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Kit was wearing a filmy summer dress that couldn’t conceal a gun, which meant that she had to wear a too-warm jacket over it, which made her look a little buttoned up and fussy among the other women. Jade and Gus were one room over, playing with the other children, but every thirty seconds brought a scream of indignation or a cry of pain and someone had to be rescued. The other mothers seemed to be able to recognize their child’s cry and its reason by tone alone, but Kit startled every time she heard anyone cry, wondering if it were her child. She felt vaguely guilty, as if she had failed at the instinctive motherhood test and everyone was judging her. Tali wasn’t even human and she was doing this motherhood thing better than Kit did. Tali had emigrated from the Realm of the Faerie to escape an evil guy who liked to cut people’s heads off. Kit had gotten to know her while investigating one of the evil guy’s murders. Now she and Tali were good friends. Funny how many people became Kit’s friends after she saved their life, or vice versa.
Tali’s mother-in-law read the card on the next package. She handed the package over and Tali opened it, being careful to detach the crocheted baby booties tied like a favor to the pouf of chenille ribbon. Kit had used inside-out Christmas paper held together with scotch tape that barely hid the seam. She’d felt proud that she had even managed to get it wrapped, but in this too, compared to the other women she felt inadequate. Kit barely watched the gift proceedings, glancing back over her shoulder at her children. Jade was dumping a basket of blocks on the floor while Gus was trying to eat a plastic truck.
Everyone oohed and ahhed at the collection of onesies with appliques of soft animals on them. Kit herself had gone for a giant pack of diapers and wipes, not sure of how Tali would feel about a gift of clothing. Would Tali feel it inappropriate for her child to wear new clothing, as Indel could only wear torn or secondhand clothes? Would Tali feel it improper for her child to wear pink or red, preferring a more modest blue or white? Or had Tali been here in the dying lands long enough to not care?
Tali was opening another package, this one some kind of sling for carrying her child. Kit had the same sling when Jade was a baby. Kit had used it solidly for a week before Jade outgrew it. They never brought it out for Gus, because by then Fenwick had quit his job in favor of consulting work and they’d hired nannies to pitch in with the child care when Fenwick was on contract.
Kit was bored, and sober, since she and Fenwick were expecting a third child, so she couldn’t even enjoy one of the mimosas they were handing out. She was only acquaintances with the other guests, except Silvara whom she’d known since forever. Judging by the deferential respect the others offered Silvara, Kit guessed most of the guests were Tali’s witch coven. The story Kit heard is that these were most of the same witches who had saved Tali’s life by using magic to hide her from a murderer. Actually, Kit was pretty sure that she and Tali’s mother-in-law were the only people in the room who weren’t Pagan.
Tali held up a crocheted baby blanket, and the elderly witch with the curly hair raised her hand modestly admitting she had made it. Kit used to make stuff with her hands. She used to make a living at it, though it wasn’t much of a living. Now the only thing she did creative was make stakes to kill vampires and figure out new ways of tweaking the wards around her house. Well, magic was kind of creative.
They were interrupted by a cry from the other room, and Kit looked to see that it was her own child who was upset. As much as she hated her boy being unhappy, comforting him was a welcome respite from cooing over yet another outfit.
She stood and stepped over the baby gate to scoop up Gus and cuddle him. She changed him and offered a bottle, but Gus wouldn’t take it unless she held him on her lap, so she sat in the rocking chair to feed him. The attention was probably his aim to begin with. He held the bottle himself, which gave her a hand free to brush his hair out of his eyes. He looked like his dad. She couldn’t see much of herself in his face. He had blue eyes, pale hair, and was already topping out the growth chart, his pudgy legs dangling past the arm of the rocking chair. Such a big boy. Not a changer, though, nor was Jade. She hoped Fenwick wasn’t disappointed that the lycanthropy gene had not yet bred true. Or maybe he was relieved. Not being a normal human was a burden sometimes.
“Everything okay, Kit?” Tali asked quietly, stepping over the baby gate. She had one hand on her belly, as if keeping it in place, though she still had a steady grace in her movements.
“Yeah, he just needed a bottle. How are you feeling? Ready to not be pregnant anymore?”
Tali rubbed her belly. “Not much longer now.”
“I guess I’m going to have to find myself a new tutor,” Kit said regretfully. “A shame. You’ve taught me so much.”
Tali shrugged modestly. “I am only an Indel.”
“You’re one of the best mages I’ve seen in the dying lands,” Kit said. “And I’m so lucky that you have been willing to share your knowledge. But motherhood has a way of upending a woman’s life.”
“Oh, I don’t know, you seem to manage it.”
