Prologue

Blood dripped from the crone’s palm. Methodically, each drop rippled in the bowl of water on her lap. It dissipated into the clear liquid but, with each drop, the water’s color shifted a shade murkier.

Kizu’s mouth dried as he watched the process. The ancient saying echoed in his head- blood is life, and life is magic.

Her back bent, the crone set her bloody knife aside, not paying any heed to her self-inflicted wound, and examined the results. The decorated wooden bowl filled with the concoction of blood and water appeared no different than before to Kizu, but he knew better than to ask questions or interrupt. What the crone underwent took all her focus.

Only once before could he recall an instance of her using blood divination. The night, ten years ago, after she stole him away from his family. At the time he had babbled and whined and cried. As a result, she had silenced him with a wave of her hand. That simple gesture had crushed his joints and sent him sprawling across the dirty cottage floor. This time, he intended to get a good view of the spell.

“Trouble,” the crone muttered. “A deer’s limp benefits a wolf. Who is the deer and who is the wolf?”

Kizu remained still and silent. He barely even dared to take shallow breaths. All questions asked were clearly rhetorical. Still, he strained his eyes to see inside the bowl. But he saw no patterns or symbols, it just looked like normal water clouded with blood.

The crone smiled as she loomed over the bowl, cutting off his view. Her yellow teeth glittered in the dim lantern light. “Blood and water. Very fitting. Ironic even. Tied as tight as a rat tails. The two are vital for one another. And a spinal cord dangling between.”

Kizu waited.

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““An old friend turns in its sleep. So many footprints in the sand. They lead in every direction. So many options. But one, a sea lion cut in two? No, a beached seal. And of course, lizards, jellyfish, foxes. Leeches though, unexpected. Still one empty place at the table.” Then the crone’s eyes seemed to pop out of her skull. “So clear. Never so clear a directive as this. And so…unfortunate.”

Again, Kizu attempted to decipher what the wooden bowl told her. To his surprise, he actually found the liquid clearer. But only in a literal sense. The blood appeared to filter out of the water and dissipate as the crone channeled.

“Well, boy, what did you learn?” the crone asked him.

“That only the owner of the blood can see the results of the spell?” he guessed.

“Incorrect,” she snapped. “Any fool can see the divination. You’re just less than a fool. Your eyes are bad and your angle even worse.”

The crone appeared to be in a temper as she pushed the bowl of water into his hands and demanded he wash it.

Dutifully, he complied. Pushing past the sacks and tied up bobbles that dangled from the ceiling, he exited the hut.

The canopy overhead kept the lighting dusky even in the sunniest of days. Still, Kizu navigated the jungle with practiced ease on his way down to a little brook near the hut.

As he rinsed the bowl clean, his fingers traced the carvings along the sides of it. Predators and prey circled the rim. A leaf, an insect, a mouse, an owl, an ocelot, a human, then back to the leaf.

He yawned, not used to being awake in the middle of the day. But the crone had insisted on it. She claimed this specific rite needed to be performed at the dead center of the solstice for the greatest foreseeable capability. Why it couldn’t instead be done in the dead of night on the winter solstice, remained a mystery to him.

After rinsing out the bowl with fresh water, Kizu pushed the door open with his shoulder. The crone wasn’t there. Everything dangled from the ceiling, same as it always did. No movement showed him where she might have disappeared to. Likely, she jumped to a different place. Maybe to another witch’s hut. Probably to gossip about whatever she had discovered in her divination. Kizu was too tired to care.

With a final look around, he made certain she wouldn’t pop out from around a rusty cauldron or sack of beets. Then he crawled into his little nook beside the hearth, closed the curtain, and slept.