “Well.” She grips Mairwen’s hand tightly.
“Here,” Mair says, grinning with her sharp teeth, “is the first lesson: listen.”
Silence stretches. Mairwen nods and continues climbing, Haf’s hand still in hers. Mair listens to the slip of pebbles tumbling under their feet, the wind through the trees and tall grass ahead, where the mountain juts up past the tree line. She listens to Haf’s breath pick up with effort and expectation, to her own slight grunt of effort, and the throb of blood in her ears. She listens to the voice of the forest, calling, calling, and it’s not in her ears. It’s in her heart. Since it pushed out, it’s gone quieter again, as if it caught something and reeled it back in.
“Listen to what?” Haf finally says, exasperated.
“Just listen!” Mair tugs them a little faster. “To everything. Listen. Mom used to set me somewhere and leave me for an hour, and when she returned asked me to tell her everything I heard, and what I thought of it.” The reminder is bitter in the aftermath of Aderyn’s confession; Mair thinks if she’d learned the lesson better, she’d have known the truth long ago.
“What is the second lesson?” Haf asks.
“My mother would say learning to steep herbs and make an ointment, or patience. But I think it’s seeing between day and night. Learning to find a place between everything. That’s the charm. Life, dead, and grace in between. The witch in between.”
“Being comfortable there,” Haf says thoughtfully. She slips her arms around Mairwen’s waist.
Mair nods, hugging back. “I think being a witch means making choices, too. If you can see between day and night, if you see shades between good and evil, then you can act on what others can’t, or refuse to, see. Change things.”
“I’ve always admired that you didn’t fit anywhere, so you made your own place.”
“You do too, Haf. Nobody says who you are but you. It doesn’t matter who anybody wants us to be. We choose. We decide.”
Haf stops moving. She watches Mairwen carefully for a moment, then nods. “Maybe. I think I’m lucky because Iwantto be what others also want me to be. It’s harder for you.”
“I make it hard.”
“Is Arthur a witch?”
Mair huffs.
“He’s lived between,” Haf suggests. “I thought he was lucky at first, to get to be both, but he hated it.”
“He fights so hard against being undefinable! I love it. He’d rather nobody saw his betweenness. How can he see between light and dark if he’s determined to only ever stand in the dark?”
“Maybe he couldn’t tell who he wanted to be, when people forced it on him so early.”
“No more than the rest of us are dressed as we’re born and trained as we’re supposed to behave,” Mairwen says.
Haf sighs.
“Arthur’s problem,” Mairwen says, “is he puts more value on being a boy than on being a girl. As if the fact that the best boy is sacrificed means boys are better than girls. That’s not why.”
