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The last coal broke beneath Althea's broom and showed its red heart.
She stopped. Upstairs, a bed creaked. She waited for the footsteps to cross the floor, then lifted the coal into the grate with the iron shovel.
Too late for one bristle. Its blackened tip curled against the stone.
“You might have warned me,” she murmured.
She rubbed the damaged patch with her thumb. The old besom needed rebinding; several birch twigs had worked loose from its willow handle. She could mend it if she had sound cord, and buy cord if she sold a basket. First, she had to finish the work that earned her permission to stay in her aunt's house.
Beyond the shutter, wind moved through Brackenreach Forest. The nearest birches grew so close that their leaves found the cottage every autumn, to her aunt's annual astonishment. Now bare branches scraped the roof, and snow remained in the hollows beneath their roots.
Althea finished the hearth. Her aunt came downstairs carrying a blue dress over one arm.
“Brush that hem. Your cousin wants it for Saint's Day.”
“If she keeps it out of the lane until then, it might stay clean.”
Her aunt laid the dress on the back of a chair.
“The water bucket too.”
“I need to finish the baskets.”
“Afterward.”
Althea looked at the dried mud along the woolen hem. By the time she had brushed it and filled the bucket, there would be washing to do, breakfast to clear, something else that could not wait.
“They need to be ready for Saint's Day,” she said.
Her aunt turned on the stair.
“And I need someone who remembers that this house doesn't keep itself.”
Althea took the dress. The broom slid against her ankle as she moved, and she caught it before it fell.
When the cousins came down, one complained that her porridge had formed a skin. The other wore Althea's mother's silver clasp at her throat.
Althea watched it tilt as the girl reached for honey.
Three years had passed since her mother died and Althea came from the river settlements to Grissel. She had arrived with her tools, a bundle of clothes, and the clasp. When she asked for it back the following spring, her aunt told her she was fortunate to have a roof; small ornaments were hardly worth quarreling over.
Her cousin noticed her looking and adjusted the clasp.
Althea turned back to the hearth.
That evening, two finished baskets stood beneath the bench. The third lay across her knees. She eased a damp willow strand around its rim, pressing with her thumbs where the curve resisted.
This she understood. Draw it too tightly and the rim would buckle; leave it loose and it would fail the person who carried it.
She imagined the baskets sold. Flour and cord first. A little put aside afterward, if she could manage it. Enough small payments might someday become a room where she could work, with a table beneath a window and no one else's dishes waiting on it.
The willow slipped from her fingers.
“A window first, then,” she muttered. “Furniture can wait.”
Upstairs, her aunt shut a door. She had counted the candles before taking them away.
Althea leaned nearer the hearth's low glow and tucked the strand into place.
Something tapped behind her.
The besom had tipped against the bench. She put it upright without getting up.
Three more taps followed.
She turned in time to see the handle straighten.
Nothing held it. The bristles gathered beneath its weight, and the head turned across the hearthstone, drawing a clean crescent through the ash.
Althea stood. The basket struck the floor.
The broom rested against the wall again.
She knelt beside the crescent, searching for a cord caught beneath the handle. There was none. The small impressions at its edge matched the uneven bristles she had meant to trim.
When she touched the handle, warmth entered her palm.
The fire had burned too low to account for it. She should have let go. Instead, she found herself turning her hand until more of her skin rested against the willow.
A branch scraped the shutter.
She snatched her hand back.
Beyond the door, something moved. Through a split between the lower boards, an amber eye caught the hearthlight.
Althea stayed on her knees, unable to rise without moving toward the door.
The eye vanished. Soft footfalls crossed the frozen earth and faded into the trees.
She checked the bolt twice. Then she brought the broom beside her blanket and sat awake until the first gray light entered the room.
The morning before Saint's Day, Althea carried her aunt's cracked hamper into Grissel. The besom lay across its mouth.
She had told herself she needed both repaired. It was true, although she had never before found it difficult to leave the broom at home.
Grissel stood on Brackenreach's outskirts, its houses gathering around the church and thinning toward the wood. On market mornings, carts crowded the roads that connected fields, forest, and mill. Today a boy on a ladder was trying to tie red cloth between two houses while his father directed him from below.
“Higher.”
The boy looked at the last rung under his feet.
Althea nearly smiled.
Iona's stall stood beside the well. Wooden spoons hung from its crossbar, and brushes lay in a row beneath them, their bindings so neat that Althea always found a reason to examine one.
“That hamper again,” Iona said. “Tell your aunt I remember its better days.”
“She expects you to restore them.”
“She always did have confidence in someone else's labor.”
Althea glanced around, but Iona had already drawn the hamper onto her lap. A curl of wood clung to her sleeve. Her hands moved over the damaged corner, testing each strand before deciding what could be saved.
Althea set the besom beside the stall.
It remained upright.
The ground sloped toward the well. She knew how it ought to fall.
Iona stopped working.
The broom turned a little on its bristles. Its handle tipped toward Althea's shoulder, and she caught it.
Iona looked from the disturbed earth to her face.
“Did you expect that?”
Althea shook her head.
“Has it happened before?”
She could have called it an accident. The explanation was ready, the sort she used whenever something might make her aunt impatient.
But Iona had seen it.
“Last night,” she said. “It moved across the hearth. By itself.”
Iona shifted the hamper to make room for her on the low wall, out of the path of a passing cart.
From the church steps, Father Anselm called for another grain sack. A woman with a child on her hip hurried toward the waiting cart.
“An extra measure,” the priest told the man holding the scoop. “They've had a difficult winter.”
The woman bowed over his hand. He rested it on the child's hair.
A laborer beside the cart asked whether he could carry a sack to a household farther down the lane.
“They can collect it after the blessing,” Anselm said.
“Her husband's laid up.”
The priest waited. The laborer lowered his eyes and returned to the sacks.
“What do you think it is?” Althea whispered.
Iona studied the place where the besom had stood. “Something worth a better look when there are fewer wheels passing our ankles. Bring it again.”
Althea loosened her grip.
Iona drew a length of cord from her box and measured it against the loose binding.
“I'll put suitable material aside. Finish this corner of the hamper for me, and we'll count the work against it.”
Althea took the damp willow she offered.
“Will you be here tomorrow?”
“Until the blessing. Then I'm off to the western farms.”
“I've baskets to sell.”
“Bring them early. And bring this.” She nodded toward the besom. “We can see to its head while we're quiet.”
That evening, emptying the hearth pan into the ash pit, Althea saw the wolf.
He stood between two birches at the yard's edge. Gray fur darkened along his back; his head reached the low fork where she hung washing in summer.
She stopped with the pan against her hip.
The wolf stepped back.
Althea looked toward the cottage door. To reach it, she would have to cross the open yard.
“Go on,” she said.
His ears shifted, but he remained beneath the trees.
She took one step toward the house. He withdrew another pace.
She got inside, fastened the bolt, and watched through the shutter's narrow opening. He settled beyond the last fence post, his head turned toward the cottage.
By morning, prints marked the frost where he had lain. They led back into Brackenreach.
None crossed the yard.
Althea left before the cousins finished dressing, carrying three baskets and her own besom. The basket rims were sound. She had checked them twice.
Smoke from cooking fires drifted beneath the banners. Someone had roasted onions, and the smell made her heel of breakfast bread seem very long ago.
Iona's cart stood covered beside the well. The woman at the next stall told Althea that a farm cart had broken an axle on the western road; Iona had gone to help before continuing to the farms.
Althea set out her baskets beside the covered cart. She had counted on a friendly face while she named her prices.
A woman paused over the smallest.
“How much?”
Althea told her, carefully, without adding that she might take less.
The woman turned it over and pressed the base.
“Would you take flour?”
“Yes.”
“I'll fetch—”
“You there.”
Father Anselm stood halfway down the church steps.
Althea turned. Beside her, the woman put down the basket.
“Your aunt tells me you're useful with a broom. These steps need seeing to before the procession.”
“I'm waiting for a customer, Father.”
His gaze rested on her until she felt herself becoming troublesome in front of everyone.
“The blessing cannot wait upon your trade.”
She looked at the scattered grit. There was room beside it for people to pass.
The woman who had offered flour for a basket was studying her sleeve.
The sexton brought a broom with its head split down the middle. He held it out, his eyes on the ground.
Althea put her own besom beside the well.
“That one will do,” Anselm said, indicating the damaged broom. “We needn't wear out what you're trying to sell.”
“It isn't for sale.”
The words escaped before she could judge them.
Anselm looked at the willow handle. Althea took the cracked broom from the sexton and went to the steps.
Half its bristles folded at the first stroke.
Someone laughed.
She turned the head sideways, trying to work with the part that still held.
“Make way,” Elin called. “The Ash-Sweeper has important work.”
She stood with the baker's household, her cheeks bright above a fur collar. Three days earlier, Althea had carried rushes into their kitchen while Elin kneaded dough. They had spoken about the weather. Althea remembered thinking she was pleasant enough.
Now Elin smiled as the laughter spread.
A child scooped cold ash from a brazier and threw it at the steps. Dust settled over Althea's sleeve.
Another bent to follow him.
“Enough.” A man in a miller's apron caught the child's wrist. “You'll have it in someone's eyes.”
Anselm watched from above. Althea waited for him to speak, but he turned toward the sexton and asked about the procession candles.
She bent back to the work.
The broken bristles snagged; a splinter worked through the wool at her knee. She kept her face turned from the crowd. If she stopped now, they would see what she was trying to swallow.
“For my son,” a woman said quietly inside the church. “And for anyone cold this morning.”
Althea looked through the open doorway. An old woman shielded a candle flame with both hands.
“Move along,” Anselm said behind her.
The woman was coming down the steps. Althea drew aside.
“Thank you, dear.”
She steadied herself briefly on Althea's arm and passed into the square.
Althea looked down until she could trust her face again. Then she swept the last grit into the gutter.
Beyond the crowd, a gray shape stood beneath the yews that marked the woodland edge.
The wolf watched her. One forepaw was lifted; his body was rigid beneath his fur.
Anselm followed her glance.
Althea turned toward him before his gaze reached the trees.
“It's done.”
He inspected the steps.
“Remember how much can be accomplished with willing hands.”
She returned the cracked broom to the sexton and retrieved her own. The woman who had wanted a basket was gone. Iona had not returned.
Althea gathered the baskets and left before the bell finished ringing.
On the birch path, a footfall sounded behind her.
“I know you're there.”
The wolf emerged between the trunks. He stayed beyond her reach.
“You watched,” she said. “All of them laughing, and you watched.”
He lowered his head. Althea looked away, ashamed of how much she wanted an answer from an animal.
The baskets dragged at her elbow. Her knee hurt, and she could still smell roasted onions from the fires where she had bought nothing.
“I don't know what you could have done,” she said at last.
She shifted the load. The smallest basket slipped and rolled against a root beside his paws.
He stepped away from it.
Althea went forward slowly. Up close she saw the hollow behind his ribs and a thin place in the fur at his shoulder. As she bent for the basket, he turned that shoulder from her.
She stopped reaching until he settled, then picked it up.
He had given her room to come near. She could feel the restraint in his stillness without understanding it.
“If you're going to follow me, walk where I can see you.”
She started down the path. After several steps, he came out of the trees and walked beside her, leaving enough room for another person between them.
At the cottage, her aunt's cart was still absent.
Althea set down the baskets and pointed to the last fence post.
“There. No nearer unless I ask.”
He stopped.
She carried her things inside. Then she filled a shallow bowl and took it halfway across the yard, watching him over its rim.
Only when she returned to the doorway did he approach. He drank and went back beyond the post.
Althea stood until the cold reached through her stockings.
Inside, she leaned the besom beside her blanket. Its handle warmed beneath her fingers. After the noise in the square, the touch nearly brought the tears she had held back all morning.
She kept her hand there until she could breathe comfortably.
Outside, the wolf lowered himself beneath the birch. He was still there when she closed the door.
Her aunt asked about the baskets before she had taken off her cloak.
Althea drew them from beneath the bench. Three baskets, nested as they had been that morning. She placed them on the table with the handles turned toward her aunt, as though arranging them more carefully might change what they meant.
“Nothing?”
