Importance of a Name

by ohHOLYmoves

Summary:

There are witch prisoners dotting the countryside. Legally prohibited to be visited or, in some places, even seen. River's life changes when she falls into one such prison.

Chapter 1

There are witch prisoners dotting the countryside. Bones that jut from the ground where they have been left to rot after the civil war that happened ages past. Most of them are hidden for the safety of pilgrims who might stumble into their jail cells, but some people know how to find them. The thrill seekers who want to try toying with the witches or stealing from the things that were imprisoned with them. River knows where many of the underground ones are hidden around the village and she has visited them many times. Not for treasure or thrills but for the fact that the best mushrooms grow there.

Most often, witches locked in arcane prisons do not bother her. A few try to trick her into releasing them and more just want someone to talk to about the crime they swear they did not commit. One of them, a foxy older man with a sly smile and curled mustache, tries to seduce her at least twice per visit. To be safe she never talks to them and only looks at the corner of their eyes, just in case they can work some kind of magic while in confinement. She only picks mushrooms that grow the edge of earshot from the prisons and only in the same handful near the village. She only picks mushrooms near the same prisons, taking the same routes each time. Down beneath the crack in the rock wall behind the waterfall because the ones that grow near the village are plucked up by the less adventurous before she can arrive. Deep under the earth where she witches sit in glowing rings preventing natural decomposition of the body age invokes and the basic human needs for survival. Most witches she passes look up only to meet the eyes of another living being, to be acknowledged as a living thing in return and be granted the space to exist in her eyes. Others ask for the first taste of water in over a hundred years.

For their safety she has taken to ignoring them.

Father warns her about this particular monthly chore. ‘The risk outweighs the reward. If you were caught down there, the guards would quarter you in the street.’ While this is true, the mushrooms are such a valuable item she cannot write this chore off simply for the sake of her own safety. People travel to their inn just to sample the soup broth and gravies made with these mushrooms. They cannot afford to lose that patronage.

Today moss peels away from rock beneath her hands, wet and spongy that leaves a grotty trail of soil on her palms. Quietly she apologizes to the ancient plant that spent a longer time than she has been alive settling roots there just to be unmoored by her carelessness. Each little clump is set in jars in her basket. Nothing goes to waste. Knees sing of a pain in the joints while she climbs down into the earth where light is swallowed up and loneliness is dangerous. Above and around her there is a sound of water rushing where the waterfall slips noise between the rocks still. Trickling comes from deeper down where little bits of the small lake come through cracks in the surface. Below the surface everything is tacky from moisture retention. Even the air is thick and wet and smells stale from being trapped down below.

River is not claustrophobic but she does not enjoy being underground. Each witch cage she passes makes her feel a small kernel of sympathy even if they are ancient criminals serving punishment. No one should be forced to live like this.

From the corner of her eye, she sees one of the witches when she kneels down. Knife in hand, held to the stubby cream stalk of a mushroom, she watches the witch stir. Rising from the rocky floor to their knees to notice her presence.

“You again.” Says this witch a masculine voice and soft features. Hands that are half rotted from an old battle wound lift to tap against the barrier of their cage. A glowing ring of tunes that encircle where they sit on their knees. Unable to step past the threshold, supposedly unable to cast magic inside it, unable to die while inside it.

River says nothing. The risk of being enchanted is too high no matter what they say about those runes. If her father loses her to such foolishness, she will never forgive herself.

“Could I have one of those? Please?”

Large fermenting jars with a few inches of starter liquid in the bottom are pulled out of the basket. Each small mushroom she cuts is dropped into the jar.

“Hey! Please! Please, please!”

River pulls her hood over her head to cut off the vision of the witch crawling closer to the edge of the runes.

They say the war was awful. That witches were some of the cruelest creatures to ever exist and that was why their punishment was so severe. Starvation broke the generation that came before River’s father because witches burned fields and stole cargo from traveling merchants. Intentionally starving entire towns to force their Queen to send out military advancements to stop them and therein fell into witch traps. River’s grandmother is perpetually thin, scarred by her starving in a way that gorging herself now will not fix. They say the war was the witches doing. Beasts so hungry for power they had swallowed up whole countries just to make themselves monstrous ours enough to take it all. Whatever stood in their path had suffered a hundred deaths and become the mud that stuck to witch’s boots.

They do not clarify River’s questions about why the hunger was so intense and they hiss between their teeth when she asks. They cuff her ears and whisper prayers when she admits that the cages seem just as cruel as the stories they tell her of what witches did.

“I haven’t eaten in so long, please,” Broken words from a parched throat, “Just throw it past the prison charm. I’ll show you how. Please. No, don’t go! Don’t! Please, I’ll give you anything!”

Footsteps bounces off cavern walls. Pats this tube of rock where this witch—River calls them Pabi—is imprisoned. The smallest space in a volcanic vent where no light reaches except for the faintest glow of bioluminescent algae on the ceiling. Down this path, there will be a large oval shaped space it empties into. One with half the roof of the cavern caved in where sun lights spills through and crawling vines that bear purple flowers encircle the mouth. Hanging down in lengths between ten to thirty feet long yet still high above her head, dripping water the spirals down the stalks of the vines. Mushrooms that she comes to collect do not grow in this section. There is too much light. In this place, atop the small collection of vividly blue water, is another witch cage. This one River calls Meshi because witches imprisoned cannot speak their own names. Not their own names, not where they came from, not their age or their families names. They are allowed to give nothing that might aid in their freedom. History is stripped away as a protective tool but making them keep that knowledge in their heads, unable to say it, is part of the punishment.

Meshi is an older masculine looking fellow with a long white wisp of hair that hangs off his chin down the entire length of his chest. Bald on the top of his head, there is a perpetual redness from the sun exposure that makes the skin flake. Half of the ancient robes have been burnt away along with the flesh on that side. Just a black cracking surface that has dried blood between the fissures. Part of the sinew shows through a cheek that has been scraped down to the bone, showing root strands webbing over yellow teeth and part of the mandible.

“Another one.” He says in a thin voice that slithers through the air.

River does not look at him more than she dares risk as she passes. Following the same path on the rocks that does not get as wet and has spongy moss to walk on. To lower the risk of slipping and falling into the water.

“Tip toe, tip toe, away the mouse will go,” Musically sung in a flat rasp of a note that sends shivers down her spine, “Deeper down, where cats abound and men refuse to go. With claw and wit, mouse the cat will get. Old man—“

He starts to cough when he tries to say his own name. Deep body shaking coughs that make him bend over his own knees to hack. 

River hurries down the path away from Meshi who might be one of the witches that have gone mad.

Past the sunlit cavern is the snake's path that curves hard to one side then just as powerfully to the other, dipping further downward. Narrow at the tail end but widening out as it winds down. From her hip she takes out a small hand sized lantern with a deflated burlap sack at the end. She crouches down with it tucked under her arm so she can strike flint by the wick. Each spark lights the circular tunnel in a wash of orange that is quickly consumed by black again. Until the wick catches and she quickly stuffs it under the burlap hood. Heat makes it swell and as it does the light inside starts to grow brighter. She lifts the torch above her head as she walks further down, basket hooked over her shoulder.

At the end of the snake’s path, there is the head that is a small tear dropped shaped alcove. This is usually as far as River goes. At the head of the snake mushrooms grow in thick bushels of three different varieties that is more than enough. Crawling along rocks, weeping between them, dripping down from the ceiling. Normally she comes into this place gently, mindful not to step on them and waste the fungus. Today she pauses in the narrow channel, startled into freezing there because she hears voices and scuffling. Normally inside the head there is a small witch, a child, kept in a ring at the far end of the head who does not speak. The child always seems more afraid of her than River is of the witch. Today she can hear the screams of a young girl ripping through the still air.

River made a mistake. She made such a huge mistake coming down here today. Quickly she turns to sprint away before she can be seen, before the light gets noticed or her breathing can be heard.

“Hey! You hear that!? Someone’s out there!”

“Get the rope!”

“What about the witch?”

“Take the knife and hurry the fuck up!”

The screaming stops. Footsteps rush after her in thunderous advance, bouncing off the walls so loudly she cannot even hear her own breathing.

“There! It’s that girl!”

“River Kelsey! Stop there girl!”

No, no, no! Not them!

Whistling disturbs the air from rope being whipped through it at a rapid pace. Tightness suddenly catches her around the ankles and pulls backward, cinching her ankles together. Momentum is a cruel thing when paired with gravity. Her body slams into the hard rock floor, head bouncing off the rock with such a might that it sends spots dancing across her vision.

“What are you doing!?”

“Do you know what they’ll do to us if she tells anyone she saw us down here!?”

“So what are you going to do!? Kill her!?”

“Yes!”

“No! Please, if I die, my father will be all alone! Don’t—“

A boot heel connects roughly with her jaw, making her head bounce off the rock again. Rocks can sometimes feel like broken glass. Pain bursts in places where cuts appear from being dragged across the floor into the head of the snake. Over the mushrooms she came to collect that are trodden and ruined upon the ground.

Blood makes her scream. She has never seen a dead body before, never seen anything more brutal than the chickens and pigs they butcher in the inn for meals. Ghildi, the littlest witch, is laying on her side with her throat cut open and blood spilling out in time with the rhythm of a dying heartbeat. Eyes wide open, staring at her when she is unfortunately brought right past her corpse.

“Please, please don’t—“

Two men with large hands lift her up. One grabs her by the ankles, cussing at her every time she kicks to try and free herself. The other grabs her by the arms.

When they start to swing her, she realizes how she is going to die. Struck by the terror of facing her own mortality clenches an invisible fist around her throat. She goes stiff and tries to scream but she cannot get the muscles in her face to work. Cannot do anything except by thrown over the edge of the cliff where the end of the snake’s head meets blackness. She twists and flails, clawing and kicking and screaming, to free herself before they can send her down that way.

It does not work. They are stronger than she is. Weightlessness makes her stomach lift into her throat and her lungs burn from the blood curdling terror that manifests in screams so loud it scrapes her throat raw.

When she was a little girl, her father laid a black shawl over her shoulders while he wept. One of the traditional weaves that look like fish net, laid over thin black cloth, looped together by intricately embroidered vines and flowers and the names of those they have lost since it was made. A mantle that is tied under the chin with a strip of cured leather and hangs clear down to her elbows if her arms are held straight. That way mourners can hug themselves beneath the veil and not be noticed. As the only living girl in her father’s family, the duty of wearing it fell to her. Even now she can remember the smell of it and the scratch of it on her arms for the year she was obligated to wear it after her mother’s death. During the day of the wake, this mantle was accompanied by a black veil that covered her dull hair a color between brown and blond. A chair was set out for her, as is the custom, that she sat in still as a stone for the entire thing so that mourners in attendance could set flowers in jars around her feet. With her veil covering her entire head and the mantle covering her torso, she had wept beneath it and wished it could have been her who died instead of her mother. A young girl then but still more selfless than a person ought to be. River is just a stupid girl. Mother was the woman that the village looked to for help and she was the pillar of her father’s existence. Without her, he was adrift. That feeling of sitting under the black while she watched her father weep never left her. She can still smell the mantle again as she falls.

When she dies down here, there will be no one to wear the black for her.

Rock meets flesh quicker than she expected. Her back hits something so hard and quickly she feels she has lost the ability to breath. Momentum carries her further forward, twisted her body into an involuntary roll that carries her right over the edge of this slanted cliff side back into the air. Then again on a rock covered in slime and wet that propels her quickly downward like a slide coated in animal fat. Back into the air that she flails in, arms and legs kicking like that will somehow save her. Sounds of water rushing catch her ears just before her body meets rock again. This time she does not slide. This time her vision goes black.

When she comes back awake, she does so screaming in agony.

“It’s alright.” A voice, cool and low and raspy, says startlingly close to her.

Pain makes her lethargic and feverish. The ability to connect her personal reality to the reality of the world are two separate things in her state.

“The civil rings don’t allow suicide. It is bringing you back, but they are designed to make it painful. Just lay still, save your energy.”

Pops echo in her ears. Her own screams overlay the sounds of her bones coming together again. Pain promises her it will never end and she begs it to relent, to give her peace.

“I’m surprised it’s working for you. Considering this is my prison, not yours. A blessing,” Something warm lays over her forehead, soft and pleasant, “Lay still. Wriggling makes it worst, trust me.”

Blackness comes in and out with the pain that stays in her even after she can feel her limbs again. It makes her teeth hurt in the roots, it crawls over her brain that feels swollen in the skull, it is in each joint on every finger howling with bristling, pin pricks of pain.

This place is not totally dark for being even deeper underground than the snake’s path is. Purple lights dot the ceiling of the cavern that flicker and move. A dark rock with crystal veins that reflect the light in an umbrella of light that makes the entire roof light up. Whatever the lights are hang like stalactites that occasionally separate from the bulk to fly and collect with another long tendril. The floor is a narrow bridge of rock that is sandwiched between two underground rivers. Clear enough for her to see the odd-looking fish that swim around with white scales and no eyes. And bones that liter the bed under the shallow water. On the rock bridge are bones hung from poles, four in total, staring with hollow eye sockets at the end of the bridge where she is. Where there is a pale rune circle carved into the rock, glowing a similar purple to the things hanging from the ceiling.

A rune circle she is laying inside.

Her head whips over quickly which she instantly regrets from the instant, searing pain that rips through her.

“Easy. You should let your body readjust. You were dead for a few minutes and the first time is always hard.”

There is a witch kneeling an arm’s length from her prone body. Long in the arms and fingers and the neck, giving an air of tallness because of the way she moves her body. Pale blue dye creates long paragraphs of scrip on her biceps, throat, forearms, and around the thighs and knees. Running through the script is a thin red line that runs up her arms, across her jaw, to just beneath both eyes where it meets a horizontal line that runs over the bottom lids into her hair. In the pale light it is difficult to tell the features, but the eyes are bright. Eyes like the rind of an orange freshly plucked from the tree. Sleeveless, her shirt has a high neck that peeks over the poncho made of a thick animal fur hanging off her, pinned up at the shoulders to keep them off her arms. Dusty after years spent down here and made of a moth eaten, blend of colors mostly in of grey hues. Her thick hair is braided back with little spines of some sort of animal bone poking out of each pleat. It is a light grey coloration that usually River has only seen elders have.

A real living witch that she is laying just beside. She tries to get away, to scream, but nothing happens.  The muscles in her legs cramp into knots that makes her writhe from pain and howl.

“Relax. You’re only making it worst.”

“P-please…”

A hand touches her. Chilly fingers that meet skin are a dream when her entire body is on fire.

A witch is touching me.

She tries to scream again but all that comes out is a garbled whimper.

“I heard the screaming. And then suddenly you fell here, in my circle. You’re lucky. If you had landed just a little to the left, you’d have stayed dead.”

“I’m not…?”

“Not anymore. As I said, our jailers assumed we would attempt to take our own lives after a few years in these circles. When we try, we are simply restored and returned to life. Painfully.”

River tries to move again, to crawl away from this thing of nightmares. Since she was a little girl the village elders and the teacher at the school house had been warning children about the witches. About the bloody civil war they started and what would happen to a naughty child if they let themselves get caught in a witch’s trap. One of the elder’s missing an eye and several teeth had told her that he got caught in an trap as a boy and showed his grizzly smile to inform her how that went for him.

This witch does not speak in riddles to trick her into giving something away. She does not reach into her abdomen to pluck out an organ. She stays in the skin River can see and only focuses intently on her when River starts to wiggle and writhe. The first inch she makes toward the rune circle makes this witch flinch back.

“I have to go, I have to get back,” Her lungs ache from the place her ribs had pierced them, left bruised by the memory, “My father needs me.”

“We are deep under the castle, I’m afraid. It will be some journey back.”

River has simple rules for these witch cages when she comes to get the chesawick mushrooms. Do not make eye contact. She has already broken that rule with this woman. Do not let them hear the sound of your voice. She has broken that rule too. And do not engage in any conversation they start.

Her head tilts backward to meet the strange vibrantly orange eyes, “Castle?”

A dimple appears between the woman’s eyebrows, “Castle Lakemoor, home of the,” Her voice catches on something that strangles the air from her, “The…the monarchs. Of Vale.”

River feels herself shaking her head, “There is no castle. No Vale.”

Rapidly blinking from the witch who digests this information poorly. Her knees get drawn up to her chest and she looks away, toward one of the rivers flowing by, muttering to herself. While the witch is distracted, she drags herself out of the circle onto the rock where her basket fell. All the jars have been broken, her ingredients strewn all around.

At least I’m alive.

“Are you leaving now?”

This time River ignores the witch. She pulls herself onto her feet, swaying from the pain still shaking her. Only three steps are taken before she realizes she has no idea where she is in terms of the explores parts of the witch’s caverns underground.

“Do you…know the way out?”

“Is there a reason to live?” Not said cruel, nor without forethought put into the words. The body of it still is a haunting that makes her shiver. Too easily spoken, too gently prosed.

She looks over her shoulder and breaks her rule again to look directly into those empty eyes, “Yes. My father needs me.”

“Fathers do not care for their daughters. Daughters care for their fathers.”

“Maybe but my Papa is not like that. He is the best man. And he can’t be alone.”

The witch stares until something breaks in her and she looks away, “Go down this bridge and turn left. Perhaps what was broken above has not sundered what remains below. There should be stairs. Take them all the way to the surface.”

“Thank you.” Her stomach is uneasy because she realizes what she has done. She owes a witch a favor now.

“Speak your name,” The witch says like she can hear River’s thoughts and seeks her payment now rather than later, “I’d like to hear it. All of it.”

“River O’Bru. I’m called River Kelsey because—“

“It is translated to the copper tongue from the lilting of the Vale. I understand. O’Bru. Is that all of it?”

That is a curious question. Not one she gets often enough that she knows how to answer it.

“What do you mean, Miss?”

“O’Bru is a a surname but there is always a precursor in the lilting. What is yours?”

River feels a tingling in her fingers, “Ava.”

“Ava. Fascinating. It is how we keep our family history, in our names. Give me your mother’s name. All of it.”

“O’Bru Ava Kessa Freya. Second daughter. I am First daughter O’Bru Ava Yunen River.”

“Ava Kessa and you are Ava Yunen. Child of Peace and Child of Water. Ava means this greatness bore me which is the way your family chose to honor your grandmothers. Your name with precursor says to me that you are a quiet, lovely woman who is proud and reflective of your mother’s peace. Yet powerful and ill tempered and liable to kill you if situations become muddled enough. And your name is River. Because?”

River swallows hard and tries to recall her lessons, “The river is where I was born.”

“You should hurry home,” The Witch turns her back to River to lay herself down on the rock, “Farewell River.”

“Miss?”

“The river knows how to run. If that is where they found you, the river will know her way home. Go quickly.”

Quickly she goes, turning on heel to race through rocky hallways back home.

Outside of the bridge in the place the witch told her to go, stone changes from jagged natural edges to a hewn and chiseled type. The kind made by tools from men in ages past. Stumbling blindly through dark halls, she follows the way on her knees to feel with her hands until she bumps into the stairs. Up she climbs, up and further up until light touches her sensitive eyes. To get out she has to put her shoulder into ruble that has clogged the passage and dig with her hands like a dog. Rotten boards are ripped away leaving behind a trail of nails that have come loose form aging and the swelling of the half-buried wood. At last she bursts into the midday, crawling from the earth like a corpse from a grave.

 

“River! My girl—move, Darcy! Great heavens, River,” Wheels made of wood and a fine iron coating bite into the grit of the road, propelled by her father’s enormous hands, “What happened, my girl? You’re filthy!”

By some luck, the dirt she pushed herself through stuck into the blood that soiled her hair and clung to her skin. Only some of it has stained into her clothes but she rubbed as much dirt into that as she could with her hands before she ran into town. River’s throat gets tight when she sees her father in his chair, looking at her like she is the sun in the sky. She did not think she would make it back to him.

“Papa, hey,” She bends down to throw her arms around his burly shoulders and squeeze him tight, “I’m sorry I worried you. I got a little lost.”

“A little lost you say? Girl, you look like the river swallowed you up and shat you out in a pig stye.”

From the corner of her eye, she sees the black and the tan of brand new leathers stretched over flat chests. Not impressive armor like the knights of the King wear but the embossed shiny stuff rich hunters can afford. The sort that belongs to the village chief’s son. Some smudges of dirt have sullied them. She looks over to meet their wide eyes.

The men who threw her to her death.

Ghedric follows her line of sight toward the men huddled together looking at her like fawn frightened by a predator, “The hunters were just rallying to go search for you, River.”

“How kind of them,” She hears the timbre of her own voice mute kindness and clears it away to smile upon her doting father who has trails on his cheeks where tears have left a residue, “You oughtn’t have fussed over me, Papa. I slipped on a bank and I fell down that old gulch you always warn me about walking too near. Knocked the wind out of me but I’m a tough girl. I came home fast as I could. Broke all my damn jars though, sorry Papa.”

“Damn the jars,” Ghedric reaches up to hold her by the face the way he did when she was small and looks into her eyes, searching past the lie to find the fear still bristling and alive inside her, “I’m glad you’re alright, honey.”

The boys wipe their faces of surprise and look to each other for answers. There is a tremble in the air only River can feel because she knows the truth. They worry that she will tell everyone what happened down there. River would like to tell everyone what the men did to her. What the tall handsome one in the middle commanded them to do when, last spring, he had come to her home to ask her father for her hand. The one who had been baffled when her father turned to ask River’s opinion and deduced from a single look that her answer was no.

River had always been leery of Killian for the way he peacocked around the village. No one that nice and adored by all can be honest. After what happened down below, now she knows why. Why had they pulled that little girl out of her prison just to kill her? The witches are helpless in the rune circles. They can speak but the words hardly have any effect. She knows that personally now. Just for fun? For sport? Knowing, as the chieftain’s son, that it is illegal to break a witch from their cage even to kill them. The crown is protective of its prisoners. Just speaking them to them can be a crime in villages closer to the throne.

“She ought to see the physician.” Says Martha, the woman they buy their produce from.

Panic burns through River quickly, in all the places she still aches, “No! I’m fine, really. It was mostly the long walk back that has been ragged.”

Her father reaches up to grip her wrist, “River, you’ve been missing for two days.”

Two days!? How long had it taken that circle to put her back together!?

River summons a smile that feels like all the broken shards of her bone pricking at the soft meat inside her lips, “Then it would feel real nice to be reunited with my bed.”

“River—“

“Papa, please. Two whole days on the road after all that,” She sets a hand on the back of his wheelchair, touching against the wicker backing and his cotton shirt, “I’m real hungry.”

Her hands reach down to grip the wheels, harkened by the words that will always inspire, “Come on then, I’ll fix you supper.”

They do not make it directly to the Water Wheel Inn because of the worried villagers that crowd her. Beloved to this town for her position by her fathers side her entire life, working as the bar maid in their inn that is popular for its food. Most of the people here were down by the waterside when River was born, all the women that go with pregnant women to welcome children into the world. Hands hold her face to press kisses to her brow and let her feel their tears. Through tears memories are shared, goes the old folktale, but really she just feels the wetness and knows guilt for having worried them all.

The Water Wheel Inn is apply named for being a tall three-story cottage with a massive wheel on the side. Churning up the green waters that run off the mountains miles above and beyond their village. Crooked smokestacks made of tin pipping and brick billow clouds of grey and black into the blue sky above. Windows with roosters and river weeds made of stained glass decorate the sides, all along the walls of the bottom floor where the tables and the pub are.

Ramps lead up the front into the bottom floor where the epicenter for activity is. Tables are set out in a spiral pattern, on short tiers that all require ramps for her father to get up and down. In the center of the spiral is a massive hearth of coals they usually roast meats and vegetables over along with great big pots of never-ending soup. At the far end of the room is a long L shaped table behind which are racks of bottles and lines of kegs. In the wall is a set of swinging doors that lead to the kitchens where her father spends most of his time. Stairs on the East and west sides of the walls lead up to the second floor of the inn where there are ten rooms available to rent. Above that is an attic space that is partly used for storage but also where River has set up her room.

“Go up and have a hot bath. I’ll fix some supper.” Ghedric takes her hand to pat the back of it.

“Thanks papa,” She bends to kiss his head and walk off but he keeps a firm grip on her hand, “Was is it?”

“What really happened, River? I didn’t tell no one where you went but,” There is a tremble to his lower lip, “I was worried I’d lost you. I told you the mushrooms ain’t worth the danger.”

If she does not word this perfectly, he will use hit cleverness to find the truth between the omissions and then he will become a broken man. Lying to her father does not come naturally to her. They have had a relationship healthy enough through her youth she never needed to except on rare, rebellious ventures that he ended up knowing about anyway. She does not want to lie.

She cannot ever tell him what happened. It might break him the rest of the way, finishing off what survived after her mother died.

“I um…”

There is nothing she can lie about that will not incriminate her. She touches her side where her basket had been and feels the echos of that pain that came with be revived. Of orange colored eyes and a scratchy voice.

“I’ve taken a lover.”

They both blink in shock. River is one of the young women in this village whose hand is readily sought after. Wealth is not coupled to her name, but she is not destitute, and she comes from a good family and is reasonably attractive. Many of the other women already her age have ended up marrying the suitors that River turned down. Some of the aunts around town had grown worried for her and asked for nephews from neighboring villages to come court her to no success. Father has begun to worry about her in the way everyone else has except he has done it quietly, in a way that he thinks she does not notice. He does not worry for her becoming an old spinster who will die miserable and alone. He worries that she is going to end up in this place by herself, left to work and waking silence after he has left her all alone.

That is perhaps why it is the first thing she grasps for that is equal parts as far from the truth as possible and something that will make him happy.

He turns his wheels so his body is facing her and sounds winded from joy when he asks, “Have you? Truly?”

She swallows down her guilt for lying when he looks up at her with all the mushy bits of a proud parent’s heart in the color of his iris, “Yes, I have. I’m sorry I lied about where I was off to.”

There is a redness that rises to his round cheeks, just above his thick mutton chops, “I hope your fellow intends to make an honest woman of you. If anyone were to find out—“

“They won’t, Papa.”

“Two days,” He stops to calculate the maths and raises an eyebrow, “Is your fella from Newin?”

This was foolish. What had she been thinking? He would know most anyone from Newin that is far enough away for her to walk to and back.

“Now, hold on,” Something occurs to him that stiffens his posture and surfaces the protective father inside him, “Why in hells name would your fella let you walk back unaccompanied and let you get all roughed up like this? Maybe he—“

“She, Papa. I haven’t managed to be honest with you or, myself really, until now but I’ve never been interested in the fellas.” Her palms feel sweaty and that stings for all the small cuts littering them. It turns the dried dirt to an unpleasant paste she wipes on her soiled apron hanging from her belt.

“Oh,” He seems startled by this news but love stays in his eyes, “Well that’s alright then. Is it Jacob’s daughter? The girl on the other side of the lake?”

“No, no. She’s not from around here.”

Ghedric ponders this while he looks at his daughter, “Couldn’t have gotten much further than Newin on foot.”

“We um,” She wrings her wrists behind her back and berates herself for choosing the worst possible lie, “We meet in Newin but she’s from further out. It’s rather complicated, Papa.”

“Has she got nowhere to call home, now? She one of the Wandering Doves?”

“Ah…yes. She is.”

“Well that’s fine then. Just ask for her hand and move her in here.”

River’s throat tightens, “Papa!”

“No, now. I try to be an open-minded man but you can’t run around with someone like this, honey. If you get caught, it’ll spell bad for you both. Do it proper. I ought to meet her anyhow.”

“I can’t!”

“River O’Bru, you can, and you will. Prancing about risking your good name is fine and fun in your youth but you’re a grown woman now. You need a steady partner to help you around here. I won’t live forever. You need someone. It kills me to think you’ll be left alone.”

“Papa, people won’t—“

“Oh who cares, River. People weren’t none pleased ‘bout your ma marrying me and they got over it. Cause we loved one another,” He starts to wheel away, forcing her to pick up her tattered skirts and chase after him, “You love your Dove, don’t ya?”

She should have told a different story. She should have just told him what happened.

No. It would have terrified him to death. He’d never let me leave again.

“Sure, Papa. Sure I do.”

“Then that’s all that matters. I’ll start getting the place ready for your bride, how’s that sound? I’ll make a pebble stew. I’ll need to get some goat from Simon.”

River watches him wheel himself behind the counter and push his way into the kitchen, muttering about different types of wedding food.

 

Traveling back to the twin rivers under the snake’s head takes half a day. This time she comes with more provisions than would be usual for her foraging. Her palms stay sweaty during the descent down the carved stairs, this time lit by one of her flint lanterns. Before she could not see the tragic and breathtaking mosaic that decorated the walls all the way down. Before she could not see the gold filagree in the bridge nor the carvings made to look like snakes chasing fish tails.

The witch lifts herself off the floor to sit in a crossed position, orange eyes aglow from her torch. Long-limbed and ropy like a prey animal found curled up, sleepy and doe-eyed, in its den. A robust sense of regality that hangs in orbit round her sharply build same as the moon spins round their sky at night. The long length of her braid hangs over her shoulder to pool in her lap. She flinches from the stimulation of such a bright light but does not take her eyes off River. Even beneath layers of filth, settled under the mountain like an heirloom forgotten, she is an unearthed beauty for River’s eyes alone to be beguiled by.  

“You’ve come back. That’s not what I expected.” The wisp of smoke that is her voice coils around River’s throat, squeezing it in a tight heat.

“I have. I wanted to confirm something.”

“Confirm, not ask?”

She steps to the place where there is a great disturbance in the dust layer outside of the witch’s ring. Where she had dragged her quivering body out of it onto the rock.

“Yes. To ask indicates I want you to answer in your own way of speaking. To confirm means I wish to ask a question that you provide a yes or a no for.”

The witch winces from the light. This close she can see the water sitting on her lashes from the intensity of it. River, out of kindness, reaches up to crank the knob for the brightness and turn it to the dimmest setting. The witch’s shoulders sink from relief.

“If I do this, will you explain that gadget you have there? I tried to inspect the one that fell with you before, but I cannot quite reach it and it’s hard to see at a distance.”

“Um,” River’s brows furrow from confusion, “I suppose?”

