5 - Highsun 18 / 1 – Ash Moon 10
Morning felt like a small cruelty. I woke with sleep still stuck in my mouth and a silly certainty that the world would be bright and safe and my biggest worry would be choosing which sweet bread to eat for breakfast. Instead my face itched in places that never itched, and the pillow smelled faintly of lilies and algae—an odd fragrance that didn't belong in my room.
I sat up slowly, feeling off. I slid up in bed and got up sluggishly to go to the mirror; in my bones, I already knew something was wrong, even if my mind was taking its time. My reflection looked back and my heart dropped. My cheeks had puffed so much my jawline softened into something squishy; my nose sat wide and a quite bulbous, as if borrowed from some tavern tale about amphibians. My skin had a sallow sheen, not quite green but leaning toward it.
I pressed my palms to my cheeks as though I might be able to push my features back into place. They did not obey.
I had meant to sob, but instead made a sound that was not all that different from a croak…
"This is not happening," I said aloud, as if words could keep me company. I tried the reversal charm until my throat ached, but the face would not budge. "No, no, no, no…" Without meaning to, I let out another croak instead of a whimper as I had meant to produce…
Fear filled me completely. I lurched for the shelf where the glamour notes lay—Grandmother's tidy loops and my scribbles—and scanned the page as if the letters might rearrange themselves to give me the explanation to where I had failed so horridly. In the very bottom of the inner margin, so small I definitely missed it, a line hid like a secret: Under a waning moon, glamour requires a lunar-stabilizer; without this, effects may distort when the moon bends from full.
I remembered thinking, too excited to be careful, that the page looked crammed. I had been proud of myself for skimming. Of course I had. I had accomplished something and, in the exhilaration, had skipped the fine print—the one thing every sensible contract had, and every sensible witch would've read.
The words swam in my head. Lunar-stabilizer—what on earth was that? I turned the page. There, in a different hand and in ink so light it could have been cobweb, were instructions for a stabilizer: a sliver of moon-silk, a threading of silverwire, and a chant at dawn to set the charm facing the Crow star. None of which I had, or had done, or even had the faintest idea how to acquire.
Panic, in a slow, icy bloom, unfolded in my chest. It wasn't dramatic with loud sobs and screams or throwing glass at the wall as I realized just how much trouble I was in. It was very… quiet: heart racing, stomach churning, palms damp, breath coming small and jagged.
I needed to know if the Duke's daughter had suffered the same fate as I had…
I needed to know, in the pragmatic way that comes from being hungry for weeks, whether the Duke's house would be the sort that came asking for my head. I grabbed my cloak, pulled up the hood to hide my face, and left. The world reduced to the winding path between my cottage and the market.
The town was a different kind of loud that morning. Where yesterday had been the pleasant clatter of trade, today the square hummed with something sharper—voices threaded with worry as a guard hung a poster on the town board. A group had gathered around to read and talk. From where I stood in the shadows, I couldn't read the papers, but I could hear the other's words.
Their voices were surprised with disbelief. "—and the Duke himself demands the name of the witch who did it—" "—the Duchess swears she was lovely at the altar—" "—but by midnight—" The sentences frayed in the air.
A little boy with flour on his nose said, "They say she turned into a beast on her bridal night." A vendor I knew well, and who I had told about my successful sell when he had asked about my good fortune as he passed me my order, Tomas, caught sight of me and leaned in. "Keep your head down, girl. Soldiers're about. The Duke's not one for jokes."
I did as he said and mumbled a thanks before taking off in a run—shame, panic, and guilt filled me fresh once more. I went to the only place I knew I could get more information from: the apothecary. Mistress Calla stood behind her counter, hands busy polishing jars. The chimes rang when I opened and shut the door quickly, and went over to her. "Mistress… I need advice, please—"
When I asked, barely breathing, if she'd heard anything about the Duke's fury, she waved me over and pulled me into the back room. I lowered my hood there, seeing that the windows were covered by the curtains and it was just us, and looked at her with teary, scared eyes.
"Goodness child!" Her shock startled me, and then I remembered my ugly appearance. Before I could stop it, my mouth turned down into a sad pout, my brows pulling together, and my eyes stung as I showed her exactly what must have happened to the poor bride… I made to lift the hood back up to cover myself, but she stepped forward and stopped me with her hand on mine.