“There was a woman who offered flour. Father Anselm needed the steps swept before the blessing, and by the time—”
“The steps were your work.”
“I know.”
Her aunt pushed the baskets aside to make room for the supper pot.
Althea went to fetch the water bowl. A thin skin of ice had formed around its edge. Beyond the fence, the wolf rose from beneath the birch, but she hurried indoors before her aunt could ask whom she was feeding.
That night she pulled a splinter from her knee. The cousins had gone upstairs still wearing their festival ribbons. One had left a heel of sweet bread on her plate; Althea wrapped it for morning and lay down beside the hearth.
She meant to listen for paws outside the door.
Instead, she heard birch twigs brushing stone.
The besom stood beyond her blanket. Firelight ran along its handle, although the hearth had burned to ash. It tipped, recovered itself, and turned with a small, deliberate movement that made her think of a foot testing the first measure of a dance.
“You'll wake them.”
The head lifted from the floor.
She tried to sit up. The blanket slipped away, and the cottage lengthened around her. Between the hearth and the wood box stood two white birches. Beyond them, a path led into Brackenreach.
The broom went ahead.
Althea followed with bare feet, expecting cold. The ground held the warmth of earth after rain. She smelled bread, then wet linen, then a room where too many people had waited through a fever.
A woman sat beside a child's bed, supporting a cup with both hands. Her sleeve had been rolled back over a burn at the wrist. When the child swallowed, she smiled without disturbing him.
Sera.
The name came with the sight of her. Althea knew it as she knew the woman was tired, though she had never seen that face before.
Someone stood behind Sera with a basin. Someone else opened a shutter to the morning.
Then the doorway darkened.
Father Anselm laid his hand on the doorpost. Althea recognized the square nail on his smallest finger, the pale seam in his sleeve. She had seen that hand above the grain measure the previous morning.
He pointed at Sera.
The person holding the basin set it down and backed away. Sera rose, keeping herself between the bed and the door. Men caught her arms. The cup fell, struck the bed frame, and rolled beneath it with a little water still inside.
Althea tried to catch it. Her fingers passed through the wood.
A man pushed into the room. He caught one of the men by the shoulder and pulled him away from Sera. His mouth moved urgently. Althea heard nothing, although she could see the effort of the words in his throat.
Rowan.
She reached for his sleeve. He turned, and she saw a small scar beside his eyebrow.
His eyes were amber.
The room vanished.
She stood beneath the churchyard yews. Rowan was on his knees in the wet earth. Anselm faced him, with no one standing close enough to touch either man.
Sera was gone.
Althea looked for her between the trees, afraid of what she might find. There was a patch of disturbed ground she could not bring herself to approach.
Anselm drew his fingers together.
A dark band tightened around Rowan's throat.
“You will be heard no more.”
Rowan's hands closed over his neck. He tried to rise. Another band caught his chest and pulled him forward; his fingers struck the mud, and Althea saw them change.
She turned her face away, but the dream would not let her escape the sight. His shoulders bent. Fur spread over the skin of his arms. A wolf struggled where the man had knelt, his jaws open, his whole body straining toward a cry that never came.
“Stop.”
Anselm did not look at her.
She knelt beside the wolf and reached for the band at his throat. The moment she touched it, she felt other bindings pulling through it. They ran beneath the church door and down the lanes into Grissel. A woman reached toward her neighbor, then withdrew her hand. A child swallowed a question. At her aunt's table, Althea heard herself say nothing while someone took away her work.
The darkness tightened. She could scarcely breathe.
Behind her, the broom struck the earth.
One clear tap.
Warmth spread beneath her knees. It entered the ground and the roots of the yews, moving toward the wolf without wrenching at what held him. His chest loosened enough for a breath.
The besom rose and danced around him.
Light gathered along its worn handle, where Althea's hands had polished the willow. She recognized the warmth from the cottage, but here it filled the space around her. She could feel it waiting at her open palms.
She had thought the broom was playing, or answering some wish she had been ashamed to make. Now, watching its patient movement around the suffering animal, she understood that it had been trying to show her something.
She reached toward him again.
Light rushed into her hands. Frightened by its strength, she closed her fingers.
The wolf's amber eyes fixed on hers.
Althea woke with her hands clenched against her chest.
The hearth was dark. Her blanket twisted around her legs. She dragged it away, convinced for a moment that the darkness had followed her out of sleep.
Above her, a foot struck the floorboards.
“Be quiet.”
She pressed her fist against her mouth until she could trust herself to breathe without making a sound.
The besom leaned beside the door. She watched it until daylight.
In the morning she put salt into her aunt's cup instead of the pot.
Her aunt spat into the hearth.
“Must I watch everything you do?”
Althea took the cup to rinse it. She could not remember lifting the salt. Water ran over her fingers, and for an instant she was reaching beneath Sera's bed again. The cup slipped; she caught it against the bucket hard enough to bruise her knuckles.
“What's wrong with you?”
“I had a bad dream.”
“You've made a poor enough start to the day without dwelling on it.”
Althea dried the cup. She said nothing about the priest.
By noon she had swept beneath the bench twice and left the far corner untouched. She brought an armful of kindling indoors and stood holding it, unable to remember what she had meant to do next.
Her aunt took a stick from the bundle and pointed toward the hearth. Althea crouched too quickly. Wood scattered across the stone, and her hands shook as she gathered it.
Outside, the wolf waited near the last fence post.
She saw him through the open shutter and felt such relief that she had already crossed half the room before she remembered Rowan on his knees. Her hand stopped short of the latch.
The wolf lifted his head.
She studied his face from the window. There was a pale mark close to one eye, almost hidden by fur. Had she seen it before? She must have. Her mind could have taken a glimpse of it and made a man in her sleep.
She tried to imagine the man cutting bread or pulling on a boot. His fingers drove into the mud instead.
She closed the shutter.
For several minutes she stood with her forehead against the wood. Then she filled the bowl and carried it outside.
The wolf rose. Althea stopped, spilling water over her skirts.
“Stay there.”
He settled back beneath the birch.
She put the bowl where she had left it the day before and returned to the cottage. From behind the door she heard him drinking.
She wanted to call him Rowan. She was afraid of what it would mean if he looked up.
That evening her younger cousin reached past her for a spoon. The silver clasp at the girl's shoulder caught the firelight. Althea had a sudden, fierce longing to ask her mother what to do.
She went outside before the tears came.
The church roof showed above the neighboring houses. She could hear the bell. People would be gathering beneath it, taking their familiar places, and Father Anselm would stand before them with his hands folded.
He had given extra grain to a hungry woman. Althea had watched him do it. He had also let them laugh at her while she worked on her knees.
Neither memory told her how to live with the dream.
She could not accuse a man because she had seen him in her sleep. She could not forget the wolf's mouth opening in silence.
When she returned indoors, she moved the broom to the far side of the room. Later she fetched it back. She lay awake angry with herself, holding its handle until her fingers cramped.
Sleep came briefly and left her gasping. Once she dreamed only of the cup rolling where no one could reach it.
On the second morning after Saint's Day, her aunt sent her to ask the price of lamp oil. Althea went by the well, though it lengthened the errand.
Iona's place was empty.
She stood beside the wheel rut where the cart had been. A woman carrying turnips asked whether she had lost something.
“No.”
Althea stepped aside.
That afternoon she tried to repair her aunt's hamper. She worked three sound lengths into the broken side before noticing that she had woven them above the split support. The whole patch would sag under a load.
She unwove it. Good willow frayed beneath her fingers.
For the first time in years, the work she trusted herself to do would not hold.
The following morning she wrapped the besom's head in an old cloth and took it with her when she went for the oil.
Iona was kneeling beside a wheel.
“You'll turn on every stone between here and the western farms,” she told it, “but not when there's a bucket waiting.”
She pushed the hub. It moved, splashing her hem.
Althea stopped beside the well. Iona looked up, and her smile faded.
“Come behind the cart. There's a stool.”
“Did you find the binding?”
“Yes. Have you eaten?”
Althea followed her without answering. Iona put bread and water on the repair board and went back to unpacking. The familiar sounds of tools gave Althea something to attend to.
“I've spoiled the hamper,” she said.
“Beyond mending?”
“No. I can put it right.”
“Then the cord can wait.”
Althea managed a mouthful of bread. “I dreamed about the wolf.”
The words came awkwardly. She began with the animal at the fence, went back to the broom by the hearth, and forgot what she had already told. At the sickroom she stopped. Iona moved the cup before Althea's shaking hand could knock it from the board.
“You can leave the rest until later.”
Althea shook her head. She had to finish while she could.
She described the yews, the man's hands changing, the band around his throat. She lowered her voice for the priest's name. Last came the broom's light, and the warmth that had eased the wolf's breathing.
“Do you know a woman called Sera?” she asked.
“Not one I can place.”
Althea tried to describe her. The burn at the wrist was clearer than the shape of her face. Why could she remember the fallen cup better than the woman who held it?
“What if I made all of it?”
“Then we'll learn that. I won't tell you every detail happened because it felt real.” Iona pulled her stool closer. “But I saw your broom stand where it should have fallen. There is something here to understand.”
“Should I tell someone about Anselm?”
“You've told me. We need to know more before an accusation reaches him.”
The wrapped besom tapped against Althea's boot. She jerked her foot away.
Iona looked at the cloth. “Will you uncover it?”
Althea loosened the knot. The broom balanced on its bristles, turning toward the narrow strip of daylight beside the cart. Then it rose clear of the ground.
Light shone between the birch twigs. Althea drew her hands against her skirt, remembering how strongly it had entered her palms in the dream.
The besom made one slow turn and settled against her knee.
Iona bowed her head.
“You know what it is,” Althea whispered.
“I know the presence within it.”
“Whose?”
“God's.”
Althea glanced toward the church. Her stomach tightened.
“I've felt that goodness in the woods,” Iona said, “and beside someone too ill to know I was praying. I've never seen it lift a broom. But I know it.”
“Then why show me such terrible things?”
“I don't yet know why you were shown them. What came to the wolf's aid?”
“The light.”
“You remember that part too.”
Althea rubbed her bruised knuckles. “I couldn't help him. Now I'm frightened of him, and he hasn't done anything to me.”
Iona took a smooth length of willow from her workbox.
“Find where this will bend.”
Reluctantly Althea followed the grain with her thumb. She showed where it would yield after soaking and where it would split. Explaining it steadied her enough to notice what Iona had done.
“You could have told me that was why you gave it to me.”
“I'll remember.”
The answer surprised her. She kept the willow on her knees while Iona brushed the bread board clean and shook a little hearth ash onto it.
“Would you like to try something small?”
“Will I see the dream again?”
“We won't call for one. You may stop whenever you choose.”
Althea looked at the ash. “What do you practice?”
“Wicca.”
The word brought back warnings heard over wash water and at the church door. Here it sounded like an ordinary part of Iona's life.
Althea put her hand above the board. She strained toward the warmth. A ridge of ash trembled, then scattered across her skirt.
“Feel your feet on the ground,” Iona said. “The stool beneath you.”
Althea tried again. The wolf's open mouth returned to her; she lost sight of the board.
“What are you holding?”
“Willow.”
Its weight rested across her knees. Slowly the present returned. She was behind a cart in the market, and no one was kneeling beneath the yews.
A thin warmth gathered below her palm. One twig reached from the broom and drew a wavering curve through the ash. Althea moved her hand with it. The curve closed, and the grains within it settled.
For three breaths she watched them.
Then a cart jolted past. Her fingers clenched, and the warmth faded.
She kept her feet on the ground until it had gone.
“Did you do that?”
“I helped you attend to it. I didn't move the ash.”
Althea looked at her ordinary, chapped hand. She ate another piece of bread while Iona put away the scouring pot.
“I'll fetch your oil with you,” Iona said. “We've done enough for one morning.”
Althea wanted to stay where someone else had seen the broom dance. Instead she folded the cloth around its head.
“Will you be here tomorrow?”
“Yes. Come after you've eaten, if you can.”
Beyond the cart, the church bell began to ring. Althea gripped the broom and waited for the sound to end. Iona waited beside her.
Only then did they step into the square.
