Chapter Text
Out of habit, Imogen still woke early. Even with no farm chores to do, the instinct to escape sleep before a dream — or worse — could find her startled her awake almost before the sun was up. As the blur of sleep fell away from her eyes she found herself looking at not the attic ceiling of her old bedroom, but the warped beams of a ramshackle roof not far above her head. To anyone else it might have seemed unsightly, the tar-paper shingles through the gaps in the boards and the frost on the exposed roofing nails. But when she saw it the knot of dread always coiled in her chest when she woke began to unbind itself, and she relaxed. She was not in Gelvaan anymore.
No voices crowding intrusively up against her mind. No voices raised against Laudna in hatred. Around her there lay only a dense, gentle hush, and from the pearly cast of the light she could tell that it had snowed in the night.
Smiling, she snuggled down into the rustling warmth of the bed, enfolding herself in the comforting weight of the blankets, the softness of her new red flannel pajamas, the sweet mingled scent of dried bedstraw and Laudna’s hair on the pillow beside her. She was lying on a straw tick in a barely upright little shack in the woods, and it was the most at peace she’d ever been. Gelvaan lay far behind her, and although in leaving it she had had to leave behind a few more things than she’d expected, one of them was not Laudna.
Imogen turned over to face her. The rising dawn shed just enough light over the bed for her to take in the utter deadness of the figure next to her. Laudna’s head lolled limply on the pillow, tilted just a little too far to the side to be comfortable, so that Imogen was looking straight into the unseeing dark of her half-lidded eyes. Her hair lay in lank tangles over her face like strands of river weeds, unstirred by any hint of breath between her slack lips. Her horrible little dead rat doll lay curled on her chest like a pet. All of this was precious to Imogen now.
In the snowy silence she could hear nothing but the contented murmur of her friend’s thoughts under the blanket of sleep, and by that she knew that she was not, despite all appearances, lying in bed next to a corpse. It didn’t bother her as much as it used to, now that she knew.
“It really doesn’t trouble you?” Laudna had asked, with an anxious knotting of her knobby fingers, waiting for Imogen to flee, or drive her away, or turn on her in fear and disgust with a bleak acceptance that suggested that many, many others had done the same before. “That I’m a . . . a little bit dead?” But after her first shock had worn off — how could someone so vibrantly, joyfully alive be dead? — she found that it wasn’t the deadness that horrified her but the realization that someone must have made her that way.
Imogen’s fingers lingered on the sharpness of Laudna’s cheek, and lightly she swept her hair away from her face, revealing her scarred throat, the ragged line of the old wound purply-dark against her pallid skin. Not for the first time she wondered grimly whose hand had held the knife? rope? that had done it, but Laudna had not offered the answer, and Imogen hadn’t wanted to press her. She’d even managed to resist peeking into her thoughts to find out for herself, although it hadn’t been easy. That someone had looked into her big, bright eyes, shining with the trust and affection that came so easily to her, and then snuffed the life from them seemed unthinkable. But the only alternative, the thought that the final wound might have come from Laudna’s own hand, was unbearable.
But the only thing she wanted more than to repay those who had hurt Laudna in kind was to protect her from further hurt, and so she had not asked. Leaning over, she tenderly kissed the gaunt cheek.
Laudna stirred, and breathed, easing out of the stillness of sleep. Her long lashes slid closed like a baby doll’s over her blank eyes, and when she opened them again the vivid spark that made her look anything but dead to Imogen had returned to them. Waking to find Imogen bending over her, she smiled, but a flicker of concern tightened her eyebrows.
“Everything all right, love?” she murmured sleepily. Reaching up, she caressed her cheek with the backs of her fingers, and Imogen leaned affectionately into her touch like a stray cat recently tamed. The borrowed heat of her own body in their nest of blankets had given an almost-living warmth to her hand. It was the warmest Laudna would be all day.
“Mmm-hm. Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“No bad dreams?”
“None at all. Haven’t had a nightmare in weeks, come to think of it. Not since we left Gelvaan.”
“Maybe they’re gone for good!”
Imogen smiled against Laudna’s knuckles. “It’s a Winter’s Crest miracle.”
“Winter’s Crest!” The bright burst of joy flinging itself outward from Laudna’s thoughts as she flung herself out of bed gave Imogen just enough warning to lean back and avoid cracking their foreheads together.