“Very well then. Go on.”

“Are you in this prison for committing crimes?”

The witch’s lips curl over her teeth and a prim sort of laugh slides out, “Hm. Yes.”

“Murder?”

“You’re asking questions I personally feel need more explanation. But yes, I’ve murdered. And killed which I think is distinctly different from murder.”

“Then you are violent by nature?”

“No and yes.”

River expected this and still finds herself annoyed, “That is not an answer.”

“I’m afraid everyone is violent by nature. Some just never know it. I am wholly unbothered by much and was—River, I cannot speak much of my past. Part of my punishment.”

“Very well. Is it true that if you do a witch a favor, they are in a debt to you that owes a favor of equal measure?”

The witch again laughs in a great whoosh of air that River realizes is not coming from a place of humor at all. It is not a friendly sort of laugh that sticks sugar to the roof of her mouth. It is sickly and dark, dripping something foul that she wants to squirm away from.

“This witch obeys that old tradition, yes.”

“Do you want out of this place?”

Stillness falls between them. A complete lack of movement from the witch that does not even create the soft whistle from her breathing that echos down here. Shuffling, the scrape of skin over stone, as the witch drags herself away from River and backs herself against the barrier of the rune circle.

“No.”

River blinks, shocked, and trips over her own tongue, “No? Surely you, I mean…don’t all prisoners want out?”

“Perhaps. But not all prisoners have a soft woman standing so close to them asking a favor for a favor. To drag me into a world I don’t know and expect magic out of me. Maybe I do not want to pay whatever price you deem fit for freedom.”

“Magic? No, no. No magic. That’s illegal for everyone to do in my village, please do not do magic,” River takes her pack off her shoulders to sit it between her legs after she crouches, flipping it open to dig around inside, “I…lied to my father and I need help.”

The witch does not move from her place, eyes watching River’s hands that take items from her bag and pile them on the ground, “I’m not going to kill anyone for you either. Just leave me be, River girl.”

Her fingers fumble with a tin of matches from how violently that turns her stomach. She pats around for them and clutches them against her chest so she cannot lose them in the dark again.

“K—no! I love my father! He’s all I have!”

Orange becomes narrow glimpses of a sickly kind of sunlight, “What you are going to ask is not something I’m interested in. I am content to lose my mind down here like all my kin.”

“I just,” She bends to blow on the kindling she held a match to, feeding the small flame oxygen and adding bits of wood as it catches, “I made a…mistake. My father is a good man. The best man. I cannot stand to disappoint him, and I cannot stand telling him the truth. Do you like shallots?”

The witch crawls a bit closer, face guarded still but there is a curiousness in the air. She turns her head to get an angle that allows a proper view of the raw ingredient in her hand.

“What are you doing?” She asks instead of affirming for River.

“You’ve been in there a while. I figured you’d be hungry. Do not worry, this is not to gain another favor. I am doing this because it seems a kind thing to do.” Now it sounds silly to her own ears, but her father had always told her how important a good meal is. How it can settle just about anyone’s raging heart and give them a human connection they need.

The witch’s face brightens very subtly, “Little River, you are cooking for me?”

“I was attempting to. Papa gave me clear instructions on how to do it. Shallots?”

The witch crouches in a position with her knees bowed out by her ribs and her palms flat on the rock between them, near her ankles. Her head cocks sending her braid swinging.

“I don’t know what those are. They did not grow in the Vale.”

“They’re bulbs. A bit like garlic but they taste a bit more like onions?”

“Fine then. I’m going to watch you cook.”

River looks over then away again when that makes her nervous, “I’m not going to poison you.”

“Says you. Tell me what your plans are here because this all seems tremendously naïve. Don’t you know I’m a war criminal?” There is a scathing mockery hidden in this that ruffles River’s preverbal feathers.

She cuts a mean look to the witch, “I’m not a child. If this is foolish then I can just leave, would you like that?”

“Do not be cruel. You are, I’m sure, aware that company is a rare gift for my kind down here. Even rarer still that company does not abuse us in our circles or try to trick us with riddles that cost us dearly. I was being empathic toward you.”

She emits a strangled noise of annoyance, “How!?”

“I do not know the state of the world outside, but you said magic has been outlawed and I hear men come into the tunnels above. I hear the anguish. I smell the death. I cannot imagine witches are received in glad cheer these days. It must be a great risk to come here and sit yourself down to cook me a meal as if we are estranged friends reuniting.”

A flush of shame creeps up her neck, “I don’t need you to remind me of what a fool I am being. I know this is a mistake. They will kill me and my Papa and probably half the town if they find out I even came down here considering what I’m considering.”

The witch rolls her wrist in a practiced gesture that says more than words how she is a confidant woman who is used to being proven right. She cocks her head and waits for River to provide the information she requested.

In the dark of the cavern, orange and pale purple light shine on the knife she uses to cut shallots. Garlic and small tomatoes that are set in a pan. A thick metal trivet with twisted legs is set over the small pile of coals her campfire has burned down into. On it goes the pan that begins to bubble and pop while she adds a bit more wood beneath. The witch seems curious when she unwraps a salted fish fillet and adds it to the pan.

“River?”

“I was thinking.”

“About?”

“How to,” She sighs and prods at the items in the pan with a cast iron fork, “It’s crashing down on me now. I’m the village fool. I was—what was I thinking!? No one would do this. This is foolhardy. Beyond foolhardy.”

“Are you?”

“I might as well be.”

The witch leans a shoulder against the barrier and peers around at the cooking food, licking her bottom lip when a shallot pops in the oil, “Enlighten me.”

“I’ve come to ask for your hand.”

To her incredible surprise, the witch merely looks at her a bit baffled rather than laugh or curse at her. Those piercing eyes that she suspects cannot be deceived by anything run along the length of her body where she is sitting. The slow intent to just look at her makes her squirm and blush in such a way she feels indecent and appalled.

“You have come to ask for my hand?”

“Yes. Do not look at me so, it’s improper.”

“I am only wondering if you’re hiding a man under your skirts, River O’Bru. Else wise I’m not sure who I’m meant to marry in this scenario.”

“Oh, right,” She nudges a tomato over with the fork to add a handful of breadcrumbs in to soak up the access oil, “In the last century, the prince who is now king adopted his wife’s foreign religion. Due to that, it broadened the legal allowance for marriage.”

The witch hums curiously, “Two women may marry?”

“Yes.”

“Finally. You lot,” The witch flicks her fingers toward River, not dismissing her but her for the representation of the people she is partnered to, “Very slow and stuffy. That was the worst of my culture shock.”

“It,” She does not want to give herself away but she also finds that this woman is pleasant if frightening and River always defaults to her manners when she is unsure of a situation, “It was nice. The change. I never expected to marry but I surely did not before my only choice would have been illegal.”

“And this new king? What is his name?”

“His name? King Emmeron.”

The witch leans forward, “Son of?”

“King Hyeron.”

“Son of?”

“Um…Queen Emmera?”

Without explanation or any indication that would warn her, the witch begins to laugh uproariously. A touch of mania drives it to higher limits. She reaches up to wipe tears from her eyes but finds herself so dehydrated nothing is produced. The bright noise makes all the purple lights dripping off the cave ceiling go out. A loud fluttering of hundreds of wings flapping overpower the sound of the witch’s laugh. With the glow of the creatures gone, her workstation is cast in a thick shadow save for the under glow of the coals beneath her pan. She has to turn her lantern back up to see. Using a great big spoon, she scrapes out the oil-soaked crumbs and sets them aside. From a small decanter she pours in a bit of stock and sets a lid over it to let it simmer.

“Ouch,” The witch hisses, hand curled around her own throat, but her smile is wide, “I have not done that in a long while.”

“What was so amusing?”

There is a merry twinkle in the orange eyes when she gestures to the ring encircling her, “It is difficult to say. It does mean that, in the end, I got the last laugh after all and that is marvelous. Thank you, River.”

“You’re welcome, I suppose.”

“I’ve been down here a long, long while River. You are not the first to find me though I am more hidden than others. Of the few that have found me, you are also not the first to offer me freedom via shackling me in marriage. You see, a woman in such a position as I cannot be choosy and everyone that comes to lust for me think themselves quite clever to use my disadvantage to their advantage. The last was a roughish adventurer who declared my beauty wasted down here and spoke poetry all the ways he would worship my body.”

The way this makes River squeamish seems to interest the witch. River wonders if she can tell, without words, that it is because River finds the idea of a man cornering a woman like that disgusting.

“I rejected the very idea because I am not going to leave this man’s prison to go live in another. And I’m not sure what they teach men in this new generation, but that is hardly convincing. An actual proposition? Now that I’d be open to. So, I want to understand why you are asking this of me.”

“I lied to my father so I would not break his heart by telling him the chief’s son threw me to my death and I was pieced back together inside a witch cage. Because it would utterly destroy him and I cannot,” Her throat constricts when she recalls the dusty smell of the veil and his crumbled body in his chair, the sounds of him crying himself to sleep, his whimpered apologies for failing her when he tried to fix her hair the way mother did, “I told him something he wanted to hear and now I’ve wiggled my way into a lie. Which is awful and makes me want to vomit. I hate lying to him, but I cannot hurt him, you see. I cannot hurt anyone but him most of all. I would protect him no matter the cost.”

“I see. So you are going to…what exactly?”

“I told him I had taken a lover. That I was romancing a Wandering Dove. It is what he wanted to hear most. I’m getting too old, by the public’s standards, to still be unwed and it causes rumors. Rumors that concern him when he already has been fretful about my being alone. I thought it would soothe him, but it has only made things worse. He insisted I marry the woman and bring her to the village to make a home for her.”

“Ah, lying is always a double-edged blade. You now need to provide a lover, but it cannot be one that would raise suspicion by having someone that anyone could possibly know. Hm, quite the predicament there. Still, why should I be convinced acquire my freedom through becoming a wife? Whisked from here just to hang your drawers on a line? Hardly seems tempting. Hardly seems fair. Where do I benefit from your arrangement?”

“Tell me what you would like aside from your freedom if that does not sound well enough,” River straightens from the indignantly of being accused of being such a brute, even without the words being spoken bluntly, “And, to defend my own honor, I am not asking you to become a surrogate mother to me. I do not expect anything of that nature from you. I am only asking for a wife.”

“No? Are you wealthy, River O’Bru?”

“Well, no—“

“Then you expect me to be a layabout? I’m to understand homes like yours often seek wives just for the extra pair of hands. Or to make extra hands. Do you expect me to be a breeding supply?”

“No!”

“No children but you expect work of me?”

River feels a spark of irritation, “Could I speak please?”

The witch has a self-satisfied smile when she waves at River to do just that.

River takes a fortifying breath, “I am not wealthy, no. I work for my living as does my father but we own a small property. Very small but cherished. Our inn is established, known in more places than just here so we aren’t poor but by no means wealthy. Not anymore. Not near the level of a nobleman. My wages are enough that I could support you and obviously I’d set aside a healthy portion as an allowance. I’m asking something unfair of you and for that I don’t expect you to do anything you are not comfortable with. And I understand, how cruel it is from your perspective. I’m not asking for my lifetime. Perhaps a year or two, then you can leave.”

This causes grey brows to rise, “Leave? Have the laws about divorce changed as well?”

“No. But I imagined you could save up some of the allowance to pay for a trip far from here. To go back to whatever that Vale was you spoke of. If you absolutely must. I would prefer you not for how it will cause me issue, but I cannot begrudge it of you. Just give me two years, at least. That is all I am saying.”

“That’s an interesting thing, River. And when I flee and leave you, my legal spouse behind, what then? You shall have to face that disappointment in your father that you are fleeing by marrying me, as you said. Worse then because now you cannot take another partner, and you will spend your life alone. You’d offer me that, in the negotiations for our nuptials?” 

She removes the lid to stir the soup and break the fish apart, face warmed by the steam, “I don’t mind being alone. Most times, the idea of a spouse seems bothersome. If they muck up my space, I’ll be cross. And there is of course facing the reality of entertaining a woman long term which seems improbable. I’m a bore and I’m troublesome, needy, stubborn. I think I’d prefer this. Not being a disappointment. We will still be wed. I intend to be as good and caring of a spouse as I can manage. This deal is for us both, after all. That’s what I’m asking. Will I enjoy being the woman that was left behind? No. It will mean facing my father’s grief again, but I would like for us both to benefit. If that means you leave me after an agreed period of time, so be it.”

“Hm,” The witch begins running her thick braid through her hands while she squints at River, “Why not be honest about what happened here instead? You are safe and well and there is no lasting effect of being revived. I cannot understand why this would upset your father.”

Ice fills her veins, “I cannot do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I—“ She remembers the gnarled hands of her aunt and the grim face when she pulled the mantle out of storage. When she had to sit and watch her mother’s name get sewn into it. The construction when they secured the veil to her head.

She drops her head from the shame, from the phantom weight of that old lace veil and the heavy mantle that choked her for an entire year.

“He will see a ghost if I tell him. He won’t tell a soul but he will never live in peace. He will watch the door waiting for my death to march in and drag me to the tree where they will hang me. Just like—“

She rubs her throat where she can feel the cool touch of the cinch in the mantle.

“Just like whom, River?”

“My mother,” The dust smell may forever sting her nose, “They hung her for trespassing in a witch’s circle. When we were traveling, she and I, we were attacked by vile men. There was a witch on the side of the highway who my mother crawled to. So she could escape the men because she knew they would not follow there and the witch welcomed her. She pulled my mother in so tightly, not even the ragged ends of her travel dress hung outside of the circle. Nothing for them to grab. The very same men who accosted us and stole my mother’s purse and tried to steal me ran to to the Newin guards. Anyone seen tampering with or cavorting with witch prisons—there is a reward, if you catch it and report it. Newin’s laws about magic are far laxer than some but all countries anywhere in the kingdom must respect the laws made about the circles. It was considered treason, what my mother did. They arrested her and hung her the next day. They would have done it to me too but that witch, she told me to stay back. She held my mother until the men on horses arrived. She sang her the softest song. It still haunts me.”

The intensity of the witch’s focus only wavers when she lifts a hand to tap a finger beneath an orange eye. Mortified, River turns her back on the woman to scrub the tears from her face.

“Rivers only get stronger when rain falls.”

“Thank you, I’m fine. It was a long time ago.”

“Pain will always be pain,” The witch is a blur at the corner of her eye while she begins ladling out some of the soup into a wooden bowl, “I am sorry for it all.”

“That…that is kind of you. Thank you.”

Fingers brush hers when she extends the bowl across the runes and the witch takes it, meeting her eyes when she does, “I am generally a kind beast. That being said, let us discuss this proposal further.”

“Oh.”

The witch taps a long nail against the brim of the bowl, “Utensil please?”

“Oh,” She glances down at the pack and frowns.

“River, I am not going to kill the first person to treat me to civility. And not with a spoon. Bloody business that would be. I don’t have the muscles for it anymore.”

“Fine then. Here.”

“Thank you,” The way she moans from the first bite and licks the back of the spoon is shamelessly lewd, “My. Food. I have not eaten in over a hundred years. River, this is marvelous. Thank you.”

River says nothing. She tucks the skirts of her dress around her bent knees and sets her chin atop her arms folded on them.

“Your proposal. You said you have the means to support me? This means a roof and my own room and three meals a day?”

“Of course. Though, not your own room. We will have to share. Papa would be amenable to letting you stay in one of the rooms we rent for a short while but not long term. We aren’t a noble sort. We share rooms—ah, us married folk. We don’t have room nor need for sharing separate spaces. It would be odd.”

“Understandable. Are you a tidy woman?”

“Yes, oh yes. That’s one of my main…peeves. Mess. I shan’t bother you overly much as long as you are also tidy.”

Her teeth rasp against the metal when she draws a bit of food off the curve, “And you’d respect my space?”

“If you do mine.”

“Allow me to rearrange, redecorate if I see fit?”

“Within reason, of course.”

“Shoukd I proclaim I need space and vanish for a few days?”

“Let me know where you are going so I can be sure you are safe, that’s all I ask. Otherwise, I don’t mind. Of course, if you’re leaving to have an affair try not to get caught please.”

“May I have affairs?”

River shrugs, “Just…try not to catch anything.”

“Like a child?” The witch has a very sly smile. The kind that comes from knowing that are riling a person and enjoying it.

“A child, yes. That would be difficult to explain away. But I meant more the sort of sex related sicknesses.”

A sharp quickness, the flashing of a knife, that is shown teeth and a flick of pupils, “Why? Do you expect to catch something?”

River blinks then, realizing, flushes, “No my lady—ma’am. Miss. No I—the sort that rot your face and nose.”

The witch licks the edge of the spoon while holding River’s gaze. Dark as a cracked window in an abandoned home that has sworn, through rumor, to swallow up any fool who dares enter uninvited.

“And amenities? Could you afford books?”

“I,” River licks the backs of her teeth, drowning in her own embarrassment, “You can read?”

The witch pauses, spoon shoved into her cheek so she can speak around the handle, “Can you not?”

“No.”

“Oh. I see.”

“But the man in Newin who binds them, he has proposed to me twice now. He seems fond of me enough that I could ask him about pricing and perhaps get some on discount. If that is something you’d like.”

“I would like that,” She pulls the spoon out to wave it at River, smile sly now, “You propose to me and not moments later tell me I have competition?”

River watches the woman suck salt and tomato juice off her thumb and feels her skull fill with heat.

“Pardon?”

“It was a jest, River. I have a sense of humor still, believe it or not. What of clothes?”

“I can make just about anything if I have enough fabric. My mother taught me.”

“Good. I’m tall so it is difficult to find dresses that fit me. Is it still indecent for women to wear trousers?”

“In the cites, yes. Around here we labor together during harvest, so it is—oh! I almost forgot!”

She makes the witch hold her bowl near the circle so she can sprinkle the crispy breadcrumbs over top. The second bite with the crumbs earns her a widening of the eyes and a happy noise around the spoon.

“If I decide to find work, will you have a fit about it?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Perhaps you’d like me to stay home. Perhaps you are the archaic sort. When I—hm. That’s not—it won’t let me say that. I understand that tradition usually meant women did not work? Except in certain positions and usually inside homes. Men especially did not seem keen on their wives laboring.”

“You can do as you like as long as you are careful. Your hair I can only explain away because I will tell everyone you are a Dove but you will stick out in my village. Eyes will be on you. You cannot do any kind of magic. My village is more hostile than most.”

“Sounds ever so inviting. And this proposal certainly does not sound like a death trap. I’m sure I won’t be lured out like those awful boys who like to torture dogs for fun.”

“My town is more awful than most but not because of its people. And not me. I am warning you in case you agree to this. Getting caught as a witch will likely damn us both. This proposal is just…a business transaction. We are both getting something we need. If we both find a reason to agree, that is.”

The witch shrugs and shovels another spoonful of food past her cracked lips. She glances up, curious, at the cup of cider that River extends. Another deeply satisfied moan accompanies the first sip.

“What is this thing? These Doves.”

“Pilgrims. They are leftover from the witching war. All of the orphans left by the witches who died and could be verified to not have the ability to cast were allowed to go free. No one would adopt them, and towns would not keep them, so they started moving. Eventually the children raised each other and developed masteries that made sense for travel. Performers, doctors, cooks, and such. They are welcome to settle anywhere they like now but this is their culture, and it has become a tradition that they only break away from the group to settle if they get married. Though they do this only if they desire it. My best friend, Billy-Boy, he left to go live with his new bride in their ranks. I get to see him when they come through every summer.”

“Is it summer now?”

“It is coming to be. We are not there just yet but it’s a few weeks out.”

“Hm. You’ve tied that up nicely because it will excuse me if I decide to run too. I will just be returning to my roots,” The witch chews on the end of her spoon while she ponders something and asks casually, “What if I decide to stay?”

Baffled, she can only stumble over repeating the single word, “Stay?”

“Stay, yes. Marriages are most often tools for convenience. Mothers use it to ensure their daughters live comfortably. Fathers use it to ensure their all-important legacy continues in their name. Tools for financial security, political convenience, wartime solutions, and so on. You’re promising me a secured future. A home, a means of sustenance I won’t have to source for, clothes, even an allowance. These are all things I would have to do myself and figure out how to get if I left. So what if I choose to stay your wife to keep these things and make my life easier? I think I would like creature comforts after years of this.”

River sucks in a breath to answer then blows it out, sagging as the air leaves her lungs.

“I didn’t expect you to ask me that.”

“I don’t know why,” The witch gestures to the space they are inside with a wave of her spoon, “I have been trapped here in this dark damp cave for years. And you come stumbling in, pretty and smelling like the rain, offering me what sounds like a considerate partnership that ensures I don’t sleep on rock and I’m not being abused by anyone who may find me. I wouldn’t have to be a vagabond in a world I don’t know anymore, risking my own life for being caught as an escaped witch. This could work for me, long term.”

“Then…I suppose in that scenario, if you choose to stay, I will uphold my promise. I will provide for you and tend to you, as you need, and make this place your home. Provided you do not tell my father the truth, not ever. And that you conceal your identity and your abilities. It is the better end of what I hoped to achieve with this. So I would be pleased by you staying.”

The witch cants her head, “Does that include you?”

This woman is full of surprising questions, “Me?”

“You know what I am. Can I at least use magic in front of you?”

“To what end?”

“Perhaps I want to convince you that magic is nothing to be afraid of. Or perhaps I do not want to spend my life with a woman who will pretend I am not what I am.”

River summons the courage her mother gave to her and narrows her eyes at the witch, “If I set you free from this place, you must swear to never harm the world with your powers. If you hurt anyone, I will drag you back here myself.”

“I was not threatening you so there is no need to threaten me, River,” The witch’s good humor that spices her tone has vanished leaving a flat and chilling sound, “We both benefit from this situation—like you enjoy pointing out every few words. This thing you are proposing, let’s keep it cordial, shall we?”

Her shoulders sink, “I apologize. I am afraid of magic and what it may unleash if I let you out.”

“Thank you, that’s much better. It is alright to be afraid of the unknown, it is not alright to attack it simply because you do not understand it. I intend to use small miracles, in front of you. Magic is mysticism and innovation, River. It’s nothing to be afraid of.”

She swallows down her skepticism, “Very well. Just me then.”

“Hm. It is a good bargain and I enjoy your cooking and your pleasant company. You have given a good proposal. I would like time to ponder this,” The witch plucks at the fur lined poncho clipped to her shoulders, “Could you make me a change of clothes? And bring water for me to wash with? I have been wearing my war paint and these travel clothes for years.”

“Of course. I’ll need your measurements.”

The witch makes a little gesture that is cousin to a shrug, “I’m afraid I don’t recall mine and even if I did, it would not matter now.”

“If you could stand?”

The witch does so and in doing that, nearly makes River swallow her tongue. The woman is taller than she had guessed. Easily a full head above River herself who is average height for the women in her village. Such a height that River feels eclipsed when standing in front of her. By the way she can see this woman move, lifting arms and twisting so River can set her hand down to measure by memory, she can tell this woman once was an impressive thing on a battlefield. Without tape, she measures from thumb tip to fingertip and turns the hand over to count the number of hand lengths. It is imprecise but she has done this long enough she can make guess work close to good. At least close enough to get her something comfortable to wear back to the inn where she can use her tape to get accurate measurements.

The witch’s breath catches when she kneels to encircle the thighs and measure down the legs. River looks up, “Alright?”

“Oh, aces.”

“Your breath caught.”

“Perceptive and cruel.” Is all the witch says, flicking her eyes down then up again. 

“I am being as modest as I can be.”

“I understand that, River. I, however, have not felt touch in a long, long while. Forgive my human reaction.”

“Oh,” She swallows down her embarrassment for not realizing, “Apologies.”

“Forgiven.” Said in a raggedy wheeze.

After she gets what she needs and sets the rest to guest work, she packs her things quickly and hurries away on a wind of promises to return in a week.

 

In the week that follows her foolishness, she feels as if she has gone mad. Her fear is driving her and that is a powerful thing. The desperation hollows her, changes her temporarily into someone she cannot recognize. Constantly she is at war with her own mind. What is she thinking, asking a witch to marry her. A stranger is far less offensive to consider because arranged marriages happen all the time. Convenience is worth its weight in gold, this she understands, but being driven to seek the aid of witch is beneath her.

Isn’t it?

No, no. She is not a cruel woman. She has never actually hated witches based off the history that her father claims has been warped. Time does that to stories, he said, it’s inevitable we are missing parts of the story so we should not be hasty. River had carried lessons and some of those had needled past her common sense. Most of the witches she had seen in those circles were broken, wounded animals at the wits end. Only a few had actually threatened her.

Perhaps all those times she went down to forage mushrooms, and she kept her rules, she had been wise. The very first time she broke her rules, she had come back near immediately to ask that same witch to marry her.

How does a person tell if they are under a spell?

That is not the case here. Even if she has never seen magic cast, she knows that is not what is driving her. That witch had been too leery of the proposal for it to have been her idea. If it had been magic, River does not think she would be sitting here wallowing in her misery wondering if she has lost her mind.

And, she must remember, witches cannot cast magic inside their prisons. There is no one to blame but herself.

She is confidant she has lost her mind. All the unanswered for grief she never dealt with, all the worry for others, her lack of self care, this is showing now. She is finally at her breaking point. This is what River O’Bru’s insanity looks like.

 

 

Birds overhead draw the eye to silver tipped wings and large blue plumage. Wind whistles through trees that dance merrily, swaying side to side with their partners all around. That same breeze lifts grey hair that is loose, still damp from a quick bath using a pot of water warmed on a fire.

River does not look when the witch begins to weep.

Without the paint, in the light, she is a wretchedly vulnerable thing. After years spent underground, she has become pale enough that River can see the blue of her veins in her hands and wrists. It shines almost like silver when she holds out her palm to hold that which cannot be held. Legs shake enough that River can see it when she takes just a few steps. A fawn learning to walk.

The outfit River made her fits almost perfectly. She is impressed with herself for getting everything so close. Only some hemming had needed done on the trousers that she will fix when she gets the woman back in her studio. In a pair of cream cavalier boots that she had borrowed from a woodsmen’s son who looked at her with dreamy eyes. Nothing else River owned would have fit her. The capelet had to be modified too because the witch insisted, ‘I need a cloak with a mantle.’ River had been annoyed until she displayed her work and the witch had run her fingers over the roosters and flowers embroidered on the capelet with awe. Now she wears it under the first rays of sun that have touched her paper skin in years. Creamy yellow with blue and red piping to match—as closely as she could get with thread—the colors of her war paint. A wedding gift that stole a few drops of blood and some stress tears.

“I will say some words now,” The witch says in a voice softer than a newborn kitten’s ear, “Repeat them upon hearing them. Ready? Altier Vu Alwynn Carver.”

It drives a nail of suspension into her but she repeats the words. The witch curls her fingers into her palm and closes her eyes, holding the fist against her heart.

“Thank you. I have longed to hear my name spoken again. I did not think I ever would. Nor feel the sun or the smell the green baking beneath it. Nor hear birds and feel the wind in my hair.”

River’s eyes widen, “That is your name? Carver?”

“‘Tis, yes.”

Altier. That name scratches the back of her mind. Somewhere perhaps in the long oral history lessons passed down from mother to mother that had been taught to her.

“Could we walk slowly to your village? I want to enjoy the quiet reunion with nature for a while longer.”

River gestures to their right, “If we go this way, we could take the barge across the river and walk our way back through Tilli.”

Carver lights up, “Blue waters and fish and green living things on the bottom. Yes, let’s go there.”

 

With the hat she bought for a few pennies and the ensemble, Carver draws the attention of everyone they pass. It would be difficult not to with her height outside of her bright appearance. The bells on thread looped around the ankles of the boots, through the laces, chime with each step. Just like the Wandering Doves fashion themselves. River feels torn by her own focus to stay smiling while this escaped war criminal she let loose holds her around the wrist. If she fails in her participation in this act it will be suspicious. The fingers on her skin make her itch clear to the scalp.

Carver is surprisingly cordial for someone so out of practice when it comes to socializing. Clearly mingling with strangers is an old muscle memory that did not atrophy somehow. She makes many laugh and swoon and give River big eyes that speak of pride and surprise. When Ghedric comes out of the inn, he pushes his way through the crowd gathered outside to look up at River’s bride-to-be.

Carver blinks at him then forms a smile that is so beyond beautiful that it pins River’s lungs to her ribcage.

“Oh you are her father. I would recognize her face in any crowd and that beauty she got from you,” Carver touches her own nose shape then pokes her bottom lip, “It’s all here.”

Ghedric is wrapped round her finger instantly. Charmed, he speaks through a smile, “No, no. She got it all from her mother.”

“Then if my River looks anything like your wife did, she was one of the most beautiful women in this world.”

Perhaps this witch is too good at acting.

 

There is a small civil service that the entire village is invited to. Per tradition in a place this small where all the women go to a special place during birth and share wisdom to safely deliver the child. Weddings are no different. Everyone deserves to celebrate in some way, this life they helped welcome to the world, to see it reach the penultimate moment of maturity. First they go to the river where she was born, just the women, in veils of green and lay flowers in the water. Old words are spoken from a book that remembers tradition better than they can. Only one of the elders can read it and when the time comes, she will teach the next in line how to do so. Down here they make pact with earth where they bind their names to it and then to each other.

Then a ceremony for all to witness where they present as a bound couple. They speak vows and make promises and share a glass of cider. After that is a feast where every house brings something special to their family. Ghedric is alive with joy for finally being the father of the ceremony who can provide the most meals and signal the time for feasting to begin. It is loud and hot and full of drunks by the end of the first hour.

Carver does not stray far from her side. Her fingers stay linked with her own because they are bounded at the wrist with river reeds and golden thread that is not to be removed until sunup the next morning. Old wives and ancient fathers watch with twinkles in their eyes when they have to, as a newly wed pair, work together to share their meal and drink their cups.

“I love weddings.” Carver whispers excitedly, quite suddenly, near her ear.

River jumps, shaken from the daydreams in her own head she had been escaping to. In front of the entire town, she does her best to not appear as terrified of her new wife as she is.