Althea brought the lamp oil home without spilling it and returned to the hamper. She opened the weave down to its split support, stopping before tired hands spoiled another strand.
That night she woke when the fire settled. Her heart was beating hard, but she knew where she was. She touched the blanket, the hearthstone, the worn handle beside her. When sleep returned, it brought nothing she could remember.
In the morning she took the hamper and broom to Iona.
“I patched above the split,” she said. “I knew better.”
“Most mistakes I make are things I know better than to do. Put it here.”
They worked beside Iona's unfinished hoe. Once Althea stopped at a raised voice outside the stall. When she looked down, her fingers still held the weave where she had left it. She eased the next strand into place.
By midday the repaired corner held a load of stones. They set it aside and unbound the besom over a cloth.
Without its binding the broom looked like something taken apart beyond repair. Althea laid her hand on the willow. The warmth remained.
Iona sorted the sound birch twigs from the broken ones. Althea gathered them around the handle and wound the softened willow. On the third turn she pulled too hard. A twig snapped.
“Test it before you pull again.”
Althea pressed a thumb into the bundle. Nothing moved. She eased the last turn and secured it.
When she tried the broom on the earth, the bristles spread evenly. Then its head lifted and tapped her boot.
“I hope that's thanks,” Iona said. “I haven't time to take a complaint apart again.”
Althea laughed.
She took the hamper home. Her aunt tested it with two pots, then pointed to the work waiting beside the hearth. Althea finished that before returning to meet Iona, who had invited her to the outer birches after closing the stall.
“Bring something that matters to you,” she had said. “It needn't be a gift for me.”
Althea chose a short length of willow from her rim material. She carried it in her pocket, running her thumb along its curve as they walked out of Grissel.
They stopped where the path widened around a fallen trunk. Beyond it, Brackenreach deepened into darker trees, but here the last light still reached the ground.
The wolf stood at the edge of the clearing.
He watched Iona, then withdrew behind a birch.
Althea took a step after him.
“He doesn't know you.”
“Then we'll give him time to watch.”
Iona set her bag on the trunk. She took out a little cup, a covered flask of water, and a piece of bread wrapped in linen. She placed them on a flat stone and rested her hands beside them.
Althea waited for instructions. There was no stall to arrange, no work she could begin to justify being there.
“What should I do?”
“Sit where you're comfortable. You can listen today, or join me when you wish.”
Althea sat on the trunk. She laid the broom alongside her and held the willow between her fingers.
Iona turned slowly, attending to the trees and pale sky. Althea followed her gaze and heard the wind moving in from the fields.
Iona poured water into the cup.
“God, who meets us in the living earth, receive our thanks for this place. Help us see what is ours to care for, and give us willing hands.”
Althea looked at the stone. She had heard prayers all her life. Usually she knew when to stand, what words to repeat, how long to keep her eyes down. Here she did not know whether she was doing anything correctly.
Iona drank and offered the cup. The water was cold enough to ache against Althea's teeth; she took a second mouthful before handing it back.
Iona broke the bread. “For those who planted and tended, ground and baked. For those who have none tonight. May our gratitude make room at our tables.”
Althea held her piece carefully. The baker's fingers had left a mark along its edge.
They ate without speaking. Somewhere beyond the birches, a bird disturbed the dead leaves.
Afterward Iona set a small stone beside the cup.
“A woman gave me this near the northern crossing. She found it when we were looking for her lost sheep. Whenever I see it, I remember how she laughed when we brought the creature home.”
Althea turned the willow in her lap.
“I thought it would have to be something grander.”
“Does it matter to you?”
She nodded.
Iona stepped aside, leaving room by the stone.
Althea rose. She placed the willow beside the cup, then moved it farther from the damp rim. She could feel Iona waiting behind her, and began too quickly.
“It's for a basket.”
She stopped. That explained nothing.
The wolf had returned to the edge of the clearing. He stood with his head low, watching them through the birches.
“My mother showed me how to find the grain,” Althea said. “I used to pull things apart to see how she'd made them. Once I unwove the side of the basket she carried to market.”
The memory brought the room back with painful clarity: her mother's cloak over a chair, wet boots by the door, the basket open across Althea's knees.
“She was angry. I always remember her being patient, but she was angry that day. She needed it.”
Althea touched the willow.
“Then she sat down and showed me how to put it back.”
Her voice failed. She had not expected grief to come from that particular memory, from having been troublesome and loved in the same afternoon.
Iona did not speak over it.
Althea wiped her face with her sleeve.
“I want somewhere to work. A table by a window. I keep thinking if I can save enough, I can leave my things out overnight and find them where I put them.”
She glanced toward Iona, embarrassed by the smallness of it beside what she had seen in the dream.
“And I want him to be able to rest.”
The wolf shifted his weight. No answer came, and none was needed for her to finish.
“I don't know how to help him. But I don't want to turn him away because I'm frightened.”
She lowered her hands.
Iona came to stand beside her.
“May you have a home that welcomes you,” she said, “and company to share it when you choose. May the work of your hands give you joy as well as bread.”
Althea closed her eyes.
The broom stirred beside the trunk. She heard its bristles moving over leaves, then a soft tap against the earth. Warmth gathered around her fingers. It held no vision this time, no command she had to understand before it was too late.
She stood within it until she could lift her head.
When they sat again, she asked, “Must I learn to do something with it to belong here?”
Iona looked at her.
“Suppose I can't. Suppose today was all I ever managed.”
“You would still be welcome to pray with me.”
“And if I don't mend anything?”
“Althea.” Iona's voice grew firm. “You don't owe me work for this evening.”
Althea looked down at her empty hands. For a while she could not think how to answer.
Iona poured the remaining water at the foot of a birch. She thanked God for their gathering, gathered the cup and flask, and returned Althea's willow to her.
“Will you be doing this again?” Althea asked.
“Yes.”
“I'd like to come.”
They walked as far as the fork together. The wolf followed among the trees, keeping clear of Iona's path.
At home Althea found the small stitched book in which she kept measurements and sums. A basket rim filled half the last used page. Beneath it she wrote, I want to learn this way of prayer.
She paused, then added, I was welcome before the broom moved.
She let the ink dry before closing the book.
The next time they met in the clearing, Althea had eaten, finished the washing, and slept through most of the night. She told Iona these things with the care of someone bringing the right materials for a difficult repair.
Iona sat on the fallen trunk.
“And what would you like to try?”
Althea looked toward the wolf. He had come closer this time, though he still watched Iona whenever she moved.
“Can you see what's holding him?”
Iona put down her bag. “I can see some of it. I've been trying to understand it without troubling him.”
“Can you take it off?”
“I'll try to ease it. Leave him a way to move away from us.”
Althea stepped aside. Iona lowered herself onto the damp ground well short of the wolf and held out her empty hands. He retreated one pace, then stopped.
She waited until he settled.
A faint warmth appeared between her palms. Althea felt its nearness, familiar from the evening prayer, but it remained small. Iona brought her hands apart slowly.
The wolf's breathing eased. Then something caught the light beneath the thin fur at his shoulder: a dark thread, drawn tight enough to disappear into him.
Althea felt sick.
Iona lifted one hand. The thread held. She tried a different angle, and it held again, without loosening where it entered his body.
She lowered her hands.
The light faded. The wolf turned away and stood sniffing the earth.
“I can recognize a working,” Iona said. “Sometimes I can quiet what presses against it. I cannot undo this.”
“Because it's too strong?”
“I've met much smaller bindings that would not lift for me.” She rubbed mud from her palms. “Discernment is the gift I know best. I can often find where a thing is fastened. Releasing it is another matter.”
Althea watched the wolf. “Then how could I?”
“At the stall, the ash moved under your hand. Let us find out what else will answer you.”
Althea began clearing the ground where the wolf stood. She caught a root and scattered leaves. He stepped back, and she stopped. She was sweeping as though her aunt stood ready to inspect the earth.
“I want him to lie down without hurting.”
“Leave room for him, then,” Iona said.
She began again, working around the root. The circle widened slowly. At the last curve, the besom lifted beneath her hands and passed over the gap. A pale gleam sank into the soil.
Althea stepped back.
The wolf approached, pausing at the edge. He placed one paw inside, then the other. His shoulders trembled. She nearly reached toward him, but he was already lowering himself to the ground.
He stretched out his hind legs and rested his head on his paws.
Althea knelt outside the circle. She had never seen him lie so easily.
For a few minutes she was content to watch him breathe.
Then the thread became visible again, dimly, against his shoulder. It seemed so close to the light that she could not stop looking at it.
“Could I try?”
Iona crouched beside her.
“Keep the space beneath him steady. Touch only what you can feel.”
Althea held her hand above the edge of the circle. Warmth moved from the handle into her palm. She followed it toward the fastening.
The dark thread lifted.
Only a little, but enough for light to pass beneath it.
Iona drew a breath. Althea heard it and looked up.
The thread slipped back.
“I had it.”
Iona nodded toward her hand. Althea returned her attention to the fastening.
She tried again. This time the light gathered more strongly. The thread lifted, and another fastening appeared behind it, and another, running farther than she could follow.
Her hand began to shake.
She could see the man from the dream beneath the wolf's fur. She imagined failing halfway, leaving him neither one thing nor the other. Surely Iona should be doing this. Surely someone who knew what the power was would hold it better.
The warmth thinned as her attention scattered. She gripped the broom, trying to force it back toward the thread.
The fastening drew taut.
The wolf flinched and pulled his forelegs beneath him.
Althea snatched her hand away. The circle dimmed, but she kept the broom still until he had stepped clear.
He stood several paces off, breathing as he had when they arrived. No cry came from him. That silence was worse than anything she could have been told.
“I hurt him.” Althea pressed her palm against her skirt to hide its shaking.
“You felt him draw away and stopped. Remember that as well.” Iona watched the wolf settle. “In my hands the fastening never moved. In yours it began to release.”
“And then I lost it. What if I'm frightened every time?”
“Then we work while you're frightened. Start with the space where he could rest. You held that.”
Althea could still feel warmth in the broom. It had not vanished when her courage did. She laid the handle across her knees and waited until she could stand without stumbling.
They ended the lesson. Iona went back toward Grissel, carrying the empty flask. Althea walked home with the wolf among the trees beside her.
At the cottage she found a list beneath the salt jar. Her aunt had taken the cousins beyond the mill; there would be time before they returned.
Althea set the broom indoors and brought a piece of bread to the doorstep. She put part on a flat stone and sat back while the wolf approached.
He ate the crust and lowered himself beside the stone, closer than he had rested before.
“There was a name in the dream,” she said. “Rowan.”
His eyes turned toward her. She could not tell whether he had recognized the name or merely heard her voice.
“I'd like to call you that. Until you can tell me if I've got it wrong.”
He rested his muzzle on his forelegs.
Althea broke her remaining bread in half, considered the smaller piece, and ate it herself.
“I was frightened of what would happen if I failed you.” She looked at the worn edge of the stone. “Then I frightened you too.”
Wind stirred the fur at his shoulder. She wanted to smooth it, to offer some comfort her hands could understand. When she began to reach, he drew back.
She returned her hand to her knee.
“All right.”
She stayed where she was. After a while he settled again, leaving the distance between them unchanged.
Althea watched a drop gather beneath the eaves and fall into the water barrel. She could not promise him freedom by any day she knew how to name. She could come back to the clearing.
From the lane came the sound of her aunt's cart. Althea picked up the empty bowl and went indoors. Before closing the door, she looked back.
Rowan had stayed beside the stone.
Spring reached Grissel first as mud. It followed the cousins into the kitchen, filled the ruts beside the mill, and made Althea's aunt speak of the road as though it had offended her deliberately.
Beyond the last gardens, buds darkened the birches. Rowan came back from the woods with burrs in his coat instead of frost.
Althea met Iona when the household work allowed it. For three lessons she worked at keeping the resting circle steady when Rowan moved. One afternoon he stretched and turned onto his side without the light fading.
Later she wrote beside a drawing of a basket rim: I can notice something without following it away.
She did not try to lift the binding again. Sometimes this felt sensible. Sometimes it felt like cowardice. She could not yet tell Iona how much she wanted to be ready before anyone asked whether she was.
