5.

 

Ayae had not seen Olcea since the night before Faise left, but if the witch was surprised to see her arrival under the night’s sky, it did not show. “Ayae.” In the lamplight, the streaks of silver in her thick black hair shone, but her face was tired and lined, even when she smiled. “I have heard your name spoken of a lot recently.”

At the edge of the cart, Ayae stopped. “I can leave, if I bother you,” she said, trying to mask her frustration.

“As you can clearly see, I am the one leaving.” Olcea had been holding a box of empty jars and she placed it on the back of the cart. She sighed once the weight left her, and slid it beneath the broken-down frame of her bed, next to another pair of boxes. There was room for more, though how much more, Ayae could not say. Already, the witch had filled the cart to the brim with much of her belongings, the jumble of odds and ends and furniture that had filled her house for over two decades looking like a miniature castle. Straightening, she turned to Ayae and said, “But I shall do it on my own terms so far as I can.”

“I hadn’t heard that you planned to leave.”

“It was not my plan until recently.” She beckoned Ayae to the door. “Come, I have a pair of chairs I have not yet packed. We can sit and discuss why I cannot help you.”

Outside, the shadowed shape of Olcea’s house was, by daylight, a sagging map of repairs, as if a lifetime of work on it by children had caused its shape and consistency to be lost. On the inside, however, the witch had kept a stronger sense of herself, with the high ceiling leading to small vents, and the first two rooms being large and open and stocked—or, at least, once stocked—with glass jars of animals, bones and blood. What remained now was a vast emptiness, the internal organs of the building removed as if for embalming, leaving an echo that sounded as the witch passed through the doorways, heading deeper into her house, to the private rooms she kept, and where the rest of the boxes were stacked.

“You cannot help?” Ayae asked, following her. “I haven’t even told you why I am here.”

“You do not want to be cursed.” Olcea approached a pair of wooden chairs, stacked on each other, one upside down, with its legs in the air. “You are not the first to visit me in the middle of the night wanting a cure.”

A hard, short laugh escaped her. “It didn’t even occur to me.”

“You cannot take it away, I am afraid.” She placed the first chair in front of Ayae and sat down on the second, her wrapped hands gripping the edge as she did. “I could no more remove all your blood and expect you to live.”

“It has already been described to me as an infection.”

“Don’t sound bitter, girl.”

“I—” She stopped herself, bit back words similar to what she had said to Lady Wagan. “It was too much to hope for, wasn’t it?”

“It always is,” Olcea said. “But you do not look ill, or in pain.”

“I am not.”

The witch spread her hands. “That is not the case for all,” she said. “You should feel lucky for that, at least.”

Ayae did not feel lucky. “Is there nothing to be done?”

“You will be able to find someone who says that that there is, but it is a lie,” the witch said. “The dead simply do not have that much to give.”

“I have seen amazing things done by others.” She was aware of how desperate she sounded. “Done by you, as well.”

“There are limits to the blood magic.” Olcea pushed herself to her feet and moved to where the wooden boxes were. There were more, Ayae thought, than could possibly fit onto the back of her cart, each of them stacked on top of each other. As she watched, Olcea reached into one and lifted a jar from within it. “You remember Hien, yes?”

At the bottom of the head, the spine showed from the soft, decayed edges of the neck, and it was pure and white, the only part of him that remained so. Decay and rot had set in elsewhere and pressed against the curves of the glass, the shape of his face had become distorted. His milky right eye raised itself above the dark brown of his left, the iris of which stared toward the ground. Hien had been a young man when he had been alive, and to a degree, the youth remained in the bloating of his flesh, and the gentle up-swept motion of his hair, which did not reach the briny water’s top.

“Yes,” Ayae said softly.

“My oldest friend.” Olcea placed him on the ground between them. “He was once my most bitter enemy, but you can hold the hate for only so long inside you.”

“He was the man who killed your children.”

“He was.” Her bandaged hands reached into the folds of her clothes, returning with a small, silver knife. With a small flick, she sliced her thumb, and held it above the jar. “If you live long enough, I’ve found, your enemies become your friends. Hien may think differently, but what remains of him is limited, and he is moved by the basest desires, only. He reacts only by the promise of life, and blood is life, Ayae. Within our blood is all that creation gave to us—and the nature of that cannot be underestimated. It is infinite in its complexity and its repercussions.” A drop of the witch’s blood hit the jar’s water and, for a second, the cartographer’s apprentice thought she saw a man, an outline of a soldier, his tall, lean form wearing intricate leather armor. So brief was it that Ayae doubted that she saw it until one of the boxes in the room rose and began to move, as if carried, out to the ox and cart. “I have kept him for years,” Olcea said softly, “his soul unable to forgo his head. He does not realize that if he could leave it, he would have nowhere to go, but that does not stop the urge. But because he cannot leave, I have used him, fed him and stolen from his very being for all that I have done in this world and will do, still. I have visited on him a horror so complete and awful that the depths of my rage are but just the start of it, the satisfaction that I demanded for the loss of my children paid a thousand times. That is the nature of what I do—the nature of my power, but it is not the nature of yours.”

In front of Ayae, the head of Hien was still, the water placid. “Is it not?” she asked.

“No,” Olcea said softly. “I use blood to take from the dead, but in you is creation itself, the very power that gave rise to all that we are, and that cannot be touched by the likes of me.”