“A scrying device,” Luna murmured.
And she could remember. Her grandmother had made them more than once. Sometimes with string. Sometimes with a raw egg. Sometimes with the sticky insides of a milkweed pod.
“It’s the intention that matters,” Luna said out loud, her bones buzzing as she said it. “Any good witch knows how to build a tool with what’s on hand.”
These weren’t her words. Her grandmother had said them. Her grandmother had said them while Luna was in the room. But then the words flew away and she went blank. And now they were coming back again. She leaned forward and spat on the ground, making a small puddle of dusty mud. With her left hand she grabbed a handful of dried grass, growing from a crack in the rock. She dipped it into the spittle-mud and started to wind it into a complicated knot.
She didn’t understand what she was doing—not really. She moved by instinct, as though trying to piece together a song she heard once and could barely recall.
“Show me my grandmother,” she said as she stuck her thumb into the center of the knot and stretched it into a hole.
Luna saw nothing at first.
And then she saw a man with a heavily scarred face walking through the woods. He was frightened. He tripped on roots and twice ran into a tree. He was moving too quickly for someone who clearly didn’t know where he was going. But it didn’t matter, because the device obviously didn’t work. She hadn’t asked to see a man. She had asked to see her grandmother.
“My grandmother,” Luna said more deliberately, in a loud voice.
The man wore a leather jerkin. Small knives hung from either side of his belt. He opened the pouch on his jerkin and crooned to something nestled inside. A small beak peeked out of the leather folds.
Luna squinted. It was a swallow. And it was old and sick. “I already drew you,” she said out loud.
The swallow, as though in response, peeked its head out and looked around.
“I said, I need my grandmother,” she almost shouted. The swallow struggled, tittered, and squawked. It looked desperate to get out.
“Not now, silly,” the man in the device said. “Let’s wait until we fix that wing. Then you can get out. Here. Eat this spider.” And the man shoved a wriggling spider into the swallow’s protesting beak.
The swallow chewed the spider, a combination of frustration and gratitude on its face.
Luna grunted with frustration.
“I’m not very good at this yet. Show me my GRANDMOTHER,” she said firmly. And the device focused clearly on the face of the bird. And the bird stared through the scrying device, right into Luna’s eye. The swallow couldn’t see her. Of course it couldn’t. And yet it seemed to Luna that the bird shook its head, very slowly, from side to side.
“Grandmama?” Luna whispered.
And then the device went dark.
“Come back,” the girl called.
The makeshift device stayed dark. The scrying device hadn’t failed at all, Luna realized with a start. Someone was blocking it.
“Oh, Grandmama,” Luna whispered. “What have you done?”
37.
In Which the Witch Learns Something Shocking
It wasn’t Luna, Xan told herself again and again and again. My Luna is safe at home. She told herself this until it felt true. The man shoved another spider into her mouth. Despite how repellant she found the food, she had to admit that her birdish gullet found it delicious. It was the first time she had ever actually eaten while transformed. And it would be the last time, too. The slow vanishing of her life in front of her eyes did not make her sad in and of itself. But the thought of leaving Luna . . .
Xan shivered. Birds do not sob. Had she been in her old-woman form, she would have sobbed. She would have sobbed all night.
“Are you all right, my friend?” the man said, his voice hushed and stricken. Xan’s black, beady bird eyes did not roll as well as her human eyes rolled, and alas, the gesture was lost on him.
But Xan was being unfair. He was a nice enough young man—a bit excitable, perhaps. Overly keen. She’d seen the type before.
“Oh, I know you are just a bird and you cannot possibly understand me, but I have never harmed a living creature before.” His voice broke. Two large tears appeared in his eyes.
Oh! Xan thought. You are in pain. And she nestled in a little bit more closely, clucking and cooing and doing her best in Bird to make him feel better. Xan was very good at making people feel better, having had five hundred years of practice. Easing sorrow. Soothing pain. A listening ear.
The young man had built a small fire and was cooking a piece of sausage he had taken from a package. If Xan had her human nose and her human taste buds, the sausage would have smelled delicious. In her birdish state, she detected no fewer than nine different spices and a hint of dried apples and crushed zirin petals. And love, too. Copious amounts of love. She had smelled it even before he opened the package. Someone made that for him, Xan thought. Someone loves that boy very much. Lucky fellow.
The sausage bubbled and hissed on the fire.
“I don’t suppose you’ll be wanting any?”
Xan chirped and hoped he would understand. First of all, she wouldn’t dream of taking the boy’s food—not while he was lost in the forest. Second of all, there was no way her bird gullet would tolerate meat. Bugs were fine. Anything else would make her vomit.
The young man took a bite, and though he smiled, more tears came pouring down his face. He looked down at the bird, and his cheeks turned bright red with embarrassment.
“Excuse me, my winged friend. You see, this sausage was made by my beloved wife.” His voice choked. “Ethyne. Her name is Ethyne.”
Xan chirped, hoping to encourage him to continue. This young man seemed to have so many feelings stuck inside him, he was like a pile of kindling, just waiting for that first, hot spark.
He took another bite. The sun had vanished completely and the stars had just begun to show themselves in the sky’s deepening dark. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. Xan could feel a little rattle, deep inside the young man’s chest—the precursor to loss. She chortled and cheeped and gave his arm an encouraging peck. He looked down and smiled.
“What is it about you, my friend? I feel I could tell you anything.” He reached over and put another small bundle of kindling onto the fire. “Not too much,” he said. “This is just to keep us warm until the moon rises. And then we must be on our way. The Day of Sacrifice waits for no man, after all. Or, at least, it hasn’t so far. But we’ll see, little friend. Perhaps I’ll make it wait forever.”
Day of Sacrifice, she thought. What is he talking about?
She gave him another quick peck. Keep talking, she thought.
He laughed. “My, you are a feisty thing. If Ethyne is not able to fix your wing, rest assured that we will make you a comfortable home and life for the rest of your days. Ethyne . . .” He sighed. “She is a wonder. She makes everything beautiful. Even me, and I am as ugly as they come. I loved her, you know, when we were children. But I was shy and she joined the Sisters, and then I was maimed. I had made my peace with loneliness.”
He leaned back. His deeply grooved face glowed in the firelight. He wasn’t ugly. But he was broken. And not by the scars, either. Something else had broken him. Xan fixed her eyes on his heart and peered inside. She saw a woman with hair writhing like snakes perched in the rafters of a house with a baby clutched to her chest.
A baby with a birthmark in the shape of a crescent moon.
Xan felt her heart go cold.
“You may not know it, my friend, but there is a witch in the woods.”
No, thought Xan.
“And she takes our children. One every year. We have to leave the youngest baby in the circle of sycamores and never look back. If we don’t, the Witch will destroy us all.”
No, Xan thought. No, no, no.
Those babies!