The woman looked at me for a long moment. “Are you hungry?” she surprised me by asking.
My stomach had been so tight with worry since we left the empty village that I hadn’t had time to even think about food. But as soon as she said this, it growled.
“Yes,” I said.
“Let’s get you something to eat , then. And don’t worry, I’ll give some to your man over there, too. And we can talk.”
She led me to the bonfire in the center of the encampment, which was surrounded by rudimentary benches made from logs and stumps. People sat and ate, talking quietly. It was an ordinary scene, and one that made my heart ache for the villagers back home.
How were they faring? Were they hidden? Were they safe? Or would they at least be safe enough until we returned? And what would they do if we never returned, or if we weren’t able to find a way to get rid of the corruption and give the king his usable hearts again?
I was so roiled and muddled in my own head that I tripped over a log and almost sprawled full-length.
“Here,” said the woman, giving me a plate of stew when I had settled myself. It was good stew, thick and brown, with a strong, gamey taste that made me think it must be venison. Coins of carrot bobbed to the surface.
“Thank you,” I said.
“We gave a plate to the magic-worker as well. If he’ll stoop so low as to eat peasant food.”
“He loves peasant food,” I said, shoveling the stew into my mouth. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was. I hadn’t eaten properly since before I was taken to the palace.
She gave me an odd look. “You seem to know him well.”
“I have little choice,” I explained. “I am bound to him, and he to me. A heart-harvesting spell gone wrong.”
“Or so he says,” she said.
I felt too full of stew and goodwill to argue.
“So why have you come to us from the Invisible Kingdom?” she asked. “We rarely get visitors from beyond the mist, and even more rarely do they survive the journey.”
“We were told to seek the Weftwitch.”
She raised her eyebrows. “And why do you need the Weftwitch?”
“You know of her?”
“First tell me why you seek her.”
I explained as best I could about the mold that was destroying the king’s hearts and his plan to cull half the population to replace them. She watched me with an unreadable gaze.
“And you believe that if you repair the hearts, he will be content with what he has and return to the old ways?” she asked.
“Well, no,” I said. “But it is all we could think to do. We couldn’t stay, and I had to do something to help repair myself. And it would slow down his harvest. If he does what he is planning to do, he’ll destroy whole villages at once.”
“Even if you succeed, you will still be enslaved to a king who picks your hearts like apples whenever he has the need.”
“What choice do we have?” I said. “At least before the mold started destroying his hearts, it was peaceful, for the most part. They took bits and pieces of us—rarely a whole heart. We might have been trapped inside the kingdom, yes, but it’s not a bad place. And there hasn’t been a war in a century.”
“No war?” She laughed and spat out a wad of chewed bay leaf from the stew. It splattered on the stone, looking like a fat bug someone had stepped on. “Girl, there is a war. There has been a war for a hundred years or more. You just don’t know about it.”
“There can’t be,” I said.
She snorted.
“I’m not an imbecile,” I argued. “I may never have known war, but I know what one should look like. There would be soldiers, weapons, shortages of food. We have always lived in peace. We have always had plenty. Our boys grow to old men, get fat, and die without ever holding so much as a wooden play-sword.”
“There are other kinds of wars,” the headwoman said, “with a king such as yours.” She heaved herself to her feet, sucking noisily at her teeth, and wandered over to the fire to give it a poke. “You will see.”
