Chewing, Roan looked around and nodded, but he wasn’t certain which question she was answering.
“If you’d like, we could go fo’ a walk,” he ventured.
“Can’t.” She pointed at the smithy and swallowed. “Have too much work.”
“I thought Pe’sephone said she was astounded by how much you’d accomplished.”
“Still behind.”
“Says who?”
“Me.”
“But I’m only asking—”
“I can’t,” she told him.
Gifford was disappointed, even a little upset. He saw so little of her that he was slipping into his own depression. That was how he tried to rationalize everything afterward, but in truth he didn’t know why he’d said it. It just came out. “It’s like old Ivy is alive again.”
Roan looked as if he’d hit her with the smithing hammer. She stared down at the food, at the sack it came in, and at the grease on her hands. “You talked to Padera, didn’t you?”
Gifford had no idea what she meant. “I have talked to that old woman on many occasions.”
Roan began to shake.
Gifford felt his heart sink. He’d done something terrible. He’d hurt her somehow. “What’s wong, Woan?”
“Don’t blame her. It wasn’t…” Roan began to cry.
Gifford hated himself. He had no idea what he’d done, but nothing—nothing in the world—was worse than hurting Roan. He wanted to make it better, but didn’t know how because he didn’t know what he’d done. “Woan? What’s going on?”
She got up then and ran back to the smithy, abandoning her apron, Gifford, and the warmth of the sun.
* * *
—
The old woman was in the kitchen cutting mushrooms into a series of neat slices while a kettle boiled over the cook fire. “What do you want?” she asked as Gifford let himself in.
“I just had a meal with Woan,” he said with an ominous tone in his voice.
“Doubt that you just had a meal with Roan.” Padera scraped her choppings into her palm and tossed them into the pot. “If you ate with her, it would have been in the smithy, which had to have been hours ago given your lightning-fast travel speed. Or has love given you invisible wings?”
Gifford was going to be polite. She was an old woman after all. He planned on being compassionate, easing his way to the point, but Padera was being her normal witch-self, and Gifford cut right to the dark meat. “Did you kill Ivy?”
The thought had come to him on the walk from the fortress, which was just as long as Padera described. It had also given him ample time to ponder why Roan was so upset. Guilt. She blamed herself for Iver’s death because Padera had killed him on her behalf.
The old woman had her back to him as she faced the fire. Padera was just as hunched over as ever, her true form hidden beneath layers of old wool. “By Ivy, do you mean Iver the Carver?”
Gifford scowled. She knew whom he meant. “Yes.”
“Why do you say that?” Her tone was controlled, even relaxed.
Why not surprise? Why not outrage? Why not laughter? Why isn’t she asking if I’m making a joke?
“I told you, I just had a meal with Woan. A meal that ended with Woan weeping.”
“I would imagine any meal with you would end that way.”
“You did it, didn’t you?” He hobbled to the table and looked at the pile of uncut mushrooms. “Was such a shock when he just died, when he went to sleep and failed to wake up. Did you poison him?”
Padera silently prodded the fire.
“How you find these mushwooms?” he asked. “We all new to this place, but you can locate mushwooms…and some mushwooms be poisonous.”
Padera turned and peered with her one eye. “What are you saying?”
“How old is you?”
“How old are you,” she corrected him.
“You know I can’t say that.”
“If you can’t talk, you should keep your mouth shut.”
“How old?” he persisted.
“Don’t know—lost count.”
“Uh-huh. You always say that when anyone asks, don’t you?”
“What does my age have to do with this?”
“You oldest in Dahl Wen.”
“What of it, cripple-boy?” Her voice took on an edge.
“So, maybe you not even fom Wen. Maybe you just showed up one day and have outlived all who knew that.”
Padera shambled back to the table and sat down in front of her mushrooms. “And I suppose my husband, Melvin, and our sons, were imaginary?”
“Maybe—I not met Melvin, not met sons.”
“Because you’re a child.”
“Most childwen outlive pawents.”
“No, they don’t.” She looked almost sad, but it was hard to tell with that leathery melon face of hers. “Most people don’t live as long as I have.”
“I’m thinking maybe no one lives as long as you.”
Again, she gave him the squint. “What are you saying, gimp?”
“I’m saying that maybe you don’t just look and act like a witch.”
He saw the change in her face. A twitch, a grimace—brief but it was there. He’d touched a nerve.
“All people say the name, use it when cussing. Just a name, not a god, so it’s safe. But what if it isn’t just a name? What if the witch is weal?”
Padera’s malleable lips folded up into a smile. “So, you aren’t just accusing me of being a witch, you’re saying I’m the witch?”