If Noleen hears Ruben speak, she doesn’t show it. Instead, she remains exactly where she is, her glazed eyes staring at her feet.
‘Mum?’ Only when Ruben kneels down beside her does she finally lift her head.
‘Ru … Sorry, love, did you say something?’
‘Rose is here, Mum.’
‘Rose?’
‘You remember Rose? She lived with us in the slums. She won the gifting. One of us.’
Ruben looks at me and beckons me over with a nod. A lump fills my throat, and not just because of Noleen’s state and the fact that I have no idea if I’ll be able to help her the way Ruben wants me to, but also because of the words he just said.One of us.That’s how they viewed me in the slums. And yet what have I done to help them since I was accepted into the Retterheld? Nothing. That’s what. I didn’t even manage to get the leftover food out to them after the balls due to the rebel attack. No, my contribution to the people who claimed me as their own has, so far, been nothing.
I’ll change that, I vow. One day, I’ll change that. I’m not sure how, but I will.
For now, I focus on my old neighbour and kneel before Ruben’s mum. ‘Hi, Noleen. It’s?—’
‘Rose? Yes, Rose!’ She tries to smile, but she’s too weak. The simple exclamation of my name causes her breath to heave. ‘You did so well, my dear. One of us winning! Imagine! You did so w?—’
Her words are stolen by a coughing fit that causes her to double over, her entire body clenching in pain. Worry is etched in every line of Ruben’s face as he grabs a cup of water and tips it up to her lips.
‘I’m going to make you something, okay?’ I speak to Noleen, but I catch Ruben’s eye so he knows what my plan is. ‘Something that should make it a little easier to breathe.’
She nods, still coughing, and pats my hand in acknowledgement.
After finding the matches for the stove – Noleen is in no state to do it for me – I light three of the hobs, then search around for a pan.
‘What do you need?’ Ruben asks as he sidles up beside me.
Noleen’s coughing fit has passed, and she’s once again slumped in her chair, eyes closing, head lolling on her chest.
‘Um, pans,’ I start. ‘I definitely need pans. And a chopping board. If you can grab me the board first and then get some water boiling, that would be great.’
As he sets out to find what I need, I start emptying the contents of my bag onto the worktop, starting with the dagger from Dinah. Somehow, I can’t bear to part with it, even for a moment. Though it is far better suited to stabbing enemies than chopping plants, instinct propelled me to bring it.
‘Wow, that’s impressive,’ Ruben comments on my fancy knife as he places a chopping board down next to it.
‘You don’t know the half of it,’ I mutter before noting the pans in his hand. ‘Can you fill that big one halfway? We’ll use it to clean. The other one you can put on to boil.’
He does all of that and wanders back to look again at my dagger. He reaches out to touch it and instantly recoils. ‘Damn! That’s hot!’
‘Must be too close to the flames.’ I absentmindedly shuffle the board holding the dagger a little further back from the pans and their fire, just in case. ‘Don’t worry about that now. I need some ice. Can you get some?’
‘Of course. I’ve got an icebox outside,’ he tells me. ‘I’ll just be a minute.’
As he disappears through the back of the house, I continue pulling out the contents of my bag.
Now that I’ve seen Noleen, I’m sure that if I went back to the orangery, the magic would be more specific and give me even more ingredients I need. But I’ve got enough to get started. With what I’ve already harvested I can ease her pain and hopefully help her breathing a little, too.
I start with the mottled greenleaves of lungwort, which I tear parallel to the midrib into thin strips before grabbing the hyssop. It’s not the leaves I want here. It’s the sap, and there’s not a lot of it.
Thankfully, I have magic on my side.
A buzz of anticipation flickers within me, thoughexcitedis the wrong word to use to describe it. It’s not exciting trying to ease yourfriend’s sick mother’s pain. But to feel this magic thrumming beneath my fingertips, pure and ancient and fully mine, is almost dizzying.
My gifts from the Goddess may not have eased all my worries the way I’d hoped, but this part of my magic – this connection to my past and my mother – is everything I wished for.
I don’t even bother cutting or ripping the hyssop. Instead, I hover my hands above the bundle of leaves, like I saw Mother do hundreds of times before, and then I let the magic flow through me. It starts as a tingle in my palms before spreading to my fingers with a rush of heat, like blood returning to a limb gone numb. As I look down, the hyssop is practically floating in a glistening pool of its own sap.