“I have two nannies and a husband with an extremely flexible schedule, and I’m still run ragged. But if you have time, and I’m wrong, then I am happy to learn whatever you are willing to teach me.” Like how to undo curses, Kit thought with a frown. There was still so much she didn’t know.
“Did I say something wrong?” Tali asked.
Kit gave an embarrassed smile, “No, sorry, I’ve got something on my mind I’m worried about.”
To other people, Tali looked like a pretty, fair-haired white woman in her third trimester. To Kit, whose bindi made her ignore glamours, she looked like an Indel of Clan Willow, with hair the color of driftwood and a rabbit-long nose. Her eyes had an odd tilt to them, and there was something about the chin that made her look like a Clanfaerie. They had racially consistent features, Kit thought, but she didn’t know how to describe it except it was obvious. It was the same way it was obvious that she was an Indel rather than a Vargel, though she couldn’t explain that either.
“Is it the renovations? How are they going?”
“We’re moving out next week while they rip the roof off, and then once they put the frame of the second floor in, we get to move back in. The kids are super excited about staying in a hotel. I told them that they have tiny soaps and now Jade wants one.” Fenwick had to postpone his change so that he didn’t turn into a bear in the hotel room, but he thought he could manage. Who knew family life could be so complicated? “Are you looking forward to seeing your baby?”
Tali smiled. “I’m nervous.”
“You’ll be fine. Babies are pretty resilient,” Kit said. But she had a terrible thought. What if they went after her, or her family? How bad was that insult in the first place? What had they done to make Yseulta so angry? “Tali, have you ever heard the story of Clan Yew, Dalde Apple, and Omuta?”
Tali leaned back abruptly. “Of course I have. It’s infamous. Everyone knows that story. It’s taught to children to impart the importance of showing proper respect.”
“The story I heard is that Omuta was the senndil, the familiar of Yseulta,” Kit said. She made faces at Gus. “And Dalde Apple insulted him, and as a punishment, Yseulta turned his clan into an orchard.”
“Who is Yseulta?” One of the younger witches, the one in the blue dress, had come into the room to change her baby.
Tali answered. “The legends of my people teach that the landscape gods created the Realm and the dying lands. Each god rules over a type of land. Isoler of the deserts, Jannt of the wild in-between places, Yseulta of the forests, one for each type of land.”
“And these gods can have a familiar?” the witch asked as she expertly diapered her squirming baby. “Like a mage’s familiar?”
Like me, Kit thought, but didn’t say.
“Familiar is the best translation I know,” Tali said. “The story is that Omuta had a son who was ill, and he found a portal to the Realm of the Faerie. No one dies there, and he hoped he could find someone to heal his son.
“But the Realm is vast,” Tali said. “And the lands between the palaces are wild and populated by a fierce and savage people. A traveler could wander around for centuries and never get anywhere.”
Kit knew that from firsthand experience. The first time she went, she swore it had been centuries. It felt like so long she had wandered in the wilderness before the coyote god had taken pity on her and made his bargain. If not for that bargain, she may never have been able to return. She had been so lucky. Her life had been one lucky experience after another. What would happen when her luck ran out?
“He came to the palace of Clan Yew and Clan Apple,” Tali said. The young witch had finished diapering her baby and offered him to Tali to hold. Tali kissed the baby and held him close before continuing her story. “And he begged someone to help him. But Clan Yew has a reputation of being inhospitable to strangers. They told him to go away and warned if he didn’t, they’d make him regret it. But he didn’t leave.”
“Prickly as a Yew,” Kit said, remembering a phrase from the language and culture she acquired. That had been the second time she’d gone to the Realm of the Faerie, for much the same reason: because she had an injury that would have killed her had she not gone. If Yseulta herself had not brought her, would they have let her in the gates?
“Why didn’t he leave?” the witch asked.
“The Realm is different from here,” Tali said. “Inside the palaces, great magics keep reality stable. One may walk from room to room as here. But outside the palaces, time and space have little meaning. As in a dream, one could run for days in a straight line and never leave the place one began. Only the Pilell have the ability to bend the land to their will, and they are not friends to my people.”
Kit’s arm was starting to fall asleep with Gus’s weight against it, pressing into the wooden arm of the rocking chair. She imagined herself in Omuta’s shoes, carrying Gus, desperate for help. Told to leave. Before she’d run with the Pilell, she wouldn’t have been able to leave. It had taken her a long time to learn to bend the fabric of the Realm of the Faerie so that she could travel from point A to point B. How long had she run with them before she’d learned? Years? Months? Decades? Long enough to learn their language, long enough to make dear friends that she grieved to leave. Without knowing the Pilell’s trick, you could run forever and never go anywhere.