Thus far, in the three days it has taken to prepare their wedding since they arrived, Carver has done little more than sleep and eat. River has hovered by the door, peeking around the edge to catch her fiancé in a nefarious act but each time Carver had been sitting on the bed, staring out the window. At times so still she looked like a statue carved immaculately from just the right things to portray a human woman. Other times she would be piling teacups and plates, eating so quickly she would give herself hiccups that she whined about to Ghectric until he made her something sweet to appease her.

The witch behaves like a runaway princess half the time rather than a combat veteran who has spent over a hundred years in prison. Lounging around, curled beneath heaps of blankets to sleep the sun filled hours away. Crawling from her nest only to slide into the cloak River made her and follow Ghedric around hoping she can get him to dote on her and feed her. To which the mission is always successful because her father is thriving now that he has a new daughter to care for.

No magic that she has seen. Nothing that glows or slinks or snaps or kills. In all the stories told to River about witches they had been vicious, power-hungry beasts that would kill for fun. Who would wheedle magic into the minds of men to bring a town to its knees. Who would smile and in doing so doom whatever fool had set eyes upon it.

Carver’s height of cruelty, thus far, has been eating all the cherries in storage before their wedding then getting a pat on the arm from Ghendric and a sweet ‘that’s alright. I’ll make a strawberry cake.’

Just because no signs have been shown yet does not lower River’s guard. Though she wonders sometimes if she even worries for herself and instead just worries about what will happen if she is discovered. If Carver unleashes years of pent-up rage on the village that raised her, and her father suffers because of it.

Carver gives a tug on their tethered hands, eyes wide and fixed upon the feasting table, “That is duck. I want to eat the duck. Come help me with the duck.”

“Are you fond of it?”

“I’m fond of having the ability to eat again. I am fond of meat.”

River’s stomach drops to her feet. Her head swivels around to see if anyone was close enough to hear that.

“Carver! Not so loud!”

“Sure, yes. Not so loud, of course. Duck, Little River. Run with me.”

Together they are brides dressed in the colors of a forest with veils of green. Around the hoop shirts cinched at the waist is a cord that spirals around the waist down to the thighs. From the cord hangs layers of evergreen branches and herbs. A traditional wedding ensemble they share except for Carver’s allowed changes due to her pretending to be a Wandering Dove. In each earlobe are bone earrings as big around as River’s pinky and in her bootlaces are the string of bells that make music with each step. Under her breath, amidst the music made by fiddle and lyre and the bells on her boots, Carver chants the word duck over and over again. The chanting cuts out when a hulking man steps between them and their hurried path toward the duck.

“No.” Carver whines in disappointment.

River gives her hand a chastising shake and hisses, “Hush.”

Chief Semé stands as the only man in red. A single fall leaf at a spring wedding so that he, as their leader, can be found in the crowd. With his thick mane is russet hair and his beard braided around a set of golden rings, he smiles at them as brightly as a proud father would. Not as proud as Ghedric because there is no father happier for his daughter this day than any father has ever been before. His cloak is lined with wolf fur and the tunic he wears has golden wolves dancing down the front. Sleeveless beneath it because, under the tunic, he wears no shirt so that his monstrous obliques show. And the bulbous hills of scar tissue that run over old blue tattoos. Scars he boasts to have earned as a witch hunter before the practice was outlawed due to the only witches being left either being the ones jailed or children under the ages of ten.

Father always told her that the people witch hunters chased around the continent and killed had not a drop of magic in them. All they had to do was sympathize with the barbaric nature of the witch rings to be considered a ‘witch’ worth hunting.

“Happy day! What beautiful brides these two make,” Chief Semé bows his head while holding eye contact, “Happy day.”

River reacts normally by bowing at the waist, lower than the lord than stands before her. Always a low born woman, this is natural to her. Carver lifts her head to accept this deference, looking at their chief on a equal height. Through her lower lashes when she tilts her head back. Chief’s brows furrow for this reaction and then his lips part when Carver heaves an annoyed sigh and preforms a very disinterested curtsy.

River is mortified and shaken by fear. Her mouth begins to move before her mind can catch it, “My wife, my love, she is from beyond the Forrests. Out there, there is no chiefs for her to bow to. Please, if there is offense taken, consider this first.”

Carver gives River a disinterested look next, even raising an eyebrow to question the defense.

Do not forgive my disrespect. It was intentional, I put work into that.

Chief Semé reaches out for her when River jumps suddenly and lets out a warbled cry of shock.

“Are you alright!?” Chief Semé asks.

Carver voice had been in her head.

“She is a bit drunk.” Carver says in a dry, bored tone while peeking around his shoulder to ensure the duck is still there waiting for her.

The witch had spoken directly into her mind without moving a finger or batting a lash or opening her mouth.

“River Kelsey? Drunk?” He says it with an air of jest that makes her new wife pull a face that reminds her of the stray cat who ate something he threw back up, right onto her boot.

Do all these people fawn over you like you are a pretty thing in a window to admire? It is embarrassing for them. I saw one boy weeping over there, mourning the children he would not have that bear your striking features. Another boy who smells like death and this tall man has been glaring at you all night.

“I have had a cup,” She lies with a smile, “Maybe two. Just to celebrate, Lord.”

Kelsey. Such an insult. We are O’Bru. This is a goodly thing. Do you know how old that name is, Little River? Almost as old as mine.

“Stop it.” She hisses suddenly.

Chief Semé looks between the newly weds with an uncomfortable smile, “Pardon, River?”

“No, sorry Lord. She—it is a bit of a joke we have. She was tapping my thumb, you see, and that is how she tells me she is hungry.”

For one who does not like to lie, you have a clever tongue, River.

Chief brightens from realization and pats his wide palm over his belly, “Oh! Forgive me, yes! It is your feast and what a night to share a meal. Please, I will leave you now to enjoy. I only wished to stop you so that I may congratulate you River, on finally getting married. And to welcome you, Carver Kelsey, into our village. May you sew seeds that bear plentiful fruit and may you find joy in this place.”

The men in this village are horrific. If a man had been that blunt toward me in front of my own mothers, they would have blended his mind and taken his tongue to feed to my hunting dogs. Did you catch that implication, River? No wonder he has been staring at you like that all night. Jealous wretch.

“How gracious,” Carver says in a lulling falsetto, head tilted down so that she looks up through her lashes at Chief Semé. 

Obviously, you cannot get me pregnant.

River’s spine snaps straight along with this twisting unpleasantness in her belly. River’s shame for the years she did not get to spend in the schoolhouse with the other children is a wounded secret she bears alone. Her parents needed help and then her mother died and there was no time for her to waste on books and history. River had to get clever to gain her lessons. With the right kind of eyes and ears, there are lessons to be found in all things. What her father retained when he traveled across the sea as a little boy, all over the lands beyond anywhere she will ever see and every step that brought him nearer to her mother. All her mother’s wisdom passed down through generations of stories, through learning things the hard way and the wrong way. A gift of a mother to teach a daughter where the steps taken before should not be tread and to remember the missteps she takes past where they have gone, to teach her daughters next. River is not welcome in most noble societies or the bustle of city, this she knows, but of some things there are few more educated than she. A judge of character, there are few that compare to her. Sometimes she can become complacent and does not bother looking and that is a luxury.

Teachings like these can hold a power books do not. This teaching was the only thing she held when she knelt in front of a witch and made her proposal. A judge of character that runs deep.

Chief Semé had once been her mother’s fiancé. Long ago, far before her father had come to this side of the world and she had been swept up by him. When young River heard this news from some of the other children, teased by it, she had brought it weeping to her mother’s feet.

“Why would they say that? It’s not true! You love Papa!”

Her mother had crouched down because River was too big to hold and laughed, made a soft joke about how River was adopting her father’s accent more every day.

“But Mama, why?”

“I had needed to. I changed my mind.”

“Why?”

Her mother had given a rueful shake of her head and said in that motherly tone that meant lessons were to be learned, “You must decide that yourself some day. When you are old enough to see it. Trust yourself and you will know.”

When she was thirteen, she understood. He called her a woman, looked down his nose at her with an odd gleam in his eye that made her squirm in her skin. He had said she was beautiful like her mother and spoken with her father behind closed doors for a long while. When he came out, he was angry, and his fists were red and her father was laying on the floor. Some people do evil, and some people choose to be it. That is what her mother wanted her to learn. His sons are just like him. Ignorant brutes whose own worth is of more value to them than all the gold in the world. River wonders how he and his sons exist in the same place. They think they are owed everything. That raw strength is the only quality in a person that matters. That a man is not a man unless he has taken a life and kept his strength through bloodshed. A fist that rules this otherwise quiet and peaceful village.

Marriages are tools of convenience, Carver said, and that is always a truth. It kept the brute Semé from slaughtering their village for being a place that once spoke the lilting, that had names that came before. With sympathizers, he called them, and so they should all die too. A marriage saved it. Almost her mother’s but that changed because her mother had made it so. Most of the village waits for him to die so they can breathe easy. Most of the village is afraid of him and the monsters being birthed under his sons skins, waiting to be born.

River is not. Of her many lessons, control over fear and bravery was chief among them. Just beside the judge of character.

A brute who thinks he deserves everything. Once he wanted her and her father said no. Now he sees a beautiful woman in Carver and has decided he wants that.

River can almost feel her mother beside her when she tips her head back to smile up at the chief of her village. With her free hand she holds out her skirt and curtsies to him, not taking her eyes off his.

“You are ever so gracious, Lord. We thank you for attending our wedding and for your personal welcome into this place. For wishing blessings upon our home and our name. My lovely wife, my cherished,” She straightens, hand held over the evergreen hanging around her skirts, “She is particular about the soil she plants herself in. By some luck she has found the perfect balance to set roots in me. I know that if my mother were here today, she could not wish a better partner for me. In fact, she might be pinching my ear, I’m ashamed to say. It is unbecoming of me, but the truth is, I find myself aggressively in love with her. If she were parted from my vision, for even a moment, I may go mad. I’m protective of her. I’m not sure what I’d do if something befell her, if she flew from me, if she was taken.”

River stares at her mountain of a chief who, for a moment, is disarmed. A pinch of anger shows. A vein in the neck from clenching his jaw and holding his breath. His eyes move to Carver who has no decency at all in the smug smile. He has that same look that his eldest son had when River turned down his proposal. She had not told anyone that he grabbed her wrist and reminded her that her life was in his hands, that they are alone, and that it would be better for her to say yes. River knew he would react that way because he is just like his father. A vicious creature who does not like being told no.

“Little River,” He says without a smile but soft because there are eyes here and the brute sleeps because it has gotten fat and lazy after feeding on the power in a title, “You? The squeaky little mouse girl, just like her mother? I cannot even imagine what sort of things you’re implying. You’d cut your finger trying to throw a stone. Some women are born to be beautiful and that is all.”

“I am my mother’s daughter,” She simpers, feeling those lessons and the warmth of hands and the smell of an old death mantle, “That is a good reminder for us all to keep. Today of all days, thank you Lord. You pay me two kindnesses today.”

“Hm,” He looks to Carver again, tall and resplendent in her wedding gown, “Then, as your chief, allow me to take that burden from you. I will protect your pretty wife so that she remains in your vision. After all, she is one of us now and you are all mine.”

“Yes, we are and what a blessing, Lord. Could I be rude a moment? I wish to feed my wife before she falls over from hunger.”

“Of course. The duties of a spouse never cease. Welcome to the joys of marriage, River.” He gives them both a tilt of his head before walking away. She notices that he moves around Carver’s side to let his cape brush her ankles as he passes.

“You are certainly an O’Bru.” Carver sniffs, flicking a bored gaze upon the Chief Lord Semé, and turns to drag them toward the duck.

“Stop speaking cryptically. It leads to questions about what you know and that results in the answers being more than you should. Stop it, there is a fork there. Do it properly.”

Carver pulls back her hand to lick her greasy fingers. River flushes from such an inappropriate display in a public place, both for being married to it and for watching it happen.

“I have but one hand at the moment.” She speaks around the thumb in her mouth, sitting upon a pink tongue that shows through her teeth.

“Ask for help.”

“Hm,” Orange eyes watch her struggle with the fork alone, snickering when River hisses at her to gather the plate, “Explain that man to me.”

“He is our chief.”

“No, that is not what I requested and you know that.”

River wonders what would happen if she poked her new wife with the fork at her own wedding. Hard enough to prick the skin and give her a good, lasting warning about what happens if she keeps testing River’s patience. 

“It’s like you want to get us both killed,” She hisses between clenched teeth, “Are you daft? Kicked in the head by a mule!? Don’t ask me that here!”

“Why not?” Carver sets her plate on the table to pluck a tender piece of the breast meat from the pile and pop it into her mouth.

River might do it. She might stab her wife with the fork.

“Who raised you!?”

“Irei and Reyiomin. Queens of the Witch clans Altier, Fkad, O’Bru, Misfo’Tol, Hessm, and Dew. You are more prickly than my first spouse was, you know. I didn’t expect that of a woman.”

There is more information in that sentence than she can tolerate while her senses are heightened and her blood is still hot.

“I like you better than him though. Of course, this is not a compliment yet since he was dirt under my feet and anyone I could like better than him.”

“That’s nice.” She says dryly while mechanically poking the tines of the fork into some of the meat on the plate and holding it out for Carver. She leans forward to slide it free with her teeth, chewing happily.

“Tell me later then.”

“Why would I do that?”

“I am your wife now,” Carver takes the fork so she can spear a bit of the darker meat and hold it up as an offering for River, “And we share secrets, don’t we?”

That judge of character is almost never wrong. River wishes it told her that Carver is as dangerous as they say witches are. That she deserved to be in that prison being treated like a monster because she is one. Sometimes she thinks she sees it, the looming darkness that covers someone, but it is not a whole piece. It is more of a fraction of a larger thing that is not natural to the being. Something forged and worn like armor.

Unfortunately, to her senses, Carver is disinterested in lying and does not pose much of a threat at all. Except perhaps eating them out of house and home.

“Later.”

 

River had forgotten about the tie. Together they stand in the attic of the inn where her lonely bed sits, layered in blankets that she made herself. To ensure the legality of their marriage, they are honor bound to leave the binding around their hands until sunup the next day.

River had forgotten that would mean they have to share a bed.

“It’s small.”

River shifts her attention to Carver beside her, “I’m small.”

“You are small and so is this bed. You expect me to fit in this with you? My feet will hang over.”

“I’m not exactly comfortable with this situation either, witch.”

Carver lifts one of her brows that, she notices now, has patchy sections from barely perceptible scars that run down her forehead through the brows onto an eyelid. Only the thinnest and sharpest of blades could have made wounds to leave such precise scars.

“Are you still carrying that notion around?”

“You’re a dangerous criminal.”

“Whom you married. Don’t blubber to me and pick at my wounds just because you’re feeling sorry about a life choice you made. Let’s live in the present and worry about how we are going to fit in that bed.”

River digs her heels in and gives a solid enough tug against her wife’s urging to make her hiss out a soft curse. She has to tilt her head back to glare at the woman when she is standing this close.

“You didn’t have to say it like that.”

Carver does not soften at all. She barely even bothers to show a care in any regard.

“Yes, your life is so hard that you had to marry me. Why should I soften myself for your sake? I’ve been tortured for over a hundred years of my life! And then some girl fell on me and died and then came back to me bawling about her father. I showed you pity and it is my kindness that has me standing here now.”

“I let you out!”

“Yes and thank you for that but it’s not like I’m free, is it?”

“Well, go then! If you’re so unhappy here!”

Carver lifts her nose up and clicks her tongue against the back of her teeth, “No. I want what was promised to me.”

“Then be kind to me!”

“I don’t have to be! Don’t be so sensitive, is all that I’m saying, because I’m suffering this just beside you. You don’t like being married to a total stranger who you still consider a threat? Well neither do I. But this is our bed,” She flings a hand toward the moss-colored blanket with fern frond embroidery on them, “How do we lie in it?”

“I—oh, you—hm.” She feels the pout consume her. With her shoulders hunched to her ears, she ignores the witch beside her to survey the situation. The bed is made to fit her person alone, set into a short frame made from oak and pine. Close to the floor for the mornings when she rolls from it onto her feet. Made squat for the days when her hips and legs ache so badly she can barely stand and has, a handful of times, fallen short of making it into the bed.

“Your arms are long,” She gestures to the height of the frame and to herself, “I’ll sleep on the floor and you can hang your hand down.”

“I’d have to lay on my stomach.”

“So? I’ll be sleeping on the floor. Make one small sacrifice.”

“No. I don’t want to make a sacrifice, small or of any size. Just make yourself small there, against the wall, and I’ll turn onto my side behind you.”

Heat crawls up her back to tickle at her neck, “Absolutely not.”

“I am not sleeping on the floor with you! I’ve done my fucking lion’s share of sleeping on hard surfaces. I’m not doing it again. You promised me beds. I agreed to become a wife for this bed and I aim to take advantage of it. Forever.”

“Keep your voice down, you’re going to sleep in the bed,” She is not pleased about it either, is not sure how to share a bed with another person to begin with, “You’ll get your way.”

“Excellent. Help me out of this dress.”

She whips her head over to snap at her new wife for being presumptuous, for even considering something may bloom here. Then she remembers they share one hand and are both dressed still in their wedding gowns with the plants hanging from their skirts.

“These are designed to come away with the consideration that one hand will be fixed.”

“All the same,” She turns toward River, stepping closer, “Assist me.”

“Fine.”

“You’re far less charming now that I’m your bride.” Carver tilts her head to the side so River can wiggle her fingers past the fabric for the small buckle under the armpit. One side of the dress has no sleeve and remains fixed against the body with hidden buckles smaller than a coin so that, later, it can be removed without the bound hands needed to be broken. One on the shoulder, nestled high against the ribs and down by the hips.

“I can see your sense of humor is going to be exhausting to deal with.”

“Relax, I have far too many exhausting qualities for you to focus on that particular one. There, that. That little face is the one you make when you hate that I’m humanizing myself. Is it easier to think of me as what you perceive my kind to be? As the thing you found?”

“Obviously,” River swallows hard, looking at the ceiling while the backs of this woman’s fingers brush her throat so the buckle can be undone for her own dress, “I apologize. I don’t mean to be so—this is a lot. I’ve perhaps lost my mind. Marrying you simply to appease a lie I told my father was one of the most foolish decisions I’ve ever made. I suppose, I had just died and my emotions were running a little…hot.”

“I understand why you did.”

River tried not to jump when cool fingers brush the skin of her ribs, “Excuse me?”

“I’ve seen how you love your father and how he loves his daughter. How he has already begun loving me as his daughter-in-law. I can tell you would do anything to protect him even if it means plucking a criminal out of prison and making a housewife out of her. I can see how I would do the same if positions were reversed. I know that I would do such a thing for my mothers because I did. In my own way.”

Carver has to bend to get the buckle near her hip. The long length of her grey hair is still parted down the middle so it can be separated into two braids. Her veil hangs down the back of her, long and green and smelling like river water and grass. The orange of her eyes is like a dark egg yolk, brighter than the rest of her washed out by years in the dark. Little scars cover her hands too, around the cuticles and along her fingers. Weapons cannot be made fine enough to make marks like those. Only tools and if tools were used against flesh the purposes could only be torture. There is a natural beauty to her wife but she is still sallow, sunken around the eyes. She looks starved and meager, even for someone of such an immense height.

River’s heart catches on the memory of the bony witch that held her mother inside her circle to protect her from violent men. Withered and sunburnt, cracked lips from years of dehydration that cannot kill her but will always torment her. This evil creature of legend who has been made out to be a vile horror that would always kill and fight for power. Who held her mother the way only a mother can and sang to her.

“That is not all. It was convenient because you aren’t known but it was riskier than the value of that. I just…I had already backed myself into the corner and I wanted to let you out. Some of you I’ve encountered do seem vile and terrifying but there are monsters of men in this same village. It is not particular to a type of person. Most of the time, it’s just a miserable thing. I wanted to let you out. You were kind to me,” The way her mother wept and seemed to realize, too late, how she had doomed herself and just given into to the comfort of a stranger, “when I fell into your ring. I could have done anything else and this was my first, worst idea but it appealed to me most because I wanted to do something. Just once. So it wasn’t just because I knew your best option was to accept my offer—that you would not refuse because I was your only way out— and that it would ensure you stick to your word and not betray me. I wanted to take a chance on hope that you aren’t as evil as they say and that if that is true, you can earn a happy life here.”

Carver taps her fingers against River’s bare arm that is covered in goose flesh from the wash of cool air and the touch of another.

“I respect your position. A witch, at the core of us, aim to aid civilization. We build and heal and help. War is not natural to us. If we were brutal during that time, it is because we were driven into being things we’ve never been before. What you must have heard has been exasperated over time. And yes, you are using me but I am getting arguably more from this. I am, after all, using to you too. Though that particular wording is a little vile. We are adult women who made an agreement that benefiting us both. However, I’m in just as precarious a position as you and you may not realize you have more power over me than I do you. I’m just as afraid of you as you are of me.”

This is a not point of view River considered. It surprises her enough that Carver raises an eyebrow at the expression she makes.

“I asked you to put yourself in this position with a stranger and you said yes in spite of it all. Why would I ever hurt you?”

Carver tsks to indicate she has both made a point and missed it too, “Exactly. You came down into the dark and you asked me if I wanted to leave it. You gave me the taste of salt again, the feeling of sunlight, the sound of my name. Why would I ever hurt you? Besides, this is not my first marriage to a stranger. I’m used to this already. You’re already an improvement, I’m content. So can we stop bickering? It’s only making this situation worse.”

River pinches her lips to a corner and makes her own tsk, “You started it.”

“You had a tone that started it.”

“I had no such thing.”

“Oh yes you did.”

River is surprised that she feels amusement. An ancient memory surfaces suddenly of her father pestering her mother until she sunk her fingers into a bowl of berries and smashed them against his lips. River had not been privy to whatever they had been arguing about but she had heard her mother laughing around the threats of speaking sweeter now or she would shove more into his mouth. There had been the jarring confusion for her young mind back then, how they had gone from what she thought was negative emotions into adoring one another again.

“What is it? You have a look.”

River begins to unfasten her hair with her free hand, looking at the bed they will share instead of the curious eyes, “You’re easy to argue with.”

“As are you. My mother told me that marriages without arguing never hold merit. This is a good sign, no?”

The bed is a hateful thing that sits in the corner of her room waiting for their brave next move. River stares at it with a growing contempt. She gestures toward the wall, “So I’ll lay there, shall I? Let’s get this over with.”

“Just what I like to hear on my wedding night.”

“I wish I could have left your sense of humor in the prison.”

River has not yet shared a bed with another person before. While some of her peers have broken the pact made with society to remain patient and virtuous then broke it, in secret, she has remained loyal to that promise. Not particularly because she did not have opportunities but because she did not have the emotional capacity to handle a lover. Losing her mother catapulted her small family into a whirlwind of grief that lasted years and still taints their home in darker hues and painful memories. She had needed to grow up quickly and learn how to fly so she could support her father until he was able to be human again. Then work needed to be done, chores and eventually a proper position tending the bar and the customers. Most of the men that came into the inn asking after her only did so because of her common beauty. Very few have managed to get her to set down work long enough to have a full conversation with her. The idea of a lover has been a daydream she indulged in before sleep or when her heart was yearning for company. Otherwise it had never been more than an eventual chore she did not have time for.

Carver is fire personified, pressure against her back with little more than a thin shift preventing skin on skin contact. Just the pressure of another body climbing into the bed behind her had been startling. It had made her stomach jump into her throat. This feels lewd. This makes her boil under flesh that prickles and crawls, not unpleasantly, from a tall woman curling around her. The witch’s arm is under her head so their hands can remain clasped. If a single strand of braided grass snaps, they will be proved an unfit pair, so they have to be careful. Each time Carver shifts, her legs brush against River’s and she trembles.

“Stop wiggling.”

“I’m trying to get comfortable, but it is difficult with you being as stiff as a nail. Relax, I’m begging,” A knee nudges the back of her thigh, breath washes over her hunched shoulder, “You act as if—“

“As if what, witch!?”

“Tender spot. I forgot how repressed your folk are. As if virginity is something of value. It makes you all act strange and blush over innocuous things and wiggle around just because some hot skin is touching yours. River, stop it! Just—hold still.”

“I’m holding very still!”

“You keep scooting away from me!”

“Because you’re a witch and I don’t know you!”

“I’m your wife and stop it. Stop using that word like a weapon against me when even you don’t sound convinced! I am Carver or Darling to you. That is it. Can we agree to that!?”

River, properly chastened, huffs out a weak, “Fine.”

“If you just ignore the unpleasantness of our strangeness, close your eyes, you can enjoy the feel of me.”

Terrible shame for such bluntness floods her, “Carver.”

“River, it has been a long time since I’ve gotten to enjoy closeness. You never have, not like this. Just relax and consume what you’ve denied yourself. There is no shame in it. Aren’t I warm? Soft? Isn’t it nice?”

“It’s not appropriate, we aren’t really married.”

“Yes we are.”

“No we aren’t. It’s a sham.”

A sigh tickles the back of her ear, “You’re an ass, River. Stubborn and difficult.”

“Fine but then so are you.”

“Fine. May I get closer?”

“Closer how? We are as close as two people can be.”

“We certainly are not. My arm is an odd angle, and I can’t put it anywhere but around you. I won’t be able to sleep like this.”

Fire consumes her, “Fine. Don’t—stay perfectly centered. Don’t go any higher or lower than wherever your arm needs to go.”

Legs slide against her own suddenly, silken and scorching. She jumps from the surprise of the sensation. The free hand of the witch settles upon her soft belly, palm against the slight curve and content there. Just an ember trying to blaze a trail through her. The sensation is alarmingly pleasant.

“Close your eyes, dear.” Spoken just near her earlobe. There is a small swallowing of breath for having this criminal, a witch, whisper a pet name in velvet wrapped sugar.

She closes her eyes and feels threatened by her own decision. Everything is only more intense with the lack of vision.

“Isn’t this nice?”

River does not say anything because her tongue is wrapped into knots that spasm in sync with her rapidly beating heart. The hand on her belly flattens so the witch has leverage to move closer, pressing her front to River’s back. The soft weight of her small breasts against her shoulders nearly makes her unravel.

Carver sighs behind her ear, “This alone would have convinced me to take your bargain.”

“Carver, please.”

“Stop acting like we are misbehaving. We are a married couple laying in bed together.”

River turns her head down to tuck her chin into her chest, “You’re making it so! You’re practically moaning and…and whatnot. Quit romanticizing it.”

“I’m doing the opposite! We are simply two women laying in bed together—“

“Carver! You can’t say it like that when I’ve been romanizing laying in bed with another woman for years!”

“—and I am pointing out that it is is nice. Soothing. Sweet. Pleasant. Isn’t it? Aren’t I nice?”

River wants to squirm bodily, outside of herself, the way she is squirming beneath the flesh, “I am not thinking of you in that way, Carver.”

“And while I applaud the chivalry, I am not talking about sex or anything related to it. Before tonight, I would get so cold my body would shake and keep shaking until my muscles clenched and formed knots. I would lay awake because the cramps would prevent sleep. Now I am laying here with you and yes, we are strangers, but isn’t it nice to not be alone for a moment? Is there no comfort you can take from this?”

“Comfort?” Her voice sounds soft. The exposed bits of her sensitive self she does not share with others. Because there is no time for her to be this close to someone, to let someone get near her in any capacity. Because her focus is keeping their business in operation so that her father can be taken care of when he gets older. Learning how to tend to the entire business by herself just for when that event begins to occur, preparing herself ahead of time so that he will not have to worry.

Her wife’s voice is a serpent of flame that coils around her throat, apathetic to the way its presence shakes her from her mooring, “Are you unfamiliar with the concept?”

“I might be,” The body she came in seems to desire it, even if she cannot recognize it for what it is, because her breathing has slowed to match Carver’s pace as has the drum of her heart, “Is this…?”

“It can be,” Carver releases a long, loud yawn, “I give you permission to enjoy it. To enjoy me, to an extent. I have my boundaries but this is fine. We are married and we have done this for comfort on both our ends of the deal. This can be an extension of that. I’m fine with that.”

The last time she had been held had been before her mother died. Full bodied, enveloped in the loving arms of someone, held. Ghedric had been too devoid of life for so long and by the time he had come back to a sense of himself, she had turned into a woman in front of his eyes with a household to run and no care for casual things like physical comfort.

“This is alright?”

“Our marriage is not a sham. It is one of convenience so you might feel that way about it but it is real. We made a deal that benefits us both. Enjoy your spoils.”

River wants to shout for how that makes her skin crawl, “You aren’t—“

“Again, I am not speaking about explicit things. Humans are allowed to crave close, physical comforts that are purely being held. Nothing sexual about it. And if you are going to indulge, it’s okay if it’s me. I very much appreciate this. Thank you, River. Thank you.”

The hand on her belly does feel nice. Heavy as a sunbeam that sits upon her shoulders and warms her so deep that she nearly falls asleep. All the muscles, usually coiled from stress and a constant action, relax. Laying beside someone is nice. It is new and awkward and overwhelming for all the strange sensations and new smells but it is lovely. Carver fits against her in such a place way that she feels swallowed up by witch, encircled and guarded against the wall.

Tentatively, she reaches up to lay her hand over Carver’s on her belly. One long finger rises off her stomach to caress the outside edge of her own, spreading sparks of fire that sink beneath to sew seeds.

“See?” Carver whispers into the spill of her straight hair falling over the pillow, trapped beneath her cheek.

River is boiling alive and unsure what to do about it. If this is why her peers have been relentlessly chasing after her every glance or soft-spoken praise, insisting that she be the bride they win, she might understand now. She might also understand the slinking away in nights fogged and dark to take an illicit lover. Chasing the feeling of comfort in closeness.

Not being alone for a single night.

“This is alright?”

“This is fine. It’s far more pleasant than my other first night as a bride,” There is a hesitant breath taken and held then a softer, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Perhaps, if this is not a rare moment, this marriage will not be as awful as she can imagine it to become.

 

Come morning, Ghedric is delighted and overwhelmed to tears that he is the witness to receive them. With practice from his own marriage, he takes their bound hands into his own to turn them over and check for any damage done to their union. Not a single blade of grass displays damage done which confirms their marriage to be worthy and complete.