There was not a lot she knew about the winter holiday of Laudna’s homeland. She’d had a vague memory of staring drowsily at a map of Tal’Dorei in a little red Gelvaan schoolhouse while a teacher droned on about the defeat of an invading tyrant, but the particular customs of the celebration marking his demise were unknown to her. Laudna had airily claimed that it didn’t matter because she couldn’t remember much more than the date, but an uncharacteristic wistfulness in the echo of her thoughts behind her words made Imogen think that she really must have missed it. Carefully, pitching the idea as a favor to herself — because Laudna would have brushed away the offer if she had thought it was for her own benefit — she had asked to celebrate Winter’s Crest with her.
Over the past few weeks as the first bite of frost had crept into the air and they’d settled into their new home, Laudna had begun to mention little details in passing, and Imogen had carefully collected them to assemble into what she hoped was a worthy recreation of the holiday no longer quite familiar to either of them. At the little general store in the nearby village they’d bought the red and white striped candy she remembered her father bringing home, and molasses and spices for the gingerbread she remembered her mother baking. They’d decorated the splintery cabin walls with boughs of evergreen and red and gold paper streamers and hung paper snowflakes and stars from the roofbeams. They had made a strange, soft steamed pastry of spiced apples and dried fruit soaked in what seemed an alarming amount of brandy with a polished silver piece hidden in the batter, which Laudna had insistently referred to as “pudding” even though it looked more like a cake to Imogen.
Peeling and coring the apples seemed to have unlocked some vital memory for her, because that night Imogen had been awakened by the hum of Laudna’s mind in the dark next to hers, her thoughts scampering around after scraps of memory like kittens after crumpled scraps of paper.
“What’s up?” she’d mumbled, without speaking.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. I’ve just remembered something.”
A silence. “Well, what is it?”
“We need a horse’s skull.”
“. . . What’n the world for?”
“For Winter’s Crest. I’ve just remembered. We — my mother and father and me and all the neighbors — we used to get dressed up in costumes and go out at night to the orchard and make a bonfire. And we’d sing and toast to the health of the trees so we’d have cider the next year.”
“All right. That sounds real fun.”
“And we’d make noise and hit them with sticks to frighten off the evil spirits of the Parchwood. And my father would lift me up so I could put toast in the branches to feed the dryads.”
“Wait, that kinda toast? Not the kind with drinks.”
“Oh, we did that too.”
“Okay.”
“There was quite a lot of toasting. And we’d parade through the town to all the fancy houses of the lords and ladies of Whitestone, and we’d make music and sing, and in return they invited us in and gave us gifts and treats, sometimes.”
“Sounds like a good time.”
“And there was a horse’s skull dressed as a lady.”
“Okay, you lost me there. Are you sure this is the same holiday?”
“Yes! She was — she was like Pâté! Only very big, because she was a horse. She used to tease the nobles until they let us come in. Then she’d chase the children around. Oh, it was such fun.”
Into Imogen’s mind had flickered a glowing ember-image of firelight, and music, hot spiced cider and apple cake, half-remembered faces ruddy with the cold and half-remembered voices raised in song. In someone else’s memory, the clamor of voices was cozy rather than crowding, and she’d smiled.
“Well . . . we’d probably have to go back to Gelvaan to find an orchard. And way down south to Sruwargas to find nobles.” She’d felt Laudna’s enthusiasm drawing back into herself, and quickly added, “But I bet we could find a deer skull or somethin’ in the woods around here.”
Now the morning had come. The house was bedecked in festive garlands, the gifts wrapped and waiting by the stove, the mysterious pudding wrapped in cheesecloth on a shelf, the gingerbread built into a silly little rat-sized house trimmed with sugar icing and striped candies, and the ghastly doe skull puppet, lovingly belled and beribboned, leaned against a wall waiting for a wealthy person to taunt.
Imogen started to get up but Laudna pulled the heavy blankets back over her. “Stay here where it’s warm, I’ll go light the fire.” Collecting Pâté in one arm, she scrambled backwards down the ladder from the high shelf serving them as a sleeping loft and went to the stove. Imogen rested her chin on her arms and watched her over the side of the bed as she stirred the embers, filled a saucepan from the water bucket, and set it on the stove to boil for tea. She almost wanted to call out to her that she didn’t need to do that, but she didn’t want to spoil the surprise of her present. She hoped she’d like it. But the more she thought about it the more it seemed like the surprise was the only thing it had going for it.