The newcomer arrived while Althea was carrying meal home from the mill.
Her handcart caught in a rut, throwing a pan lid onto the road. Beneath its canvas cover were chairs, a rolled mattress, tools, and a pot large enough to bathe a child.
The woman at the handles tried to pull it free. One wheel sank deeper.
“If you're going to settle here,” she told it, “you can pay the rent.”
Althea put down her sack. “Lift this side. Pulling will break the handle.”
Together they raised the wheel clear. The stranger stood with one hand against her ribs, catching her breath. A red scarf had slipped loose from her neck.
“Thank you. I'm looking for the empty cottage beyond the mill race.”
“It's that way.”
“Does it have a table?”
“Most of one.”
“Good. I've brought several parts of other tables.” The woman glanced at her load.
Althea picked up the lid. A neat row of rivets followed a split near the rim.
“You did this?”
“Yes. The pot's owner swore it couldn't be mended.” She tucked the lid beneath the rope. “Mara.”
“Althea.”
They took the cart across the bridge. Althea meant only to show her the cottage, but the threshold caught the mattress, and there was no sensible place to stop until the first load was inside.
Beneath the window a table tilted toward the light. Althea held it while Mara slid a block under the broken leg.
“There. Civilization.” Mara coughed into her sleeve and began unpacking her tools. Althea kept looking at the table.
“Do you make things?” Mara asked.
“Baskets.”
“I need something shallow for repairs. Two handles, if it won't make the price ridiculous.”
Althea described the broadest of the baskets waiting beneath her aunt's bench. As she spoke, Mara stopped unpacking and listened.
“Bring it when you can. I should like to see it.”
Althea remembered the meal on the road and hurried back for it. The mill worker stood beside the sack, keeping it out of reach of a nosing dog. He was the man who had stopped the child throwing ash on Saint's Day.
“She's taken the cottage for the season,” he said, nodding toward Mara's door.
“She may buy a basket.”
“Then I hope she has more money than she has chairs.”
He lifted the meal onto Althea's shoulder. She thanked him and went home by the birches.
Rowan appeared beyond the hedge.
“A customer,” she told him. “Possibly.”
He walked with her along the woodland path. That evening she took out the broad basket and examined every fastening before setting it by the door.
Her aunt wanted the winter blankets washed the next day. By evening Althea's hands were too sore to carry much, and she could not face another complaint about leaving work unfinished.
She took the basket to Mara two days later.
The shutter was closed. No smoke rose from the chimney.
She knocked and heard a cough inside.
“Mara?”
“Door's open.”
Mara lay on the bed with her coat over the coverlet. The mattress had been unrolled, but half her belongings still stood in bundles against the wall. A cup rested on the floor beyond her reach.
“I've brought the basket.”
“Put it somewhere dry. The roof and I have begun a disagreement.”
She tried to sit up. Another cough bent her forward, and Althea set the basket down to bring her the cup.
It was empty.
So was the water jar, except for a little sediment at the bottom.
For an instant Althea saw Sera's fallen cup beneath the bed. Her fingers tightened against the clay. She looked at Mara's green coat, the block under the table, the dark shutter across the window.
This was the cottage by the mill. Mara was awake and watching her.
“Have you seen the healer?”
“I thought I'd be better by morning.”
Althea looked at the stale loaf and the empty jar.
Mara turned her face aside. “There's money in the blue pot. Will you fetch him?”
“Yes.”
Outside, the mill worker was moving sacks into the storehouse. Althea called to him. He listened, glanced at Mara's shutter, and set down his load.
“I'll fetch him. You stay with her.”
She filled the jar and asked Mara whether she could open the shutter a little. When Mara agreed, light fell across the bed and showed how little she had eaten from the loaf beside it.
The healer arrived before Althea had finished clearing a space for his bag. He asked her to wait by the door while he examined Mara. His questions were patient and precise. Althea listened when he told her what help Mara needed, and asked him to repeat what she had not understood.
He arranged to return and explained what help Mara needed until then: water within reach, food she could manage, and someone to look in on her. Althea agreed to come the next day.
With Mara's permission, she took coins from the blue pot for food. She returned the change to the table and showed her where it was. The mill worker left a second pail beside the hearth.
By the time Althea went home, she had missed the hour her aunt expected her.
“A woman you scarcely know,” her aunt said. “And who is doing your work while you're there?”
“I will finish it.”
“Paid work, is it?”
“She asked to buy a basket.”
“Then see she does.”
For several days Althea rose earlier. She took food to Mara, brought what the healer had asked for, washed dishes, and carried away linen to be cleaned. Some visits lasted only long enough to fill the jar. Others took an hour she had meant to spend weaving.
She missed a lesson with Iona. When she explained the next morning, Iona handed her a repaired hinge.
“Mara wanted this before she was ill. Will you take it?”
“We traded work on the road last autumn,” Iona added. “Tell her I expect her to try it before she pays me. She'll be furious if she's too tired to complain.”
Althea turned the hinge over, pleased to imagine Mara before this bed and this cough, bargaining over useful iron.
That afternoon Mara slept restlessly. Althea stood beside her with the besom, which she had used to clear the hearth. Warmth gathered in its handle.
She thought of the clearing. She could make a place quieter. Perhaps she could do more.
Mara opened her eyes.
“Water?”
Althea set down the broom and brought the cup.
She stayed until Mara had drunk, then moved the jar nearer the bed. Before leaving, she checked the tasks the healer had given her. Nothing on that list could be put aside for an experiment.
Across the yard, beyond the far hedge, a gray shape moved among the trees. Rowan stayed where the field rose into Brackenreach. Althea did not call him closer.
Father Anselm stopped her at the gate the following day.
“How is our new neighbor?”
“A little better. The healer will be here tomorrow.”
His gaze moved from her covered pot to the broom beneath her arm.
“And you have been attending her.”
“Bringing food. Keeping things ready.”
“Your aunt tells me there is plenty to keep ready at home.”
Althea adjusted the pot against her hip.
From the cottage came a cough. Anselm looked toward the door but made no move to enter.
“Illness can bring people into strange company,” he said. “Be careful what you take on.”
She waited until he had stepped clear before carrying the food inside.
Mara recovered slowly enough to resent the healer's instruction to rest. Althea found her trying to brace a chair while seated in it and made her change places.
Mara directed from the bed, objecting whenever Althea reached for a tool before she had finished naming it.
On the next visit she sat in the mended chair with the broad basket across her knees.
“What do I owe you?”
Althea named the price she had practiced on the walk over.
Mara counted out more.
“That's too much.”
“The basket, and your work here.”
Althea looked at the coins. Her aunt would want to know every one of them. She could put some aside, perhaps enough to buy willow without asking, enough to begin again on the home she had scarcely allowed herself to imagine since the dream.
Then she thought of Mara lying alone with an empty cup, and the money seemed to turn all those visits into something else.
“I didn't come because I wanted paying.”
“I know. You still carried my washing and fetched my food. Those hours came out of your day.”
“You don't have to feel sorry for me.”
Mara set the coins down. “Ask me what I mean before deciding it for me.”
She separated the money. “That's the basket. This is for the work. Refuse it if you wish, but don't accuse me of trying to insult you.”
The mill wheel creaked beyond the window. Althea pulled out the other chair and sat.
“When my aunt gives me anything, she tells me afterward what it cost.” Althea rubbed a rough place beside her thumbnail. “I'm sorry. I didn't think about what you meant.”
Mara nodded and left the money where it was.
Althea accepted both sums. She wrapped them separately, so she could remember what each was for.
Before she left, Mara noticed the loose seam at her wrist.
“Bring that sleeve next time. I can manage a needle sitting down.”
“I could mend it.”
“So could I.”
Althea looked at her, then held out her arm.
Mara fetched her sewing things. While she worked, Althea told her about the mill worker guarding the meal from the dog. Mara laughed hard enough to cough, complained about both of them for making her laugh, and finished the seam with small, secure stitches.
Afterward she asked, “Does the wolf come often?”
Althea went still.
“I've seen him from this window. Beyond the hedge.”
“He stays in the woods.”
Mara waited. Althea could find nothing else she was ready to say.
“You can leave the broth pot,” Mara said at last. “I'll wash it.”
On the way home Althea touched the repaired seam. At the birches she took out the money again, counted what she could put aside, and wrote the sum in her little book beneath the words about prayer.
For the first time, the two entries seemed to belong on the same page.
A week later Mara walked to her gate. Two days after that she reached the well. She carried her own empty pail there and surrendered it only after Althea had filled it.
“Half the arrangement was mine,” she said on the way back.
People began bringing repairs. The mill worker arrived with a stool that had lost its seat. A woman left a pan at the door. Mara complained that the village had waited for her to be weak enough to accept its worst furniture.
She took the work anyway.
Althea spent one afternoon sorting fittings at the window while Mara examined a broken latch. There was room on the table for both their work. They could talk, or leave a thought unfinished and come back to it later.
When the healer called, Althea stepped outside to give them privacy.
Anselm arrived as the man was leaving.
“Quite a recovery,” the priest said. “Our Ash-Sweeper seems to have found unusual talents.”
The healer closed his bag.
“Althea brought food and kept water in the house. She did what I asked her to do.”
“I understand there has been talk.”
“There's generally talk when someone is ill. I'm satisfied with her progress.”
He wished Althea good afternoon and went down the path.
Anselm remained beside the gate.
“You have been spending time with the traveling woman too.”
Althea felt the broom's handle beneath her fingers. She had brought it after a lesson and used it to clear Mara's hearth.
“Iona has helped me with my work.”
“She has helped you take time away from your proper duties.”
“The washing is finished.”
His eyes settled on her face. She wished she had said nothing, then disliked herself for wishing it.
“There are duties beyond washing. Your aunt has sheltered you for years. People who offer you new ideas will not necessarily feed you when those ideas make you unwelcome.”
Behind him, Mara's door stood open. Althea could hear a drawer being pulled out and pushed back.
Anselm lowered his voice.
“You hope to sell your work here. You would do well to consider whose confidence you need.”
She thought of the coins wrapped beneath her folded clothes. She had calculated how many baskets it would take to add another small sum. Already a woman at the well had asked whether she could make a carrying hamper before the next market.
“What are you asking me to do?”
“Attend to your household. Leave this woman's care to those appointed to it. End your lessons with Iona.”
Althea could see the easy answer. She had used it all her life. She could say yes now and decide later what she might manage in secret.
Mara appeared in the doorway with a hinge in her hand.
“If you've finished with my visitor, there's tea cooling.”
Anselm did not turn.
Althea looked at her repaired sleeve. Beyond the field, where the trees began, Rowan stood partly hidden by the hedge. She could not know how long he had been there.
“The healer knows what help I've given,” she said. “I will keep visiting Mara. And I'll keep learning with Iona.”
Her voice was quieter than she had intended. She made herself leave the words where they were.
Anselm rested his hand on the gatepost.
“Then you must be prepared to live with your choice.”
He left by the path toward the church.
Althea remained outside until Mara came down the short path. She did not touch her or tell her she had been brave.
“Come in,” she said. “You can tell me what he wanted, if you wish.”
At the table, Althea took off her cloak and laid the broom where no one would trip over it. The room was warm. Her hands had begun to shake, and she held the cup with both of them.
Mara sat opposite her and waited.
“He wants me to stop coming.”
Mara glanced toward the open door. “Well, I want you to finish your tea. After that you can decide for yourself.”
Althea took a mouthful. It had cooled enough that she could swallow without waiting.
After a while she reached for the basket fittings. She sorted three sound handles from a broken one and set them beside Mara's tools. When Mara began explaining the latch again, Althea listened, though part of her was still counting the money hidden at home.
The woman who wanted a carrying hamper found Althea beside the well. Althea had brought two lengths of willow to show her how the handles would lie. She took them from beneath her arm, but the woman kept both hands on her pail.
“I won't be needing it now. I've made another arrangement.” She did not look up.
Althea lowered the willow.
“I could have it ready before market. As we said.”
The woman glanced toward the church. Father Anselm stood at its door, talking to the sexton.
“I know you could.”
Althea followed her glance.
“Did he ask you not to buy it?”
The woman reached for her pail.
“He said there were matters I ought to consider.”
