On Tollswitch Hill Stories from the Averraine Cycle by Morgan Smith

Author:Morgan Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: adventure, fantasy, ghost stories, magic and mayem
Publisher: Morgan Smith

The Finding Charm

By Morgan Smith

Copyright 2016 Morgan Smith

Traveling Light Publications

The Finding Charm

There’s a rule that you don’t leave a charming brew unattended in the middle of the Making. It’s a good rule, and Glynnis had never broken it before, and certainly she never did so again. And because she never knew what it was that Keeley had done, she was never completely aware that she had, in fact, broken the rule at all. As far as she knew, Keeley had sat stirring the pot all widdershins, as she’d been told, and no harm done at all.

But there it was: right in the middle of brewing up the ingredients, Glynnis discovered she was clean out of dried violets, and left the girl to mind the pot while she went out to the woods to retrieve a handful of wild petals.

The flowers turned out to be somewhat elusive, it took a full half-glass to locate enough that were unblemished, and by the time she’d returned, the damage had been done. Not that she ever knew that. How could she have?

Keeley, left to her own devices, had still been in that state of unreasoning panic.

What would Anyon think? What would he do? He had already been angry with her at the betrothal feast, because she’d made that stupid comment about his mother’s nettle soup. If he found out she’d lost the silver ring he’d given her, he was bound to be livid, and who could blame him?

She’d watched as the witch had carefully measured out the distilled wormwood and the corpse-dust. She’d asked questions, not because she understood or even cared about these things, but because asking and listening served to stop her anxious mind from worrying over the problem.

“Ashwood, that’s for retrieval. The fur – it really should be squirrel hairs, but badger’s what I’ve got. It’s not as strong, of course, but it’ll do. And willow – willow always finds things.”

And then Glynnis had gone off for the violets, and Keeley, without any distractions, began to worry anew.

The witch hadn’t taken her plight very seriously, to Keeley’s mind. In fact, she’d seemed a wee bit amused by it all. How was Keeley to be sure that the witch was doing all she could to make this charm work properly?

That badger hair, for example. She’d only put in three or four of them, even after saying that it wasn’t so strong.

She thought about Anyon. So muscular and handsome, and those deep-set brown eyes. All of her friends had swooned over him, but it was her he’d picked, in the end. Maybe she wasn’t as pretty as some, but Anyon seemed to think she was. And he laughed a lot at her jokes.

They’d made such plans, too. Her father was gifting her with a full five acres of good farmland as a wedding present, and Anyon and she had talked over all the things they would do with it, how they’d make it prosper.

Well, Anyon had talked it over, anyway. He’d been pretty certain about what would work and what wouldn’t.

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