Laudna was tucking Pâté into his gingerbread house, and Imogen made a mental note of which parts of the walls his limp rat body had touched, in case she was expected to eat it later. In her red nightgown — made of the same flannel as Imogen’s pajamas and the tiny nightcap on Pâté’s bird skull head, for Laudna had asserted that matching new jammies for the entire family were essential to the enjoyment of the holiday — she looked like an illustration from a storybook she didn’t quite remember. Maybe it was the dreamlike strangeness of feeling nostalgia for someone else’s childhood through someone else’s thoughts, but the whole scene filled her with a warm and wistful tenderness.
The tumbledown hut had scarcely had four walls to speak of when they’d moved in, one of them dubiously supporting the fallen tree rotting against the roof, but Laudna had done so much to make it snug before the snow came. They hadn’t been able to do much to change the shape of the bowed wall, but she had reshaped the roof timbers to meet it, and stuffed the gaps in the walls with brightly colored rags. Mended the rotted floorboards and roofbeams with the magic that Imogen always found so relaxing to watch, the spectral red threads from an invisible needle seeking out the broken places and stitching them patiently together. Spread a remnant of red and white gingham over an old crate to make a table. Braided scraps of cloth into a little mat to sit on before the fire. Cleaned and fixed up the rusted woodstove, where the embers of last night’s fire still gave off enough warmth to take off the chill from outside.
(Laudna had always had an affinity for broken, discarded things. Sometimes she mended them, sometimes she found the beauty in their brokenness and turned it into something more, sometimes she just loved them as they were. The cracked crockery left behind by some previous inhabitant, she had mended. The broken windows, she had replaced with shards of colored glass carefully pieced together to fill the empty window frames. Imogen, she had loved.)
Glancing out the wobbly scrap-glass window, she gave a delighted “Ooh!” and ran to the door. Imogen braced herself against the incoming rush of cold air as she flung it open.
“Laudna — wait, Laudna no,” she called after her, lifting her chin from her arms, but Laudna was already out the door, in only her nightgown. “Put some boots on! It’s snowin’!”
“It’s snowing!” Laudna’s voice echoed back to her as Imogen reluctantly descended the ladder.
“I know it’s snowin’! Put your boots on!” Hastily tugging on her own boots and winter coat, she followed Laudna outside to find her twirling around ankle-deep in the new-fallen snow, with her white, spindly arms, bared by the loose cuffs of her nightgown, raised like birch branches to the gently drifting sky. Her dark hair and her berry-red nightie were already dusted with a downy shower of snowflakes, making her look like the aftermath of a pillow fight. But her mind was singing with such a pure and reckless joyfulness that Imogen didn’t stop her. Folding her arms, she fondly watched her teeter around in the snow with that graceless, graceful gait peculiar to her, like a puppet on strings pulled by an invisible hand.
Laughing breathlessly, Laudna bounded back to the porch and took Imogen’s hands in her own to draw her out into the little clearing in the pine trees that made their front yard. They swung each other around until Laudna’s feet got tangled up in Imogen’s and they both went down with a whoop and a squeal into a snowbank.
Immediately Laudna sat up and began brushing the snow from Imogen’s hair in concern. “Oh! Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m fine.” Imogen looked up at her. The snow clinging to the frizz of her hair caught the light of the rising morning at a perfect angle, ringing her head in a glittering halo.
“What?” Laudna asked, seeing her smile.
“Nothin’,” Imogen replied, but didn’t stop smiling. “Let’s go on inside.”
In the doorway she shook out her coat and brushed Laudna off before the heat of the stove could melt the snow into her nightgown.
“You’re not tired of the snow yet, after spendin’ all those years in Tal’Dorei?” Imogen asked, while Laudna stomped her feet to try to coax some urgency into her slow-moving blood.
“Oh, no. Not when I have somewhere warm to come home to.”
Imogen didn’t want to think about how often she might have not. Taking her hands, which were curled against her chest as if to hold on to the fading warmth of her heart, she found the last of the heat gone from them, leaving her with fingers as cold as her surroundings again.
“Ohh,” she murmured regretfully, running her thumbs over her knuckles, “You’re turnin’ into an icicle. Here.” Lifting up her pajama shirt, she laid her hands against the bare skin of her belly, even though they were goddamn freezing. Laudna pressed her hands appreciatively into the warmth of her skin, which grew even warmer under her touch as she leaned up and kissed the top of her head in thanks. Her hair fell around Imogen’s face, curtaining her with the scent of frost and the particular smell unique to it, a dusky, autumnal smell reminiscent of damp earth and fallen leaves.