"Now I understand the rumors… Well, dear, they say the bride—" she began, then stopped. She looked at me with the gentleness that had saved me a dozen times before. "She was lovely at the wedding. The groom was absolutely amazed, and the guests were charmed beyond belief. You did that part perfectly… But later—after midnight… The guests say her appearance became—well, that it changed, and her groom rushed off with her. No one understood why, but the Duke. He's… He's furious, his pride hurt. His men and some guards have been around town, asking questions. It's bad."
"Bad how?" My voice was smaller than I felt.
Mistress Calla's mouth thinned. "They're looking for you… There's talk of rewards and punishments, but no one has said anything—we know you, Ami. Still, if there's a way to fix this, you need to do so. If not…." She swallowed. "Don't come back, child. It's not safe for you right now."
It was the sort of warning that made your blood go colder than actual winter ever could.
I left the apothecary in a daze—by my own face, by the idea that I'd turned a newlywed couple's happiness into horror, by the fact that I had just lost the little I had left…
The town that had felt alive and friendly yesterday was now a place of fear for me… I kept my hood up, but still, some of these people had known of me my whole life and probably easily recognized, and avoided me now: a woman with bags in her hands crossed the road to walk on the other side of the street; a man I'd once bartered with for marigolds avoided my glance like a nettle. Small kindnesses vanished.
The path through the woods, which yesterday had been so inviting, now felt like a dark tunnel. I imagined guards at every bend. My face stung from the shame, and my legs burned as I ran faster than ever. I raced home like a creature pursued, yet with nowhere smart to run to… A cottage in the woods could an easy enough idea for a place to look for a witch…
The warding my great-grandmother had set would hide the cottage from unbidden eyes—but not from men hunting with intent. My hands shook at the gate. I fumbled the latch until it clicked, then scrambled up the steps.
Inside smelled of rosewater and cooled cauldrons. I thought of making something that could help me now, but what? The book lay where I'd left it, the marginalia like a small, accusing chorus. I threw off my cape, made sure the front door was bolted shut, and pressed my back to the wood, breathing like I had run up the hill twice over.
For a dizzy second I pictured packing a bundle and leaving… I imagined myself on a road where no one knew I had made a faulty potion for a Duke's daughter, and thus maybe never suspected me of ruining anything. But the thought hollowed fast. Leaving would mean abandoning the home I had grown up in, the jars I'd always tended to, Grandmother's books, the last threads of my mother's presence. I couldn't do it. It would mean leaving pieces of myself I couldn't afford to lose. I was too weak to do so.
So the panic broke into tears instead—sharp, hot, visceral sobs. I pressed myself to the door and let the grief be noisy and useless for a while. When it eased, a blunt truth sat in my stomach: I was hunted now. I could not just walk through town anymore for the foreseeable future, not even to get food or sell my harvests… The little life I'd stitched together had been wiped by one misread clause.
The glamour had completely cracked.
I slid down until I was sitting on the floor, my face still strange in the reflection when I stole a begrudging glance. My hands worked their way into my hair in an old, useless gesture. Fear made the room too loud. My mind, trying yet failing to help, started cataloguing options—stabilizers I didn't have, messes I could somehow undo, people I could beg to for help.
But the first thing I did was the only thing I could manage that felt like a tether: I went to the shelf and pulled down Grandmother's smallest, blackest book—the one I had always been told never to open unless the house was burning. My fingers hovered. My heart thudded in the same rhythm as a trapped animal. I had not yet decided to open it. I only knew that the page would be there if I needed it.
I tucked Grandmother's book closer like a secret for now, and for the first time I understood how thin the seams between the ordinary and the dangerous could be.
Tomorrow I would make plans. Tonight, for the first time since my mother's hands stopped stirring cauldrons, I sat very still and let the fact of how fragile everything is feel heavy in my bones.
The glamour had worked, for a time—and for that I had been paid handsomely and I had eaten warm bread and thought I might be brave. Now the cost of that magic was in the shape of a Duke's anger and my own warped face in the glass.
I pressed my palms to my cheeks again. The skin felt foreign and very much mine at once. While trying to look for familiarity in myself and the home around me, I could almost hear Grandmother's voice if I listened hard enough—Listen. Feel. Ask. I whispered the words into the hush like a vow, though I didn't know what I was asking for. Yet.
Outside, the town murmured on. Inside, the ward held—for now.