The Warded Man

“Me,” Leesha said. “She conceived me.”

Bruna nodded. “I feared for you, girl. Your mum’s womb was weak, and we both knew she would not have another chance. She came to me every day, asking me to check on her son.”

“Son?” Leesha asked.

“I warned her it might not be a boy,” Bruna said, “but Elona was stubborn. ‘The Creator could not be so cruel,’ she’d say, forgetting that the same Creator made the corelings.”

“So all I am is some cruel joke of the Creator?” Leesha asked.

Bruna grabbed Leesha’s chin in her bony fingers and pulled her in close. Leesha could see the long gray hairs, like cat’s whiskers, on the crone’s wrinkled lips as she spoke.

“We are what we choose to be, girl,” she said. “Let others determine your worth, and you’ve already lost, because no one wants people worth more than themselves. Elona has no one to blame but herself for her bad choices, but she’s too vain to admit it. Easier to take it out on you and poor Erny.”

“I wish she’d been exposed and run out of town,” Leesha said.

“You would betray your gender out of spite?” Bruna asked.

“I don’t understand,” Leesha said.

“There’s no shame in a girl wanting a man twixt her legs, Leesha,” Bruna said. “An Herb Gatherer can’t judge folks for doing what nature intended they do when they are young and free. It’s oath breakers I can’t abide. You say your vows, girl, you’d best plan on keeping them.”

Leesha nodded.

Gared returned, just then. “Darsy’s come to see ya back to town,” he told Bruna.

“I swear I sacked that dim-witted sow,” Bruna grumbled.

“The town council met yesterday and reinstated me,” Darsy said, pushing into the hut. She was not as tall as Gared, but she was not far off, and easily topped his weight. “It’s your own fault. No one else would take the job.”

“They can’t do that!” Bruna barked.

“Oh, yes they can,” Darsy said. “I don’t like it any more than you, but you could pass any day now, and the town needs someone to tend the sick.”

“I’ve outlived better than you,” Bruna sneered. “I’ll choose who I teach.”

“Well I’m to stay until you do,” Darsy said, looking at Leesha and baring her teeth.

“Then make yourself useful and put the porridge on,” Bruna said. “Gared’s a growing boy and needs to keep his strength up.”

Darsy scowled, but she rolled her sleeves and headed for the boiling kettle nonetheless.

“Smitt and I are going to have a little chat when I get to town,” Bruna grumbled.

“Is Darsy really so bad?” Leesha asked.

Bruna’s watery eyes turned Gared’s way. “I know you’re stronger than an ox, boy, but I imagine there are still a few cords to split out back.”

Gared didn’t need to be told twice. He was out the door in a blink, and they heard him put the axe back to work.

“Darsy’s useful enough around the hut,” Bruna admitted. “She splits wood almost as fast as your boy, and makes a fair porridge. But those meaty hands are too clumsy for healing, and she has little aptitude for the Gatherer’s art. She’ll make a passable mid-wife—any fool can pull a babe from its mother—and at setting bones she’s second to none, but the subtler work is beyond her. I weep at the thought of this town with her as Herb Gatherer.”

“You won’t make Gared much of a wife if you can’t get a simple dinner together!” Elona called.

Leesha scowled. So far as she knew, her mother had never prepared a meal in her life. It had been days since she’d had a proper sleep, but Creator forbid her mother lift a hand to help.

She had spent the day tending the sick with Bruna and Darsy. She picked up the skills quickly, causing Bruna to use her as an example to Darsy. Darsy did not care for that.

Leesha knew Bruna wanted to apprentice her. The old woman didn’t push, but she had made her intentions clear. But there was her father’s papermaking business to think of as well. She had worked in the shop, a large connected section of their house, since she was a little girl, penning messages for villagers and making sheets. Erny told her she had a gift for it. Her bindings were prettier than his, and Leesha liked to embed her pages with flower petals, which the ladies in Lakton and Fort Rizon paid more for than their husbands did for plain sheets.

Erny’s hope was to retire while Leesha ran the shop and Gared made the pulp and handled the heavy work. But paper-making had never held much interest for Leesha. She did it mostly to spend time with her father, away from the lash of her mother’s tongue.

Elona might have liked the money it made, but she hated the shop, complaining of the smell of the lye in the pulping vats and the noise of the grinder. The shop was a retreat from her that Leesha and Erny took often, a place of laughter that the house proper would never be.

Steave’s booming laugh made Leesha look up from the vegetables she was chopping for stew. He was in the common room, sitting in her father’s chair, drinking his ale. Elona sat on the chair’s arm, laughing and leaning in, her hand on his shoulder.

Leesha wished she were a flame demon, so she could spit fire on them. She had never been happy trapped in the house with Elona, but now all she could think of was Bruna’s stories. Her mother didn’t love her father and probably never had. She thought her daughter a cruel joke of the Creator. And she hadn’t been a virgin when Erny carried her across the wards.

For some reason, that cut the deepest. Bruna said there was no sin in a woman taking pleasure in a man, but her mother’s hypocrisy stung nonetheless. She had helped force Klarissa out of town to hide her own indiscretion.

“I won’t be like you,” Leesha swore. She would have her wedding day as the Creator intended, and become a woman in a proper marriage bed.

Elona squealed at something Steave said, and Leesha began to sing to herself to drown them out. Her voice was rich and pure; Tender Michel was forever asking her to sing at services.

“Leesha!” her mother barked a moment later. “Quit your warbling! We can hardly hear ourselves think out here!”

“Doesn’t sound like there’s much thinking going on,” Leesha muttered.

“What was that?” Elona demanded.

“Nothing!” Leesha called back in her most innocent voice.

They ate just after sunset, and Leesha watched proudly as Gared used the bread she had made to scrape clean his third bowl of her stew.

“She’s not much of a cook, Gared,” Elona apologized, “but it’s filling enough if you hold your nose.”

Steave, gulping ale at the time, snorted it out his nose. Gared laughed at his father, and Elona snatched the napkin from Erny’s lap to dry Steave’s face. Leesha looked to her father for support, but he kept his eyes on his bowl. He hadn’t said a word since emerging from the shop.

It was too much for Leesha. She cleared the table and retreated to her room, but there was no sanctuary there. She had forgotten that her mother had given the room to Steave for the duration of his and Gared’s indefinite stay. The giant woodcutter had tracked mud across her spotless floor, leaving his filthy boots atop her favorite book, where it lay by her bed.