“About my baskets?”
“Althea, I don't want trouble.”
She lifted the pail and walked away. Althea stood beside the well with the two handles she had begun fitting to a basket that no one wanted.
She almost called after her to offer a lower price. Instead she tucked the willow beneath her arm.
At home, she took out her little book and unwrapped the coins beneath her folded clothes. No money was missing, but she had counted on what the order would bring. She had cut sound rods and passed over a smaller repair to make time for it.
She crossed out the sum she had written for the next market.
Below it she counted what remained. Enough to buy more material. Enough, if she was careful, to put a little aside. Not enough to ask about renting a room, even if anyone would let one to her.
She closed the book before her aunt came in.
“Did you settle that order?”
“She doesn't want it.”
“After all that measuring.”
Althea folded the cloth over her money.
“Father Anselm spoke to her.”
Her aunt stopped beside the table.
“Then perhaps you ought to speak to him.”
“I already have.”
“And what did you say?”
Althea could hear the cousins in the yard, arguing over whose turn it was to carry water. She had no wish to give them something else to repeat.
“That I would keep visiting Mara.”
Her aunt looked at the unfinished hamper.
“Well. You can see what comes of making yourself difficult.”
That evening Althea took the willow into the trees. She could not bear to sit beneath the window and work where everyone might ask how much she expected to earn.
Rowan followed her to the fallen trunk. When she sat, he stayed standing a few paces away.
“It was a good order,” she said.
She laid the two handles side by side. One needed shaving where it would meet the rim.
“I keep thinking I could go back. Tell him I've been foolish. Say I won't see them.”
Rowan lowered himself onto the leaves.
“I'd have to hide every visit to Mara. And give up the prayers.” She turned the willow in her hands. “I didn't know how much I wanted them until he told me to stop.”
Her voice broke. She wiped her face impatiently.
Rowan rose. For a moment she thought she had frightened him away. Instead he came nearer, stopping just beyond her knee. She let her hands lie still, and after a while he settled beside the trunk.
“I wanted that money,” she whispered.
He stayed while she cried. When she could see clearly again, she wrapped the handles so they would not dry further and walked home. He kept nearer than usual along the path. At the fence post, where he normally stopped, he waited until she had reached the door before turning toward the birch.
The following afternoon she went to Mara's with the broom and the unfinished hamper. Mara might know someone who wanted it, and Althea meant to ask.
At the open gate she stopped.
There was no reason to hesitate. She could hear Mara moving tools on the table. Yet the house beyond the path seemed suddenly to belong to a life Althea had no right to enter.
She thought of her aunt's washing, though it was finished. She remembered the woman lifting her pail. The basket beneath her arm felt shabby and presumptuous.
Mara appeared at the window.
“Come in. I've cleared you a place.”
Althea took a step backward.
“I ought to go home.”
“Have they sent for you?”
“No.”
She tried to explain, but every reason sounded insufficient until she looked at the gatepost.
The besom warmed. Beneath the gray surface of the wood, a dark line appeared and vanished.
Anselm had rested his hand there.
Althea put the hamper on the wall.
“Would you mind if I brought Iona?”
Mara came to the doorway.
“What have you seen?”
“I'm not sure yet.”
“Then fetch her. I'll be here.”
Iona closed her stall when Althea told her what had happened. At the cottage she stepped toward the gate, stopped with her hand above the latch, and withdrew it.
Mara was waiting on the path.
“Both of you now.”
Iona looked at the post.
“There is something here.”
Althea set the broom down carefully.
She told Mara about the dream. The words were easier than they had been behind Iona's cart, until she reached the sickroom. Then she looked at the cottage window and had to begin that part again.
She explained what she knew, and what she only believed: that the wolf might be the man she had seen, that the priest had bound him, that darkness had reached from him through the village.
Mara listened without interrupting. When Althea finished, she looked toward the far hedge.
“Is that why he waits there?”
“I think so.”
“And this?” She pointed to the gatepost.
“It began after Anselm came. I saw his hand on it. I didn't see him make anything.”
Iona crouched beside the wall.
“May we work at your threshold?”
“Please. I would like my friends to be able to get through it.”
Iona placed her hand near the wood. A faint light spread beneath her palm, and the dark line became visible. It wound through the grain toward the latch, where several strands drew together in a knot.
Althea felt a sudden urge to apologize for standing there.
Iona moved her hand along one strand. The light steadied the wood beneath it, but the fastening did not lift.
“Like Rowan's?” Althea asked.
“Far smaller.” Iona followed a thread down the post. It continued beneath the path, too faint for Althea to see beyond the gate. “And connected to more than this doorway. Your dream showed you that much.”
Iona tried again, then let her hand fall.
“I can show you where it holds. I can't draw it out.”
Althea picked up the broom. She felt the familiar warmth before she had asked for anything.
She brought the bristles near the knot. One dark strand quivered.
Behind it, the other fastenings crowded together. She remembered all the deeper threads in Rowan's binding. This was smaller. She ought to be able to do it. She pushed the broom toward the knot.
The gate slammed against the post.
Mara jumped back. Althea felt the shock in her wrist, followed by an overwhelming certainty that she had been told to leave and was refusing to obey.
She stepped away from the gate.
Iona stood between her and the lane, leaving her room to breathe.
“Look at Mara.”
Althea kept staring at the latch.
“I made it worse.”
“Leave it a moment. Mara asked you here. Look at her.”
Mara had braced the gate open with her foot. There was a shaving caught in her hair, and she was gripping the post hard enough to whiten her knuckles.
“I want you here,” she said. “That's still true.”
Althea looked at the path beyond her. On the table inside were two cups and a cleared space for the hamper.
The warmth returned beneath her fingers.
“You know how to make a place for Rowan to rest,” Iona said. “Begin with what you know.”
Althea swept a small curve on the path inside the gate. She attended to Mara standing there, to the ground beneath her feet, to the doorway that belonged to her. The bristles lifted through the last part of the movement. A pale light settled across the threshold.
Mara loosened her grip on the post.
The knot remained, but Althea could look at it without losing sight of the path.
“Keep that space steady,” Iona said. “Then follow one fastening. You needn't move all of them together.”
Althea found the strand nearest the latch. Instead of pressing against the knot, she followed it to where it entered the wood. She turned her wrist, easing the bristles beneath it as she would lift a snag from a woven rim.
The fastening rose.
Her breath caught. She let it out slowly and kept her hand where it was.
Darkness slipped free of the grain and thinned between the birch twigs. The faint thread running beneath the path slackened with it.
There were four more fastenings she could see. She worked at each in turn, returning her attention to Mara and the quiet path whenever the knot began to draw her in.
At the last, the light wavered. Her arm ached. She lowered her elbow against her side, waited for the trembling to ease, and lifted gently.
The knot opened.
For a moment the bristles shone from within. Then the dark working loosened into nothing, and the broom settled in her hand.
Mara took her foot from the gate. It stayed open.
Althea walked through.
She could still remember her aunt's words. The order was still lost. Yet she could carry both facts into the cottage without feeling that she must turn away from the person waiting there.
“I nearly sent you home yesterday,” Mara said. “I wanted you here, but I kept thinking I'd used up my share of your kindness.”
Iona examined the post. “It found a fear already here and pulled. The rest of the working still reaches through the village, but this fastening is gone.”
She picked up the hamper from the wall and carried it inside. Althea followed, holding the broom carefully because her fingers had begun to shake.
Mara took the pot from the hearth. Iona poured, and Althea sat at the table until she could hold her own cup.
“Can it come back?” Mara asked.
“This binding is gone. I can't promise no one will try another.”
Mara put bread beside Althea's cup. “Then I'll keep an eye on my gate.”
Althea looked toward the hedge and began to rise. Her hand shook against the table.
Iona pushed the plate nearer. “You've done enough for today. Eat while I look at that hamper.”
They stayed until Althea's strength returned. Mara knew a household beyond the mill that needed a hamper; she would ask whether the size suited them. She made no promise about the answer, and Althea found that easier to trust than an assurance that all her work would soon be wanted.
Over the following days she passed through the gate several times. The post remained ordinary wood. Once she came angry after a quarrel with her aunt and found she was still angry inside Mara's house. No power removed it for her. She washed a cup, told Mara what had happened, and decided what she would say when she went home.
In the clearing she practiced holding a quiet center while attending to something beyond its edge. Iona threaded cord through a wicker frame, so that pulling one length tightened the others. Althea's hands repeated the mistake they had made at the gate before she found where a loop could lift.
The movement grew familiar through repetition. She kept it small, learning to feel resistance before answering it.
One evening she wrote in her book: Keep the living place steady. Lift where the binding holds. Stop before tired hands begin to pull.
Below it she added, The gate stayed free.
A few days later rain caught her on the way home from market. She sheltered in the church porch, standing beside the broom with her basket of purchases against her leg.
Inside, the old woman who had thanked her on Saint's Day was arranging wet greenery beside a candle.
“Will you hold these?”
She passed Althea a small basket through the doorway. Althea took it without stepping inside.
“Your son,” she said. “Have you heard from him?”
“Not yet.”
The woman steadied the candle in its holder. Then she bowed her head.
“God, keep him where I cannot. Give him shelter tonight, and someone willing to open the door.”
Water dripped from the greenery onto Althea's wrist.
Warmth touched her hands.
She looked at the broom. It stood motionless against the porch wall. The warmth was in the quiet around the woman, in the small space she had made for her prayer.
Althea stayed until the woman lifted her head.
“Thank you,” she said, taking back the basket.
The rain had eased. Althea picked up her things and went down the steps. She could remember the feeling clearly enough to recognize it, but she did not yet know what to make of finding it there.
At home she began a new page: In the church, while she prayed for her son.
She left room beneath the words.
Outside, Rowan was waiting near the doorstep. When she opened the door, he held his ground.
Althea sat with the book against her knee. He lowered himself beside the stone, close enough that she could hear his breathing.
She told him about the gate. Then she told him about the church, though she had no conclusion to offer. He remained silent beside her while the last rain fell from the birch leaves.
After a while she closed the book. She had nothing more she needed him to understand that evening.
They watched the path together until the light was gone.
Elin came to the cottage carrying bread.
Althea saw her through the window and put down the willow she was sorting. For a moment neither moved. Then Elin lifted her hand toward the latch, and Althea went to the door.
“Mara said you were taking orders.”
“I am.”
“We need a basket for the bread we send to the church. The old handle has split.”
Althea looked at the loaf. It was wrapped in a clean cloth, with a little steam escaping at one corner.
“Is that part of the payment?”
“No.” Elin shifted it between her hands. “I brought it for you.”
Althea waited.
“I ought to have come sooner.”
“Why have you come now?”
Elin glanced toward the lane, then back at her.
“I heard what Father Anselm said about Mara. Someone at the bakehouse was repeating it. I knew she had been ill. I knew you were helping her.”
“So you thought of Saint's Day.”
“Yes.”
Althea kept her hand on the door.
“You could see I was trying not to cry.”
Elin's fingers tightened beneath the loaf.
“Yes.”
“And you laughed.”
“I did. I'm sorry.”
No explanation followed. Althea had been ready for one: the crowd, the children, something she had misunderstood. The plain admission left her with no answer she wanted to give.
She stepped back.
“You can put the bread on the table.”
They discussed the basket standing up. Elin showed its width with her hands. Althea measured against the board, asked how many loaves it must hold, and named the price. Elin agreed without bargaining.
“Father Anselm has told people not to buy from me,” Althea said.
Elin looked up.
“If you mean to change your mind, do it before I begin.”
“I won't.”
Althea wrote the measurements in her book. When she turned back, Elin was staring through the window.
Rowan stood beneath the birch.
Elin backed against the table.
“Close the door.”
Althea moved toward it, leaving herself between Elin and the yard.
“He has never hurt me. I won't let him come near you.”
“You can't know what it will do.”
Outside, Rowan took one step into the light. Then he stopped. Althea saw the small break in the fur beside his eye and the way his head lifted toward the room.
“Stay there, Rowan.”
Behind her, the table scraped against the floor.
“What did you call him?”
Althea turned.
“It's a name I saw in a dream.”
“Who told it to you?”