Per tradition, they must walk up the streets of the town to the house of their official. With the man who claimed their town still considered chief, that means they must go to him. In the older times, before his arrival, they would lay their bound hands together in a golden bowl of water so clean it looked like molten metal because of the sun that would hit the base of the bowl. Inside the water, each strand would be cut away and water would cleanse the start of their marriage. While in the water, the grass would glow and leave a golden residue on the skin. This was deemed to ritualistic, too close to how magic works, so it had been forbidden. The enchanted bowl was melted down, the water cast back into a river, and the practice removed even from the tongues that remembered it. Now, before the grass is loosely braided and tethered around hands, it is soaked in an ink that permanently stains the skin. Standing on the stoop of the magnificent longhouse, in front of the town who followed them on their walk, each braid is cut by their chief.

Gasps spread through the crowd at the coloration that reveals itself. Bright red stripes crossing over their wrists and hands, looping around fingers to paint knuckles and the cuticles of a few nail beds. River stares at it aghast, betraying nothing with her face while she knows they are being watched.

Earlier the previous day, the ones who prepared their bindings had cooed over what an anxious bride she had been. ‘It is nice to see this side of you, River. You never seemed interested in love and now look at you. Fretting over the Braid.’ They had not known this very thing had been her living nightmare. Soaking the braid in dye still is a small superstition and also their backwater tradition that has evolved into golden rings in the city. This dye is mixed with powdered crystal that is meant to resonate with a pair and become one of three colors: blue, green, or red. Any combination of the colors can tell the people many things about the future of the wedded couple or so the superposition goes. Any combination of colors is fine so long as it is not a solid, vicious red. Old omens swear this means wrath and death upon the name and home of the brides. It means an unfit pair has been made, that they will end in tragedy. River had been assured this would not happen. They swore that any magic that existed in this old ritual was ruined when the bowl was sundered and the witch-touched waters was cast out. Now brides come to the weavers in secret and ask for the color pattern that is applied and everyone pretends to be surprised the way they used to. When magic was real and softly in all their dealings.

River requested green and blue. They swore to her. They showed her when she demanded they prove the colors were correct. Green threads of braided grass had been held up, dripping onto a white cloth to prove the color had been correct. They had laughed and touched her hair and told her again how wonderful it was to see her ensnared by love. The braids had been green with just three of them blue. She wanted green because it had been her mother’s color choice when she married Ghedric. She wanted blue because it had been painted on Carver’s skin when she found her down there.

Not red. They swore it would not be red.

Slowly she turns her head to find the weavers in the audience. They seem less startled than she is by the tears running down her face. There is shock and heads shaking and mouths moving but she cannot hear the words. She can see the surprise. That is important. They are surprised too.

She turns her attention to the lean, bulky mountain of a man who is beholden to their chief. The one who had her killed in the heart is a dead mountain, where she was thrown into the dark and expected to be swallowed up. The barrel chested brute who is just like his father. Unlike the others, he does not display shock or remorse. No pain sits in his hard angles, in his flinty eyes that watch her.

No. How could you? How could you have done this?

“River,” She looks back at the quiet voice, that same grave-guarded tone Carver used in the caves under earth when River proposed, “Why is it raining?”

Carver is good with words. Witches are supposed to be crafty beings who can weave words into the shape of a snake that bites down and eventually kills. That has been what she expected from the very start despite her misgivings about whether that was true or not. And it is true, witches speak in just the right way to be a balm to the wounds a world puts in a person. There has been so little time between them to alleviate that alien sensation of being bonded to a stranger. They still know next to nothing about one another. Yet at every corner, Carver has been kind and careful with her words in the witch way.

She swallows herself down. All the broken shards and the paranoia of being discovered, of failing herself by failing her father. Memories of the mantle rush back to her on this, the day she is officially a wife to someone, because she knows there will be no one to wear it for her. She does not want children. She does not want that damn thing to ever been worn again. In her fantasies, however, she would pass away alone. Not leave her father behind to be alone again. This entire fucking marriage was to prevent that.

River steps closer to Carver, fingers hung over the meat of Carver’s palms and gripped by thumbs, “When it…is red, you can leave. It doesn’t promise good things. And I asked so it is my fault, you can legally separate and suffer no social consequences. There is way to cover the marks on your hand.”

“Oh, I see,” Tickling her mind is Carver’s voice speaking different words first they butcher the spell, now they worry you with nonsense, “And a color decides this?”

More tears run, sliding over the smatter of freckles that she always thought looked like dirt thrown at her face, “I’m sorry, Carver.”

Did you do this on purpose? Is this your window for me to run?

She shakes her head and when she does, her eyes drift unintentionally to the tall man glaring at her.

Is that the one who killed you? Oh, I see. River, you brought me from the wolf den into a pit of starving bears. Well. I do not intend to stray now. These age old instincts are evidently still active and I do not want to abandon you to the wild. We made a deal after all. I’m staying.

“Wait, the ink isn’t dry—“ Semé hisses but it does not matter. River knows it is not yet fully dry.

Before the entire population of their town, in front of all the people that watched her grow or grew with her, River takes her wife’s stained hand into her palm. Bowing her head, she kisses the lifeline on the witch’s hand where a broad stripe of red is still tacky.

Her eyes shift over to catch Killian’s, to hold there unflinching and without the fear her mother taught her to tame. She understands why the braid turned out red. What he is trying to tell her, to warn her off doing. ‘If you tell anyone, I will tell too.’ A public threat that is effective for the ways it frightens him that he did not intend. Not a threat she will cede to.

“Welcome to my family,” She says while hiding her rage for the betrayal, for hiding her sorrow that her one and only wedding will be ruined, for hiding her misery.

Carver is staring at her mouth that is still hovering near her offered palm, head tilting slightly the longer she looks.

Do we kiss?

Again River gives a very subtle shake of her head.

Carver bows her head too though she does not need to. It occurs to River she should have told Carver how these ceremonies work prior.

“I wish us a prosperous future.”

The red glares back at her.

Was that alright? Must I say anything more? Repeat what you said to me?

River stands, hand in hand with her new wife, and indicates they should face Chief Semé. Together they bow their heads to him and await his final decision. The ink is set now so there is nothing he can truly do but River has heard of weddings that ended without his favor granted. The color of the stain does not always matter to him. His final say is always the one that truly matters. Not a fathers blessing nor a mothers walk by the river nor the braid surviving the night. His own small change to their culture after he assumed control of their village through conquest and was given rights by their former ruler.

To the assembled crowd, he says loudly, “To be honest, I expected River Kelsey to one day bear my family’s name.”

This family is a problem, Little River. You should have told me you needed this marriage to escape them. I would not have needed as much convincing. What sort of self-obsessed creature says that at a wedding?

There is some light laughter from those that are too dense to realize this joke is possessive and cruel to say during this ceremony. The other laughs she catches are the miserable who remain perturbed by this leader but unable to escape him. Who know the type of man he and his son are.

“Yet young River surprises me. Surprised us all, I think. It is a joyous day when one of ours finds their forever love and preforms this sacred act. Many have tried and failed to win her heart so none of us expected this day to come. Here we are though, celebrating her union to this stranger. It is a joyous day to bring another to our way, to welcome them to our home.”

The pair of them stand from their bow when Chief Semé commands it. Both of their newly stained hands are held by the wrists in his enormous paws to be brought together. Cheering resounds for this means they have been accepted.

Now they are officially married. Even if it is a marriage of convenience that gets Carver out of a cave, tortured for eternity, and River free from the grief that chokes her father this is the only marriage she will have. The only wife she will ever take because divorce is simply not a thing that exists. If Carver leaves, someday, she will be given leeway to have a private love she cannot flash around for the shame of it but she will never be able to marry the woman. Not that River suspects that would happen. The point of this way to appease her father while knowing, privately, she would never have found a bride on her own. She just does not have the time.

Still, this moment wells up inside her and tightens her throat. Carver is her bride now and will always be such. False or not, this is her only wedding and it was ruined by the color red. Perhaps it is a fair start to an unfair thing she asked of the woman. It is not like she has love for this stranger. She should not be upset.

Yet she is.

 

River takes her new bride around their town to introduce her to everyone in a longer format. During the day trip, Carver plays the part of a blushing newlywed exceptionally well. Her arm hangs off River’s, her smile gleaming and saturated in affection. The first time it was shinned upon her, River had stuttered and stumbled clumsily through a sentence. After they left the baker, she had inquired what that look was. Carver had been curious, laughing without humor, and explained that its common for spouses to be in love.

Each of the members of her community are alive with unabashed joy to meet River’s bride. There are hugs and gifts and stories and sweet words that are meant to teach a younger generation about the trials of married life. For most of the process, River is quiet and dreading her workload that will be waiting for her when this task is complete. This sort of thing was never something she dreamed about as a girl so she does not feel she has lost anything except time while they do it.

“Almost done. Just a few more homes.” She promises after they bow to an elderly woman who waves and blows kisses as they depart.

Carver twists the stem of a daisy between her fingers, arm looped through River’s, “You are adored.”

“I suppose. Everyone is here, though, so don’t give me eyes with stars in them. It is not as if we are bursting with population to present opportunity to like or dislike one child more than another.”

Carver laughs at this which surprises River. She did not think it numerous or herself charming enough to make her laugh outside of the position where she turns charm on for work.

“An argument that they only like you because there are little other options is silly, River. Small towns have more hate than most because of how much everyone knows. They adore you because you’re adorable. Had you considered that?”

River gives her wife a distasteful look, “Decidedly not.”

Carver bats the end of her nose with the daisy, “You’re a silly woman then. That boy, the smith’s son, he looked crestfallen when you arrived with me. Another broken heart to add to the collection?”

River furrows her brow, “He is married.”

“And yet his big, pitiful eyes were following you around. He did not look at his wife once while we were getting a tour of the smithy and meeting the family.”

“Hm,” She looks over her shoulder first to make sure they are out of earshot before supplying in a whisper, “I have heard he is not very loyal. Evidently, they only got married because he had gotten her pregnant, and the lack of love is evident.”

Carver makes the noise of someone who has just made a pleasant discovery, “River, are you a gossip?”

“No, of course not,” She lifts her head and guides them over a small bridge that goes over the stream that crosses through the middle of town, “But if I was, I couldn’t be blamed. I work at the inn of our town where everyone eventually ends up. And there is nothing else to do here. And people from out of town tend to enjoy the inn as a place to getaway from certain legal obligations that may have eyes and ears to discover a secret or two.”

“I love gossip,” Carver squeezes River’s arm against her ribs, looking for the world like this has been the best wedding gift given to her thus far, “Did he flock to her because you rejected him?”

“That is what I’ve heard but I take no part in the blame for their situation. He never made it clear that when he asked me to accompany him to Newin that it was intended as a date, not for work as I suspected. When he tried to kiss me, I realized and immediately turned around to return home. For a little while, I was given the treatment of some sort of harlot leading a man on. It was exhausting. Then he got that poor girl from Newin pregnant, and I was no longer the focus.”

“Just how many of your paramours will I encounter today?”

River rolls her eyes, “That self proclaimed sense of humor again.”

“I’m very funny.”

“Unfortunately, a sense of humor is not something you get to decide you have. And I think you’re a bit of an ass.”

Carver chuckles, “Ladies do not curse, River O’Bru.”

“I am not a lady. And don’t call me that in public. It’s Kelsey. We are Kelsey. Our Chief is a very proud witch hunter and he does not like when we use our old names. If we go to Newin or the Proudlins you can call me or yourself that. No one will bat an eye. But here? Everything has ears. Everyone is a friend, but friends are scared and scared friends can never really be trusted to stay your friend.”

“Witch hunter—explain this to me.”

“Explain—oh, right. You wouldn’t know what those are. After the war, sections of the country were quartered off, so to speak, for a long while. The King sent out men to go through each section and filter out the ones they were sure were full of witches. To try them and most often kill them. Many fled. Men chased them down and that ended the same way. But because of that, local men decided it was a good and just thing, hunting down folks that ways. So they became an untrained unit of men who hunted down anything related to a witch. Folks with old names, who spoke the lilting, who may be the cousin of a witch. It became an issue that I believe, at least in the city, was a deeply punishable offense. Because they were just running around causing havoc in the name of their self assumed threat to civilization. Killing innocents and ruining business—Papa told me they shut down an entire highway once. Knocked the bridge out that was the only means of travel for merchants. They had to go round the long way and all the items were so late, people starved. It was a mess, and it went on too long. People were paying them for their work, and they did occasionally root out a rouge witch, so the King was struggling to shut it all the way down. When it finally became disbanded and properly illegal, they spread all over and settled down. Papa says there are still hunters who are being praised for killing innocents, that you can’t stop ignorance as hard as we try. Here at least, our resident hunter is content lording over us. When Semé was threatened with legal punishment should he continue his hunts, he took this village hostage and killed enough knights that the king made a deal to let him have this place and us if he gave up his old job.”

Carver glances around the village that sits upon a slight grade. Mountain runoff pools in the lake that sits above their town and feeds the clear creek running through it. Near the top, where roads weave around houses sprouting from hillside like mushrooms from rock, is the longhouse. Painted rich colors to boast wealth and decorated with horns along the walls from previous hunts. Inside are more trophies some of which are not animal at all.

“Witch hunter,” Carver says slowly, eyes narrowing fractionally the longer she stares, “Carver Kelsey then. Fine. But we are O’Bru behind doors.” Said with the crisp perfunctory tone of someone not asking but rather expecting an order to be obeyed.

“You’re determined about that. May I inquire deeper about that?”

While they walk, between visits, Carver explains her reasons to be tied to the importance of a name. Names effects how witches preform magic. Names are how spells are cast. Knowing the name of something is the only way to become a witch. Witching names were rare, even during her time, and they were kept safe under the banner of witch queens. According to Carver, O’Bru is one of the elder names that will allow a person who owns it to remain a witch. It is why witches do not often marry. They lose their abilities if they take the name of someone who's name translates to ‘egg’ in the lilting.

“Unless they become an egg witch. This would not be so bad,” Carver says with an air of amusement while toying with her braid, “People do love eggs. Everyone needs them. And they are expensive.”

Against her judgment, this knowledge interests her enough to ask, “What does my name mean then? Since it seems important for you to have.”

“My name—the name of Queens—it means ‘powerful’. Which is why I was an exceptional witch. Your people were with us because of the power of their name which means ‘creative.’ This seems a little vague but the more vague a name, the more leeway for loopholes. Powerful meant my spells could topple kingdoms. Creative, well. O’Bru witches were often our crafters so I’m thrilled to see what this will do to my magic.”

“I am not a witch.”

“Only because you do not know how to be. You are an O’Bru. Magic is not blood born; it is learned. The names do not restrict ability in that anyone cannot become a witch, it only restricts the types of magic they can do. So not everyone would be willing or even consider it worth their time. Lessor names often would make a witch who can only do one thing and if you are humble, this is not so bad. But a witch with an ego? They wouldn’t never be pleased. So that is why you only saw a handful of generational witching lines.”

They pass over another bridge that wobbles under their feet and is only wide enough to fit one at a time.

“What if you marry someone with two names?”

“See? You’ve already started your first lesson. And parsed a bit of the political issues we had with our own kind. In any case, I despise the name Kelsey but I will take it for the sham it is and wear it like a mask.”

“Mother hated it too,” She pauses before knocking on Old Man Chet’s door, “What does it mean?”

“I am not as familiar with the bronze tongue but I think, translated into the lilting, it becomes ‘chicken farmer’ or something close.”

When that makes her laugh, Carver stands beside her at the door to greet Chet who is roused by the noise.

Old Man Chet is an ancient, gnarled man that hunches over a cane made of coral and birch. Hair grows from his ears and nose and his white beard has gotten long enough he tucks it into his belt.

“What’s this?” He rasps in his ancient voice that sounds like two bones being rubbed together.

“Apologies for the rudeness, Mister Chet. I just recalled the time my mother was attacked by a rooster, and it bred a deep resentment for chickens.”

“Oh! Yes, she never let a chicken within a leg’s distance of her ever again.” He recalls merrily.

At this, Carver releases a gentle laugh too.

 

Under the webbing shadow of a hundred branches woven together above, a witch sits and weeps. Face in hands to cover the tears that come. Shoulders shaking, sucking in sharp breathes between the sobs. River only notices her because she followed the sounds when she went to gather water from the well.

People pass through their village frequently on their way to Newin or to trade with their mongers. To deal with their infamous witch hunter chief and his brutish sons. With so many strangers, dangers can lurk in hidden and open spaces for women of a certain age and beauty. That is River’s first concern when she finds her wife weeping in a torn dress with blood on her knees.

The bucket dropping from her hand startles Carver silent. Her head whips up to meet the furious march of River racing toward her.

“What happened!? Has someone hurt you!? Tell me, tell me who it—“

She stops herself, hears the mania that is surely only going to feed into Carver’s fear, and forces herself to relax the aggression so her wife can relax too, “I’m sorry to yell. Can I see your knees?”

Carver looks appropriately confused and distressed in equal parts. Redness around the eyes from crying for a long time and in her pointy nose.

“No one has hurt me.”

“You do not need to be dishonest with me. I know that we are,” She pauses to strain her ear for sounds that may be anyone near enough to hear them before proceeding, “strangers to one another but I did not take my vows in false faith. I am your wife and I swore to protect you. No matter what you do or who you are, I will uphold that. So if you’re concerned or trying to be brave, don’t be. Tell me if someone has hurt you.”

“No one has hurt me. I swear it.”

“Well,” All the steam leaves her in one breath, body slumping in from a sudden tiredness now that the paranoia has vanished, “What’s the matter? Why are you crying?”

“I was running and my legs cramped and I fell.”

“Oh,” She looks down at the bloodied knees and bunches her shirt up, using the cleaner inside to dab at the blood, “Sorry. Papa can probably fix you something to help—“

“I used to be a hunter. I was a dancer. I was a warrior. I was graceful. Now I can’t run without my body spasming from disuse,” Sputtering gasps of air between lips, eyes that are growing redder, and tears that will not stop, “The sun burns me. It’s too bright. Crowds of people make my stomach turn. Smells overwhelm me to the point I have to retreat to our room. And you, kind as you’ve been, sleeping beside someone after nearly a hundred years is—Divines. I’m broken. I’m not even me anymore. He won after all. Even when I’m free, after I’ve made this deal for my freedom, I’m still there. I’ll always be there.”

Oh.

How cruel of River to forget. This is just a woman after all and one who has undergone treatment that no human should. Years built upon years in a darkness she cannot see through, alone except for her own screams in a circle that will never let her die. And now she is thrust back into civilization beneath trees and bugs and birds, upon a road of rock and stone surrounded by the encroaching creep of industrialism that has yet to hit their village. Quaint but still dense populated as far as villages go. River had expected her to be so relieved for freedom she would become an untamable threat, a chaos of magic that would be her fault. She had forgotten the human element. That is unlike River.

People are always people. People will hurt and laugh, people will drag themselves into the dark to bleed alone where it feels safest to do so. And River O’Bru is usually the type of person to find them, take them back into the light, and send them on their way. Usually. She had let her fear shape her into someone she is not.

“Recovery is a slow thing.”

“I—“

River grips both of the knobby knees of the woman, pronounced by the thinness of her legs after years of starvation. She is gentle because she does not seek to harm. The grip is grounding, to keep the woman from floating away.

“I cannot imagine how frustrating it must be. But—“

“You cannot imagine. You cannot! So do not try to comfort me. I don’t want it.”

Tepid silence thickens between them, wriggling with unpleasantness. Carver is closed off. More than she has been since coming back into the golden rain of loving sun that washed upon her in happy reunion. If River had been less focused on looking for evil conjurations or nefarious schemes, she would have noticed the agitation boiling under Carver’s skin. She would have seen the build before it got to this breaking point.

She needs to do better. River’s one thing is that she is wise where she is not smart. She is patient where she is not disciplined. She never forgets. She is always curious, and that curiosity has become how she cares. Moulding it into something that always wants to know if someone is alright. Carver is her wife now, her family, and this place is her home. She needs to do better.

Adjusting her apron, she heaves herself onto the ground beside Carver. Back to the sun warmed bark, underneath the lashes of shadow.

“What are you doing?”

“Sitting with you.”

Eyes slide closed to enjoy the temperate day. With summer so close the bugs are singing long sustaining notes of clicks and hisses mingling with bird song above. Every so often wind picks up, creating a high whistle that sways branches and flutters hundreds of leaves. The sounds of her childhood.

“Why?”

“Because you are miserable, and you do not want to talk to me.”

“So you think I want to spend time with you? River, you’ve been reasonable and tolerable up until now. Use your cleverness. Realize that you are an unwanted presence.”

“What I realized is that we don’t need to talk,” She crosses her legs at the ankles and slouches against the tree, seeing bursts of light against her closed lids each time the branches sway and sun pierces through, “You don’t want my words, that’s fine. But you also probably, deep down, don’t want to be alone after spending over a hundred years being just that. Am I right?”

Carver is quiet. For a long, long while Carver is so quiet that River could assume she has gone away. Long enough her hips start to protest from sitting on uneven ground with a tree root underneath one thigh.

Then, softly, “This is very hard for me. And it’s harder still because I didn’t expect it to be hard.”

This time she is wise and uses her cleverness to say nothing.

“I don’t want to talk about it. Not with you or maybe anyone. There isn’t someone who can understand.”

Eyes stay closed. Her face stays tilted up toward the sky, hair tickling the underside of her chin from the wind blowing it gently.

Sounds of weeping pick up again. No louder than before but clearer when it is just beside her ear and her eyes are shut. She can feel Carver shaking just because of the occasional times their arms or shoulders touch.

“I miss my home. I miss the Vale. I miss my mothers and my—“ Whatever the last thing is breaks her further. Nothing comes out of her again for a longer stretch of quiet.

At a certain point she opens her eyes to squint up at the sky showing through branches. Bright blue against brown and fading green. Consumed by the dry heat encroaching.

She glances over to check on her wife and finds her curled into herself. The skirt of her dress is pooled around her bent knees making a tent in the fabric. She is hunched over them to draw patterns in the dirt, cheeks splotchy and stained from dried tears. Makeup is smeared around red eyes still holding a heavy morose air.

“Whoever stayed in the room below us last night must have been putting on a show, don’t you think?”

Carver sniffles, brows pinched in befuddlement, “What?”

She is doing her best to avoid what Carver does not want to talk about.

“And that woman, she smelled like orange blossoms.”

“So?”

“Well, across the lake, there is an orange tree. And the working ladies there pay to have scented oils made from the blossoms.”

Carver’s eyes clear, just a little, “Are you trying to gossip with me?”

She shimmies herself into a more upright position, “And that man, he’s a tax collector. I know him because he’s come round plenty of times. Not just for taxes, if you catch my meaning. Thing is last time, he had a wedding ring on. Which is a city thing. So I asked a friend of mine in Newin if they knew him and they did. They say he has a wife and fourteen children.”

The way Carver turns her attention fully toward River is by laying her cheek on her knees and smiling. Not a big smile or even an open one. There is a wound in the curl of her lips that is still bleeding but she is willing to continue on anyway.

“That tax man, with the loudest woman in history, he visits once a month. With women. And sometimes men. Sometimes both. He always rents the same room and he’s always awful. The noisiest—no one gets any sleep. And he leaves it in such a mess. Filthy. I always wondered why a man with fourteen children would need to get away, as it were. Clearly he pounces upon his wife any moment he can.”

Tears seemed to have lost their fight for now. Eyes still are hazy from clear exhaustion and there is pain evident because of how often she shifts and makes small grimaces. The focus is clear and sharp, watching her through ash-colored lashes.

“What did you find?”

River scoots closer just to lower her voice for effect, to give the idea they are sharing a secret, “He does not have the patience to wait for her healing after giving birth to a new child. And as she has progressed in she and in the number delivered, it’s taking longer and longer.”

Carver’s nose twists up, “The men of your people never cease to astound me with how low they will go to be mon—you’re smiling.”

“I am. Because that is not all.”

Light and shadow lay across her cheek, chasing each other every time the wind blows and branches above shift. When an errant ray of light catches the iris, it turns to a crystal-bright color. Like a piece of amber held up to the sun.

River licks her lips and finds herself needing to look away, “See, his wife hates him and rightfully so. But he also hates her. She also visits the inn from time to time with her own host of lovers and is equally as obnoxious as her husband. At first I thought nothing of it because I would also try to get away from him if he were my husband too. But that is not the story.”

“And what is?”

“Well. I heard, they have this toxic sort of appreciation for one another. Divorce is not legal but there are grounds for termination if they can prevent a solid case, usually in favor of the man. They have been having ridiculously loud affairs to get grounds for divorce, hoping the other would catch them in the act. Except they enjoy spiting each other. See, last night? That man with that woman he paid who kept us up half the night? That’s because his wife is in the room next door. Right now, if you go in to have a late breakfast, you will find them arguing over a morning beer and some bread. They snap and have a big snit but do it again and again.”

“Sounds like they found a way to make their marriage work,” Carver snorts an indelicate laugh into the crook of her elbow, “Are the children even his?”

“Some of them.”

More laughter. Thin and wounded from a hurt that cannot be swept away but straining against it all the same. Rising up from the weeds as a single flower seeking brighter days.

“My, you’re the keeper of secrets, aren’t you?”

River offers a playful tsk and a knowing smirk, “I don’t gossip. But if I did, you would be wise to keep that in mind should you ever decide to have an affair.”

“No thank you. I don’t handle being made an embarrassment very well. Persnickety, that’s what I was called by some of your people back in my ruling days. Uppity.”

“Hardly holds weight. You get called worse for less by the favorite daughter of the favorite son. It’s a delicate balance, the egos of people who only have their pride.”

“Try being a Queen,” Stifled bitterness in the sneer of a lip and a glare sent at no one in particular that is washed by a begrudging forgiving sigh, “I’m sorry for this outburst.”

“Don’t be.”

“My troubles are not your troubles.”

“They are, a bit,” River holds up the hand stained in red lines and wiggles her fingers, “Or they can be, if you’d like. I’ve heard that is part of the deal when it comes to being a wife. I’m new to it and still grasping that I’m suddenly someone’s wife so forgive my slowness.”

River is pleased by the soft laugh that earns.

“I will inform you if your performance falls beneath my high standards.”

“Oh, persnickety,” She leans over to bump their shoulders together, “You didn’t eat breakfast this morning. Papa is worried.”

“Are you?”

River raises a brow, “Would it matter if I was?”

“How could it not?”

River supposes that is true. She had been the one to notice when Carver slunk off and has been keeping a very close eye on the amount of food she has been consuming. To make sure she does not overeat and make herself sick while her body adjusts to the luxury of having it available again. And to make sure she is eating above an average amount, in small increments. To work itself back into the routine of being full and having energy to burn.

Even with her suspicions, she is not without a heart.

“I would like for you to eat, yes. I fixed you a plate. It’s waiting for when you are ready,” She watches her wife from the corner of her eye, notes the tenseness in her body still and the slight frown, “Is there nothing you want to talk about? Nothing at all?”

A thoughtful hum accompanies a sour expression. Wind shifts branches, makes leaves pull away from wood to rain down on them. An acorn bounces off her knee.

“I hate our bed. I hated my husband’s ridiculous bed too, but I didn’t have to sleep on it. I had my own room to do what I liked with. It’s too tall, it makes me feel disconnected from the earth. And it’s horribly soft. I can only sleep because your body heat lulls me but then you kick me awake in the middle of the night.”

River does not remind her that they sleep on the third floor because she worries Carver does not mean the real earth and that will lead to conversation about magic. The last thing she wants to talk about.

“The floor will be difficult for me, for my own reasons.”

Carver makes a collection of disgruntled noises and shrugs, “See? No point bothering you with my troubles.”

“But,” She interjects sternly, making a point with her tone, “I would like to make a compromise. I will take the bed, and you take the floor?”

Carver shakes her head and hisses a sigh between her teeth, “I wouldn’t like that. Kicking aside, I enjoy sleeping beside you. You cannot imagine the trauma I have about sleeping alone. It sounds strange but over a hundred years spent alone, now beside a soft and perfectly lovely woman? I do not want to lose it if I can. I understand you need space and I still might too but for now, when you’re alright with it, I’d like to share a bed with you.”

“Then perhaps we can take turns between the bed and the floor until we can make something that suits both our needs? Or take turns of my just taking the bed and you on the floor.”

Light pools in the dimple above her lip, across the crown of her head. It turns to waxy ribbons of gold against pale ash. Crowned by the sun itself, River can easily see the elegant regality of her wife. How this woman once was a monarch that ruled the thrushes, the moss covering stone, the beating heart of the world itself.

When Carver meets her eyes, resplendent under the giving light, River feels a prick against her heart.

“It’s a start.”

 

Chief Semé is still a pest.

Once a week, he calls upon Carver like a skittish suitor waiting on his belle. Arguing with him or denying his desires is something River is willing to do at great risk for their home and health. Carver waves it all away with a soft frown and says she will handle it.

Handling it means going to supper with him and his sons in their fanciful longhouse. Coming back smelling like smoked meats and beer and looking foul. Going on walks with him where he insists she place her delicate hand in the curve of his arm so that he can lead her gallantly through the streets.

Some of the men who have lost wives to Semé’s ways give her looks to commiserate with her pain. Most come from the rough, hard-working folk that live in terror of the world they think Semé protects them from. Witches and magic are far more terrifying a reality than suffering a man who sees a woman, decides he wants her, and takes her regaurdless of whom she is tethered to. And most of the women who marry these sorts of men live with the same kind of fear and flock to Semé. Villagers keep their heads down and gossip about it when they think River does not know. River is, of course, the hub for all gossip in and around their village so she knows. They wager Carver will show up pregnant within a few months, baring another son for their Chief, and he will declare for some reason or another that River is unfit as Carver’s bride. Then he will take her as his own to rectify the fact that technically divorce is illegal except when annulled by leaders. Such a stain would make Carver ineligible to most but not him. He would make that sacrifice for her.