Then Laudna’s spidery hands started to spider around her waist and tickle her ribs, making her squirm. Catching her hands, Imogen led her to the stove by her fingertips.
“Thaw out for a bit, I’ll get the tea.” Picking up the saucepan she went to the kitchen counter, which was only a board laid over a couple of barrels, and the kitchen just a corner they’d designated as such. Again she glanced at the striped paper package waiting for Laudna beside the stove. Would she like it? She’d find something to like about it even if she didn’t, Imogen was sure, but the idea of hearing the disappointment in her thoughts before she did made her gnaw at her lip while she carefully poured the boiling water over tealeaves in two tin cups and then stirred honey into it — one spoonful into her cup and two into Laudna’s, and cut bread from a loaf wrapped in waxed cloth to toast over the fire. Was it too practical? Too plain? They’d never had an occasion to exchange gifts before, would this forever cement her reputation as a giver of useful but unexciting gifts?
Too late to worry about it now, she supposed.
She returned to Laudna, who was contemplatively fanning her fingers before the latticed stove door so that the fireglow shone through her translucent hands, turning them a dull purple, and handed her one. Her smile of thanks, a little crooked and so wide it never seemed to quite fit on her face, was so sweet that she couldn’t help returning it.
“You look happy,” Laudna observed, wrapping her hands around the cup, as Imogen sat down on the rug beside her.
“I am!” she said truthfully, trying to set her anxiety aside and enjoy the moment. “I feel better out here than I have in years. Makin’ our own way, and no one’s mind pressin’ up against mine except for yours. I feel like gettin’ out of Gelvaan’s done me a world of good.”
Laudna smiled into the steam of her tea. “I’m so glad.”
“Are you? Happy, I mean.”
“Oh, yes. I’d be happy anywhere with you. I’m afraid it’s quite a bit more shabby than your old home, though.”
Imogen leaned her head against her shoulder, rubbing her cheek against the softness of her flannel sleeve. “Darlin’, I’m happier in this li’l shack with you than any other house I’ve lived in. You’re here. That’s what makes it home.”
“It doesn’t have to be for always,” Laudna promised, and Imogen could feel her mind already stretching ahead, with bittersweet anticipation, into the uncertainty of an unfamiliar road.
“I don’t mind stoppin’ here until spring, at least,” Imogen reassured her, “Glad we found a snug place to stay before the snow came. To get to Jrusar we’ll have to go north through the Kaal Mountains, and that’d be hard goin’ now that winter’s set in.”
“I do so want to get you there. So you can go to that fancy academy and find the answers you’re looking for.” The swooping embellishment of the word “fancy” in her lofty accent, shaping it like itself, made Imogen smile.
“We’ll get there. I’m not in any hurry just yet.”
Over their tea and toast Laudna distributed the three wrapped packages. Imogen tugged on her earlobe in anticipation as first she helped Pâté open his, a tiny knitted sweater in red and white stripes. He complained so convincingly while Laudna stuffed him into it that she half-forgot, as she always did when Pâté spoke, that it was really Laudna’s own voice giving vent to his protests.
“Don’t you look handsome, Pâté!” Imogen said indulgently.
“Yes, very festive,” Laudna agreed.
“It itches,” Pâté grumbled.
Somewhat sheepishly Imogen offered her present to Laudna, who clapped her hands together eagerly and then began to fold back the paper. Inwardly she braced herself for her reaction, but Laudna’s mind lit up with delight when she saw it. “A teakettle! Oh, and such a nice one, too. We could have used this instead of that old saucepan this morning.”
“That’s not all it is,” Imogen explained hurriedly, “look.” Tipping it over, she showed her a word engraved in Elvish script on the bottom of the kettle. Although she couldn’t read the language, she carefully repeated the pronunciation the shopkeeper had given her, and a stream of hot water poured from the spout into Laudna’s half-empty teacup.
Laudna tilted herself to the side, turning her head to watch the steaming water in wonder. “Imogen, that’s amazing!”
She chuckled, tipping the kettle back up to still the enchantment. “Well, I can’t take credit for the magic. But it’ll be nice not havin’ to go out to fetch water from the river all the time.” Laudna turned it around in her hands, the newly polished copper reflecting her troubled expression. “Do you like it?” Imogen asked in concern.
