“My love!” the witch wailed, flinging herself onto her pile of left-foot-only shoes. Her hand rooted around in its depths before revealing a teakettle from the previous century. “I was looking for this.”
Perhaps they would get tea after all. Risa’s stomach growled at the thought.
“I wasn’t always like this,” the witch sobbed, keen on sharing her story. Risa didn’t blame her; it looked like a lonely existence. “When she left, I thought I could become lost in the tunnels. I wanted to wander an endless path, a ghost of my former self, longing for her until my body ceased to move and became food for worms, my skeleton an altar for love.”
“That’s rather romantic,” Javi breathed dreamily, lashes fluttering.
The witch nodded. “I like to think so!” With a sigh, she rested her head against the pewter kettle. “Yet I went on breathing. I missed her so much, I started to collect the things I thought she might likein case she ever returned. Leaves. Twigs. But she didn’t. I guess I’m cursed to be lonely forever.”
Risa felt the words steal her breath. She blinked at the trash witch, focusing on her face, trying to see if there was indeed a curse like Risa’s snaking through her veins, winding around her arms like a climbing vine.
Nothing.
What she did notice were the dried husks of climbing vines in a wicker basket beside the settee. Cracked eggshells where bluebirds once grew. Gold rings missing gems in a cloudy glass jar. Several chairs without legs or arms, useless for their purpose but still standing upright, a souvenir of parties never held. Bits of ripped parchment, too small to write odes of love on. Magic for remembering what one couldn’t forget.
Risa supposed she had her own brand of magic, then, too. Some were memories: the names the children of Barrow had called her, the times she saw her parents get hurt. Repeating over and over, keeping her up at night. Others were tangible items still back in Barrow. Tucked beneath her floorboards were scraps of paper and the twiggy witchtraps left on her doorstep. What remained of a gnarled stick from when her father had fallen out of a tree and cracked his skull; in a vial, charred soil where her mother had been standing when lightning struck; a bit of stone that had given way from when the river overflowed. Each a reason she was bad.
Each a kind of curse.
Some people drowned in puddles. The witch had nursed love into a curse of her own making. Growing the vines herself, letting them curl around her slowly, suffocating.
This was not a curse Risa could break. She couldn’t see where tostart. Only the witch knew where the vines grew. Only she would be able to root them out.
Risa blinked away the stinging in her eyes, and took measured steps around the relics of the witch’s heartbreak. She didn’t know a thing about kindness, but she had spent her whole life wishing someone would extend a warm hand. Palm on the witch’s shimmery shoulder, she said, “I’m not very well versed in love, but I know that sometimes you have towantto break your own curse.”
CHAPTER SIXTEENIn Which a Witch Offers Some Useless Parting Gifts
After staring at Risa for a long, hard moment, the witch’s glow returned in full force. Now she bustled about her abode in a frenzy. Assorted teacups floated out of a cushion, half a chess board unfolded itself from a treasure chest, and a dented hollow gourd with several ridged lines running parallel down its body somersaulted in the air.
The witch hummed to herself while she scraped a mangled root against the gourd, bits of it falling into each teacup. She summoned a bright yellow lemon from thin air, which she cut into slices with a piece of a broken plate. She dropped a slice in each cup, then poured water from her kettle.
“Here, you’ll feel better,” she said, and handed each of them a steaming cup. She gestured vaguely in the direction of several wooden chairs placed around whatmighthave been a table, if a table were made with a pile of discarded, rotting crates. “I’m a healer,” thewitch explained before anyone could question her. “And my name is Linda.”
“This doesn’t look like tea,” Javi said, eyeing the floating bits of root and lemon with a distrusting eye.
Linda looked affronted at the accusation. “I changed my mind. This is a tisana. It isn’t made with camellia leaves, like proper tea.”
Risa was too thirsty and tired to question what constituted tea or a tisana. Sheshouldhave questioned the cleanliness of the items, but the warm, spicy aroma that rose from her cup quieted that thought very quickly.
She took a careful sip. An immediate sense of relief swept through her. Her stomach warmed, and what remained of the ache in her shoulder melted away. With a sigh, she settled in a seat with a missing leg and found herself pleasantly well supported, no doubt by some carefully placed trash and magic.
The others followed her example, taking sips from their cups. Javi hummed in approval and dropped into the empty chair beside her with far too much confidence in its ability to hold him up. The Wolf sagged with relief, tension melting from her shoulders.
Brunie, who did not get a cup of not-tea, sauntered off to mope at the edge of the cavern with the patiently waiting horses.
Once settled, Linda the witch took the last seat. “Now, what are you all doing here traipsing through my tunnels?”
Nothing about Linda suggested she had ulterior motives. If she did, they were probably lost somewhere in her piles of trash, to be found at a later, more inconvenient date.
“We venture to Monpira,” Javi answered, clearly coming to a conclusion similar to Risa’s.
Linda nodded thoughtfully. “Oh, Monpira is a wonderful little place. I was last there one… two centuries ago?” She looked regal and beautiful, despite being surrounded by her pile of trash and being over two hundred years old. “Are you planning on attending their carnival?”
“No,” Risa interjected immediately.
“We’re off to San Cirilo after that. Then I am off to…” Javi scrunched his eyes, as if doing so might help him recall that pesky word they kept forgetting. “To get married,” he finished lamely.
“Oh, a wedding!” The witch clapped her hands giddily. “I love weddings. Where is it? Is it going to be a big wedding, beach wedding, vineyard…?”