What the village and Semé do not have is the truth of their binding. Carver would rather eat a brick of raw clay than leave her for that man. And—perhaps more shocking should anyone else find out—Carver usually comes home in a huff and complains about the entire thing. Talks River’s ears off about how forward he is, how he makes her sick with his presumptions, how crude and trite his flirtations are. How deeply it offended her that he thinks—even for a second!—she would look past the beautiful woman she has at home for his vulgarity and blocky head.

After one such event, Carver blows into the kitchen to collect water and stands with the cup for a long while. Ghedric and River share a look. One long drink, jaw clenched tight.

“Carver love,” She finally snaps from her state to glance at Ghedric, “You alright?”

“Fine,” Then she looks to River sitting at the small table with him, “Can we talk?”

Ghedric realizes his position in this situation and pulls free the brake clamp on his wheels, “I’ll go and see about sorting myself a bath.”

Neither make a move until he has gone into the room secreted away behind the kitchen on this floor. The click of a lock and the sound of his wheels become a faint whisper over wood finally bring Carver across the floor to take a seat.

She sets her face in her hand with a sigh.

“You aren’t fine, I take it?”

Carver shakes her head then sighs again, “I can’t with this man anymore. He’s driving me up the wall.”

Spikes of fear cause a coursing energy to rush under her skin, heat springing from it that prickles and colors her pale hide. She checks all of Carver that is exposed but there are not any marks.

“Did he hurt you?”

“I would kill him,” The water cup gets pushed in circles with the tips of Carver’s fingers, “He suggested your family is worthless. That you’re penniless nobodies that crumbled the second he showed teeth and gave away your land and titles to him without a fight.”

“He…isn’t entirely wrong. Mama was set to marry him so we could keep everything, but she gave it up for Papa. Sort of.” 

This does not please or appease her frustrated wife. Her brows dip and her grim mouth turns down further.

“That’s not the point. He is speaking of my in-laws and my wife like that to my face. This is my home and my family name now. The smug bastard. He suggested that I’m wasted with you because I’m a woman who deserves to be wrapped in furs and jewels. He promised to spoil me and set me on a shelf.”

River is not surprised by that but by the small burr of annoyance this spawns.

“What did you say?”

Carver narrows her eyes, “Excuse me?”

“We do not say no to Semé lightly. Consequences always come. Most find it easier to just give him and his sons what they want when they want it.”

“I told him no. You’re my wife and I’m proud to be an O’Bru. I told him I love my life. I don’t want to change it. That you treat me well, worship me even. Give me everything I need.”

A wriggling discomfort in her belly makes her squirm in her chair, “Only half a lie, I suppose.”

“More than half,” River’s brows shoot up in surprise, “I fucking hate that man. We need to do something about that family.”

River does not point out that there is nothing they can do. Instead she focuses on the far more prevalent thing just said, “You told him no?”

“I am growing steadily more offended that you think I would betray you so easily.”

“No, it isn’t that. It’s just that telling him no—when my father told him no after he asked to take me a bride, he broke his nose and his cheekbone. And he poked holes in our liquor barrels, burned down one of our sheds we use for drying meat, told the ladies round town to not sell me fabric. Made our life hell. I was just saying that, I’d understand if you wanted to avoid anymore unpleasantness in your life by agreeing to this. I wouldn’t begrudge you.”

This does not settle sweetly between them. This only turns her wife to a flinty sharp-toothed creature back into a corner and staring back at River like she is the threat.

“I’m not going to give myself to some man just because it would be easier.”

“That’s not what I’m saying!”

“Yes it is!”

“No—Carver, you’re so frustrating sometimes,” River pinches her nose to rub some of the building pressure behind her eyes, “I’m just saying that you have a right to look after yourself however you feel that can be be achieved.”

“I’m frustrating!? You—Little River, you still do not know me.” Abruptly, Carver rises from the table into the dark and gloomy cloud that had been gathering above her head. With heavy footfalls, the hard soles of her shoes create a marching beat for her to storm out to. Confusion clouds her for a brief intake and outtake before more anger surges through her.

“Hey!” She grips her skirts so she can chase after her wife, blazing out of the kitchen to emerge behind the bar. Carver is already halfway across the main floor, making toward the stairs.

From behind the bar, she shouts, “Get back here!”

Carver freezes. All muscles coiled tight, a predator seizing itself into the best position ton it utilize all its natural grace to swivel and attack. One hand grips the banister of the stairs. A poisoned sense of befuddlement colors the sharp slopes of her pretty face when she turns her head, real slow. Eyes set upon her still as a rattlesnake about to strike.

“Did you just shout at me, River O’Bru?”

Summing all the spine and fire she owns, and perhaps a dash of the irksome shadows collecting behind their marriage, she stomps over to her wife. Skirts balled up in her fist and head held way back so she can hold those broody eyes, she pokes at Carver’s stomach.

“Don’t you go starting fights and storming off before they finish!”

“I was storming off,” There is a rude theatric recreation of River’s muddied accent that is half her mother’s and half her father’s at any given time, “to avoid a fight, you fool woman.”

Being called a fool for any reason cuts deep. Displeasure radiates from her but, now that she is wounded ontop of annoyed, she has instantly lost her fire.

“Fine.” Spinning around, releasing her skirts, she goes toward the kitchen to finish washing dishes for the night. Only the ones currently renting rooms are still in the inn after super has been had and they have all gone upstairs. River will clean everything and set out a tray of biscuits with a pitcher of water for anyone that might come downstairs hungry in the late night.

A hand clamps around her wrist to stop her, “No! No, no! You want to fight, then let’s have a row!”

She shakes her wife’s touch away, “What do you want from me!? I was trying to be supportive! What the hell else am I supposed to do!?”

“Why do you act like that’s all you have to offer!? Do you want—no. Do you think I want to be the type of woman who makes a social scandle out of you!? For my own peace of mind? Do you think for a second that man can do anything I won’t be able to handle!?”

“That’s not the point! You’re getting angry at me for nothing! You—I’m not gonna call names when I’m angry, I won’t. It don’t mean anything once I’ve calmed down except that I was lashing out and I ain’t gonna let you drive me to it,” River worries the tea towel hung from her belt between her fidgeting fingers, glaring at her wife’s pointy chin, “Do whatever you want. I don’t care.”

A noise like a kettle left on boil rises from Carver, “I don’t want that! I want you to fucking care! I wanted to complain about what a thorn he is in my side and how fucking foolish he is for being obsessed with me. Because it’s embarrassing for him. I wanted us to commiserate and laugh and share this one thing. Something we both understand and have. Instead, you rolled over and showed your belly the way every fucking coward seems to do on this town. I expected better of you. My mistake.”

Twice then. Once for being called a fool then again for being called a coward. Twice the bleeding for the second one. Teeth grind together, creating a noise on her ears that only serves to enrich her ire.

“You don’t know how he is.”

“I’m the one having dinners with him and dealing with his courtship gifts and his heavy eyes on my every move.”

“And you think we haven’t!? That I haven’t!? My mother was his fiancé because if she didn’t marry him we would lose everything and she still chose my father! Now that you know him, imagine how he would react to that? Unlike some of us, she didn’t really get the option of saying no. She just—we make do with what we have and we deal with the rest. That’s why I had to deal with him from the moment I was born. It’s probably why you are in his sights now and I’m guilty about that. So there, there is the truth. I suggested you deal with it so you wouldn’t have to deal with what my family has been going through for two generations because it’s partly my fault you’re suffering at all. And I hate that. Now,” River grits her teeth, feels a complex bundle of emotions fighting to gain domainace in her chest, “We’ve had our fight and wasn’t that such fucking fun?”

A scoff, a roll of the eyes, and Carver flinging her arms into the air, “So you turn this around and make it ahout you!?”

“Oh fuck you. For hearing that and then saying that to me, fuck you! You ass!”

“No fuck you! I’m not a—“

River snaps her hand up to point with a fiery fury, “Do not say the word coward again or so help me!”

Carver’s chest swells. River’s anger is a slow spreading fire that, once large enough, swallows up whole villages. Carver’s is a subtle cucumber smell coming from the grass on a hike, sending a spiral of panic through the body that eventually everyone has to cede to and retreat. Or get bit.

Both stand too close, chests heaving from big breaths needed to shout the way they are. An odd little smidge on Carver’s alabaster chin, along the jaw, makes her brows dip. Makes her gut clench with guilt.

“Then don’t be one!”

“What do you want from me!?”

“I want you to grow a spine! Be my wife! Take care of me the way I need you to! Put your foot down and do something.”

“Put my foot down!? What is that even supposed to mean!? Do you want a controlling partner!? I’m giving you the—I’m doing my best!”

Carver’s look is ugly and mean, “It’s not good enough.”

River swallows hard. Feels the room spin a little and a faint ringing in her ears.

“Do whatever you want. I don’t care.”

Unexpectedly that makes her wife’s shoulder rise up and her body curl back in a subdued flinch. River waits, near dutifully, for a retort that she feels she deserves for soliciting that reaction. When nothing comes, she tries to storm away again to lick her wounds while she tidies the kitchen.

Feet squeak to a stop and head tilts, ear turned toward her wife’s sudden voice picking the flame right back up.

“You don’t care, do you? Because you always separate yourself from situations. It’s like you don’t even have a personality. Me? Well I’m here because poor little River worries more about her father than herself—“

Ripened vines. The creaking of wood and wind through grass. Overpowering smell of vegetables under a hot sun. She can also hear the sound of scales sliding over rock. The sting-prick of the bite is going to kill her.

Two is enough. Fragile River cannot handle a third.

“Leave it be Carver.”

“No! Because everyone gets a fucking river of kindness from you to the point they are drowning in it but when I try to take a cup full, you just brush me aside and say you don’t care. You let it wash it away because it’s easier than getting angry for me, than agreeing to the bad parts you’d rather hide from. Then having your own feelings. You just do that. You cower away from who you are for the sake of other people and it’s so frustrating! I’m right here and I’m married to you River! Not the fucking village, not Semé’s sensitive ego, you. You just defer, deflect, act like it’s better that way. Where is your fucking anger!? Where are your thoughts that are yours!? I saw it, for a second, at our wedding but then it vanished. I’m here because of Ghedric—“

“Keep your voice down!”

Carver points, eyes wild, “And that! I’m a nasty secret you’re afraid of but you chose me! Why? Because your sad little heart only knows how to be sorry and hide how it really feels. Because you feel guilty about your mother. Because you feel guilty about not caring about witches suffering for so long. You feel guilty for listening to lies and believing them. You self-flagellate by suffering for the sake of others all while claiming you’re brave and clever just like how you were raised to be,” Here it comes, the bitter sting of a venomous bite, “You must be such a disappointment.”

What a doozy that third and final one is. She may not know Carver yet, according to her, but she has figured River out completely. It cuts to the bone.

The thing she really fears most, the thing she always sinks back into like a tar pit she cannot climb out of. Being a disappointment. Such a silly thing for a woman who has been pampered with endless love and affection her entire life. In no world could Ghedric’s darling baby girl ever be anything except the stars in his sky. Such a love is what the issue is for her.

Every time she takes that is wrong, that is beyond what her perfect parents gave to her, is a disgrace. River conforms to a situation because it is easy. She shuns the woman her mother built in her to slip into this sun-fire smile, wax-heart woman for people. She stays mousy and meek, easy on the stomach so that she is tne type of person that people pass over. No conflict on her doorstep even though she is a spitting, opinionated woman on the inside. It is just so much easier if everyone loves her and no one thinks bad of her.

Because if she is anything short of perfect in the eyes of those who perceive her, then her parents sacrifice to be together and her mother dying means nothing. When she is the physical embodiment of their stories and the one who carried on, the one people look to now. The girl who should have taken charge of their village instead of standing back, smiling, while their community chews on its own tail and has been working its way up the body toward the head for years.

No, she could never be a disappointment to Ghedric or likely even Freya if her mother were alive. But she knows who and how she is and being a disappointment to herself is worse. Only she knows the ways in which she fails daily.

River whips her head away to cut through the connected gaze. Swallowing down the tears, she rips the towel from her belt and throws it at the bar top.

“You want my anger? Congratulations, Missus O’Bru. You’ve got it.”

Whether Carver has anything to say does not matter. She is bleeding out and needs to flee. Before the tears start falling.

Glaring with all the fierceness she can muster, she gestures towards the stares, “Go and sulk. I’ve got actual work to do and I don’t want to fucking look at you anymore.” 

A gasp that is more of a wet suck nearly breaks her glass casing and sends her down the spiral of her own mind. She clenches her jaw to fend of the burning building behind her nose and eyes.

“You’re doing it even now.”

“Carver—“

“I’ve had the worst day. And I’m not asking for much. I just wanted sympathy, real sympathy. I wanted a partner—my partner!—to be there for me. To hear me and see me and validate me but it’s fine,” River dares not glance at her wife when she hears a sniffle, “I’m a tough girl. What’s another lifetime spent alone?”

“If you don’t like it here, just fucking leave then. I’m not making you stay.” Her throat is so tight she can barely get the words out.

“You really are a coward,” Hard boot-stomps on their creaky stairs, “Do not crawl into my bed tonight, Missus O’Bru. I don’t want to look at you anymore, either.”

 

Washing dishes has to be put on hold because when she tries, her vision blurs and she doubled over. Instead she flees into the murky shadows clinking round the base of the trees in her backyard. She finds a familiar little place to sit down, hugged by tall gnarled roots poking up from the earth. Hard sobs that she does her best to stifle and a sinking misery.

Carver is right about all of it. She is a coward and a disappointment. A failure as a wife for leaving Carvee to cry alone upstairs, for shying away from the man who has sunk his claws into Carver because she is terrified of him. For being nothing like what Freya and Ghedric raised her to be.

Bitterness coats her tongue. From the moment she had to be the one that wore the mantle and veil, she has been bitter. Resentful. Angry. Everyone else gets to mourn their beloved Freya who should have been their leader and who effortlessly charmed the village who loved her. Except for her. Because she has to be the rock, the one people lean on, the living reminder of what they lost and cannot get back. River has spent a lifetime earning the village’s respect, through any means necessary. Resentment for her mother for telling her to hide and for being perfect without trying. For rejecting Semé and leaving his problem in her lap to deal with as she grew up. Then for feeling like a monster for having those feelings.

For being the thing River claws at in her waking dreams to clasp and push into her chest so it can consume her. But always fails to reach.

She is not her mother’s daughter and she never will be.

Not that she often goes down that path of though. Grief is not for her, it is for Ghedric whom she loves and takes great care of. Grief is for the elder folk and the parents of this new generation who remember her lamp lit eyes and the generosity of her warm grins. Who know what they lost when Freya chose Ghedric over Semé after the invasion of their village. River has not earned the right to grieve. She is the stupid little girl who lived and her mother, the jewel of the village, did not. Even after she ceded her rights to leadership through the bonds of marriage, she had kept some of the peace. In the people who now are so drunk on the fear Semé breeds had once been complacent about witches. Some of the older folk had spoke about it publicly because their former heir had been around to make them feel safe. When sick babies have colic or thrush are in need, the people knew to come to Freya. When people were hungry, when they were lonely or confused or scared, she always soothed the problem. They lost more than a mother.

How could she ever allow herself to feel anything except a tremendous sense of duty? An obligation to fill the shoes of a woman quickly fading from her memory as her mother and being replaced by the woman she should be? Who she can never be. Because Freya O’Bru was the keeper of hearts, the kind gardener, the young granny with a child to spoil in every home, the wisened one. River is a pale imitation. The awful survivor. The weak, cowardly disappointment.

A failure as a daughter, as a community leader, and now as a wife.

Only it is worse now because Carver knows it. The others get to be charmed by her and coo over how much she is like her mother but none of them know how hard she works for that. How she cannot grieve because she has not earned and because thinking of her mother just reminds her of what she did and who she is and this is what she does if that happens. A meltdown in the woods like some broken child. To combat that, she stays away from feelings and surrenders herself to peoples needs instead. No one is the wiser. Except now her wife had seen past it all, trapped it wriggling and screaming under a thumb, and applied a horrible pressure.

 

When she does creep into their room, hands pruned and eyes sore, the hour is late. After crying herself sick in the woods, she had to finish up her chores before she could go to bed and that had meant staying up well past a proper time for sleep. She will be exhausted in the morning.

Glancing at the bed gives her pause. In a fit of rage, Carver has robbed her bed of the blankets and pillow leaving just a bare matress and the thin sheet. For a little bit, in the dark, she quietly searched for where Carver may have hidden her bedding but finds nothing.

Sighing, she plucks some of their cloaks off the pegs on the wall and uses them to cover up with.

 

In the morning, she is up before the sun. That is her usual routine her body is used to. This time she is groggy and sore from crying and from sitting on the ground for so long. Her hip aches badly, sending jolts of pain down her leg bone each time she takes a step. She does not complain. She does what she usually does and goes about getting dressed as quietly as possible. This time she does not light any candles for fear of waking her wife.

She also skips breakfast. Where normally the three of them sit at the dining table in the kitchens, she makes herself absent. Shame is choking her. If she has to look in Carver’s eyes, she will buckle and probably start crying again. Under the light of a new day she can only feel foolish for losing her temper and feel like an ass for everything she said. Fighting is already a horrible thing for couples to do but when they fight like that, nothing good comes of it. Instead of communicating, they had just lashed out to make the other hurt as much as they were hurting inside. Then they had gone to bed without talking and that has soiled the day.

River avoids her like dead grass to a flame. Avoiding her becomes more difficult when Carver takes her usual seat behind the bar to read while River works. Managing it means keeping her eyes on her boots and swallowing the static storm of needles that prick at her throat and chest any time Carver clears her throat and makes herself known in any shape or form.

That is why she nearly jumps from her skin when Carver pokes her knee with her boot. That and the fact that her leg has been hurting very badly today.

Rubbing her thigh and scrambling away, she clears the awkwardness from her throat, “Yes?”

She looks at the floor by Carver’s feet, not at her face.

“You stepped on my toe.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” She hadn’t even noticed. Deep in the trenches of her own mind, replaying their fight over and over again, she has moved through today as if in a dream. Or a nightmare. Thinking about the breakdown she had outside and trying her very best to push it all back into the hiding place she keeps it. The tiny portrait of Freya that Ghedric keeps above the fireplace hurts her more than usual tonight.

If it would not shatter her father and raise questions, she would take it down.

“That’s fine. It didn’t hurt.”

“Oh. Good. I’m still,” She pauses, realizing Carver might not want to hear it and forges past it, “Excuse me.”

“Wait.”

Before she can leave to go wipe a table down that she has already cleaned twice, she pauses by the bar. Back still held toward Carver.

“I’m a bit hungry.”

Oh. She had gotten tense for nothing. Carver does not want to talk about it either.

Tucking her towel into her belt, she nods curtly and takes the job with silent obedience. Tonight, Ghedric has cooked up something some folks might consider showy. A chicken slow cooked in a bed of rice and cream that has two kinds of cheese baked into a crust overtop and sharing space with layers of thinly sliced potato. They are not a rich family but sometimes, as people know, Ghedric likes to cook up a fanciful meal for his patrons. The cheese came with a pair of salesmen who paid a couple extra coins to have it added to some bread. They had been surprised by the bread and the meal they had been served. Enough that they fed all their usual patrons and the visitors out of town.

Per usual, Ghedric always makes a very small dish of something special he sets aside from Carver. A second supper if she feels inclined or a single supper for River if she lets herself stop. Since their marriage, they have taken to unevenly splitting these little meals. Carver eating most and River only having a few bites. Since their fight, her stomach has been a nest of snakes that have been rolling around and cinching her organs into unhappy knots.

She takes the entire little cast-iron tray and sets it on an earthenware plate alongside a goodly chunk of the spiced cheesy bread. Grabs a mug that gets their special cider just for them and nabs a couple ginger cookies too.

Avoiding meeting her eyes, she hands this all to Carver one at a time.

“Still hot, Papa had it sitting by the fire. Be careful.”

“Thank you.”

Just a quick, terse nod this time. Words have been failing her all day. Little sleep usually makes a beast of her but today she has been made low and the sensitive parts of her lay wasted in the mud. Scraping together her ego for even the slightest attitude makes her want to cry. Speaking to Carver, seeing her face and what it may betray, after yesterday splits apart the tongue and tapes it to her teeth.

“River, what are you doing?”

“Hm?” Almost. She almost looks back, almost catches seeds of the sun emboldened by a smoldering smile. Almost. Then she remembers those eyes will not be bright and there will be no smile and that is partly her fault. And that soft mouth was used to cut her down and she still isn’t happy about it. Still feels properly chastened. Still feels sick when she looks at the picture of her mother or when Ghedric tries to smile at her.

“We usually share this. And you’re walking away.”

“Oh,” She tries for a laugh but all that produces is a deep hurt, a reminder of the shattered fury and the venomous bite, so nothing but a choked wheeze comes out, “No, you go ahead. I’m not hungry.”

“You didn’t eat breakfast.”

“I’m fine.”

Carver sighs, “River, you should eat. I won’t bother you. We can sit in silence.”

“I can’t,” She will throw up if she tries but she did not mean to share that and sharing anymore vulnerability with the woman she stripped her clean and found the muck of her soul feels like a knife in the ribs, “I just mean, I’m not hungry. So don’t worry. And really, you don’t need to. I shouldn’t be your burden.”

She winces, squeezing her eyes shut, then amends, “I’m sorry. That wasn’t me trying to—honestly, I just didn’t want to—I’m just not—forgive me. I’m tired. I can’t string words together.”

From the table set by the windows, a loud crash and an instant wail from a newborn. The traveling father—recently widowed and heading to his start beyond their village—flushes and reaches for his child to rock gently. He looks around to find her and gives her a frazzled, harried apology with just a look.

She wants to tell him thank you one hundred times for giving her the convenient escape from this torture.

“Excuse me.”  

 

That night when she goes to bed, her blanket and pillow have been plucked from their hiding place and returned. Carver is a lump beneath blankets pulled over her head, tendrils of grey hair seeping from the seal over an arm hanging out.

Per usual she moves around the bedroom quietly to disrobe, hang up her apron, and change into nightclothes. Again, she does not light any candles and moves by memory. Stiffly she slips into the bed that usually protests with creaking boards and a soft whoosh from the downy feathers being compressed.

A startled half-shout and a coiling of muscles, body jumping, when the cold night air is pierced by her wife’s gravily voice saying her name.

“Y-yes? Did I wake you?”

A long pause wherein River realizes she is debating truth verse lying.

“No,” River wonders if this is the lie or the truth, “Did you eat?”

River blinks slow, forehead creased from her confusion, “What?”

“Ghedric told me when you’re upset, you’ll stop eating,” A much longer pause here, “That’s not really good for you.”

“I…I have a sensitive stomach,” Divines, strike her down, save her from this hell, she knew she would make for an awful wife, “Did you…tell Papa we are fighting?”

“He heard us raising our voices and approached me about it.”

“I’m sorry for that.” 

Carver’s silence is piercing, “It was nice to have someone to talk to.”

Oh, that is a keen hurt. Just salt in the already open wound. The very flaw that Carver argued about during their fight is pointed out and repaired not by her but by her father.

A failure. A disappointment.

She should have spoken to Carver about this and about much else. Curling her hand into a fist, she raps her knuckles softly against her forehead and squeezes her eyes tightly shut.

“River?”

Shame. Worse, there is the awful burning of tears returning. Twice in one week is a new record for her. The art of silent crying is one she has mastered. Needed to during the trials of Ghedric’s mourning. Crying would be such a selfish thing when she survived and her mother—his darling wife, his only love—had not. Most often he had been in a daze, hardly living, so he never noticed the silver streams while she washed and combed his hair.

Like a coward, she does not respond. She pretends to have fallen asleep.

 

“What should I do about Semé?”

Ghedric, sleepy and blinking heavy, cradles his steaming cup of coffee. Just out of bed to start the work of prepping the days meals but River has already been up for a long while. Her hands are sore from chopping up kindling and filling wood baskets, chopping some of the things Ghedric always adds to their immortal soup. Beans and celery and the bones from some of the meat she preps for her father. Things she got used to doing and kept doing even though she does not need as much help as he did.

He yawns wide, still blinking sleep from his dark eyes, “What’s that honey?”

“He bothers my—Carver. Normally, we all just hunker down and wait for him to get tired but she um,” River is grateful that Carver usually only wakes up once the sun tickles her eyelids because it saves her this shame, “She’s disappointed in me and I don’t blame her. I want to fix it. I just don’t know how. I’m not a fighter. And I’m not—“

Like my mother. Like you.

“—sturdy. He just let off us a few years ago. I didn’t want to kick the nest but that’s selfish, ain’t it? Sort of makes me a shit partner.”

Ghedric blows a breath out that whistles between the charming gap in his front teeth, “That what you two were hollering about the other night?”

“I thought you and Carver spoke.”

“We did but I didn’t want to pry into married folks business so we talked ‘round it.”

“Oh,” She cannot do anything right these days, “Forget I said anything. Please.”

“Sure, sure.”

A ball sitting in her throat is making her jaw sore. She rubs it while she finishes her tasks. Scraping the last of the portions for the soup then swinging the cauldron on the extended arm over the fire. Burned down now to a perfect pile of cooking coals.

“Honey?”

River kneels, folding her skirts over her thigh, to prod the coals into a tight pile so the heat stays trapped longer, “Yeah?”

“You okay? You haven’t seemed yourself the last couple of days.”

“Yes, mhm. Just fine,” I can’t stop thinking of mother and it’s destroying me, I can’t see her face anymore, I just know that she was who this village and you needed but I am not her, “I just ah…I’m not so sure I’m good at this. It was a mistake, I think. You know, marrying her.”

“You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“I know.”

“It’s poison thoughts. Even jokes can be sour sickness, honey.”

“I know. I just,” Divines, she feels like crying again, “I make her unhappy and I’m a selfish chit. I don’t know how to be someone’s wife. And I’ve been trying to be like how you were with Mama, but I think I’m misremembering ‘cause when I try, I make it worse. Mama got all melty and cooed at you for being a gentleman. Carver looks at me like I’ve just spat on her mother’s name. Or like I’m being silly. I just frustrate her, make her feel isolated, remind her that this isn’t her home and I’m not her family. I’m pretty sure she hates me.”

Her head cocks toward the sound of her father moving his chair across the wooden floor. Within reach of her, he lays a blazing hand on her shoulder.

“It always feels like that in the beginning.”

She swallows down her stinging breath, her bleeding heart, “Are you sure? Because I don’t think I believe you.”

“It’s tough merging lives even with someone you love and who loves you in return. Learning new things is part of the fun but you’re also learning things you don’t like. And you’re learning that you can fight more than you’d like. It’s hard getting used to. Love is a lot of work. My advice? Talk to her. The fighting is not the sign you should be worried about. All couples fight. What you ought to worry about is fighting and then not talking about it. Keeping it all in instead of expressing what had you so heated. Sulking around, being skittish, that don’t keep relationships alive.”

She frowns at her father, “She’s avoiding talking about it too.”

“I’m not saying it’s all you. I’m just saying someone needs to start the conversation.”

River does not want to hear that but good advice is always the hardest to hear.

“And, River, we can handle having the nest kicked. We’ve handled that man since your Mama, and I were nineteen. Don’t worry none about his fits.”

“You and Mama are braver than I am.”

He pinches her arm teasingly, “Very funny.”

The smile she gives is stretched thin over broken glass and unshed tears.

 

Another day and a half before they finally talk. Because Carver had been right about her cowardliness, she continues avoiding it. In fact she is content to let it become their new normal because Carver seems spry and chaotic again. Smiling and laughing with Ghedric, plying him for sweets that she chews on while she reads. Even trying to poke at River.

She seems to have moved on without needing to discuss their fight. That must mean it’s fine to let lay.

Except she is still upset. Letting it fester had sickened her, stirred up the murky waters of her river that she ignores. She cannot escape the dread of knowing soon Semé will return, and Carver will go and come back looking washed out, drained of her chipper delights. And more so now than before, they cannot talk about it because River shut her down and Carver has made a point about handling herself alone.

More time has allowed her to stew on it and grow more apologetic. Full of sorries she cannot give because that will just irritate Carver again. Expecting her to just deal with it because that is what all the other women in the village do was wrong. Beyond wrong. After all she has been through, River should have stepped in. If it had been anyone else, she would have.

Semé has a way of skinning her and making her feel like a naked, terrified lump of useless meat.

“River!”

She startles, jumping hard enough that she spills the half empty mug of ale. Sticky warmth soaks through her apron into her blouse.

“Yes?”

“I was talking to you. You weren’t listening.”

“Sorry, I was just…thinking. What’s the matter? Do you want food?”

Carver’s nose twists and she holds up a bowl and a plate that has some soup and bread and a handful of tomatoes rolled in oil and salt.

“I asked you to come have supper with me. Please.”

“Oh, I’m not—“

“I am aware. It’s been nearly three days, and I am starting to feel guilty and that makes me want to yell at you again which I don’t want to do,” Carver’s voice had a rising heat in it that settles at the end, turning back into a gentle wave of silk, “Come over here and share my meal with me. I’m not asking.”

There isn’t really a way for her to escape that. Untying her apron and grabbing the second stool she usually tucks under the bar, she obeys her wife. Sitting in the corner together lit by a bundle of long, skinny candles. An earthenware mug is handed to her that she lifts to her lips mechanically. Sour sweetness of the cider burns pleasantly at the back of her throat.

Surpringly, Carver looks forlorn. Perhaps even a little uncomfortable.

“I’m glad you’re at least looking at me again. I felt like a monster when I heard you crying, and you wouldn’t look me in the eye anymore.”

Horrible twisting aches spiral through her chest, nipping at her fingers and toes and needling at her scalp. She swallows hard against it, once then twice.

“You weren’t meant to hear that.”

“I cried too, it’s alright.”

River squeezes her eyes shut for a long second then takes another deep drink of her cider. She starts to speak, shakes her head, and changes what she was going to say, “I shouldn’t have lost my temper. And I am sorry for what I said. If anyone is a monster, it’s me.”

“If I was still angry, I’d agree with you. I don’t anymore though. Not after how you’ve been acting the last few days,” Carver pinches pieces of the bread and scatters the crumbs on the plate, shoulders lifted to her ears, “I really hurt you, didn’t I?”