“No one.”
Elin's mouth had gone pale.
“My brother was Rowan. Rowan Vale. He disappeared six winters ago.”
Six winters. Althea had still been living by the river with her mother; she had never known Elin's brother before he disappeared. She looked from Elin to the wolf beneath the birch.
“The man I saw had a scar here,” she said, touching her eyebrow. “He was trying to help a woman called Sera.”
Elin shut her eyes.
“Don't.”
Althea stopped.
For a while they heard only the small movements of the house: a shutter shifting in the breeze, water dripping from the eaves.
“Father Anselm told us Rowan was dead,” Elin said. “Beyond the forest. He said there was nothing to bring home.”
She looked toward the window again.
“Sera was his friend. I told him to leave her alone. She had enemies, and I wanted him out of it.”
Althea sat on the edge of the bench.
“I saw her caring for a sick child. Men took her away. Your brother tried to stop them.”
“And then?”
“I saw the priest bind him. He became a wolf.”
Elin gripped the table. “You dreamed this.” “You didn't see it happen.”
“Not while I was awake.” Althea told her about the binding Iona had seen and her own attempts to loosen it. “I can't tell you more than that.”
When she finished, Elin went to the doorway.
Rowan had lain down beneath the birch. He raised his head as she approached, but did not rise.
Elin sat on the step, carefully, as though sudden movement might break whatever was holding her together. She took a piece from the heel of the loaf and set it on the stone beside her.
“Rowan always took the heel before it was cool.” The wolf approached, then stopped beyond her reach.
She studied the scar. “He fell against a branch getting apples down for me. I was too frightened to climb.”
Rowan's ears shifted toward the lane. When a cart passed the turning, he moved to where he could see it, placing himself between the sound and the step.
Elin made a small, broken sound.
“He used to stand outside when Father and I quarreled. Pretend he was waiting for someone. He wouldn't come in, but he wouldn't leave me there alone.”
She reached toward the wolf. As her hand neared his shoulder, he turned away.
“He guards that place,” Althea said.
Elin lowered her hand.
The wolf stayed. After a time he took the bread from the stone and lay down nearby.
“It could all mean nothing,” Elin whispered.
Althea sat beside her, leaving a little room. Elin watched the wolf until her face was wet. When she left, she repeated the basket measurements and asked when she should return. Her voice was unsteady, but the order remained.
The sexton fetched the death register when Elin asked. He had known her since she was small enough to hide beneath the church benches; perhaps that was why he did not think to ask what had brought her.
They stood beside the narrow vestry window. Elin found her brother's name halfway down a page.
Rowan Vale. Death reported beyond Brackenreach. No burial recorded.
She read the date twice.
“He came home after this.”
“Are you sure?”
“The bakehouse lintel was being repaired. Rowan complained about climbing over the mason's cart. That work hadn't begun on this date.”
The sexton bent over the page but said nothing.
The sexton put his hand on the table. His fingers were stained with ink.
Elin turned back a page. Sera's name appeared near the bottom, with a burial date beside it.
“She died in the storehouse,” Elin said. “He told us she was being kept there until she renounced her practices.”
The sexton put two fingers beside the entry. “She was ill. I asked him to let the healer in.”
Elin looked up. “Did he?”
“No.” His hand withdrew. “He said the door was to remain locked.”
“Did you see my brother's body?”
“Father Anselm gave me the report.”
“Who saw him?”
The sexton looked toward the door.
Anselm stood in it.
“You have been troubling old grief.”
Elin kept her finger beside the date.
“This is wrong.”
“Records may contain errors.”
“Then tell me what happened.”
He dismissed the sexton. The man hesitated, closed his ink bottle, and went into the passage. He left the door open.
Anselm came to the table.
“Who has been speaking to you?”
Elin looked at her brother's name. She could give him Althea. She could put the wolf into his hands without ever needing to decide what she believed about it.
“I've been remembering my brother.”
“There are people who will use that grief. They offer a little kindness and ask you to distrust everyone who has cared for your family.”
“Who told you he had died?”
Anselm's hand settled over the page.
“Your father supplies bread to this church, and to the households receiving our grain. He has earned that custom through years of dependable conduct.”
Elin thought of the sacks stacked beside their ovens. Her father bought flour before the church paid its account. There were weeks when that payment settled the miller's bill and the wages together.
“You would take the orders away.”
“I would be obliged to consider whether your household remained fit to receive them.”
Her eyes dropped to his sleeve. She felt the familiar impulse to agree, to say she had been foolish and ask him to forget the questions.
Then she remembered Althea on the steps, sweeping while Elin laughed because other people were laughing.
She looked up.
“Did anyone see Rowan dead?”
“You have been told enough.”
He called for the sexton.
Elin stepped away from the table. In the passage she caught the older man's sleeve.
“Don't change the date.”
His gaze moved toward the vestry.
“I can't give you permission to read that again.”
“I didn't ask you to. Leave it as it is.”
He drew his sleeve free, but he did not return to the table until she had gone.
At the bakehouse Elin found her father scraping an old account mark from a board. She waited until he had finished before telling him what Anselm had said about their orders.
He sat down heavily.
“Why were you asking now?”
Elin looked at the flour on his apron.
“Because the date is wrong. Because I never asked who had seen him.”
Her father covered his eyes. She could not tell him that everything would be well. She stayed until he lowered his hands, then helped carry the next batch of loaves to the cooling shelves.
Three days later Elin returned to Althea's cottage without bread.
She asked to sit in the yard. Rowan was away, and Althea watched her try not to look toward the birches.
Elin told her about the book and the threatened orders. When she finished, Althea put aside the basket she was making.
“Will you tell him about the wolf?”
“No.”
“He may ask again.”
“I know.”
Elin pulled a thread from her cuff and let it fall. “He answered a question about Rowan by threatening my father's work.”
“It doesn't prove who the wolf is,” Elin continued. “But I won't take him to someone who answers questions with threats.”
They sat for a while. Then Elin asked about the basket.
Althea showed her the rim and the broad handles, still loose where they would be fastened. Elin checked the width. They spoke of the work, and when she left she paid the agreed deposit from the bakehouse purse.
Althea wrote the amount down after she had gone. It did not replace the hamper order Anselm had cost her. But Elin knew the risk and had ordered it anyway.
That evening she told Iona what Elin had found.
“He'll keep doing it,” she said. “To anyone who asks.”
They were in the clearing. Rowan lay beyond the trunk, awake, his head resting on his paws.
Iona put down the cord she had brought for practice.
“What do you want to try?”
Althea looked toward Grissel. For an instant she imagined going straight to the church, lifting the broom before everyone, making Anselm answer while he could no longer turn away.
The handle grew hot beneath her palm. She caught herself gripping it and eased her fingers.
“I want to be ready.”
When Althea had laid out the cord, Iona passed her the wicker frame they had used before. Althea made a protected space around a cup at its center, then followed a loop toward the edge. When Iona shifted the opposite length of cord, Althea felt the knot tighten.
She steadied the center, changed the angle of her wrist, and lifted where the cord entered the frame. The loop came free.
Iona changed the arrangement without explaining what she had done. Althea lost the circle once, rested, and found it again.
At dusk they worked beside Rowan.
He rose when Althea approached, and she stopped until he chose to settle again. She cleared the space around him with the besom, then held the warmth beneath his resting body.
One dark strand showed at his shoulder.
She followed it without trying to see every fastening beyond it. When it lifted, she kept her attention divided between the small release and the breathing wolf.
For several breaths the strand remained clear of him.
Then she felt her strength beginning to thin. She eased it back and lowered the broom before her hand could turn rigid.
Rowan stretched out a foreleg. His eyes closed.
Althea stayed until the resting light faded naturally. When he woke, he stood without the abrupt recoil she had once caused.
The broom lifted, circled the place where Rowan had lain, and settled into her waiting hand. Althea was tired, but she knew which part of the work had gone well. She would hold it longer next time.
The following afternoon she finished Elin's basket. She tested both handles with a load of stones, emptied it, and wiped the rim clean. Mara had pans ready for delivery; they would go to market together in the morning. Iona would be at the well.
Althea wrapped the basket and put it beside her cloak.
Outside, Rowan stood near the door. She came to sit on the step and told him what she meant to carry.
“I'll be passing the bakehouse,” she said. “Elin will be there.”
His head lifted at her voice. After a while he came closer and stood beside her, his unmarked shoulder brushing her sleeve.
Althea left her hand on her own knee. She let him choose how long to remain.
When she went indoors, he stayed near the step instead of returning to the birch. She could see him from her place beside the hearth while she checked the basket's wrapping one last time.
At the hedge above Mara's cottage, Althea stopped to shift Elin's basket to her other arm.
Rowan stopped too.
Below them the lane ran past the mill and into Grissel. He knew that boundary. For weeks she had left him there, turned back to find him watching, and returned to him when her errands were done.
She started down the slope.
His paws sounded behind her.
Althea turned. He had crossed the place where the hedge ended. His head was lifted toward the houses, but when she moved back toward him he came to stand beside her.
“I'm going into town.”
He looked along the lane. Somewhere below them a door shut, and he stiffened without retreating.
Althea remembered him beside the fallen trunk while she cried over the lost order. He had stayed until she was ready to move. Now, when she took another step, he matched it.
Mara came out with two repaired pans tied together by their handles. She stopped at the sight of him.
“Has he followed you this far before?”
“No.”
Althea could see a woman watching from a garden gate. She held out her empty hand beside her skirt, and Rowan remained close to it without touching.
Althea looked down the lane. She could leave the basket with Mara and take him back to the trees. But he had crossed the hedge deliberately, and now he stood waiting while she decided whether to go beside him.
She moved toward the open field. Rowan followed, giving her room to turn. He would come back if she asked.
“We can use the lane along the well,” she said to Mara. “There'll be room there. If people crowd him, we'll return this way.”
Mara took the basket from her. “Keep your hand free.”
Althea looked at Rowan. “Stay close. Give them room.”
They went together.
Near the bakehouse a boy dropped a bundle of sticks. A dog began barking behind a door. Althea moved aside to let a woman carrying a child retreat into her yard, and Rowan stayed against Althea's other side.
“He isn't coming toward you,” she said.
The woman pulled the gate shut.
By the time they reached the square, people were calling from one house to another. A man snatched a length of wood from a cart and came toward them.
“Get it out.”
Althea stopped short of the well.
“Let us turn. Don't crowd him.”
Behind her, two men had moved across the lane. The wolf drew nearer her leg. Mara set the basket and pans beside the well, where no one would stumble over them.
Iona rose at her stall. A child caught between a cart wheel and the retreating crowd began to cry, and she went to him first.
“What is this?”
Anselm stood on the church steps.
The man with the wood looked toward him. Althea saw the priest recognize Rowan before his gaze moved to her broom.
“Stand away from her.”
People drew back, leaving a small, empty space around Althea and the wolf.
“You were warned where these practices would lead,” Anselm said. “Now she brings the beast among your children. Will you wait until it has harmed one?”
“Nobody has been harmed,” Mara said.
“Surrender it, Althea.”
Rowan stood with his weight against her skirt. He was looking at Anselm. No sound came from his open mouth.
A stone struck the paving beside his paw.
He flinched sideways. The man with the wood lunged, driving him toward the child beside the cart.
Althea swung the broom low.
Light opened along the bristles. It curved between the advancing man and Rowan, leaving a clear passage toward the well. The man stopped as warmth passed over his boots.
Mara caught the child's mother by the elbow and guided her through the passage. Iona lifted the child free.
Althea let the light settle around the space where they had stood.
Anselm raised his hand.
“You have seen it. Evil, answering her in daylight.”
Althea felt the word take hold. People who had been reaching to help one another stopped. Someone near the cart began repeating a prayer too quickly to finish it.
She planted the besom against the stones.
“He stepped away.”
Only Mara heard her.
Anselm came down one stair.
“You will put that down and submit.”
Althea looked at the man holding the wood.
“When the stone struck beside him, he stepped away. When you came at him, he came closer to me. You've been afraid since we entered the lane. I understand. I was afraid when he first stood outside my door.”
Her voice shook. She moved the broom a little farther from her foot so she would not grip it so hard.
