The Vampire & Her Witch

”There’s nothing wrong with mussels and rice,” Ashlynn protested gently as she stepped up beside Isabell and placed a reassuring hand on the other woman’s shoulder. ”Sometimes, we need the comforting and the familiar, especially when everything is changing so much, and aren’t Lassian and Issandra at the age where it seems like everything around them is changing?”

”Especially Issandra,” Ashlynn said as she gently released a thread of energy into Isabell’s body, creating something like the taproot of a tree to siphon away the power the older woman had unconsciously gathered in her moment of turmoil. ”Issandra’s body is still transforming, and she’s starting her apprenticeship at the same time, isn’t she? It must be hard for her to be in such an unfamiliar environment among all the other apprentices at the Shipwright’s guild while she’s one of the only young women there...”

”You aren’t being subtle, you know,” Isabell said, setting down the knife on the table in front of her. As soon as she did, her eyes opened wide with shock, and she snatched her hand back from the hilt as though it were a hot pot fresh off the fire.

The simple, round, polished wood handle had transformed in her grip, molding itself to her hand until it resembled the handle of a fighting knife used by sailors who lived a rougher, more dangerous life than the one enjoyed by the upright Master Engineer that Isabell had become since leaving the war-torn Emerald Kingdom behind.

”I, I didn’t realize that I could do that without even...” Without even what? Without thinking about the design she wanted, the purpose she had... Without a plan to change something to fit her desires. Without consciously choosing what she wanted to do with her power.

It was frightening to see that she could already twist the world around her to her will, and for a moment, she stood utterly still, looking at the hilt of the knife as though it had become a viper that might bite her. Not just because she’d turned a kitchen tool into a weapon, but because she hadn’t even planned to do so.

All she had needed was the desire to do something, anything, to protect her children from the monster who would prey on them, and the wood in her hand responded to that desire in the only way that made sense to her.

”It’s fine,” Ashlynn said as she reached out to pick up the knife, using it to finish chopping a turnip before presenting the hilt of the blade to Isabell. ”It’s still usable, but it probably fits your hand better than anyone else’s now,” she teased, hoping that making light of it would help Isabell to accept her own power rather than fearing it.

”Just go slowly,” Ashlynn said. ”Focus on the simple things in front of you. Learning to cook and do domestic things served more than one purpose in Big Sister Amahle’s coven,” she explained. ”Being present in the moment is one of them. It’s easy for your mind to wander when you do mundane tasks, and when your mind wanders, it’s easy for your power to respond to the desires that come from errant thoughts.”

”So even this is training,” Isabell said, looking at the calm, confident way Ashlynn went about the simple tasks of preparing their afternoon meal in an entirely different light. ”I had a teacher once who forced us to draw the same three shapes, over and over again. Triangle, circle, square. Again and again and again, and then he would come by with a ruler to measure them, and if they weren’t even, straight, or round as they should be, he rapped our knuckles with the ruler and told us to try again. He said that if we couldn’t even sketch a simple shape, we could never draft proper plans.”

”Maybe I need to take a lesson from my children,” Isabell said with a light laugh. ”Make the same thing for breakfast over and over and over again until I can do it without distractions leading me astray.”

”You could do it that way,” Ashlynn said as she returned to her own cooking, smiling as she thought of the countless ways she’d seen Amahle, Talauia, and Jacques combining and recombining the spice she was using now, turning out a seemingly endless variety of dishes for their morning and evening communal meals.

”I don’t think I could do with so little variety, though,” she added. ”Though, if I had to survive another summer in the heat of the Briar, I’d probably find myself begging Heila to prepare a chilled dish every night... Or Ollie, I suppose. They’re both so much better with ice and snow than I am, and the heat of that place is unbearable.”

”But you liked it there, in the Briar,” Isabell said, reaching out hesitantly to pick up the knife again. In her hand, however, it didn’t feel extraordinary. There was none of the feeling of shifting, flowing power moving through her body or connecting her to the blade. Instead, it was just a simple, ordinary knife with a handle that had been perfectly carved to fit her hand. It was as if it couldn’t be more ordinary, despite the extraordinary way it had been shaped.

”It must have been nice,” the silver-haired woman added, slowly chopping the vegetables as she finally gained a measure of understanding about how alone Ashlynn must have felt for most of her life. ”There was no one else in the Briar but other witches, right? So, you finally had a place where you belonged.”

Ever since she woke from her nap in the tower, Isabell had been thinking about how she would explain how she’d changed to Casquas or her children. What words would she use to describe the feeling of connection and kinship she felt with the mighty hemlock trees that towered over the lesser trees of the forest? How could she express the sensation of strength and flexibility that suffused every inch of her body since she’d woken?

She didn’t know. Casquas might be good with flowery turns of phrase, but Isabell herself had always been far more direct. Yet the things she felt... she didn’t have direct or simple words to describe them, nor did she possess an engineer’s lexicon of specialized language to capture the unique nuances of the way her world had changed.

But Ashlynn surely understood. She didn’t need the words with the members of the coven because she could feel them, just like she could feel the trees outside, and she knew that they also knew what it was like to hear the whistle of the wind through the branches with ears that weren’t your own, or to feel the earth beneath your feet, dozens of paces deep.

They knew, because they were the same, even if they were each unique in their own ways. For Ashlynn to grow up feeling all of these things, but to have no one that she could share them with...

”The Briar will always be something like a vacation home to me,” Ashlynn agreed. ”It isn’t ’home’, the way the Vale is, or the way Blackwell used to be. It belongs to Amahle. The thorns she wraps around her sanctuary, and the dangers she keeps within, make it hard to feel perfectly relaxed there, even when none of those thorns face inward. But the people there make it a place I’ll always be happy to visit,” she explained.

”I learned a great deal there,” Ashlynn said as she gently placed the seasoned fish into an iron cage, locking the fish in place before setting it on a rack in front of the hearth where she could rotate it as it cooked. ”Cooking is one of the things I enjoyed learning. It was always nice to set aside the worries of the world to take care of something simple.”

”Like this?” Isabell said as she lifted up the iron pot that was now filled with chopped vegetables and smaller pieces of fish. ”Do you want it left simple with just flesh and roots? Wouldn’t your mother have called that ’convent food’?” she teased.

”She would have,” Ashlynn said with a laugh. ”It was the one thing she always complained about when she returned from the convent. The food, according to her, was always bland and horrible. There’s a bundle of herbs tied up and ready for the soup next to the mortar and pestle, and you can drop in the heads and bones to flavor the soup too.”

”I’m sure Ollie and Virve will visit the kitchens before they join us,” Ashlynn added. ”But it won’t hurt to have something warm and comforting for a snack while we talk later. For now, though,” she said as she took the iron pot from Isabell and hung it over the hearth. ”We should talk about your mark of the witch,” she said in a more serious tone.

”It’s important to understanding your power, and guiding you in your early lessons. Is it easy for you to show me?” Ashlynn asked. ”Heila’s is on her shoulder blade, and Virve’s covers her back, so if you need help to disrobe, just let me know.”

”No,” Isabell said, taking a deep breath as she prepared to face this moment. She’d seen the mark on her skin as soon as she’d stripped out of her cold, damp clothes to wash up before taking a nap. After all, at that size, the mark was impossible to miss.

But seeing it was only the beginning. Just as much as the new sensations running through her body, the mark was a clear sign of how much her life had fundamentally changed in just a few short days, and now, she was about to learn what it would mean for her future.

”It’s on my leg,” Isabell said, bending down to gather up her skirts. ”Here, take a look...”