“Oh, yes!” Laudna replied quickly, but Imogen could overhear her thoughts mulling guiltily over the cost, and how much longer the loss of it would make the journey to the north of Marquet.
“Don’t worry about it,” she whispered into her mind, secretly glad that that was her only objection, “I drive a hard bargain. It wasn’t as expensive as you’re thinkin’.”
Which was true, although she had also picked up some extra work at the village stable to afford it. Laudna relaxed then, and handed Imogen her gift, clasping her hands in anticipation while she unfolded the wrapping of brown butcher paper cheerfully painted, she couldn’t help noticing, with the prints of little rat feet.
“Oh, Laudna! It’s beautiful.”
Inside she found a handsome leather haversack, embroidered with a pattern of yellow sunflowers on the flap. As she admired it she could see Laudna, her fingertips in her mouth, wiggling around with increasing excitement at the edge of her vision, until at her instruction she opened it and put her hand inside. Her face split in a smile at Imogen’s exclamation of surprise, for it was much more roomy on the inside than it had looked.
“And you were worried about me spendin’ too much!”
Laudna took her fingers out of her mouth to brush Imogen’s protest away from the space between them. “Oh, I bought it secondhand and fixed it up. And added the flowers, of course. I don’t think the proprietor knew what he had, to be honest. In . . . in case we have to leave again,” she explained, biting her lip, “You won’t have to leave so much behind, as last time.”
Again, Imogen could feel her mind reluctantly considering the fragility of the shelter and safety they’d surrounded themselves with, the inevitability of having to walk away from the little cabin, from the cozy wood stove, the new straw mattress, the handmade decorations, and everything they could not carry. She wondered how many times she’d had to do this, make a new home for herself. She wondered if leaving the old one ever got any easier.
She ran her fingers over the careful stitches of the sunflowers, the leather painstakingly mended by Laudna’s deft hands and defter magic. “Thanks, Laudna,” she said, sincerely, “I appreciate it.”
In the late afternoon they went out, dressed for the weather this time — Imogen in a blue and grey winter coat Laudna had patchworked together out of two old woolen blankets, and Laudna in a red hood and knitted shawl, and climbed the hill to the nearby village tucked at the foot of the mountains. Over her shoulder Laudna carried the doe skull, which she had mounted on a broom handle like a hobby horse, and on its head it wore a crown of pine twigs, rowan berries, and trailing red ribbons over a white sheet like a shroud. Whether the village was ready or not, their new friend — now bearing the regal name of Chateaubriand — was going to make her ghostly debut in town.
Imogen’s breath floated ahead of her in wisps as they made their way up the mountain path. Laudna’s did not, although the exertion of the climb made her breath rattle in her creaky lungs.
“You want me to carry her?” Imogen offered.
Laudna shook her head. “It’s just a bit farther. Here — you can carry Pâté. Wouldn’t want him to feel left out!”
Imogen held out her hands to receive the scraggly creature, inwardly glad that she had mittens on because the touch of his cold rat feet on her bare skin still made her shiver, just a little. But because Laudna loved him, she cradled him in the crook of her arm and stroked his bony bird head as they walked.
On the outskirts of town Laudna lifted the skull over her head on its stick and adjusted the veil around herself so that she was concealed from view. “Oh, I’m so excited! I never got to play her before because I was too small. How do I look?”
Hunching beneath the veil, she turned the skeletal head in Imogen’s direction. Imogen’s frosty breath caught in her throat for a moment. What had been just a grisly dead head on a broom handle a moment before had been transformed into the illusion of a grinning doe-headed ghost, made splendidly eerie by the slow, elegant strangeness with which Laudna could move herself, so that the figure seemed to drift spectrally over the snow in the gathering dusk. The effect was wonderful, and Imogen hoped the people of the town would feel the same way about it. They did not often feel the same way about Laudna.
The first door they knocked on was immediately shut in their faces. The second was opened by a sour-faced man who looked them over suspiciously, scowling through a bristling beard. “Well. What’re you two supposed to be?”
He startled as the beribboned skull leaned down to him, stretching out her neck and twitching her head to the side in a gesture immediately familiar as Laudna. She parted her teeth, and from between them issued a verse recited in the exaggeratedly wobbly tones of a fine lady.
“To the lord of the castle, and the ever-bright tree
And to our good neighbors, glad tidings to thee.
No rowdy mare am I, but a dainty-footed hind,
Pray open the door and let us inside.”
The bearded man squinted at Imogen, looking from her to the grinning face of Chateaubriand. “Y’all sellin’ something?”