“No.” She lies smoothly and hates her for it. She does not like to lie. She does not think a good wife lies to her partner.

“I know you’re lying,” The soft laugh Carver lets out is self depreciating, humorless, “I didn’t think I had enough to actually hurt you good, like I wanted to when I was angry. And I wanted to stay angry with you so I hoped I’d start another fight once you finally came back. But then you didn’t. For hours. So I ripped all your blankets and pillows off your bed and threw them out the window. Because I’m a child and I’m proud and I’m mean.” 

River is forced to take a piece of bread because Carvee catches her fingers and unfurls them to set a chunk in her now open palm. She takes a very small bite with her front teeth.

“That’s why I couldn’t find them. I thought you hid them.”

“I didn’t think you would just…shut down. River, I didn’t actually want to hurt you. I was angry and I had a misrable day and I lashed out. I said things I didn’t really mean. Sure, I wanted it to sting a bit because you had hurt me but if I had known it would do this—“

“This isn’t something you need to apologize for. Trust me, no one knows and it’s not anyone’s burden but my own. I’m my own problem and I always will be. It was a lucky shot in the dark I guess.”

Carver licks her lips, thumb tapping against the rim of her soul bowl, “What does that mean? What did I do?”

“Nothing. I just,” She glances over at the painting of her smiling mother and feels the icy shock, smells the lace of the mantle, feels the weight of survival, “It was a good um…a good hit.”

Carver winces and swallows, avoiding looking at River for long enough to eat at one of the tomatoes. A wilting kind of sadness makes her droop on her stool.

“You’ve been wonderful.” She finally says, glum and soft like the bruised part of an apple.

River catches her surprise before it can fly from her, “Oh. That’s good.”

“You’re dearly beloved by your community—“

Now River is the one who wilts, she remembers and feels the bristling edges of her harsh expectations for herself. And finds herself lacking, per usual.

“—and I understand why. You are kind and generous and you’re willing to help anyone who needs it. I don’t think you’re failing me or—when I said you weren’t enough, I didn’t mean that. I know I can’t take back the hurt it caused but please listen to me, you’ve been wonderful. More than wonderful. I’m grateful to you and your father. For keeping me here and taking care of me and not complaining or being cruel about how little I actually do to pitch in. I’m glad it was you who came along.”

River just nods. With her head hung low like a chastened child. She watches Carver split apart some of the bread to set a tomato inside and reach out to give it to River. She takes it numbly.

“I shouldn’t have told you to just deal with it,” River turns the bread over in her hands, feeling her apology like a sucking wound in her chest that will not stop hemorrhaging, “When you asked me to step up, what did you mean?”

“I’m lonely, River. And I am afraid because every woman in this village avoids eye contact when I walk past with him. No one wants to say anything. That has shaken me. That day had been poorly. He tried to kiss me but I jerked away, instinctively, and slipped on the hill. My legs still haven’t connected with my body. I wanted to come home and have that luxury that I’ve heard married couples can have. I wanted to dump it at your feet and have you take care of it for me. To take care of me. I shouldn’t have been expectant. Everyone seems afraid of him, but I had hoped,” Carver sucks her lip between her teeth with a deep furrow to her brow, “I don’t want you to put yourself in danger.”

“I don’t want to be such a poor partner.”

Carver’s shoulders hunch inward.

“I’ll fix it. I can do what you’re asking for.”

Orange eyes hold her then, steady and shining, “How?”

“I’m not sure yet but I’ll have it figured out by the time he comes for you again. I owe you that much.”

Flavor bursts across her tongue. Salty and fresh, wrapped in the lushness of warm freshly baked bread. Just one bite makes her belly gurgle to remind her of how hungry she actually is. After she stuffs the whole morsel into her mouth, she licks the salt and oil from her fingertips. They take turns with the spoon to share the soup and each time River holds her hand out for bread, Carver grants her a piece with a pleased smile.

River licks a thick trickle of meaty broth from the corner of her lips with a sigh. Carver is far more refined. Using a napkin to wipe her lips and only taking small bites to avoid mess. She even holds her cutlery in a way to ensures nothing spills over or falls into her lap.

The way she ate in the caves had been a rare thing. The sign of a starved animal being given its first meal in years.

Thinking of the caves and with their fight looming on her memory settles a new weight upon her. She chews on her lip, feeling it acutely.

“I don’t want to be a poor partner and I certainly don’t want you to feel lonely. Could we try that day over again? Tell me about your bad day and I’ll be authentic instead of,” She shifts in her chair to avoid the frozen amber eyes in that painting, “a coward.”

“To be honest, I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” That makes sense, their fight tainted it and River lost her chance. There are not do-overs for big moments or even little ones.

“But next time. Now I know that I’ve got you. Which I do, don’t I?”

“You do, I swear. I want our marriage to work.”

“I do too,” Carver has a softness that halos her which is refreshing after the last few days, “Thank you. I know I’m difficult and it’s probably unfair to whine at you and beg you to fix my issues for me.”

“They are issues you have because of me. It seems fair to me. And I like that sort of challenge, the kind that means I’m taking care of people. And you are right,” River reaches out to set a sweaty hand on Carver’s knee, “I give a lot to everyone in this village. I should be doing the same for you but on a larger scale. You’re my wife. It’s not that I need to take care of you, it’s that I want to. It’s my vow and I don’t want to be dishonest to your decision to choose me. That’s what I promised to do. I won’t fail you again.”

Carver nods rapidly, throat bobbing from a hard swallow, “You’re technically all I have.”

River feels the weight of that and feels a new guilt being born. She just nods because her throat is tight. She understands what Carver is saying and she just needs Carver to know that.

In a blink, Carver shakes off the heaviness of their conversation and offers a pleased grin, “You can return to bed tonight, Missus O’Bru.”

River’s smile is a lot smaller but no less genuine, “Very generous of you, Missus O’Bru.”

“You may also go and get me another bowl of soup.”

When she rolls her eyes, she is also laughing softly, “I wish I could eat like you and still look like you.”

“You should eat like me,” Carver sniffs primly and reaches for one of her books in the basket by her stool, “And the way you look is divine already.”

Muscles lock up, mind set on a tilted spin, “What was that?”

“I said I like the way you look,” When River stays frozen to the seat of her stool, Carver emits a grumpy note and snaps her fingers, “Chop, chop. I’m wasting away. Oh, bring me more cookies too please.”

 

When Semé comes again, she waits on the stairs out of sight. Down below, per usual, Ghedric has set himself in the archway of the kitchen door to fold his arms like steel bars over his chest and glare at their chief. Only then does River ever see her father storm like a thunder sky. His protectiveness over Carver rivals only his protectiveness of River. And he has hated that man from the moment he met him.

Semé, per usual, gloats just by standing unbothered in the main floor. Waiting for Carver so he can organically bump into her and request some of her time be gifted to him. They all know exactly when he will arrive but he likes to keep his games running a certain way.

Coming down the stairs after having changed, Carver pauses to give River a strange look. Stunning in an cream and yellow quilted dress and a pair of short heels. Where bones used to be looped through the twists of her braid, now flowers and ribbons with bells on them rent the space. A soft red lip and dark smears of khol around her eyes to make them brighter. Sharper even. They flick sharp as a knife toward the stairs leading further down then back to River.

“Is he down there?” She whispers.

She nods and backs further against the wall just because of the paranoia she has about being seen. It will ruin her plan.

Weariness makes Carver sag, “I guess I’d better get this over with. Wait up for me tonight, please? And if I’m gone uncomfortably long, come find me.”

The waft of her wife’s perfume as she walks past tickles her nose. She watches her back until she disappears at the bottom of the stairs.

Straining to listen for her planned cue, she hears Semé’s exuberant, “Carver! What a lovely surprise. My, you are ravishing. Did you dress up just for me?”

“Oh, my wife just made this for me. Isn’t it lovely? She spoils me so. It’s going to my head. I’m going to become such a monster.”

“You do fill it out quite nicely.”

“Don’t I though? To tell you the truth, I think she makes these in such a way that it compliments all the fine places she enjoys staring at. The cad,” Chief’s laugh is hollow and humorless whereas Carver’s is the perfect performance, “I do love it though. There is something addictive about being the center of River Kelsey’s attention.”

“Hm, I’m sure. Say, Carver, since I’ve run into you I wonder if I may extend an invitation for you to join my sons and I for supper.”

River perks up. Here it comes.

“How kind of you, Chief. I will have to ask my River for permission first. Between you and me, she can be the jealous sort, and I don’t want her to get the wrong idea.”

Which is usually something Carber says. Now she recognizes it as the hope for River to sweep her away. Before, she had only been confused as to why Carvee would insinuate that she needs River’s permission for anything.

Usually Semé brushes whatever sort of thing Carver says aside. Claiming that as the Chief he can excuse anyone or that River will understand or to simply not worry. They leave before Carver can seek the permission she claims to need.  

That is her cue though.

She thunders down the stairs, making sure to stomp her heels down extra hard for more noise. Heads whip over in alert to her sudden and violent entrance to the room.

River storms across the floor to her wife, hands on hips, “You had better not be doing what I think you are.”

Carver’s lip hang open, ready with words she cannot grasp. A very slow blink then she just manages to say, “Darling—“

River, to play her part, raises a hand to cut her off and barrels forward, “I’ve told you I don’t approve of this. I’ve told you how it looks, how it makes me look!”

Semé, unused to such outbursts from soft, meek River, struggles for a response himself. He glances at Carver then at River, forcing a smile, “Missus Kelesey—“

“Forgive me Chief but I have my pride. And I have to put my foot down.”

A light of understanding flickers to life behind the orange iris. She heaves a dramtic sigh and reaches to clutch River’s arm, “My love—“

“Don’t even try! It won’t work this time! Use your head, Carver! You’re a brilliant woman and you’re behaving like a fool. The way you run off with our goodly Chief does not just shine a poor light on me, your wife. But on him too. People may think that he is attempting to sway my wife away from her happy home and that would look very bad for him. Not even speaking of your honor. How do you think it feels when I get customers coming in telling me my wife is traipsing around with our chief!?”

“My River, it is not like that. You know you are my one and only. The Chief is a considerate gentleman. He is only asking me to accompany him so that I feel welcome here as a newcomer.”

“I’ve no doubt! But that does not change the facts. I am sorry darling, but I must forbid you from continuing this.”

Semé clears his throat and offers a smile to at is meant to be a hot iron to the wrinkle in this situation, “River, you mustn’t be so harsh with your woman. She has been perfectly respectful as a lady ought to be.”

“I’m afraid I must, my Lord. She has been careless and I respect your person too much to let her besmirch your good name. I mean, the rumors spinning already are atrocious!”

His eyes widen and flit around the room to gauge the state of their audience. Because the only thing he truly cares about is himself and the name he leaves behind. A threat to that is not a risk he is willing to take.

“Is that so?”

“They do not shed you in a kind light, my Lord, I dare say. And I apologize for having to say it because it is entirely my wife’s fault, of course. Which,” She turns her stinging glare upon Carver, “I will herein rectify. You’re forbidden from these little excursions from here on out. And in fact, if you are to be anywhere near our Chief, you are to have a chaperone accompany you. Either my father or myself—“

Before River’s eyes, her wife puts on a magnificent display of being peeved, “River! I’m married!”

“Then act like it!”

Carver cows in an admirably convincing way.

“Chaperone. You get my permission or, if I’m not present, my father’s permission to leave this house at all. Until you can figure things out. Am I understood?”

“You are,” Even if it is an act, the feeling of Carver’s fingers curling across the meat of her palm makes her heart jump, “I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t mean to cause trouble.”

“I know. Don’t worry, I’ll clean up your mess. For now, go help Papa with supper.”

Before departing to tend to a chore she will not actually do and does not need to, she gives Semé a slight bow of the head. The moment her back is turned to him, she rolls her eyes.

River bows deep to Semé, hands folded by her waist, “Forgive Carver, my Lord. She is still ignorant of how we do things in a society like ours. And forgive me for not stepping in sooner. Rumors run fast as a river but it is still our fault that anything poor be said about you. Trust that I take full responsibility and I will ensure this never happens again. I will keep her far from you.”

“Well that,” In a rare display, Semé seems thrown off and even made akward for it, “That is alright River. I appreciate the dedication. I think I will take my leave now. Have a good night.”

Each body present shows the deference he expects as he passes. Once the front doors swing shut, she spins on her heel to catch her wife by the elbow and drag her into the kitchen.

“River—“

“I’m so sorry for yelling—“

“No! That was brilliant! River,” Another surprise because Carver drags her into a hug that swallows her in long limbs and longer hair and perfume, “You kept your word.”

“I tried.”

“You didn’t disappoint.”

“That—“ She chokes on her own tongue, squeezing her eyes shut. Relief sweeps through her.

 

With gossiping as a bridge between them and their fight far behind them, Carver begins to bring them close. River knows Carver is doing it because she barely is speaking during work hours and when there is not work, she is outside chopping firewood or delivering meals to the elderly who are widowed and cannot make the walk to the inn. Sunrise to sundown, River is on her feet and sparing little time for things like getting to know one’s new wife. Yet she finds herself learning the meals that Carver turns away, learns the clothes she likes, learns the hours she enjoys most in the day and the restlessness that lives under her skin. She learns about Carver’s theatrics and the way she whines if she is made to do anything even if she does not actually mind doing it. Somehow Carver is around long enough for some sort of conversation to happen after they exchange a bit of gossip.

This begins when River drags herself into the attic room for sleep, long after the purple hours of twilight have passed. Surprise stops her, jerking her into a more alert state, because Carver is laying on the floor. By the small brick fireplace that she does not often use because maintenance on the third floor is difficult. Grey hair spills over the floor in glittering silken waves, undone for bed. Laying around her are dogs that she knows did not come from this village because she has never seen them before. One massive beast that, when stretched out, is just as long as Carver is. Made of grey shaggy fur and a long bushy tail. Another bulky dog with thick muscle and brown and black fur. Brown on the wide chest and around his sweet eyes. Then a smaller one curled up against the back of Carver’s bent knees, scraggly looking with notches in his floppy ears. Orange eyes blink open to squint tiredly at her.

“Oh hello. I thought you had gone off to have an,” She cuts herself off to yawn so wide she sees the pink of her tongue, “an affair.”

“I don’t have energy for an affair nor the charisma,” She lays her jacket over the the trunk at the end of her bed then sits on it to bend and begin undoing the laces in her boots, “What’s all this?”

“The bed is too soft.”

She glances over at it remorsefully. They have not been sharing it, not since their wedding night when they had no other option. Fitting the room with a second bed had been quickly removed from their list of ideas because it would look odd if two newly weds already needed separation. Ghedric had already been trying to tell her stories about when he had been a new husband that had made her flush and shoo him out of the room. Carver had told her, in private, she had been struggling to sleep on the bed anyway. She needed to acclimate to a gentler surface. River had not liked the idea of making her wife sleep on the floor but Carver had not listened to her.

“The dogs, Carver. Where did they come from?”

“Here and there. I found them. I’m going to train them to hunt with me like my old dogs did. Why are you back so late?”

“Did you steal them?” She kicks the boots off and sighs from the relief of pressure. There are blisters that have formed in new places where calluses would normally prevent that.

Carver rolls over in the nest of bedding on the floor, lifting her head onto her hand. Grey hair spills down her bent arm, reflecting ribbons of orange light from the fire and casting her face in a soft shade.

“No, I found them. As I said. Now, why are you back so late?”

“Once a month, the chief takes random villagers up the hill to pray on the alter of his strange gods. The ones from,” She waves a dismissive hand to prove the point that she does not care, “wherever he came from. We are expected to bring something for slaughter and to carry it up ourselves. Papa didn’t tell you?”

“He is ill. I did not ask, I kept him in bed and gave him a remedy.”

A chill sweeps through her that locks her muscles into an unpleasantly tight braid, “He is ill?”

“Don’t get that fretful look. He will be fine by morning.”

She swallows down her stomach and hears herself strained, choked by fear, “Did you…?”

“Yes, I used magic. I made a small remedy that chews away fever. Your father is not a young man, I worried for him. This will aid his recovery. Don’t give me those eyes,” Carver pinches a long strand of her hair between her fingers to play with it while she speaks, “I wouldn’t hurt him. I told you, I can be trusted. Believe me. We’re friends now, so you should have that kind of faith.”

She gives her wife a look from the corner of her eye, “We’re friends now?”

“We could try to be. It would be nice. I find you charming and delightful and I enjoy your wry, often bland sense of humor. And you always have the very best gossip.”

“Hm,” The middle-sized dog with the shiny black fur lifts his head, lips drooping over his lower jaw, and trots over to nudge his fat head against her knee, “Why bother?”

“With friendship? I can see your point because I also thought about that. We are not obligated to be close. I am here because it would be difficult to go now and because I don’t want to be down there anymore. In fact, if I never have to live in the dark again it would be too soon. You only need me to assure your father that you will be fine. However, I am realizing that I enjoy this small town and the people in it. I like your inn and the smell of your attic and Ghedric. I like this place. I like having community again and this—our room—I like it very much. And we are near one another almost constantly. Why can we not at least try to get along? Why bother, sure, but also what does it hurt? I enjoy you. Maybe you can get past your reserve and find a way to enjoy me too.”

She scratches under the chin and around the floppy ears of the rumbling beast. His hind leg kicks when she moves down to scratch his rump just above the tail.

“I suppose it couldn’t hurt. I haven’t many friends.”

“You have many, many friends River O’Bru. Don’t lie to me.” There is a spot of warmth in that tone.

“Can I come sit over there?” She points to the floor beside Carver’s makeshift bed. The witch reaches out an arm to pat the floor invitingly. When she is closer, the massive grey dog lifts his large head to sniff her outstretched hand. A tongue rolls out to swipe across the back of her fingers as a greeting.

“I don’t have any true friends,” She reiterates, legs crossed on the floor and both hands greeting these new animals, “No one who knows me more than skin deep.”

“Very good. Now it is my turn,” She reaches out to bury her fingers in the saggy fur of the grey beast, smiling serenely when the dog cranes his head back to look at her, “I love dogs. I haven’t felt like I was me again until I got these today. I used to have four of them and they would go on long trips with me when I would go into the mountains for days. This big one, I’m going to train him and the other fellow here to hunt bears and wild cats and foxes too. This littler one, I’ll teach him how to find birds I shoot down with arrows.”

“I haven’t a bow and arrows for you to hunt with.”

Carver shrugs one shoulder, “I can make my own. By the time I’ve finished training them, I’ll have one made and enough arrows fletched to start.”

River fights against herself to prevent an expression that would betray how impressed this information makes her.

“I shall save feathers when I find them laying about. There are a mess of wild turkeys that roam around here.”

“Your turn now. Can you swim?”

“Yes, though not very well. I sort of thrash about and pray my instinct does not let me drown.”

“It does not sound like you know how to swim.”

“No, I do. I am just not good at it, like I said. I fell into the river after it had rained, and I thrashed my way to the shore. That was how I learned. Now I only swim when it is hot, and I cannot find an easier way to cool down.”

“Can I ask a second question?”

River shrugs, feeling her exhaustion loosening her muscles and making her lids heavy.

“How old are you?”

“Oh, I had forgotten we did not do this. I’m…how old am I? Either thirty and three or thirty and four. I cannot recall. You?”

“Thirty and one.”

“Really? Do you not count the…?”

“No, I wasn’t aging. I’d be bones and misery by now if I had been.”

She glances down at the soft face, earnest at this hour and sweeter up close. Because of the grey hair she had always assumed this woman to be old. One of those crones that can hide their wrinkles and spots but cannot hide other giveaways. Now, this close, she can see the youthful curve of her body and the smoothness of her skin.

River expected her to be younger. One of the women who made the mistake of simply being a witch and got trapped in a web. Much like they little girl that was slaughtered.

River yawns into her elbow so fiercely her eyes start to water. She smacks her lips after, swaying side to side.

“Are you happy here?”

Carver lifts both eyebrows after this question, “If I say no, will it bother you?”

“It will, I think.”

“Why?”

River struggles to word this properly and, as tired as she is, she does little to try, “The situation does not change the fact that you did agree to marry me. I have certain duties to fulfill as your spouse. I don’t want you to be unhappy here. I know it seems like an insurmountable task but if we are going to be stuck together for the rest of our lives, it would really put me at peace to know you are happy here or at least can be. If there was anything I could do to make your place here a more pleasant one, I would…I would greatly like to know.”

Carver watches her, cast in light of a dying fire, from the pillow half stolen by one of her new dogs. Close enough that her hair tickles the bit of her leg and some foot.

“I can be. I’m not happy yet. But I know I can be.”

“Can I help somehow?”

“I’m not sure. My misery cannot be easily explained in words and it cannot cover a hundred years of torture. I’ve lost everything and now to gain back just myself, I am a stranger's bride. Again. I like your village and I like you and I like your father but I also hate it here. I hate your chief. I hate the eyes of your men with ruddy cheeks and drink in them. I hate the little sculptures lining your roads meant to ward me off. It makes my feet hurt to walk them so I have to walk in the grass. I’m not happy but I think I can be and that is all I can say.”

River takes this for what it is, a blunt honesty, and will parse out the places it burdens her later. When she has time to feel that particular sting.

“You may lay down.”

“What? Here? Carver, you sleep here.”

“Yes,” She adjusts so that her long legs can slip under the bundle of furs, sinking comfortably beneath them until they reach her nose, “You might not believe it but this is how I used to sleep as a girl. And then as a Queen. On the floor with my dogs. I didn’t not contend with a bed until I married my husband. I’m not sure I ever got used to it or perhaps the moment I did, I suddenly found myself sleeping on cave rock.”

One of the dogs nudges his wet nose against her cheek. The other pokes at the small of her back, nudging intently. She realizes somehow the animals have developed a cleverness enough to do this, to encourage her to lay down. Exhaustion is heavy on her bones but propriety comes first.

One hand snakes from beneath the furs to snag her shirt cuff and give a tug, “Lay down now, River. It’s quite alright.”

“Why?”

“You can learn a lot about sleeping next to someone. Come, I’ll share my blankets.”

“Carver.”

“River, we are married. It’s fine. Come, sleep beside me.”

River eyes the opening made by Carver gripping the edge of the furs and lifting them, “What do you intend to learn that you did not already learn the first time we did this?”

She jumps from the first brush of Carver’s feet against her calves. The littlest dog shimmies on the blankets from the new pair of legs interrupting his sleeping position. With the new space provided, he wedges himself between their hips. The big grey one, larger than a wolf, favors his mistress for he lumbers around them to flop by her side. His shaggy head lays on her ribs overtop the blankets, laying on their side the way she is. River lays stiffly on her back with her hands folded over her chest, staining at the slats in the wooden ceiling. Wood crackles where the fire licks at dry chunks of birch River had chopped just before the sunrise. Aches persist from day through night back into the bloody sunrise that starts another workday. That damn trail put to the alter is always a trial, and it was worse today. Worse than the last time she had to go.

“Why are you bruised, Little River?”

River jumps again, this time surprised by her wife’s voice and the lucidity in it. Such time has passed while she crawled into the back of her own mind that she had assumed the woman had gone back to sleep.

“How do you know I’m bruised?”

“I can smell it.”

“Gross,” River digs her elbow into Carver’s ribs when the woman tries to stick her freezing feet under her thighs, “Please tell me you’re joking.”

“I am but only a little. Stop squirming please, I’m freezing.”

“Crafty witch. You only asked me to sleep by you to use me for my heat.”

“Yes, yes. Clever girl. You’ve pinned me right under your thumb. Congratulations. Hold still.”

“You’re ice! Get those away from me!”

“No, you’re very warm. Do my hands too.”

“Ouch.” She winces when, from their struggling and squirming, something bony bumps the hip that still stings.

“Bruised, I knew it. What happened?”

“Nothing,” She says with a sour tongue then sighs, releases the lie she did not enjoy telling, and complains quietly, “The bastard son again. It was raining and he pushed me. We were having another little argument and he does that. Hates when I argue, or I suppose anyone does. I fell down the rocks into some brush. I’m alright, it wasn’t a long fall.”

Carver is a complex woman. River has been trying to figure out if that is because she is a witch or because she is a woman out of time or if it is her raising. At times she is a foul wind that promises a sudden freeze that will kill all the strawberries in River’s secret patch. Other times she is the secret strawberries, sweet and revitalizing and the only indulgent thing River keeps. When those moods arrive, there is no determining factor. Sometimes small things like bugs crawling across the wooden floor make her foul enough to wake everyone and demand they clean. That not even an insect wing must be left in her home and that no one is allowed to sleep until this is rectified. In other times, when she sees River putting on layers for traveling, she will—unannounced and uninvited—swing herself onto the mule behind River to accompany her. Singing songs the entire trip. It makes very little sense to her. The woman is a puzzle she cannot solve. There are rules she keeps that River is expected to obey without knowing them.

This thing turns her wife bleak and bitter breaking one of those unseen rules. 

“Why does this man pester you so? Why is it allowed?”

“To answer the second first, it’s allowed because of who he is. The other question is my fault really. I rejected him more than once. The first time he was a sweet thing and he was shy, came to me in the evening to offer me gifts. The second time he was drunk and disgusting and I slapped him. Ever since then he had been the beast that burdens me. Men like him cannot take that kind of blow to their self importance. Then I saw him commit a crime that could get him killed and he thought he fixed it when he killed me. But I came back. And I think he took that personally. Which reminds me,” She turns onto her side to face her wife, seeing the darkness clouding her features, “Be careful of him. He likely suspects something foul. I walked back practically unharmed after he knows he should have killed me. He already ruined our wedding to make a point. He will be watching us. Do not give him any reason to suspect what you are. Or me, my father, and you are going to die.”

“You accept too much. Were you raised in the Vale, you’d—“ She stops herself with a sigh, looking more troubled than before. Instead of speaking again she rolls over to face the fire and curls her legs up to her chest beneath their blankets.

“Carver?”

“If that man puts his hands on you again, there will be hell to pay.”

“Carver—“

“No. None of this anymore, not before dreams. It’s a curse. Are you in a fretful amount of pain?”

“I’m always sore.”

Orange eyes catch her when the head lifts to peer over her shoulder, “Are you?”

“Isn’t everyone?”

“No. Casual daily pain?”

“Yes?”

“Hm,” She turns back around, huffing out a word in the lilting that makes the dogs alert for a second then relax again, “This family is a mess. This town is a death trap. How are you not yet broken, Little River?”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing at all. I’m musing aloud. I wish to sleep now.”

And that is also the way of her wife. Cryptic the way she has been warned witches are but nothing at all scornful or viper-like. Secrets are not a weapon she wields to puncture lungs and suck out the air. Secrets are seeds that are brought up to a hidden garden for Carver to plant and wonder over. She speaks in mumbles phrases and out of context snippets. She watches everyone and everything and keeps more than half her mind to herself. Then, when she has confused River enough to be curious, she flings it all away and moves on to find something new and interesting.

“Goodnight then.”

“Mhm. River, move closer please. I’m cold still. I’ll not bump your aching places again, I promise.”

She does so, scooting over while laying on her back so that her shoulder and arm are pressed to Carver’s spine. The witch releases a pleased note.

“Help me tomorrow, River.”

“With what?”

“Naming our dogs.”

“Our dogs? You’re the one that found them.”

“But they live in our home, and they are our family now. Our dogs.”

That wedges an odd, soft lump under her ribcage she cannot identify.

“Our family. Very well then.”

“We could name one each. You, me, and your father.”

“That sounds nice.”

 

“She’s been a menace today.” Ghedric sits on the porch of the inn, hands folded in his lap. Wind blows his curly hair that she will need to trim soon, thick and dark blond like River’s gets during summer. Both of them are watching Carver pace the street with her hounds in a trail behind her. 

“Leave her alone. She’s adjusting.”

“Percy bit Killian.”

River leans against the porch railing, wiping lager from between her fingers with a dish towel. She squints against the bright sun to get a proper look at the dogs.

“Which one is Percy?”

“The one I named! The little fellow!”

“Right. Well Percy is a little dog. Little dogs house a deep seeded evil in their tiny bodies. Killian probably just got too close. Asked for it by existing.”

Ghedric gives a shake of his head, “No, now. We both know that ain’t true. Carver hates Killian and I cannot guess why. She had seemed a jealous thing when you brought her home but letting her dog bite the chief’s son ain’t wise. They might get offended.”

River looks over to her father then, to chastise him with a squinted glare the way her mother taught her to do.

“Papa, please tell me you are not trying to convince me to act like a controlling husband.”

“Percy bit Killian!”

“Papa. I’ve always hated couples who act that way. Treating their spouses like their misbehaving children who need their ears cuffed. To begin, Percy is still being trained. And he also hates Killian. And most anyone that gets near him. Secondly, Carver is adrift. She is alone in this place, and we have a chief who, well, I don’t recon I need to say it. You know. She’s having a hard time. And Killian, he…he’s not an easy man. Wait, did you say she’s jealous?”

“She’s greener than old copper.”

She sets a hand on her hip and glares at him fiercer, “Now what are you talking about, old man? Why on earth would she be jealous?”

“Everyone loves you, honey.”

“Everyone loves me? Why would that—oh. Right. I’m her…wife,” She feels a blush appear when her father gives her a pointed, sly look, “That has no—she is not jealous, Papa. I promise. There is no reason for her to be.”

“Whatever you say honey.”

“Don’t give me that,” She gives him a soft bop on the top of his head with her fist, “And don’t worry about her. She’s just finding her place here. That’s all. Killian makes her nervous, she just reacted the way nervous folk sometimes do.”

“I’m not disagreeing there, River. Killian is a boy whose got something dying inside him that makes him sick, and I don’t like him round you two anymore than you already are. I’m just saying, talk to her. Warn her why she’s gotta be careful with that family.”