“This is the part I’m hazy on,” Kit said. She had to readjust Gus to the other arm. “The story I was told is that Dalde Apple insulted Omuta, but I was never told what the insult was, and the detail about his dying son was left out entirely.”
“This isn’t a happy story,” Tali said. “In the tale I was told Dalde did it. As I know from my own experiences, it was probably not his own idea. He was likely ordered to chastise Omuta, and when it went wrong, he was blamed for it.”
“What was the insult?” Libby asked.
“People don’t die in the Realm, and people will heal from most injuries. But if a warrior is truly angry, or wishes to incapacitate their opponent, they will seek to dislimb or decapitate. My people have a beloved sport in which this is the end goal.” Tali glanced at Jade and the other children, who appeared to be ensconced in a cartoon-induced trance. “They insulted him by cutting off his head and his limbs. Then they opened a portal to the dying lands and shoved the pieces, and his son, through it.”
“Lord and Lady,” the witch swore. “They made his son watch him die.”
“Do you think they knew they were killing him?” Silvara asked from the door.
Tali shrugged. “My people call this land the dying lands. Sending people here is never done except as punishment.”
“I think I believe your version. It makes more sense than the abridged version I got.” Kit looked down at Gus. He had fallen asleep on her lap, still faintly suckling at the bottle. “Forests are not vindictive. She wouldn’t have taken Clan Apple to punish them, but to replace what was lost to her.”
“The Yew were grieved,” Tali said. “Their sister clan is now and perhaps forever an orchard. They had no Indel to bond with. Some of the Apples were beloved, and one was barely out of childhood. They pleaded with Yseulta for mercy, and Yseulta answered that the laws of hospitality rooted deeper than the roots of the One Tree, and they could have Clan Apple back when Omuta and his son came back to life.”
“A guest came to their door, begging for aid, and they killed him instead of offering hospitality,” another woman said. “In many old stories, that is the greatest possible crime, the crime for which cities were leveled.”
Kit looked at her darling son, imagining carrying little Gus to the Realm of the Faerie, asking for help only to be cut into pieces and thrown to the dying lands. Almost the opposite of what had happened to her before. She had been so lucky. Kit leaned forward and kissed her son’s face. Jade had come close to the rocking chair, so Kit scooped her close and kissed her as well.
“I’ve upset you. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you for telling me the story, Tali. I know I can trust you to tell me the truth,” Kit said. “I needed to know.”
“Why?” the second witch asked. “Why did you need to know such a horrible story?”
Kit looked up and met her eyes. “Because there are nineteen dryads in my yard, petrified in poses of agony, and this morning I got an email from someone claiming to be a Yew saying that they cursed the dryads and they will all die unless Yseulta restores Clan Apple, which I don’t think she’ll do, now that I know the truth.”
There was a collective inhale of breath, and Kit looked up to see that the rest of the baby shower guests had come into the playroom, having overhead Tali’s story.
“What are you going to do?” Tali asked.
“I want to help them,” Kit said. “But I don’t know how to undo curses. I don’t know how long the dryads have. We just found them this morning. I want to fix them, but I don’t even know where to start.”
“We’ll help,” the older woman said, to murmured agreements all around.
“Wait, what?” Kit asked.
“We’ll want to do it before Midsummer,” another witch said. “Let me check the moon phases.”
“I can get Sacred Thorn to help.” The young witch with the blue dress had pulled out her phone and was texting someone. “My friend has an affinity for wood and forests. This is right up her alley. Anyone have yarrow? I have dried but it’s old. We’ll want amulets.”
“I do,” the other witch said. “And I have an extra silver sickle if anyone wants to borrow one.”
Silvara had walked away from the group and was talking on her phone. “Hi, it’s Silvara. Listen, we’re going to do a spell and I need you there. It’s an emergency. On, hang on let me ask.” She turned to call out over her shoulder. “What day did we decide? Waning full is best, when is that, Tuesday? Waning full. I’ll give you more details when I get them. Oh, I don’t know. Yes, full ceremonial if you think it best.”
“Kit, do you have a firepit? Oh, nevermind, she’ll bring hers. What else do we need? Folding chairs? My mother has bad hips. She’ll need to sit.”
“I’ll put it in my calendar for Tuesday,” the older witch’s husband said. “But I need to look at my almanac to figure out the best time of day. What’s your address Kit? Is there running water nearby?”
Kit gave it to him, bemused at the flurry. “You’re all going to help me? Just because I need help?”
“That’s what witches do, Kit,” Tali said.