“No, we’re just —”
“’Cause I’m not buyin’.”
Chateaubriand drooped in disappointment as a second door closed in her face. Imogen reached up and patted the wreathed skull consolingly. “Sorry about that, sweetheart. I don’t think they know the custom ‘round here.”
“Even so, some people have an underdeveloped sense of curiosity.” The vacant eye sockets surveyed the street as Laudna turned under the sheet. “Come on, maybe we’ll have better luck in town!”
In the village square they were greeted with a few odd looks, and one or two startled gasps, but no one yet moved to drive them away. Passersby began to collect, and although their faces were more curious than hostile Imogen remembered with anxiety what had happened the last time a crowd had gathered around them back in Gelvaan. She glanced aside to a nearby alley, considering it as an avenue of escape. Just in case.
Seeming to remember as well, Laudna moved a little closer to Imogen, the monstrous looming figure managing to take on an air of timidity as she leaned into her. Imogen felt around in the swathes of the veil until she found her hand, and squeezed it lightly.
“Right here. I’m followin’ your lead. What does our friend do now?”
The dead deer stood upright again, tossing her bony head so that her bells jingled in the chilly air. “Oh, it’s been so long. I think . . . I think she sings!”
“All right,” Imogen said gamely, although to be truthful she’d rather not.
Her voice, a little muffled beneath the veil, started out frost-fragile and uncertain — and mostly incomprehensible to its audience as the verses were largely about the lord and lady of a castle, and a bountiful apple harvest, and a particular tree which seemed to be held in reverence above the others — but as Imogen picked up the gist of the song from her thoughts and joined her on the chorus it rang out with growing confidence from between the jaws of Chateaubriand.
From the crowd someone’s hand jerked out, and instinctively Imogen raised her own, sparks rushing to her fingertips beneath her mittens, but no thrown torch or brandished hay knife followed the gesture. Instead, there was a tiny ringing ting as something bounced off the pavement. She looked down to see a copper piece at their feet. Everything was fine.
“Think they think we’re buskers,” she whispered wryly into Laudna’s head. Leaving off her song, the deer skull rattled her jaws appreciatively and neighed, offering a long-necked curtsey of thanks. Then she leaned forward and, with a delicate snap of her teeth, she lifted the bowler hat from the mutton-chopped head of an elderly gentleman and placed it on the head of a child in the crowd. This was greeted with laughter and applause, and Imogen relaxed. Ruefully she realized that with the veil over her head, Laudna couldn’t be seen, and that was why everyone seemed to be regarding her as more of a curiosity than a threat. The exaggerated pantomime of the spookiness in which she reveled seemed, ironically, to make her less frightening to those who didn’t understand her.
As the tradition was a mystery to everyone except perhaps Laudna, there was no expectation of being rewarded with gifts and treats, but Imogen figured the coin could buy them a bag of roasted chestnuts to share from a street vendor. She slid it closer to herself with her foot to surreptitiously mage hand it into her pocket. Another one followed it as Laudna continued to gambol about the street, silver this time. Hot cider for both of them, too.
The growing size of the crowd made Imogen nervous, but the sight of Laudna enjoying herself, and being enjoyed, was so endearing that she restrained herself from intervening. Everything was fine. Chateaubriand bobbed amid the onlookers, snapping her jaws playfully at a teenager, offering commentary on the dress of a self-important looking man, posing silly riddles to children.
Everything was fine. Everything was fine, until a little boy of about four ran up to Laudna’s swirling skirts and grabbed hold of the veil with a shout of excitement. With one tug, the figure of the spectral deer was a puppet again, clattering to the cobblestones amid a rattle of bone and a jingling of bells. A rising gasp went up from the assembled crowd, first at the disruption of the performance, and then at the sight of Laudna. Hurriedly she pulled her hood forward to hide her face before the shock of it, the eeriness that was so lovely to Imogen but so loathed to others, could sink in. Feeling the heat of her power crawling up her arms in tingling sparks she rushed to her side, but Laudna righted herself.
“It’s all right!” she reassured the little boy, “She’s not hurt. Just a little wobbly. No legs, after all!” She offered him a smile which made him step away from her, and the momentary flicker of hurt on her face made Imogen hurt, too. Undaunted, Laudna put out her hands, wiggling her fingers theatrically, and slowly the ghostly deer rose up, apparently of her own accord, and turned her bony face back to her audience with a snap.