Carver is leading the dogs in a circle around their house, over the street and across the small bridge that spans the creek running under the foundation. Round the back where the woods encroach then past the water wheel back onto the street again. She walks beside them to monitor their cooperation and their diligence, head tilted and face serene. Under the light of a midday sun, she is tantalizing in the same way women can be for River sometimes. So endlessly beautiful but from such a distance the only thing she can do is stare and admire and stuff down all the fuzzy feelings that come from attraction. For a summer month, today is perhaps worst than usual. Everyone milling around the streets, going about their business, look like drones set upon a path they are too muddled to logically compute. Such heat withers the minds leaving behind tacky, sticky husks that move around on instinct. All except her new bride who seems to thrive under the sun and the heat despite the sweat she can see glittering on her brow. Her serenity is not bothered by the oppressive day.

“I will, Papa. Thank you for worrying.”

He appears bemused, “Of course. She’s part of our family now. Quit forgetting you’re a married woman, honey. It’s going to nip you in the rear.”

“I haven’t—I’m not! It’s just,” She glances over when she feels pressure upon her to find eyes like a vivid sunset upon her, “I haven’t forgotten. It’s complicated.”

“Complicated?”

“No! Not complicated. Just new. That’s what I meant to say.”

Ghedric squints at her as he turns his wheelchair to move himself inside. River stands there for a moment longer, knowing she needs to go inside and prepare for the workday. For just a moment longer she allows herself to watch the way that this sun shines upon the places where it is obvious that, once, her wife was a queen. With the way she holds her body upright, firm but with a cat’s grace. She is resplendent.

There must be so many rumors about them. Now that she can truly see it, she must be in danger for being found out because there is no conceivable way she has convinced people that Carver married her out of love. If even one person doubts her lie then the others will begin to wonder too and it will not be long before they are found out. 

It was likely inevitable but she will do what can until then to prevent it. Her father is right, forgetting that she is a married woman is going to be her downfall.

“Darling,” She leans on the railing, calling out to Carver who reacts with surprise to the term of endearment, “Don’t stay outside too long, please? You’re liable to catch a sun sickness.”

Across the street, Mauve looks up with a kind of smile that remembers being a newly wed. She turns to say something to her husband who rolls his eyes fondly.

Carver does not see that and does not understand the sudden, apparent, affection shown through care. She just nods and begins leading her dogs in another loop.

 

Ghedric nearly falls out of his chair when he thinks, even for a moment, that River insinuated at all that Carver was expected to work. River had needed to hold her hands up while her father wagged a finger at her and filled her ears with his disappointment. Carver had gleamed with delight while she watched it happen.

Most of the village comes to their inn for suppers. The highway runs alongside the stream that bends around their town so, often, there are pilgrims who visit. There are at least always tables filled in the golden hours of sunset. It helps that their inn serves doubly as the local pub too. River is so busy that she sometimes forgets that her new wife lurks while she hustles around tables, pouring drinks and serving plates. Not until customers ask her how the married life is, wish her well, or point out that her wife is watching from the bar. Carver likes to be where people are, but she does not like to engage often. She prefers Ghedric’s company so she sits on a stool behind the bar where she can chat with him through the kitchen doors.

Tonight, River wipes sweat form her brow on the rolled up sleeve of her shirt and sighs. Carver leans forward on her stool, lowering the book she was reading, to lift a brow.

“What?”

“You could put yourself to use, you know.”

“You promised me I wouldn’t have to work if I did not want to,” She says haughtily, crossing a long leg over a knee and giving River an unimpressed look, “I don’t labor.”

“You don’t labor? What ever does that mean?”

“It means I was a Queen and I don’t labor,” She lifts the book again and says without looking up from the pages, “Good luck out there. It seems awful busy, and those mugs aren’t going to refill themselves.”

“You know most homes like mine bring in new wives expecting help. Sometimes even specifically for that.”

“Promises are promises, darling.”

“It was worth a try.” She throws a towel over her shoulder before hooking fingers through the row of filled steins atop the bar.

“Ghedric, River is being oppressive. She is trying to make me work by appealing to my gentler nature and guilting me into it. Me, her delicate darling wife who has soft hands and a softer heart.”

From inside the kitchen, amidst whistling kettles and bubbling pots, her father’s voice sings loud, “Carver love, come in here then. I’ve made some pastries. Come have the first taste.”

Carver’s head pops up, the book snaps shut loudly, and she hops to her feet. As she passes River, she leans in to say by her cheek, “I think I’m going to stay.”

River rolls her eyes but there is a spark of fondness catching tinder beneath her breast.

Another day in that same week, instead of reading Carver leans on the counter looking bored. Her eyes are always stuck to River wherever she goes, following the paths she takes. Unforgiving summer heat is making her more grouchy than usual so she is working twice hard to be inviting to her customers. Smiling more than usual and laughing when there is not an inch of her that feels amusement. Everything is harsh briars brushing her skin and every drop of sweat only makes her more sour. Pleasantness is something she is known for and she would be upset if one lousy day ruined that reputation. Especially tonight when there are so many strangers from out of town visiting. They are raucous and look at her with stars in their eyes which helps her work a little less hard to be accommodating. Laughing at their truly terrible jokes makes them sway in their seats, teeth showing from massive grins. The downside of being overly friendly is that it is frequently misconceived as flirting and these men sink their teeth into her like starved animals. She can hardly get away from their dreamy looks and stuttering compliments. One of them says something too quiet so she leans down to get her ear nearer, gripping his muscular bicep when she does so for balance because there is a tray with empty clay mugs atop it in her free hand. It surprises her when instead of words she feels his lips against her cheek.

“Thank you, miss.” He bumbles through, turning the color of a beet after she pulls away.

He must have asked her if he could do that and she simply didn’t hear him.

The scratchy, prickling sensation his mustache left behind turns her rancor. She plasters on a smile, squeezes his arm, and pivots around to march back to the bar.

Carver is still there on her stool, eyes heavy upon her. They only break connection once to flash over to that table, running over the blushing man whose face is in his hands, then back to River grumbling to herself and aggressively wiping down the bar.

“You’re laying it on a bit thick tonight.”

“So what?” She snaps in a hissy whisper so customers cannot hear.

Carver lifts an eyebrow, face set in her hand that is covered in the brand of their union, “Do you want to bed that man?”

“Do I want to—what are you talking about!? No, I do not want to bed that man. I don’t want to bed any man. I’d be perfectly content if men did not want to bed me, in fact. But the world isn’t fucking perfect and here we fucking are.”

“Hm,” This information makes Carver’s face, that had been hardened and unhappy before, shift into contemplation, “I thought you were craving attention but evidently that is not the case.”

“Craving attention? Carver,” She pauses, swallowing down the embers on her tongue, when she sees the sunken shoulders and the flinty look and remembers what her father said days past, “Are you jealous?”

“Yes.”

There is only one answer she expects to hear.

“I didn’t think so. You are not—“

That was not the answer.

Dumbfounded, she stands with her mouth hung open and stutters through, “Did you…did you just say yes?”

“I did, yes.”

“Why?”

Carver twirls her fingertips through her hair and lifts a shoulder in half a shrug, “You’re my wife. Can I not be jealous if I have to sit here and watch you flirt with men? Without even trying to hide it from me?”

“I—I don’t—so it’s purely a possessive jealousy then? Just because I’m yours?”

Again she shrugs, “Isn’t that enough?”

River sets a hand on her hip and levies that chastising stare upon her wife, “No, it is not.”

“Fine then,” Carver dusts off the legs of her trousers before standing and taking the two steps between them to lean her hip against the counter, “I’m jealous of how complexly they get to covet you. They’ve known you their whole lives because you’ve grown up beside them. That fruit boy, down by the wood bridge, is so hopelessly in love with you because you would always pay a little extra for apples so he could afford his mother’s medicine. It’s hardly fair. I’m your wife and yet they get to adore and cherish you better than me.”

River has never been so gobsmacked in her whole life. She feels foolish for only being able to stand there and blink rapidly while her mouth hangs open.

“I didn’t…realize you wanted that?”

“I never said I did. I’m saying that I’m your wife and I’m just toddling after you while they get to profess verbose love and fawn all over you because they can. Because they know you. And I’m a simpering idiot without more than skin deep knowing. It isn’t fair.”

River continues to stare until her neck twinges from how far back she has to crane it with her wife standing so close. She steps backward, rubbing the neck, and reels at a distance.

Petulantly, Carver flings a hand toward the blushing man, “Why does he get to kiss you and I don’t? I’m your wife.”

“Well, I don’t—I didn’t,” No one has ever managed to fluster her and confuse her so profoundly before, “You want to kiss me?”

“I do if he gets to.” She folds her arms and pouts. Actually a full pout that makes her lip poke out and her brows furrow.

“I—Carver, that’s just juvenile. If I had taken him to bed, would you also want to bed me just because he did?”

“Yes!”

Steam fills her skull, warming her clear down to her toes, “I…did not expect you to say that.”

“I don’t like coming in second place especially in my own marriage.”

She looks over her shoulder toward the table of men already falling a little in love with her. The one whose mustache tickled her is watching up until he noticed her eyes then ducks his head. When she looks back to her wife, the woman is fuming and glaring at the mustache. Wordlessly she turns her head to offer her cheek for Carver to do with as she likes. The breath catches in her chest without her permission. Carver cradles the side of her face turned away from her before she gently presses her lips to River’s burning skin. Their chests brush together. A hand is gripping her hip to keep her pinned against the counter of the bar.

“Was that better?” Carver hushes against her cheek.

She squeaks an inquisitive noise.

“Better than him.”

Choking on her own tongue, all she can do is nod.

“Good then,” Carver pulls away and in doing so gives River the gift of learning how to use her lungs again, “If you aren’t craving attention, why have you been so friendly tonight?”

“I’m overheated and it’s making me furious about everything.”

Carver gives her a funny look, “You’re in a poor mood so you’re being nicer than usual because of it?”

“Exactly so.” She reaches up to lay the tips of her fingers over the buzzing skin where she was just kissed. Even in her fantasies of being swept up by a woman, she did not imagine their lips to be that soft.

“Hm,” Carver seems to have already moved on, “I’ll help you tonight.”

She looks up, frozen in the blushing slumped position against the counter, “I thought you didn’t labor.”

“I do when my alternative is sitting here watching my wife woo half the male population.”

“That’s…a bit of an exaggeration.”

“It isn’t. Ghedric?”

From inside the kitchen, her father’s gruff voice calls back, “Yes, love?”

“I’m helping River tonight. My adored wife,” There is a pointed look accompanied with the word adored, “isn’t feeling herself tonight.”

“Oh! Alright, come on in. I’ve just finished a plate.”

“Coming!”

River swallows down the insects tickling up her throat and clears them away, “Carver? Don’t burn yourself. The soup spills over sometimes. Papa overfills them.”

Carver tilts her head with a smile like honey, “Sweet River.”

Then she turns toward the kitchen doors and shouts, “Ghedric! River said you put too much soup in the cups!”

“Oh not this again! I do not!”

“He does not River, you heard him.”

River rolls her eyes.

 

First came the dogs. Next comes the bees.

It is not uncommon for Carver to spend most of the daylight hours outside in the woods behind the inn. To work on carving the body of her exquisite bow that their local carpenter had fawned over as if it were a beautiful woman. When she purchased linseed oil from him, to give it a good seal, he had followed her the entire way home to talk about it. Whether to make arrows or practice with the dogs, Carver is lost out there until supper time brings her home. For this reason, River has developed a habit of looking through the port window to check on her wife when she moves through the hall. Most often she does not spot the tall head poking through bushes or hunched over a work table. There are just signs that she has come through the space because some earth has been tilled up or tools left laying on a table. Sometimes she sees the woman with her elbow out, back firm and straight, while she practices shooting rotten fruit out of tree branches. Or following her dogs around, militant in the firm voice that issues orders then speaking gently as she gives them treats for obeying.

Today there are empty ale barrels and apple crates in the yard. Carver is walking between them, smiling to herself and talking to no one while bees turn the air to a dark shade around her. They crawl up her arms, into her hair, siting on her curled fingers as she appraises them. With her hair braided down her back, in a pair of patched corduroy trousers and a sleeveless work shirt. Bees come and go from the ale barrel with apple crates lodged inside of them.

River sets down the mop bucket to hurry around the hall into the hot outside that greets her with singing bee chorus.

Carver tilts her head backward to look over her shoulder, “Carver, where did those bees come from? Why, I found them wife. Found them!? Found them where!? Where you find bees, wife. Well…did you…you know? I don’t, maybe. I’m talking about magic. I know you are. There, now that we’ve covered the River chastises Carver part of the conversation come have a look.”

River adopts a very sour disposition, “I was going to tell you to be careful. I don’t want you to die. When Kyele’s funny man from over the lake came here to marry her, he got bees and they stung him so many times he died. Right out in his field. Looked like an ugly scarecrow by the time they found him.”

Carver clicks her tongue to her teeth in that way mothers do when they catch a lie.

River lifts her shoulders to her ears and burns for being caught, “It was the second thing I was going to say.”

“Mhm. Then I appreciate that my safety comes second to you.”

“Where did you get the bees?”

“Oh you know. Here and there.”

“Carver.”

Bees are crawling across her throat while her lips spread to show her teeth. Wind makes the loose fabric of her shirt ripple like water.

“My River, come to me.”

Heat coils her stomach into twisting knots that put an unpleasant pressure on the rest of her. My River?

From the corner of her eye, she sees movement that makes her jump. Her father had snuck up on her.

Ah. That’s why.

She presses on her stomach to settle herself. That was an odd reaction to having her name called.

“Are those bees!? Carver, honey, be careful!”

Carver gives River a smug look, “He was worried first.”

“I was also worried!”

“Only second.”

There is always a fluttery feeling whenever Carver and her father share sweet moments.

“Oh—! You come over here.”

Carver gives her hand a little shake to shoo the bees off her and fly back to their new hives. Striding through the tall grass in her clothes, arms exposed to the sun to show off muscle forged through archery, there is a swagger to her. One that is in the sway of her hips but also in the knowing smile when she gets within reach of River. The smile is fractured by confusion when River steps in to grip her arms and hands, turning them over to check them.

“I haven’t been stung.”

“I’m just checking.”

“I raised bees as a girl, I know what I’m doing.”

“I said I was just checking!”

“I appreciate it, my River,” Carver cups her chin with her long fingers and leans down to stamp a blazing kiss to her forehead, “I believe you, you are concerned. It’s very convincing.”

Befuddlement mingles with stinging feeling. Prickling, throat tightening feeling that reminds her of when Carver kissed her on the cheek out of a fit of jealousy. It reminds her of how her head had been in the clouds for hours after the event.

“Why did you—“ She stops herself when she remembers they are not alone. Instead of that, she says in a shaky tone that she hopes sounds amused and affectionate, “Not in front of Papa, honey.”

“No I don’t mind! You two have been so reserved, compared to me when I was a newlywed, I was starting to think you were pretending to be in love.”

Both he and Carver laugh at this but River remains frozen and silent. Guilt she had almost forgotten surges up to stab at her soft spots. Her father misunderstands her silence as reproach so he winks at her, playful in the way she remembers him being before they lost her mother.

“Come on now, it was just a joke. I know you love your wife, you fuss over her the way your mama fussed over me.”

River’s guilt becomes a swift tide inside, rising higher on the threat of drowning her, “I don’t fuss.”

“Don’t fuss? River, you walk by that window least four times a day to check on her.”

The heat of both their stares heavy upon her makes her shrink into herself. She expects a curious tilt to Carver’s exquisite face, something that turns everything a little sharp like the pointed end of a question mark. She also expects inscrutable, awful jests that will be cloaked in a hundred different words but all aim to tease River somehow. What she is given instead are arms that seem restless, that hang by the body unhappily, so they lift to hug around flexing ribs. Heavy breaths and a long, loud sigh. A stare that is piercing, that is trying to make a point that pierced past their built-up immunities.

She gets a gentle, “Do you really do that, River?”

“Of course,” She rushes, refuses to be made a fool by her own self, “You run off all day like some little scamp. Honestly, why bother having children when I have you?”

Without taking her intense stare off River, the witch leans down to pluck at Ghedric’s sleeve and inquires, “Papa Ghedric, is this what you call fussing?”

“This, love, is exactly what a fussy wife is.”

“I quite like it.”

They share a conspiratorial look that is teeth and squinted eyes, sunlight on frail lashes, cheeks pinched upward.

River claps her hands loudly to ruin the moment and shakes a dish towel at the two of them, “Alright, enough. Papa, you need to start the dough now so it is proofed by supper time. And you, we need to talk about your bees. You need to stop dragging wild things home. What do you even need bees for!?”

“Honey, obviously.”

“Papa, shoo. I need to beat my wife and I don’t want witnesses.”

“You shouldn’t make jokes,” Carver catches her wrist to drag her close, whispering by her ear, “Witches cut off the hands of abusers. Then we pickle them and make them eat those hands.”

“You—do not say that so loudly!—you told me witches aren’t violent.”

“And I was being honest. We aren’t. Until we are. Do you really check on me every day?”

“Every day, yes. Because you do things like,” She flings a hand into the air, “Being bees home.”

“River,” Carver sounds so different than her usual rankling-humor self that it startles River into stillness, freezes her entirely when her wife reaches out to grip her wrists, “You’re genuinely worried for me, aren’t you?”

“Well I—why are you looking at me like that? Of course, I am. What if you’re out there,” She gestures towards the woods and feels her throat tighten when she hisses next, “doing magic. I have this dread every day of Killian and the hunters seeing you and then—“

The smell invades her senses. Dust and stagnant air sullied in ancient lace. Heavy upon her for an entire year. She remembers the sound of creaking rope and a crowd cheering for the woman that swings because they have been roused by patriotism to hate anything they are told to. River had not even cried. She had been so broken then so immediately worried about her home that she had not allowed herself to mourn. The mantle had been heavy, carrying the tears inside had been heavier still.

Surprising her, Carver with her long arms and her soft body pull River into a hug.

“What are you doing?”

“Hugging you.”

“I—yes, you are. Why are you doing that though?”

“I’m happy here. I’m very happy here.”

“Oh. That is good to hear,” Fingers are pushing through her hair to pull her head beneath Carver’s chin, “Shall I hug you back?”

“This would feel less awkward if you did.”

She reaches around her wife’s strong back to hold her, loosely at first but the longer they stand under the hot sun, the firmer she holds her.

“Honey is a very commonly used magical component. It’s good for a lot of things.”

River puffs out a sigh against her wife’s collarbone, “You got bees to get honey for magic? Carver, I told you to be careful.”

“You don’t sleep with me on the floor often. I know you aren’t obligated to but I prefer when you do. But you don’t because some days, after you’ve worked, you’re in too much pain to get down. I’ve been growing some herbs and I’ve killed enough rabbits and now I have honey. I can make you tinctures that help with chronic pain.”

River pulls away quickly. It is a reflexive thing to the intensity of feeling that consumes her. Like a swell of fire that is fed by a great burst of air. She is looking for for a reason in the face, in the body, in the woman that stands placidly and pleasantly under the sun.

“You got these bees for me?”

“Yes.”

“That’s ridiculous. Why would you do that?”

“Because you are my wife and as you often like to point out for yourself, that means I have certain duties. Taking care of your needs being one. Don’t get the big, frightened eyes. No one will find out. I’ve been using magic since I came up from the caves and you never once noticed. Unless I told you.”

She grips Carver’s arms, warm from summer and dewy with sweat, “But I asked you to be here. I put you in this position. You don’t have to—Carver, don’t put yourself at risk for this.”

“You see? That’s how I know we’ve come a long way. When I first came up here, you would have grown pale as a sheet and looked ready to vomit if I told you I was going to do magic on you. And you’d probably have threatened to kill me. Now you’ve got watery eyes and a tremble in your lip, and you look like a lost lamb.”

“Carver, don’t tease me.”

“I know, you aren’t used to anyone taking care of you. Well, tough. We’re married and I like you. You have done more than enough to take care of me, now it’s my turn,” Carver pats her on the shoulders to comfort her and winks, “We can sell jars as an excuse. Your father can use this instead of sending you to buy a crate in Newin. And I get to keep bees. It all works out.”

River swallows against the lump in her throat, glancing over at the newly built hives, “Bees really are very dangerous.”

“They won’t sting me. I’m a witch. I asked them to come here. I told them they would be safe from animals here so long as they were willing to share honey. The queens agreed.”

“You…made a bargain? With bees? Witches can do that?”

“What? You thought we only charmed humans with our devilry and our bargains? Think again,” Carver pokes her in the ribs and laughs when River jumps, laughs damningly close to River’s cheek, “No one is safe from me and my wickedness.”

 

After one of her routine, monthly trips to Newin Carver returns with a bundle of brown paper packages tucked under an arm. Also with a new shawl that boasts prominent bead work along the hem, catching light and shining an array of orange and green and yellow colors across the floor.

River looks up from her needlework to glance at the collection of new treasures then goes back to her embroidery.

“How was your trip?”

“Marvelous. Ghedric and I purchased some imported fruits from the market. There was a mango.”

“What is a mango?”

“They grow in the Vale. Anyway, I purchased more books.”

She smiles down at the fabric, tapping her thimble to her finger, “Of course you did.”

“I purchased one for you.”

River pauses her work. It will be a beautiful summer dress for Carver to stretch her long legs in when the heat becomes even more unbearable. Hot but also humid, ceaselessly pressings upon them. White and green with leaves embroidered by each button. Buttons bartered for from the master carver for a meat pie, a load of bread, and a kiss on the cheek. Each is carved to be a convex heart that she sews down with red thread. All of it set down carefully so as to avoid knocking over her tea cup and staining the fabric.

The ancient chair she refuses to give up on creaks between her when she twists in it to pin her wife to the floor with a stare alone. Her wife throws off her new, pretty shawl to hang it upon the pegs of their coat rack. Each dog comes trialing in after being issued a short whistle, all in line, to their beds by the fire.

“Carver.”

“I’m not ignoring you.”

“You also are not answering for yourself.”

Each parcel is set upon the bed near the trunk that is opened for Carver to inspect. Long ago, the old steamer trunk had been overtaken by her wife as a safe storage place for her books. Cherished, beloved novels varying in age and languages and genre that all have spent many hours in Carver’s hands. One parcel is not ripped open but lovingly unwrapped. A nail slides under the tape to break it then peel away the paper corner by corner. One massive volume with a leather binding and a fire-edge painting of a cottage by the river side on the fat stack of pages.

“Carver.”

“What is it?”

She drapes an arm over the back of the chair and sets her chin upon her hand, “Don’t be difficult. Or nervous. Just explain yourself.”

Another book is revealed. This a slim one with a green covered that has a red foil rose stamped into it. Carver traces it with her finger, lips pursed.

“How would you guess me nervous, bride mine?”

“You go stiff and broody when you’re nervous. It makes you insufferable and your sense of humor is worse than usual.”

“Wow. What eyes you have. Those lessons your mama and the other mamas taught you have paid off.”

She rolls her eyes.

“Carver, I cannot read.”

“Yes, that is why I bought you a book. Two books in fact,” Rapidly now, with less care, she unwraps the smaller of the two parcels revealing similar looking books about the size of her palm, “One to read at a beginner's level and one to practice letters in. Can you write?”

“Only my name,” The trunk of books is left open by the woman that glides across the floor to stand by her chair, “You are indicating something that I don’t want to grasp.”

Both books at stacked upon one another to be presented as a single gift. Their fingers overlap when River takes them.

“I,” Carver stops to clear her throat daintily then says again with a pristine diction that she feels awed by, “I would like to teach you to read. And write, of course, the two are needed to make sense of one another. Or, rather, it helps. Keeping a business would be simpler for you. Us, since I am your wife and it will be my duty someday too. True I could keep books for you but—“

“Are you ashamed of me?”

Carver takes pause here. To knock the woman off her footing, even by accident, is an incredible victory. Nothing ever is missed by those sharp eyes that are wells for knowledge to absorb and settle deep. Kept and never forgotten. Gossip, while a fun thing for her, is a tool for Carver. It had taken her time to realize that. Only after she had cowed one of the hunters with a simple exchanging of words that made him pale and run off did she recognize the power of words. At least, the way Carver can shape them into a power. For this reason, Carver is always ahead of topics in conversation and gives River a smug look when they press into a new one that Carver already knew.

This is a total surprise for her. Likely due to the fact that River herself is surprised by the gift that does not feel like a gift at the moment.

“Pardon? Did you say embarrassed, or did I mishear?”

“You did not. Why have you done this if you did not feel some sort of shame? It’s…fine. I’m not bothered. You come from royalty, a different world than mine entirely. It must be a very…different thing to you. A woman like me. It would be difficult to be offended when I can empathize.”

“River, I do not—bugger it. You’ve gotten me. I’m not got often,” She rubs her forehead then stops to pry her travel gloves off her hands and throw them toward their bed, “Can I finish your tea?”

“I haven’t a care. Do you want me to make more?”

“Don’t bother. This will do,” Carver plucks her cup between her fingers, leaning back against River’s desk just beside her chair. The skirt of her dress is threaded through a brass skirt hike on her belt exposing the leather of her travel boots. Boots that nudge against her own foot by her chair.

Percy whines and gets a gentle shushing from them both, breaking the silence that hangs between them. A tense look is shared that makes them both feel silly enough to laugh.

“I’m sorry, I meant to broach this differently. With more grace.”

“No grace needed,” She lifts her foot onto the seat of the chair, leaning around it and laying her cheek on her knee, “I’m not a Lady or anything of the kind.”

“To me you are.”

River plucks a scrap of fabric from the desk to throw at her wife, “You’re a horrible flirt.”

“It’s fun, River. Join me in this place. You won’t regret it.”

“I’ll consider it. Now, the books?”

“Yes,” They both look over to the pair of them on the desk, “It wasn’t intended to be an insult. And I’m not ashamed of you. Far from it.”

“Then why, Carver?”

“I know that it bothers you. A great deal. And I see your envy when you come to our room after your workday has finished and you catch me crying over poetry or enthralled in a novel. I know you won’t say it and you will never waste your precious time on yourself. Spending even an hour on lessons would riddle you with guilt. You’d say ‘Grandmother Lissy needs me to fold her laundry. She’s alone now, her last grandchild married off and left. She needs the help, Carver.’ And you’d say ‘Papa needs me to do some things more than most fathers need of a daughter. I have to help. It’s only right. I’ll chop wood and skin the rabbits you brought home and oh, of course there is the roof.’ You think your time is only good for giving away. But you want to have hobbies. You want to read. It upsets you to be handicapped in this way.”

River shifts her eyes away and that is all she offers her wife for the astute observation. Even agreeing to the notes would bring her burning embarrassment.

“I can teach you.”

“You don’t need to. I’ve gone this long without needing to know how. I speak just fine, don’t I?”

“You do. You’re very intelligent, you’ve learned a lot from the cultural wisdom handed down to you. This isn’t about intellectual scholarship. This is about you feeling left out and lesser than your peers. Than me. It makes you uneasy.”

Again, River subdues herself into a quiet ball in her chair.

“Do you want to learn?”

She swallows back her eagerness and shrugs.

“Then I’ll teach you.”

“How? A teacher and whatever you were are vastly different.”

“Not really. People are people. We’ll start with the alphabet. Then, once you’ve mastered the bronze tongue, we can move on to the lilting.”

“Now hold on—“

“You’ll be an excellent pupil. I know it. You’re very clever. Alarmingly so, at times.”

“I don’t have time.”

“We will make time. We will have tea and we will flirt—divines willing—and you will learn.”

“I’m busy with work.”

“As I said. We will make time. Aren’t you excited?”

River looks up at her tall wife looming miles above her, beautiful in travel clothes that are plain when not worn by her. Beaming with pride and holding her hands folded over her waist. Red lines lash across a hand that beguiles her.

“I am.”

“Perfect. I haven’t made a fool of myself. I was worried, you know. Especially when you reacted the way you did. That I did not plan for.”

“I didn’t plan for any of this.”

“And how could you,” Carver tips the tea cup back to swallow the last of it and sets it aside, “Will you sleep with me tonight?”

“Could we try the bed tonight?”

“I suppose.”

“Then yes.”

 

When the customers are slow to arrive or there is far less demand of her, they convene. River is self conscious about her penmanship, but Carver assures her that does not matter. The hand that holds her to correct the pen’s course always seeds little embers under her skin and she convinces herself it is from embarrassment. She knows better but the lie comforts her. Between getting mugs of lager or ale and plates of food, she stops behind the bar to visit her wife. They go over lines in the first chapter of the book together. She struggles to focus because of how often she looks up to ensure no one is watching or that she is being summoned for drinks. During lunches or before bed. Any time they can find, Carver settles down with her and the books and they study.

The time she spends with her wife is more refreshing than she anticipates. Learning to read is a great treasure she will not admit, even to her teacher, the joy of receiving. Carver is a patient teacher with an ample surplus of wisdom she is generous with. That is not the unexpected part of her lessons. What surprises her is how much she comes to enjoy the time near Carver. Listening to her voice, sharing meals or tea, laughing and even occasionally flirting. Carver is delightful. Gentler than her crude imaginings of a witch, wiser and far more amusing too.

 

“What’s his name?”

Water falls from hair that is wrung between hands, back down into the cool, clear river.

“Junji. Very handsome.”

On the bank, with her legs hanging into the water, Carver is reclined on soft sand and grass, “If you’re saying that, he must be.”

“I suppose. Anyway, Kathrine is enamored with him, but the thing is? She’s engaged.”

Carver splays her fingers over her lips to conceal her gasp, “To whom!?”

“His father.” Water sloshes from legs pushing against the current, felt under the surface but not seen above that appears glassy and still save the ripples she has made. Drops rain from her fingers, fed from the trails that trickle down her arms. Above her the sun is bright and vicious but stymied by the canopy of trees that shade them. Just in this stretch of the river that is higher up in the mountains, farther away from the village than most people are willing to walk.

“His father! How old was he?” Carver twists the green off a strawberry before taking the top off with her teeth, chewing quietly behind her hand. More sit in the small basket by her hip. Collected with with berries that shine black and red, plucked off briar bushes that line the path up this way. All from River’s secret patch.

“Junji? He was her age.”

“Her age! Then how old was the father?”

“Twice her age,” She reaches the place on the river bed where it dips down suddenly and eases herself in deep, sinking down into the cool depths up to her neck, “It was all a mess from the start. I heard her mother was furious with Katherine’s father for arranging the marriage. But her father sells lumber and Junji’s father is or was a prolific merchant. He trades in gems, worked with the best jewelers.”

