Page 63 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
Sneering, I jabbed the ground with the walking stick he’d fashioned for me. “You said that an hour ago,” I uttered more to myself, then forced my aching legs onward. Thank Danu I had the warrior’s skin.I’d never have kept Briar’s breakneck pace with a leg injury.
Hedged by bald cypresses, the Witch’s shack sat in a reedy swamp abuzz with insects of impossible colors and melodious spring peepers, who backstroked through the mud amid our squelching. Constructed of loose stones and thatched with bark shavings, smoke trailing from a hollowed toadstool in its roof, I wondered what rodent had built it.
A short, lissome woman with a young, round face and reddish-tan skin met us at the sturdy front door. She’d barely covered herself in patches of moss with twine. Her long hair, the shade of black coffee, lay over her shoulder in a matted braid, her arched ears peeking out through flyaways. Pitch-black shadowed her dark eyes, her eyeliner crossing over the bump in her nose bridge. “You,” she grunted, sultry as summer, upon seeing Briar. She set a red-stained hand on her hip.
He smirked. “Me.”
Lips twisting, she scrutinized us—me, especially. Finally, she pushed off her doorjamb and stepped aside. “In you come.” She spoke in a peculiar accent somewhere between Spanish and French, and I doubted I’d ever heard her native tongue before. “Afore someone see you.”
I wondered who’d see us in this remote countryside, hers the only home I’d seen on our trek.
Briar guided me into the shack. Sunlight broke through gaps in the thatching, illuminating the clutter of dried herbs, hanging cookware, and cobwebbed shelves littered with containers of unidentifiable substances. I coughed upon smoke and the metallic reek of blood, cringing as the central butcher-block island came into view. A sheep-like creature with peach wool and a horned snout lay half butchered upon it.
“Would my home offend you, princess?” The Witch sashayed past me to the carcass and snatched the cleaver stuck in the block. “I’d have done to clean up the gruesome had I known to be receiving royalty.”
I flushed at my rudeness. “I’m—it’s not—I’m fine.” I choked down a deep breath, calming myself, and whacked my bangs from my eyes. “How did you know I was royalty?”
One of the Witch’s thick brows arched, her lips uplifting, but she didn’t reply. Was the answer just that obvious?
Instead, she embedded her cleaver in the animal’s flank. “I figure you portal through any day now when bogeybats swarming my flock.” She hacked again, and I jumped. “Devoured half my fleecers these past days.”
Before my eyes, Briar transformed into Prince Charming—head bowed and all. He was too damn good at that. “I apologize for your damages, Tamsyn. We’ll, of course, ensure you’re repaid.”
“Ha!” She whacked the carcass so hard the island tremored. “I see the day the royal coffers do charity to the likes of Witch.”
Despite her acrimony, Briar smiled. “If you do us a favor, Tamsyn, I give you my solemn vow you’ll be handsomely compensated for your lost livestock.”
Tamsyn dropped the cleaver, wiped her bloody hand on a rough-hewn rag tucked into her twine belt. “Favor you how?”
After Briar explained our anonymity plight, Tamsyn’s penetrating eyes bored through me. “Clothes be only half the worry with this one. She have too much the look of Ginny.”
I perked up. Had the Witch known my mother?
“Folk about still remember her.”
Briar chewed his lip. “Can that be resolved?”
Tamsyn continued her scrutiny. Her unblinking eyes burned through my skull, making me flinch.
“Tamsyn,” Briar warned. “I’ll thank you not to violate the princess’s mind, or you’ll force me to do something quiteuncharitable. Her memories are her own.”
Huffing, the Witch broke our eye contact.
I stepped closer to Briar, heart now galloping. Why would she want my memories?
“Will you help us?” Briar asked, steepling his hands. “Please?”
Tamsyn considered us, lips pursed. Finally, something in her demeanor mellowed. “I give help.” Shadows flickered through her eyes. “For Ginny.”
Yeah, she totally knew my mother.
Briar exhaled. “Thank you.”
I watched, fascinated, as Tamsyn flitted about her shack, gathering items. Her shortness didn’t hinder her. Though her shelves were out of even my reach, she had but to look at a canister, and it flew into her hands. She was scooping a handful of bright blue seeds from one of her hollowed gourds when she noticed my gawking. Stern-mouthed, she pointed to her stove across the space—a giant boulder filled with fire. “You be useful—do boil.”
Ugh, Amy, where are your manners?I shrugged out of my backpack, handing it to Briar.
“You overstep your bounds again, Tamsyn,” Briar snapped. “She’s the Larkspur crown princess. She doesn’t take orders from Unseelie—”