The miraculous resurrection of Chateaubriand did not seem to have the cheering effect Laudna was hoping for. She was greeted with stony silence, and a few nervous whispers, as the crowd began to disperse uneasily. From the back of the assembly a broad man in the uniform of a town guard made his way to them, and Laudna quickly snatched the puppet from the air.
“Not from these parts, are you? Necromancy and the like’s illegal in Marquet,” he said levelly, looking from the dead deer head, to Laudna’s habitually ashen face, to Imogen.
“Oh, it isn’t necromancy!” Laudna explained hastily, “Just a silly little magic trick. See?” She rapped the skull with her knuckles. “Still quite dead.”
“Why don’t you get along, now.”
He eyed her with pointed skepticism, and Imogen slipped her hands into the crook of Laudna’s elbow. “We were just goin’, anyway,” she said, silently nudging her away from the square. She got the message and trotted along beside her.
“Happy Winter’s Crest!” Laudna called back, with a wave to the dissolving crowd, but no one answered.
Back in their cabin Imogen followed Laudna’s lead for the rest of the day’s festivities, finding happiness in her happiness. Regretfully, though, she could feel that the morning’s joy, which had resonated through her mind with the clear and erratic sweetness of wind chimes, had quieted to a more subdued hum. Sitting by the fire they played guessing games, and cat’s cradles with a loop of yarn, and a rowdy game that involved keeping aloft a feather using only their breath until Laudna’s unambitious lungs couldn’t keep up and it spiraled down to land in her hair. They cut into the pudding-cake concoction, dark and sweet and spicy, and Imogen found the silver piece in her slice, which Laudna cheerfully told her would ensure good luck for the coming year. They were probably going to need it.
Finally, late in the evening, Laudna opened the woodstove door so that her shadow fell against the wall, and as she spun a tale of a haunted castle on a hill, she spun the nimble shadows of her long-fingered hands into the puppet figures of lords and ladies that seemed to move through her story almost on their own. Lying on the floor beside her with her chin propped on her hands, Imogen watched the shadow-play with admiration, but she was just as captivated by the intricate weaving of Laudna’s delicate hands, the delightful animation of her expressive face, the sharpness of her profile edged in golden firelight.
At bedtime Imogen banked the fire in the stove to keep the embers going overnight, and Laudna turned back the covers on the bed, laying her hands on the innermost of the blankets and murmuring a spell to warm it. The heat would only last for an hour but it was enough to keep them cozy until they fell asleep. Leaving the warmth of the stove, Imogen scurried across the floor and up the ladder to the bed loft, crawling gratefully under the covers Laudna held open for her.
In the dark beside her Laudna’s hand found hers and slid into it, intertwining their fingers. “Happy Winter’s Crest, darling,” she whispered, and Imogen could hear the warmth of her smile in her voice even though she couldn’t see it.
She squeezed her hand. “Happy Winter’s Crest to you, too. Sorry if it didn’t turn out like you remembered.”
“Oh, no! It was better than I could have hoped. It’s been . . . such a long time since I’ve gotten to celebrate it with someone. Other than Pâté, of course, and he’s not very good at caroling. Thank you, for sharing it with me.”
“Of course! I had a good time today.”
“Me too.”
From the quiet, dreamy happiness reaching out from her mind Imogen could tell she meant it. She fell asleep content in the contentment of Laudna’s thoughts, curled up comfortably in the curve of her slowly warming body beneath the dead weight of her loving arm.
She was not sure if she was dreaming when she heard the crash. It was Laudna’s hand shaking her by the shoulder that dragged her to wakefulness.
“Imogen,” her voice hissed urgently over her, “Wake up, darling.”
“Wh . . .?” She turned over to face her, pawing sleep from her eyes. “What’s wrong? You all right?” Blinking into the grey light of what wasn’t yet dawn, she sat up, fully awake, and crawled to the side of the bed. “What was that noise?”
“I’m sorry.”
Downstairs, a whistling of cold air through an open window gave her the answer immediately. One of the colored windowpanes Laudna had so carefully repaired was scattered across the floor in pieces. On the floor amid the rainbow of broken shards lay a rough chunk of brick with a scrap of paper wrapped around it. From here she could just read the ugly strokes of the word scrawled on it in charcoal.
WITCH.
“I’m sorry,” Laudna said again, her voice hitching on something that wasn’t quite tears, something too long expected to cry over, “It’s time to go.”