Rich indigo juice forms a little trickle over Carver’s lower lip after she bites into one of the dark berries. Pink shows too when her tongue darts out to lick it away then the points of the fingers also stained dark from the sticky sweet blood of the berries.

River watches it with a curious fire, only for the moment she is unnoticed, then shifts focus because orange eyes alight upon her.

“What happened?”

“Well,” She grins slow, the smile of someone with something wriggling between their teeth, “Katherine got pregnant.”

Carver’s eyes widen and she leans forward over her knees, “Before or after her marriage to the father?”

“After.”

Carver’s gasp is one of indulgent delight, “After!? Was it…?”

“Oh yes. At least that’s what I’ve heard.”

“What did they do?”

“Well—and this is the best part—she had the child and convinced her husband that it was his. Why else would he doubt?”

“His own grandson!? He thought it was his son? When did this happen?”

“Two? Three years back? On the other side of the lake but Katherine was from here.”

Carver scoots a little further into the water so that her knees are beneath now, soaking the hemline of her shirt. Water turns the yellow material to a duller shade, miserable compared to the bright depths of her eyes. Little chickens and bees have been embroidered into the skirt by River’s own hand matching the embroidery on the shoulders of the white blouse she wears. Ferns and bees and birds with bright pops of flower all across the shoulders until they dispense underneath the collar. Today, relaxed in this place, the collar is unbuttoned enough to expose some of the skin on her chest. After surviving the harsher months of newness in this particularly long summer, welcomed into the fold of their small but doting family, Carver has come back to life. Gained enough weight to appear more than hollow bones tented under sallow, pale skin. Color has taken residence again in her, making it no longer possible to see the veins in her wrists and neck. Nor around eyes that were sunken in, lips chapped and cracking. Life is a beautiful, graceful look upon her high cheekbones and sharp eyebrows.

Vibrant, she plasters her palm over her mouth to conceal her smile and asks muffled, “Did he never find out?”

She cups water in her hands to lift it over her head, flattening her hair that runs thick with the chilling liquid. Little prickles of coolness scatter across her skin.

“That depends on who you ask. Mary Gladys across the lake claims he found them in bed together and killed himself to save his name. Mary Hannah from our side of the lake says that he died in an accident and by that, I mean they killed him. To get him out of the picture. As of now, they’ve had a second child. Poor widowed Katherine married him a few months after her husband died.”

“That’s simply delicious,” Carver bunches her skirt up so less of it gets wet, tucking it into her belt, when she sinks in just a bit deeper into the water, now on her feet, wading out until it comes up to mid thigh, “What do you think happened?”

“Don’t slip.”

“It’ll be alright if I do.”

She swims back to the shallow side to approach, lifting out her arms for Carver to grip for leverage. A look is the thanks given alongside fingers that curl around her forearms and squeeze. 

“River.”

“I think it was planned from the start. Katherine used to teach at the schoolhouse before, you know. They were asking her to come teach at the college in Newin but she kept refusing. Five times. They sent men on those snow-colored horses with bridals that had tassels and one carried a flag on a pole. And she still said no. Because, I think, she wanted a certain handsome man to come across the river and propose. She didn’t want it to be the way it is for women under the proposal law—“

“Proposal law?”

“We—sorry, Carver, I keep forgetting. You must think me rude.”

“Not you, Little River. I would like to see you rude, but I don’t think you know how to be. I’ll teach you.”

“Mm,” She hums, swaying in the water with her wife’s hands around her biceps, “Fifty or sixty? Some years ago, the crown started noticing after conferring with local lords and ladies and physicians that both in cities and in rural towns we were having a very low percentage of children. Evidently, many mothers were dying during childbirth.”

Carver smacks her lips together and rolls her eyes a bit, “Imagine that. Killed off a large percent of the world’s witches and suddenly all your women can’t survive a first born.”

“And so—sorry, what was that? What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Or something. Magic is knowledge and the power to implement that. It is also remembering and keeping the memory in the family, generation to generation. Here we go!”

River’s stomach swoops into her chest then plummets to her feet when she is, suddenly, gripped by the fingers to be spun around. The arch of her foot steps on a slimy rock under the water, under a layer of sediment, which nearly sends her down into the water.

“Carver! What are you doing!?”

“Dancing. And,” A hand curls around her hip to bring her back in, turning her effortlessly so they are facing one another once more, “Here we are. Step, step, turn.”

“Ouch, rock—Carver! What are we doing? I thought were were discussing—“

“Gossiping, we were gossiping. No need to pretend we weren’t. Another step and let’s spin again.”

Her heel catches on the same rock, exposed now from her earlier slip. She careens backward, expecting to hit the water and sink beneath the surface into the cool below. Instead, hands grip her waist to keep her up and turn her around into another prancing step that requires them to step high so they can fight the water.

“Hm.” Carver hums, not quite disapproving but making a displeased note of something.

“Carver!”

“I just wanted to see if you could dance.”

“I could have told you—“

“You can’t.”

“Yes I can! I just can’t do those courtly types of dances. And not in a river.”

“But you are my River, so it seems fitting to dance here.”

She feels a little woozy from how quickly that makes her blood rush to her head.

Carver’s smirk is slick and hot, knowing intimately why River dodged her obvious flirtation. Though River herself wonders what emboldened her wife. Some of the women she knows tend to a friendliness amongst one another that is positively salacious. If a man spoke the way some women do with their friends, in polite company, it would cause such a scandal she knows men would be fighting one another over a perceived slight of honor. Perhaps, now that they have gotten closer, Carver is revealing herself to be one of those types of women.

Then again, that may not be true. Carver watches her at times with such a fever that the heat in it makes her feel ill. Chilled and sweating, burning beneath the attention. More and more, Carver slips in treacherous silken things that she wants to scorn her wife for. She wants to scorn her because that is what she has been told ladies of a certain fashion do and it is what her own mother would scold her father for. When he would get into certain moods that made her blush, even as a long-married woman, and accuse him of being a rowdy flirt. River has inherited this honor, as a married woman and matriarch of the family. However she finds she does not want to discourage her wife of this new, surprising behavior. She is discovering, with the gift of time afforded to them now and a closeness growing nearer every day, she likes this.

Trying to chastise her wife for the behavior had proved useless the single time she tried, anyway. River had admonished her just outside the bakery doors after Carver had taken her hand and tutted over how the baker’s hand had lingers on her fingers when her parcel was handed over the counter. She had said, ‘a hand such as yours in another’s is a thing to desire. I understand his lapse in sanity, to hold it in front of my eyes. Now that I’ve gotten it in mine, my.’ The rest had turned to a choked laugh because River had pinched the cartilage of her ear and sternly warned her off that talk. Carver had merely stated that if River gets to flirt with customers, then she should be allowed the opportunity to flirt with River too.

It has created a bad habit. One she wants to abstain from because it would be the right thing to do. At least, that is what lessons from grandmothers and aunts have told her is the right thing to do. Her own mother was far laxer about the ideas of romance to which she had given her child a mischievous look each time she gave poor advice and said, ‘don’t listen to me.’ River has listened to her. The heart might have been inherited and along with it came a host of improper attitudes. Instead of hissing at her wife and compelling her through constant care to behave better, she smiles. Instead of putting an end to the flirting, she leans into it.  Flirting is fun. It is exceptionally more so when she realizes she might be very good at it and Carver always looks at her with the same delight she does when they gossip.

It has become an awful habit.

“Do you wish to dance with your River, or this river?”

Carver makes it easy to give in to temptation. Easy for the way her body lifts upon an unseen wind and she looks like she has been given one of Ghedric’s honey-soaked treats.

“This is not fun for you?”

“Slipping and bashing my head on rocks is not fun, no. I feel a bruise developing on the soft part of my foot. Even when you are giving me one of your sweetest looks, just like that one, I would rather not dance in a river.”

The sweet look twists into something mischievous, growing when she nudges River forward by the loose grasp on her hips.

“Let’s sit down on the shore then.”

River allows herself to be herded though suspicion bubbles in her belly, more so when Carver insists she sits first.

“No,” She is stopped from sitting beside her wife, half bent down, water running through her hair and spiraling down her arms, “You can lay your head in my lap.”

“Hm, should have guessed,” She flicks the woman’s earlobe before she moves into a prone position on her back and gently rests her head on her wife’s thigh, “A witch and her schemes. It’s always one thing means another with you.”

“Do you really think I would sweep you into a random dance in a river just to make you bruise your feet so you’d come lay your head in my lap? Within perfect reach to let me touch your hair? Sounds simply dubious.”

“Nefarious,” She crosses her legs in a position that leaves one foot dipped into the water, sand cushioning the heel, “Evil witch.”

“You think so poorly of me still. Woe to me. Would you mind if I tended to your hair?”

“Tended?” She asks skeptically, her own smile budding.

Carver gives her a shrug just before she reaches down to move the wet clumps of her hair stuck to her face and neck.

“Anyway, you were explaining the proposal law.”

“Longer story short, there used to be these parties. Newin hosted one but where were a few around the world. Everyone of marrying age or, really, an age where they could conceive would attend to find an immediate spouse. There wasn’t really a courting ritual or any official engagements that lasted an appropriate time before the union. People met, dined, danced, and then at the end of the day would choose someone. An officiant would marry them there. No ceremony, just a legal document. These lasted about three days. Four parties a year I believe? But I think that’s why. Because Katherine was mandated to attend the gathering and she was met with the father waiting there with the jeweler and it was an immediate marriage. Her father handed her the half-signed contract in the same few hours after she got there. Didn’t even get to dance, poor thing.”

Carver’s fingertips are tracing the edge of her hairline, occasionally dipping down to comb through her wet hair, “Why, I cannot fathom why they abolished that little soirée.”

“They didn’t abolish it for the reason you’re thinking.”

“No? Not because it proved problematic to treat it like a pig auction for the most eligible womb?”

A splash alerts her to the the massive grey dog—Antiveli, named by Carver—jumping into the water to chase a fish. Following his brother pacing on the shore is the muscled brown and tan dog—Rolly, named by River—watching the hunt as it occurs. Each time Antiveli gets close, Rolly snaps his jaws in sympathy almost like he is instructing the larger dog. Percy is content to pant on the shore, speckled tongue hanging over his teeth.

“No. It was because too many high-born sons and daughters were marrying peasants. The Prince—now King—married his foreign wife who was some sort of stage girl from afar. They decided that was going to be the last time.”

Politely, Carver hides her laugh behind her hand even though she does not need to while they are alone. A habit from long ago.

“Yes, I imagine that ruffled a lot of royal feathers,” Carver leans back on her hands, legs stretched out in front of her and turns her face up toward the sun, “River, since we have time, let’s play my game again.”

“Which one?”

“The one where I ask you questions to get to know you better.”

“Haven’t you gotten tired of this game? We do it nearly every night.”

“Is there still things to learn?”

She kicks a bit of water on Percy to cool him off, staring at the underside of her wife’s pointy chin, “Fine then. Ask.”

“Are you happy?”

 She laughs only because it seems like a joke but then Carver does not join the chorus. She turns her head back down, away from the sun, to issue an inquisitive raising of a brow. Her smile withers and her eyes widen.

“Why are you asking me that?”

To this, her wife shrugs and twirls a strand of River’s hair around her finger, “It occurred to me, through getting to know you, that you have probably never been asked that question.”

Weightlessness consumes her.

“No, I suppose not. Are you asking in regard to our marriage?”

“No. I know you’re happy with me. Why else would you invite me to your river and share your secret fruit with me?”

“I—“

“Well that is not true,” Carver interrupts with a thoughtful expression, “You are horribly self-sacrificing. You married me for your father’s happiness and forsook any potential future where you married for love. You would do something like that to make me happy.”

“I am happy in our marriage. It is not what I expected and that has been a pleasant surprise. I expected to spend my life looking over my shoulder until you decided to leave. I was not expecting for us to become friends.”

They both watch the dogs abandon the fish to start chasing each other and fight over a stick found wedged in the crack of a massive boulder. Fingertips touch the skin of her throat like rain.

“Neither was I. I expected your marriage proposal to be a trap or a dishonesty. You would kill me or abuse me and I would be helpless to get away. In fact, during the ceremony when your chief—“

“Our chief. You live here and I refuse to take all of his name as my total responsibility.”

Carver’s laugh is a breeze that carries the coolness from the top of the river, “Our chief. When he made his interest in me blatant, I was overcome with this jarring fear that you brought me out of that hole to be an offering to him.”

“An—an offering!?”

“How was I to know what sort of person you were,” Red lines cross the fingers and hand that seems tempted to hold her face but never does, just shies close then goes back into her hair, “You were so kind and so honest with me. But I wasn’t going to be charmed by your pleasant voice and your immaculate beauty—“

This time Carver stops speaking because River begins to laugh uproariously. Hard enough that she becomes destitute for breath after expelling her wealth from the loud, unending roll of laughter.

“My River, are you laughing at me?”

“You being charmed by my—what did you say?”

“The truth.”

“Oh, very good. Immaculate beauty,” She reaches up to rub the tears collecting on her lashes with the heel of her palm, hiccuping errant laughter starved for air, “Yes, me the little comely tavern wench, I’m going to charm you with my beauty. You the witch-queen.”

“Each night, I see you touch men on their arms and compliment them into buying round after round until they are drunk enough to profess undying love. To you.”

“That is for work. You told me you did not mind, as long as I—“

Carver taps her on the tip of her nose, “Work, yes. A smile for a copper and all that. You just understand, right, that your beauty is very powerful.”

“Men in their cups is vastly different.”

“Oh, I’m not better than them,” Carver’s eyes are the sunset itself, burning and dark and rich, “Now answer my question, Little River.”

“I did. I’m happy with you. Surprised but delightfully so. I haven’t had a friend I connected with so quickly and so deeply. It’s been wonderful.”

“This gladdens my heart. But I’m asking if you’re happy.”

River pauses there, taken by surprise again, and tries to find the answer.

“I—of course I’m happy. Well. I…may not be that happy,” She kicks her foot through the water, pondering the depths of her own grief that never had an outlet and the endless work and caring about everyone but herself, “It can be difficult. Carrying everything. I don’t ever really have time to stop and father, he keeps fretting over me. Telling me he is going to die and ‘this form needs filed, sweet daughter’ and ‘don’t let that banker stuff you the wrong way’. Whatever that means. I hate hearing it. I hate thinking about it. He thinks it’s comforting me, the idea that he is leaving everything to me and that I won’t be destitute. But he would nag me so about settling down and I misunderstood him for so long. Until I realized quite suddenly that it was a tremendous fear of his, leaving me with everything but leaving me. Alone. I don’t have siblings nor cousins whom I’m aquatinted with and most my aunts have died now. It was a hard road my parents took to be together. You know him now, not like when I was snot nosed and terrified of you and I proposed. You see it too, don’t you?”

“Oh yes. Even the stiff elites in Newin know, I’m sure of it. And now he worries about me just the same. He tried giving me some of your mother’s jewelry, just the stuff he did not give you. He mourned that it was not worth more and he made a little joke that it was good I was not high born, or it would have embarrassed him into an early grave. I was grateful for our ruse then. He fretted over leaving us alone, with no children to help us as we age. He begged me to seek the adoption center in Newin, for this reason. He worried about your pains worsening with age and how hard you work, and he lamented that I am a good wife to you, but I have limits too. I cannot care for you in old age when I will be old too. He never seems to stop worrying. He has a way of worrying so intensely that it becomes your worry too.”

“Yes! That’s exactly it! Thank you. That is exactly it. He worried constantly and now all I want to do is not think about my father passing. Yet I am unable. All I can do is fret over assuaging as many of his worries as I can before he is gone from me. You have been—sorry, a moment. Did you say he’s been begging you to visit an orphanage?”

“He wants grandchildren. Less for the idea though he is keen about the idea of little ones tying ribbons in his beard and around the spokes in his wheels. Mucking up our lives in the blessed way little ones do. His intention is more that he would be comforted to know we will be cared for the way you and now I care for him at his age. Which, I might say, he is not quite on death’s door. I do not understand why he acts as if he must get his affairs in order like he is dying tomorrow.”

River expels an annoyed breath and heaves herself out of her wife’s lap so that she can plant both feet in the river. Silt and sand push up between her toes, disturbing a local newt that darts away from the weeds it had been hiding in. Glumly, she hugs her knees and sets her chin upon them.

“Now you understand me better.”

“Certainly, I’ve come to understand what drives a woman to the extreme you took with me. After you died in front of me then raced off, I know better now how that must have pushed you into this. The panic of it all. You want for nothing except your father’s safety and joy,” Carver is a warm presence beside her, their shoulders brushing when she comes to set her feet in the river beside her own, “It’s endearing.”

River glances over quickly then back to the mirk she created under the cool blue water, “He’s been doing it for years.”

“Why? Has he an illness I’m not aware of? I know you do not like to discuss it openly but I am a powerful witch, my River. There is much I can cure and even more I can treat. Like I do with you, to help with your pains. Make your days bearable. I might not be able to save him but I could extend his life with proper medications.”

“No, it isn’t that. It was my mother. Losing her broke him in a fundamental way. Down past the meat and the blood that makes him tangible. It’s somewhere in the untouchable part of a man. He spoke of his passing to me while I still wore the mantle for my mother. It’s always been a ghost in my home, his death and his affairs and me. I’m his everything. He isn’t scared to die and that terrifies me. Because he speaks of it so offhandedly like it will relieve me of a burden. I think it’s part of his grief that will never heal, focusing on me and my life after he is gone. Before he knew about my attractions in the fairer sex, he would speak of a husband near constantly. As far back as when I was still but a girl, only months after losing mother. A husband to secure my safety, my happiness, my loneliness. You know, twice I considered marrying a man. Just to take away that frenzy in him, to give him peace of mind and escape from his grief. But marriage is—I’m not that kind of liar, Carver.”

“I know that. You made it clear with me. We married under duress, I would argue. Yet you made it very clear that you would honor your vow because it meant a great deal to you. I am your one shot at marriage, you will never have another and we are not wed for love. Nor are you in love. Yet you swear loyalty to me until the day you die because you made me a promise. You give me a healthy allowance and do not resent me for it. You make me clothes and you bring me my meals if I fail to come collect them myself. You do not abuse me or demand affections. You are kind and gentle. I am your wife and you may not love me but you do not need to in order to care for me as a spouse should. I understand, River. You intended to make our marriage a very real one the moment you proposed, I’ve seen it and I do not doubt it. I know,” Carver leans down to cup a bit of water in hand and flicks it at her, hoping to lift her mood and succeeds, “Which men? I’d like to know so I can be appropriately jealous.”

“Never you mind,” She gazes forward feeling the weight of this conversation grow heavier upon her the longer the words ring in her ear, “Do you suppose I’m a terrible daughter?”

“Absolutely not. Why would you ask me such a thing?”

“Because I’m lying to him. He feels such relief and joy over our marriage but it’s a lie. And that is cruel of me. I can hardly forgive myself when I think on it so I try not to but…here we are.”

“River, it isn’t a lie. Do not look at me so morose and miserable. It isn’t a lie. I just told you, didn’t I? I am your wife, and you treat me as such. We are friends too, aren’t we? Don’t you thrill for the times when you and I can sit down for our reading lessons? When we can share looks and gossip behind the bar? We have inside jokes now. And you take our commitment very seriously, as do I. We are going to spend our lives together and it will not be a sham. It will never be a lie; we care for each other too much for that. We will have a happy life here, at your river where you were born and with our dogs. In our merry little inn in the shadow of a hill by a lake. We may even get chickens someday.”

River kicks water on her wife’s shins, sharing her joy when a radiant smile is turned upon her, “You hate our name.”

“I hate our bronze tongue name. I adore our name in the lilting. And I adore chickens.”

“Dogs, bees, chickens. What’s next?”

“Never you mind,” The words are sent back at her with a rakish grin then an arm is extended out, “Come here.”

Without hesitation she slips her arm into Carver’s and leans over to lay her head upon her wife’s shoulder.

“I hadn’t thought about it like that. It was comforting to hear, thank you,” She drapes her hand over Carver’s forearm, watching their dogs chase one another on the bank of the river, “We will have a nice life together. And you’re still content here?”

Carver wheels around to fix a look upon her that reminds her of all the exasperated mothers whom chase their children round the village.

“Am I content here? River, you have given me everything. A father who dotes on me. A roof. Stability and security. And you are exactly what my mothers warned me I would never find in a marriage of convenience. Certainly not with my first. You are my very dear friend. After spending a hundred years and more down in a cave, tortured by existing, this new life as your wife is something I will die to protect and keep.”

Rolly splashes his way across the river to drop a stick by their feet, tail wagging behind him. Carver snags it to toss it down stream for him. All three dogs race after it, making the woman laugh. The scene impacts River deeply, lodging the sentiment under bone to secure it there. This marriage is everything she never expected to have. There is not love here, in the romantic sense, but River does love this woman in a profound way. She gets excited to see Carver again when she overhears things at the card tournaments she is invited to once a month. Watching her stroll down the street with their dogs and a host of the villages children flocking to her so they can pet floppy ears and scratch rumps always makes her heart throb. This witch who once terrified her is a precious creature softer than the sand under her feet. A woman with the capacity to care so widely she gives a little love to everyone she meets. Now River has a partner that everyone thinks of as a piece of her, and she agrees with them.

She too would die to defend this.

“My turn.”

“Ask away.”

“Tell me of your first marriage.”

Carver makes a loud, displeased note and says sardonically, “I’d hate to make you jealous.”

River answers the note with a soft song of her own and squeezes her wife’s arm, “You don’t have to tell me.”

“I don’t mind. Just give me a moment.”

In that moment taken, they sit quietly by the water listening to the splashing and barking. Fish swim upstream to escape the terrors down below, silver and blue streaks beneath glittering water.

“It was to stave off a war we ended up having anyway. Which I suppose is my fault,” She wedges her finger into the earth to push out a half buried rock and throws it into the water just to make a splash, “I probably should not have killed him.”

‘I got the last laugh in the end’ she has said through a haze of tears brought on by laughter. Snow chill sweeps through her, freezing her tender insides.

“You…started the war?”

Carver throws another rock, “Yes.”

“But,” She swallows, eyes wide from this revelation that Carver is unbothered to reveal, “The war started because a witch killed our King.”

“Yes. These are the same events. I killed my husband, the King.”

She sits in her own disbelief until Carver reaches over to push her mouth shut.

“I—you—I married the Queen!?”

“You already knew this.”

“No! You said you were a queen, not the Queen!”

“Oh,” To befuddle her more, Carver waves a dismissive hand through the air, “Trivial to decide a difference. I was a queen among witches and then I became a queen of this kingdom. Queen is a Queen.”

“I—yes, I suppose. If you look at it like that,” She chews into the blunt tip of her thumbnail, awash with shame and anxiety, “You must think your allowance paltry compared to the sum of a King.”

“I was living on a cave floor, River.”

“Well yes but this is such a—you wear clothes made of cheap fabric. Some of which I buy on sale because it used to be drapes and—this is so plebeian. You were the Queen. And you—why did you do it, Carver? It’s not like you. That kind of violence.”

“My, look how far we’ve come indeed.”

“Carver.”

“I married him when I was fifteen. By the time I was eighteen, I was a mother of three.”

River is blown back by another wave of profound shock that humbles her and flays her. She clenches her wife’s arm and turns slowly back to watch the water. A playful prod to her thigh from long fingers does not drag her wide eyes away from the river.

“Nothing to say?”

“That is…very close in age.”

Carver snorts out a laugh, “He was not a terrible husband. That’s a lie, he was. Just not at first and that is primarily because he was handsome. I married him so he would not invade the Vale to take vengeance on the number of nobles we had killed. It’s a longer story I don’t want to explain right now but we are very strict about the laws of a marriage. We protect anyone that needs us and women, of lesser and noble birth, would flee to us. We tried their husbands according to our law and most did not survive the punishment. The King was twenty, at the time, but already incredibly desperate for heirs. I could assure him that I could provide them, healthy and without issue. So we parlayed. My husband was winsome and beguiling as he was vulgar and sex crazed. You lot, you drive yourselves mad with your chaste culture. Making yourself wait until marriage just to kiss. He was—“

“I imagine. No need to explain.”

“Mm. I gave him two sons and a daughter. Things were…fine. After our daughter, I cut him off and he became a rowdy, whining prat. Kings don’t like being told no. He fucked off to any brothel that would have him and that suited me fine. I raised my children and things were pleasant enough. Until our foolish son stepped on a snake while hunting and died from the poison. His heir gone, he became erratic and that was made worse by his brothers and aunts and distant relatives suddenly trying to use the weakness. To secure the throne. We had a small squabble, here and there. Little fires put out with battles. Our second son was killed by his aunt’s son in battle, some years later, and things changed drastically. My little one, he never should have gone. He was just a boy. Yajkon—my husband—became so singularly focused on continuing his line that it made him a little mad. I never bothered with it much, I let him do as he pleased and tended to my daughter. I would have let it go on for however long it needed to if he hadn’t turned his sights on her.”

To think, River had once pitied Carver for being so young and trapped inside that prison. A mother of three and the queen of her nation, the witch that started the war. That is who she married.

Carver continues in a thin voice, weakened by ancient grief, “My Emmera was just a little girl. A baby still in my eyes. My husband was feverish about seeing a male heir in his lifetime with his family name attached to it. When I learned that he had ordered one of his men to check my daughter daily for her first blood, I became enraged. There are things in the witch kingdom that are illegal that your people do not bat an eye to. Abuse is a scandal but not punished like it is in my kingdom. Being a poor father is—children are sacred. I gave him a rare gift in that I let him survive what he put her through. I gave him a chance. I told him that if he ever put my daughter into a position of discomfort again, I would kill him.”

“I assume he did not listen.”

“She was only eleven when he told me that he had arranged her marriage to her own uncle. If he had been quicker and changed the laws, like I saw him attempting to do, he would have married her to one of his bastard sons. They couldn’t legally have his name, you see, and his counsel said it would take years to overthrow that law if ever he could. I do think he would have attempted to marry our daughter himself except for the fact that it would require getting me out of the way, as his legal wife, and that would not be easy. I was already a grieving mother and then he tried explaining why he wanted to whore out my daughter for his pride. I’ll save you the filthy details but it was awful. So I killed him. I killed him and it started war. Ask me if I regret it.”

River has never once heard this story. Victors always get to dictate how history is recorded but even still, she had not heard any of this. Not even the parts of the deaths of both princes though she had been told stories of the civil disputes that had the noble houses warring for a short stent. All she had been told was how cruel the witches had been. Ruthless, vicious murderers that tore apart the royal family so they could seize power.

“Your daughter became Queen though. She continued the line of kings.”

“And that is thanks to my pettiness and my scorn as her mother.”

Carefully, to provide comfort without alarming her wife, she slides her palm down Carver’s forearm to take her hand.

“When the Queen commits regicide, it sort of throws everything and everyone for a loop. It gave time to the fucking snakes to steal away with my Em. She was the next ruler in everything except law yet,” Carver spreads her fingers so that River’s can slot between them, “I warned them to give her back. That she would not play their game of crowns as her father deigned. I would not let her be used, that is why I killed her father. They did not listen. They had the thing that would give them the keys to the kingdom and would not yield it to the murderer of the King. I became an agent of wrath, my River. I swore that if they would take her, to use her, then I would make it so only she could become their next ruler and they would love to regret that. That she would set her path as the new Queen only because they forced my hand, they made it so that there would be no other option. I killed cousins and aunts and grandparents. I killed my in-laws. Witches flew to me from across this wide world, to defend their princess. My lovely Emmera. In my rage, I lost sight of what I doing. I was just angry. They took her and I couldn’t get her back. By the time I found her, I realized I had isolated her. I killed almost her entire family, and her final parent was a murderer. A war criminal. I did get to see her, at least, I found where they were keeping her and I spent time with her before I gave myself over to her mercy. I’m sorry River, my final moments with my daughter are for me. I do not wish to share more.”

Tears are in her eyes when she rushes forward to explain, “Tell me nothing more. Please. I wouldn’t take it from you.”

Carver squeezes her hand but does not cry. This is an old wound that will never heal but it does not actively threaten her anymore. She is serene, heartbroken only in the eyes.

It is a lot of information to be given under a summer sun while the sweet taste of strawberries lingers on her tongue. To learn that her wife is the great grandmother of her king and that she is also married to the witch that rallied witches for war. This woman, who looks to barely be out of her twenties yet, had been a mother since she was a child herself. The depth and complexity of Carver’s character has always been more than surface level, she knew that even from the start. Yet the true depths of it still surprise her each time Carver takes hers by the hand to bring her wading into it further.

Another broken heart, overwhelmed by loss, to add to her collection.

Another body for whom hers must become a shelter to. Another person for whom she must protect above all else.

“What are you thinking?”

“That you’ve been through more than you let on and that I don’t want anything bad to happen to you ever again,” River shifts so she is facing her wife fully and opens her arms, “Come here.”

Orange eyes travel the length of her wingspan from fingertip to fingertip, unconvinced.

“Little River, always giving. Never taking.”

“It is my divinely given talent as this meek, boring woman. I may only be good at a handful of things and taking care of others is one of them. Come here, let me hold you.”

“Meek. My River, meek. Imagine.”

Orange eyes fix upon the stubborn furrow to River’s brow and the arms still held open.

“I don’t require the comfort.”

“Too bad. I’m giving it.”

Carver heaves a sigh, “Fine. I suppose I should not look a gift horse in the mouth. A rare chance to be kept in those loving arms, I should seize it and be grateful.”

“Don’t flirt with me right now.”

“But I like flirting with you.”

Lean arms circle firmly around her waist, overlapping so that Carver’s hands grip her own forearms. River holds her by the back of her head, fingers buried in long grey hair. A soft melting of the spine brings them closer, evening their height. Carver sags against her, face pressed into her neck.

“You won’t suffer anymore, Carver.”

The woman’s voice is muffled against her neck, “Is that a promise to protect me?”

“I suppose it is.”

“I’m swooning.”

“Lucky I’ve already got you in my arms then.”

“Very lucky.”