“But look at what he has done. He has given you room. You have thrown at him and raised a club. Please lower it before someone is hurt.”
“You hear how she pleads for it,” Anselm said. “What has she given to earn its obedience?”
Rowan's foreleg trembled.
Althea glanced down. His breathing had shortened. Beneath the fur at his shoulder, something dark tightened toward his chest.
The priest drew his fingers closer together.
Althea steadied the light beneath Rowan's paws.
“When Mara was ill, I brought water and food. The mill worker fetched the healer. You saw him go. The healer came back because she still needed him.”
“I fetched him,” the mill worker said from beside the cart.
“Ask me,” Mara said. “It was my house. I was the one in the bed.”
Althea held the light beneath Rowan. “Yet you were asked to suspect her recovery. He told me to stop visiting. When I refused, someone who wanted a basket was warned against buying it.”
Anselm spoke over her.
“Your household has duties you have neglected.”
“Ask what I neglected. Ask Mara what I did. Don't punish someone for wanting a basket from me.”
Rowan stumbled. Althea bent, keeping one hand on the handle. A band had become visible around his throat.
She widened the protected space beneath him. His paw steadied, though his breath still came painfully.
“You see the beast struggling,” Anselm called. “It cannot endure this holy place.”
Althea looked at his clenched fingers.
“Open your hand.”
He did not.
The sexton had come into the church doorway. Althea saw him looking between the hand and the wolf.
“I came here on Saint's Day with baskets to sell,” she said. “I was given a broken broom and told to sweep. People threw ash over me while I worked.”
Elin stood outside the bakehouse. She had heard the shouting; flour still marked her sleeve.
“Some of you tried to stop it. Some laughed. I remember both.”
Elin left the doorway and crossed toward them.
“I laughed,” she said. “I knew she was crying.”
Her voice caught, but she stayed where people could see her.
Althea's throat tightened. She had not known what it would mean to hear that admission here.
“I'm learning Wicca,” she said. “I pray with Iona. I'm learning to use this gift to protect someone who is hurting. I won't call that evil to make you comfortable.”
Anselm's other hand rose.
The band drew tighter. Rowan sank against her knee.
“And I can see what your hand is doing now.”
“Silence.”
The command struck through her. For a heartbeat she could feel the cottage floor beneath her knees, the shame of being watched while someone waited for her to obey.
She found Rowan's breathing and kept the light around it.
“A dream showed me a man called Rowan defending Sera. I didn't witness it awake. But Elin has found something wrong in the record of her brother's death.”
Elin came nearer the circle.
“He was in our kitchen after the date written there. I asked who had seen him dead. Father Anselm threatened our bread orders.”
“Your father will answer for this,” Anselm said.
The baker had reached the edge of the square. He looked at Elin, then remained where he was.
Althea turned toward the villagers.
“You know the goodness you ask for when you pray. Does it ask you to strike before you listen? To call kindness evil because you dislike the person offering it?”
The man lowered the wood.
“You needn't believe everything about me. But let us be heard. Let him breathe. Keep your faith, and ask whether he is serving it when he teaches you to fear your neighbors.”
A woman stooping for another stone straightened with empty hands.
Anselm pointed to the guard beside the church.
“Take the animal. Strike it if she resists.”
The guard lifted his spear, then looked at Rowan pressed against Althea's leg.
“It hasn't attacked anyone.”
“I have given you an order.”
The spear remained upright.
Althea looked at Anselm.
“Release him. You can still choose to stop.”
Both the priest's hands closed.
Darkness rose through the paving.
Althea lifted the besom. It rose from her hands and began circling Rowan.
Light followed the bristles, enclosing him from paws to bowed head. The first strand lifted from his shoulder. Althea felt its fastening loosen and held the resting space beneath it.
Then Anselm drew the strand back across the broom's path.
The resistance shook through her arms. She had practiced against Iona's moving cord. This was a living will, dragging each loosened knot into another and fastening it again.
The broom made another turn. A band lifted at Rowan's throat.
Elin drew a sharp breath.
Althea pushed toward the opening.
The light flared. For a moment she thought she had gained it. She drove the broom faster, trying to pass before Anselm could rebuild the strand.
The knot tightened.
Rowan's legs folded beneath him.
The besom struck the stones. The handle struck the paving with a sharp crack. Althea dropped beside him.
His chest scarcely moved.
Elin tried to reach him. Mara caught her before she stepped across the dark band stretched above the ground.
“Let her work.”
Althea could see Iona beyond the cart, holding a child against her side while people pressed around them. She was trying to make room to come through.
Anselm stepped toward the fallen broom.
“It has left you. You have brought this upon him.”
Althea's hand lay against Rowan's ribs. She could feel one small movement, then a pause that seemed to last too long.
She had promised herself she would stop before frightened hands began to pull. She had felt the resistance and pulled harder.
“Please,” she whispered.
There was warmth beneath her palm.
The broom lay beside his forelegs, still faintly lit along its worn handle. The goodness had not gone. It waited in the small place she had abandoned while she tried to tear the whole binding apart.
Althea loosened her fingers from his fur.
She looked at his chest. There was a life here, still trying to breathe. She knew how to make room for that.
She reached for the broom.
Anselm moved to stop her. The guard stepped between them, spear held across his body.
“Stand aside.”
The guard's hands shook. He stayed.
Althea drew the besom close and laid its bristles beside Rowan. She let the warmth gather where his breath moved, attending to that place until the light beneath him steadied.
His ribs lifted a little farther.
She followed the nearest strand to its fastening. Anselm was pulling at the knot beyond it, but she did not need to follow him there. She turned the broom toward the attachment beneath the thin fur of Rowan's shoulder and lifted gently.
It released.
Darkness struck the circle. Althea flinched, then returned her attention to the breath beneath her hand. The center held.
The broom rose.
Slowly, it danced around Rowan, lifting where the bindings entered him. Its light passed beneath his shoulder, along his spine, beside his paws. Each freed strand dissolved beyond the protected space before Anselm could draw it back.
Althea's wrist trembled. She braced her elbow against her side and allowed the broom its time.
The band around his throat loosened.
He drew one long, ragged breath.
Then the last fastening broke.
A dark thread snapped away from Rowan toward the church. Other strands shuddered beneath the stalls, loosening together. Althea remembered the thread beneath Mara's gate: one fastening released, and the working beyond it had slackened. Here the opening ran through the square.
Light surrounded him. Beneath Althea's hand the body changed: the foreleg lengthened into an arm, fur thinned from the shoulder, and a man's hand opened against the stones.
Mara pulled off her coat. Althea caught it and spread it over him while the broom continued circling.
For a moment he lay with his eyes shut, his breath moving freely beneath the cloth.
Elin was crying his name.
He turned toward her. His lips parted. He swallowed, as though the thing he wanted to do had become unfamiliar.
“Elin.”
Althea opened a space in the light for Elin. She knelt beside her brother and touched his face. He covered her fingers with his own.
“You were dead,” she said.
Rowan shook his head.
He looked past her toward the priest.
“He told you.”
His voice was rough, but it was his. He tried another breath, and Althea saw the shock of its ease pass across his face.
Anselm thrust a hand past the guard. A dark ripple crossed the stones and broke against the circle.
Althea steadied the broom's path.
Rowan pushed himself upright beneath Mara's coat. Elin supported him without letting go of his hand.
“My name is Rowan Vale,” he said.
People leaned nearer. Someone spoke his name from the back of the crowd.
“You knew me. I carried flour from the mill. I mended the bakehouse shutter badly enough that my father made me do it twice.”
The baker put a hand over his mouth.
“Sera was my friend. She cared for a child when people were afraid to go into the house. I saw her stay through the night. I saw that child drink from her cup.”
Rowan stopped to swallow. Althea felt the darkness gathering beyond the circle and kept its center steady.
“He ordered her locked in the storehouse. I brought water and was turned away. I stood outside while the healer asked to see her. Anselm sent him away.” Rowan looked toward the church. “When she died, I asked him before witnesses what harm she had done. People trusted her because she helped them. He wanted that trust to belong to him.”
“Lies,” the priest said.
Rowan looked directly at him.
“You remember the yews. You remember telling me I would be heard no more.”
Anselm's hand jerked.
The circle brightened where the next dark surge struck it.
“He made me a wolf,” Rowan said. “He left me with everything I remembered and no way to speak it. Then he told my family I had died.”
Elin bent over their joined hands.
“I came back. I stood where people might recognize me. You drove me out. After a while I learned to stay beyond the trees.”
The man who had held the wood laid it flat on the ground.
Rowan drew the coat closer.
“Althea gave me water and somewhere to rest. I watched her come home frightened because he had threatened her too. I couldn't stay beyond the trees and hear another person being silenced.”
His voice broke. Elin pressed his hand against her cheek.
“Sera is dead. I can't undo that. I can tell you she helped someone. I can say what was done to me. If you saw anything, tell it.”
The sexton came down the steps.
“I wrote the report,” he said. “I never saw a body. He told me what to enter.”
He looked at Rowan.
“The book is still there. And I asked him to admit the healer to Sera. He refused.”
Anselm turned toward him. The guard shifted to block the way, leaving himself between the priest and both witnesses.
Across the square, the darkness began to rise from every threshold at once.
Althea stood, keeping the light around Rowan and Elin.
The besom returned to her hands.
Dark threads ran beneath the stalls and through the church doorway. Where Rowan's curse had broken, their loose ends trembled. Anselm was drawing them together, trying to close the opening before she could reach it.
Althea felt how little strength remained in her arms. She could not break every fastening by fighting it anew. But these belonged to the same working, and its severed connections were exposed.
She kept the living center steady and let the warmth pass through her hands toward the nearest loosened strand. It lifted. Another loosened beyond it.
There was a way through.
She swept outward from the protected center.
Warmth passed beneath Mara, beneath the guard's planted feet, beneath the cart where Iona was helping the children out. It made room for people to move without driving one another back.
Anselm raised both hands.
The darkness pressed against Althea's throat. She heard the memory of her aunt asking who would shelter her if she became difficult. She saw the expected earnings crossed out in her book.
Those things remained true. She was frightened of them still.
She let the warmth deepen around the people she could see.
The broom turned in her open hands and rose.
It danced across the square, following the light outward. At each threshold, the fastenings lifted. Strands slipped from the well's stones and uncurled beneath the stalls. The darkness tried to gather around Anselm, but its loosened ends dissolved before he could catch them.
A woman reached for her neighbor. The baker crossed to the well and knelt beside his children.
The light entered the church.
At the porch, the old woman who prayed for her son set down her basket. She stood with her hands open, looking into the room where she had lit so many candles.
“I know this,” she said.
The presence within the church answered the warmth in Althea's hands. Althea recognized what she had felt beside the old woman's candle and beneath the birches.
Iona had reached her. She stood close without touching the broom.
“The same God,” Althea said.
“Yes.”
The old woman turned toward them, her face wet. “The God I have prayed to here.”
The blessing moving through Althea's Wiccan prayer and the woman's devotion was one. Althea felt it fill the church as it had filled the clearing beneath the birches.
Anselm had taught them to call one another enemies while he bound them both.
Althea gave the besom its final turn.
Light filled the doorways, the lanes, the small spaces between people who had drawn apart. The last threads lifted from Grissel. Anselm reached after them, but there was nothing left for his hands to close upon.
The binding broke completely.
The broom returned. Althea caught it against her chest, and her knees gave way.
Iona took her weight. Mara came to her other side and helped lower her onto the well's broad ledge.
For several breaths Althea could hear only her own heart.
Then the mill wheel returned to her, and a bird calling beneath the church eaves, and Rowan speaking his father's name.
Anselm lifted his hand.
“Kneel.”
Althea sat on the well's ledge with the broom against her chest. She heard the command clearly. Her body, exhausted enough to welcome any excuse to fold, made no answer to it.
Neither did anyone else's.
The priest spoke again beneath his breath. His fingers moved through the old shapes.
Nothing stirred beneath the stones.
Near the cart, a man bent and picked up a piece of broken paving. He straightened with it in his fist.
“Put it down,” Althea said.
Her voice was hoarse. Iona steadied her as she leaned forward.
