Page 4
ELINOR
Keeping the baker’s box from disintegrating in the rain proves almost impossible. I end up folding the soggy paper over itself and holding it under my oilcloth cloak. It’s not exactly what you’d call a fashionable garment, but it does the job of keeping me dry.
The rain starts with a downpour and a crack of lightning, but it quickly fades into a miserable drip. I pick my way along the path until the witch’s cottage comes into view. Smoke puffs cheerfully out the chimney.
“Miss Ellie!”
Maxine waves me inside. Her gray mane is barely contained in a thick braid dotted with beads that clack every time she moves her head.
“I brought you something.” I offer her the squished box of pastries.
Maxine seizes the broken cookie. “My favorite! Anise.” It’s gone in three bites. She bustles around her overstuffed little cottage, pulling out innocuous-looking herbs, not-so-innocuous-smelling gooey things I don’t want to examine too closely, and dried bits and bobs of gods-know-what.
“I suppose those sisters of yours want more glamour?” she asks.
I nod and stow away the remaining pastries. “Does it ever make you feel bad?”
“Does what make me feel bad?”
“Poisoning them with magic.”
“None of my business,” she chirps. “If I don’t give them the glamours they crave, another witch will.
Course, at the rate they’re going through my stores, I’ll either have to raise my prices or start diluting the potions to wean them off.
Or both.” She opens a dusty wooden chest with creaking hinges.
With both hands, she extracts an enormous talon.
One end has been chipped away. Maxine says as if greeting an old friend, “There you are.”
Maxine’s Monster Box is infamous amongst regular purchasers of illegal magic.
Only royalty is supposed to own monster parts, but there’s a brisk underground trade in fae beast bits.
Children who find a harpy feather in a field will sell them.
A single basilisk scale can feed a large family for a month.
Of course, the same family risks starvation if their primary provider is lost to the monster’s terrifying gaze.
“Did you hear about the prince’s ball?” I watch her slice thin pieces off the end with a wicked-looking obsidian knife. Acrid smoke curls into the air. I wrinkle my nose and reach down to pet a skinny black cat that winds between my ankles, her tail high.
“I’ve been doing a brisk trade all afternoon because of that prince’s folly.”
Maxine strips a pinch of the vane from a tattered harpy’s feather and drops it into a mortar along with a single gelatinous frog’s eye, a black lump of something I can’t identify, and precisely nine drops from a vial of eerie green glowing liquid.
Each addition changes the color of that smoke.
She straps on goggles and snaps rubber gloves up over her elbows before deploying the pestle and grinding this disgusting mix into a paste.
Magic, as she has explained to me on previous visits, is embedded in all living things.
Most of it is too weak to be extracted. The fae gods were so in tune with the natural world that they could manipulate the essence of life at will.
Their creatures were imbued with potent power, but the fae abandoned them when they fled to the sky realm.
Humans aren’t so blessed. We have to hunt down the animals that carry the most concentrated remnants of magic, pulverize pieces of them to release the weakest dregs imaginable, then distill the stuff into a usable form.
The most popular use is for physical enhancement; people always want to be more beautiful than they are.
“Will you go?”
Maxine doesn’t look up from her work, and her question takes me off guard. She scrapes the contents of the mortar into a small cauldron, drops in the piece of talon, and adds a blue liquid, then sets this foul-smelling concoction over the fire to simmer.
“To the ball?” I laugh. “Very funny.”
“You have as much a right as either of them to be considered.” Maxine sets a small cup before me. “Tea. Drink it.”
I do. Carefully, as it’s hot. It’s good. Better than the stuff we have at home.
“There’s no point. The prince isn’t going to choose me.”
“At least you’d get a nice evening out of it.” The witch glances at the rag I’m wearing. “A new dress, too. Been a while since you had one of those.”
My sisters keep their prized castoffs in mothballs no matter how out-of-fashion. I’ve been mending my mother’s old dresses ever since she died. Tremaine won’t waste coin on properly clothing his red-headed stepdaughter.
“This smells about ready.” Maxine straps on her goggles and gloves and strains the magic potion into six small vials. They glow a bright-teal color, fizzing while they settle into a deep-fuchsia.
“While we’re waiting for those to cool, I have something for you. A gift.”
Alarm prickles along my neck. It isn’t wise to accept gifts from witches, even one you have known on a first-name basis for the better part of a decade.
“I don’t need anything,” I hasten to assure her. “Thanks, though.”
“It’s not much. A little thing I’ve been saving for just the right moment.
” She ignores my protest and rummages through stacks of dried herbs, an odd assortment of dishes, books lying face-down with broken spines, and other clutter.
Idly, I nudge one of the books out from under a month-old newspaper to get a better look at the title.
“That one’s spicy. Want to borrow it?” She winks.
I snatch my hand away as if I’ve been burned. Maxine likes salacious books. She keeps trying to foist them on me.
“Here it is!”
Triumphantly, she holds a winking silver chain from which is suspended a charm in the shape of a heeled shoe filled with fizzing silvery-blue liquid.
I recognize it instantly as far higher quality magic than I’ve ever seen her produce for my sisters.
She drops the glowing charm into my cupped hands.
“A potent glamour that can make you look like anyone else for up to six hours. You wouldn’t even need a new dress. Drink this, go to the ball, and your own family won’t recognize you.”
“I don’t want to use magic.” I’ve seen the kind of hangovers my sisters get. I want nothing to do with that.
“Once won’t hurt you,” Maxine insists.
“I’m not willing to take that risk.” The necklace is pretty, though. It’s been a long time since I held something this nice. I run the pad of my thumb over the smooth surface and sigh. Tiny sparkling stones dot the tapered bail.
“They’re not real. You wouldn’t be able to sell them for much.”
“I was wondering why you’d give me diamonds,” I say wryly.
Maxine cackles. “And what use do I have for diamonds?” She flips her long gray hair.
“I have a crown of pure silver. A cottage in the woods. A thriving business plying the dark arts to those foolish enough to indulge.” Bending, she scoops up the cat and busses a kiss between its ears.
“And I have a cat for companionship. Better than a whole wheelbarrow of gemstones, if you ask me.”
“I can’t take this, Max.” I drop her gift on a dusty velvet cushion that has an indentation in the center like it once held a crystal ball. “It’s too generous, and I’d never use it anyway. Who knows what Cilla and Stacia would do if they got hold of it.”
The old woman turns thoughtful.
“Fair enough. I’ll keep it for when you want it. The potions should be cool enough to cork now. That’ll be fifteen coppers.”
“Fifteen?! You charged half that amount for nine bottles last week.”
“That was then, this is now. The grocer put his prices up, which means resupplying monster parts will be more expensive too. Everyone has to eat and I’m too old and fat to go clambering up mountains looking for harpy feathers.”
She wheels on me. I stand back, startled. Slyly, she says, “I’ll give you the lot for free if you promise to take the necklace I offered.”
“Maxine. That makes no sense.”
“Take it. Keep the coins I hear rattling in your pocket. You need those more than I do.”
Her voice fades tinnily. The rest of her fades around the edges, too. I stare at the place where she stood only seconds ago in astonishment.
I’m fond of the witch, but I’m too creeped out to stay here for another second.
I scoop the coins from my pocket and deposit them on the scuffed wood table and flee, leaving the beautiful pendant with its potion charm coiled on the pile.
I’m not risking my life for one night of fun.