“You heard him,” the man said. “What he did to Sera.”
“Yes.”
“And we're to let him walk away?”
Althea looked toward the guard.
“Take him to the magistrate. Take the book. Let the witnesses speak.” She swallowed. “He must answer for it. Put the stone down.”
The man looked at Rowan, sitting beneath Mara's coat with his father and sister beside him. Rowan did not offer forgiveness. He did not speak for Anselm's life. He watched until the man lowered his hand and let the stone fall.
Anselm backed toward the church.
The sexton reached the doorway first. For years Althea had seen him step aside before the priest came near enough to ask. Now he stood with his hand against the open door.
“Let me pass.”
The sexton's face was gray.
“You may enter to pray. You may no longer enter to command.”
Anselm looked past him into the church. The guard came up the steps and took his arm.
“You're coming with me.”
While the sexton fetched the register, the mill worker brought his cart. A second man went for another escort. Someone found cord. The guard bound Anselm's wrists with cloth beneath it so the knots would not cut. Anselm stared at that small care and said nothing.
The healer arrived and knelt beside Rowan. Elin moved back just far enough to give him room. When he came to Althea, she tried to tell him she was only tired, but he asked his questions anyway.
“You'll both rest,” he said. “Someone else can carry things today.”
Mara collected her pans and the bread basket from beside the well. She handed them to the mill worker's wife, who had offered to take them to the bakehouse.
Althea's aunt approached while the guard was helping Anselm onto the cart.
“Althea.”
The name sounded tentative in her mouth.
“I'm going to Mara's,” Althea said.
Her aunt looked at the broom, then at Iona's arm supporting her.
“There are your things at home.”
“I'll collect them.”
Her aunt opened her mouth, closed it, and returned to the cousins.
The sexton climbed onto the cart with the register wrapped against the weather. He would show the magistrate what he had entered and tell him whose report it had been. Other witnesses would follow. Rowan would give his account when he was fit to travel.
As the cart turned out of the square, Althea saw the woman who had withdrawn the hamper order standing beside the well.
“I ought to have—” the woman began.
Althea could not hear another apology yet.
“Another day,” she said.
The woman nodded and moved aside so Mara and Iona could help her up.
Behind them the church doors remained open.
For two days Althea slept on Mara's spare mattress, waking for food and the healer's visits. Sometimes she woke with the square still around her, certain she had left Rowan struggling on the stones. Mara would tell her where he was, and she would listen until the room returned.
The first time she went to the bakehouse, he was sitting by its open door with a cup held in both hands.
His borrowed shirt was too short at the wrists. A little tea had spilled across his knees. “It slipped,” he said.
Althea stopped inside the gate.
She had heard him speak before the whole village. Somehow this small complaint, offered to her alone, made his voice real in a different way.
“Did you spill much?”
He looked into the cup.
“Enough that Elin has stopped filling it to the top.”
She sat beside him. They watched the yard while he tried another mouthful.
Visitors came asking for Rowan's story. Elin began meeting them at the gate, turning them away when he was tired.
One afternoon Rowan asked Althea to walk. They went only as far as the birch turning, stopping twice along the way.
At the trees he laid his palm against the bark.
“There are places in there where I knew how to be safe.”
Althea waited beside him.
“I wanted to come home. Now I keep wanting to hide.”
“You could tell them not today.”
“I wanted a voice for so long.”
“You don't have to spend all of it.”
He looked at her, then back into Brackenreach. After a while they sat on a fallen branch until he had strength for the walk home.
The magistrate heard Rowan's account over several meetings. The sexton brought records and described the refused request for a healer. Others testified that Anselm had ordered Sera confined and kept the door locked as her illness worsened. Anselm remained in custody while the inquiry continued.
When Rowan was ready, he asked Althea to tell him the dream.
She described Sera beside the bed. He listened with his hands resting open on his knees.
“She always warmed the cup first,” he said. “She hated giving anyone one more thing to shiver over.”
Althea remembered all the cups she had brought to Mara.
“Tell me something else about her.”
He spoke about a gate Sera could never close without lifting it, and the neighbor's goat that ate her washing. Once he laughed. Then he cried, and Althea stayed until he could speak again.
The sexton showed them her burial place. It had been in the register all along.
They cleared the weeds and arranged for a stone bearing her name. Rowan asked for no public gathering that day. Elin came with water and a brush.
As she knelt, she began to apologize again for Saint's Day.
“I heard you,” Rowan said.
She stopped.
“I know.”
“I need you to know I was there.”
Elin set the brush beside the water.
“I do.”
He let her take his hand, but he did not tell her that it was finished. Later, when he tired, she cleaned the last of the soil from the stone while he rested beside Althea.
They walked home together.
A week later Rowan came to Mara's door carrying two apples. He had washed, and his hair was still damp where he had tried to make it lie flat.
“Have you time to walk?” he asked Althea. “I've been told I can go farther, and I would rather hear what you think of something besides my health.”
She took an apple. They walked toward the river path, arguing about whether a badly made chair deserved a second chance. Rowan defended one he remembered from the bakehouse until he admitted he had made it himself.
Althea laughed. He looked pleased enough that she grew shy and bit into the apple to hide it.
When they parted, she asked him to come again the following afternoon.
Althea returned to her aunt's cottage for her tools, her book, her blanket, and the clothes that were hers. The two baskets left from Saint's Day still stood beneath the bench. She nested them and laid her things inside.
The cousin wearing her mother's clasp watched from the stairs.
Althea looked at the silver at the girl's shoulder.
“That was my mother's. I want it back.”
The girl covered it with her hand.
Althea waited.
Her aunt stood by the hearth. This time she did not come to settle the matter in the cousin's favor. Slowly the girl unfastened the clasp and set it on the table.
Althea picked it up.
“Where will you go?” her aunt asked.
“I'm staying with Mara while I find somewhere.”
“You could stay here.”
Althea tucked the clasp into the cloth around her book.
“I won't.”
She carried the baskets out. No one followed her to take them.
For a time Mara's cottage held more willow than either woman considered sensible. The unfinished hamper finally found a buyer through Mara's inquiries. Elin paid the balance on the bread basket, and Althea marked the deposit and final payment separately before putting the money away.
Further orders came, though some people still crossed the square to avoid her stall. Althea learned to ask for a clear agreement before cutting good material.
The mill worker told her about the old weaver's house near the outer birches.
Its chimney leaked. One window was boarded over, and the door had sunk against the threshold. At the back stood a heavy table that would take several people to move.
Althea laid her hand on it.
“The morning light would come here.”
Mara examined the boarded window.
“Once we let it.”
They agreed terms with the owner: a modest rent, specified repairs counted against part of it, and the roof work done by someone who knew roofs. Althea counted her savings twice before agreeing.
Iona helped her decide what work she could reasonably do herself. Mara repaired the latch. Elin brought nails and scraped old cloth from the window frame. Rowan sorted wood in the yard until he was strong enough to carry it inside.
The old woman from the church helped wash the glass. When they had finished, she and Althea stood back to watch the light fall over the table.
“There,” the woman said.
Althea could think of nothing to add.
She moved in before the room was entirely ready. The first night the wind found a gap beside the shutter, and she had to get out of bed to stuff it with cloth. In the morning she ate at her own table and left an unfinished rim upon it when she went to fetch water.
It was there when she returned.
Rowan came that afternoon to finish a shelf. Althea wanted it beneath the window; he thought the nearer wall would save her steps.
They tried both places. He conceded the window when he saw how she reached for her tools there, and she agreed to shorten it so the shutter could open fully.
He was collecting the shavings when she asked whether he would stay for supper.
“I haven't brought anything.”
“You've brought yourself.” She felt her face warm. “That was who I was asking.”
He put down the brush. “Then yes.”
Afterward they sat outside until the light failed. When Althea moved her hand beside his, he turned his palm upward. She took it, and for a while neither spoke.
Through summer and autumn she worked, learned, and sometimes agreed to more than she could manage. A handle failed on a basket she had hurried. She replaced it without charging the buyer and crossed a promised delivery date from her book to write a more honest one beneath it.
The book filled with measurements, accounts, prayers, and observations she corrected when experience taught her better. She began calling it her Book of Shadows. Beside the first words about wanting this way of prayer, she later wrote, I still do.
Iona continued teaching her. Sometimes Althea led a gathering beneath the birches. Sometimes she listened. She no longer expected every prayer to end with the broom moving.
When a new participant proposed displaying the names of everyone who practiced with them, a woman near the back put down her sewing.
“My employer wouldn't keep me.”
“After what happened?” the man asked.
“He was away. He has his own views.”
Althea closed her book.
“We will ask before using anyone's name.”
“I thought we were done hiding.”
“You may name yourself. She may choose who she tells.”
The woman picked up her sewing again. Later she stayed to help put away the cups.
Through the winter, neighbors from the church joined them for supper after their separate observances. There were awkward questions and disagreements. Some asked about Wiccan prayer; others preferred to begin with a chair that needed mending. They kept meeting.
On the next Saint's Day, Althea woke in her own bed.
Her mother's clasp lay beside the wash bowl. The besom stood by the door, newly rebound after a winter of use. Morning light reached the table where she had laid out the baskets for market.
She watched it for a little while before getting up.
Mara arrived after breakfast and immediately found something Althea had forgotten to pack. At the birch turning they met Rowan and Elin. Rowan took one of the heavier baskets, then put it down again while they adjusted the cloth so the handle would not dig into his fingers.
They had time to do it properly.
The square was hung with red and gold.
Althea stopped at its edge. Her hands remembered the broken church broom before she had consciously looked toward the steps.
Rowan waited beside her.
Across the square, Iona raised a hand. The church doors stood open. Inside, the sexton was setting out seats for people who could not stand through the observance.
Althea walked on.
They laid her baskets on the stall cloth. Mara put out repaired pans, and Elin went to help carry bread from the bakehouse. After the church gathering, tables were brought into the square for the shared meal. Later, those who wished would join the Wiccan observance near the forest.
A man examining a basket asked Althea whether she went to the gatherings beneath the birches.
“Yes. I'm Wiccan.”
She liked saying it plainly.
“My wife has been asking about them.”
“She'd be welcome to visit. Iona or I can tell her when we meet.”
Nearby, the woman who kept her practice private shared bread with a neighbor. Althea greeted her and left their conversation to them.
A child came to the stall carrying a little broom made from spare twigs.
“Can you make this dance?”
Mara looked into her cup to hide a smile.
Althea crouched beside the child.
“I can show you how to hold it.”
They began with a scattering of leaves beside the stall. The child pushed too hard and caught the twigs against a stone.
“Lift a little. There. Give it room to move.”
The broom came free. They tried again, and this time the leaves gathered where the child wanted them.
“Must I say a prayer?”
“Only if you wish. Anyone can learn to sweep.”
The child ran to show his mother. Rowan brought Althea water and stood beside her while she drank.
Behind the stall, away from the busiest part of the square, she set down the cup. He brushed a loose leaf from her sleeve and smiled at her. She caught his hand before he withdrew it.
For a moment they were both shy.
Rowan leaned nearer, slowly enough for her to meet him. Althea lifted her face, and they kissed: a brief, soft touch, followed by the warmth of his forehead resting against hers.
She smiled first. He followed, looking almost surprised by his own happiness.
Someone called for another loaf. The square went on around them. Althea squeezed his hand before letting go.
From the bakehouse table Elin began a song. Rowan listened to the first line and joined her. He missed a word and laughed. Elin sang it again, louder, until he found his place.
Althea watched them. She had once listened for the slightest sound from him outside her aunt's door. Now his voice carried across the square.
She reached for her besom.
Before her fingers closed, it rose. Sunlight caught the willow handle as it turned, and the birch twigs swept a bright circle around her. The child stopped running. Mara laughed openly. Iona stood beside the well, smiling with both hands resting on her work.
The broom danced once more and returned to Althea's palm.
Warmth moved through the worn wood. A prayer of thanks rose from the church porch, and beyond the last gardens the wind stirred Brackenreach's leaves. Althea rested her hand on the handle and listened.
She set the bristles to the stones and swept the leaves from beside her table. She wanted room for someone to sit.
When a neighbor came nearer, she looked up and made a place.
