20) Gift

Their giant was slow to heal, much of the spirit taken from him. He barely spoke, but turned his face to the wall when they tended him. After a day, the wound began to swell, and then to seep, and Bronwyn pulled the stitches free to let the infection drain.

On the third day, Rue came to Bronwyn as she sat on a rock in the meadow, trying to warm herself in the morning sunlight. "The prince is gravely ill," she began.

"I don't care," Bronwyn snapped.

"But he's -" she let the rest of the sentence drop off as the witch whirled on her.

"He's a beast, like his father. If he dies, Janette will inherit. If he dies, the male line with all it's curse upon this land, will die with him." Pain and hatred darkened her vision for a moment. "Grahme is worth ten of him; I will not leave my husband to tend that evil brat."

A messenger came the next day, the Lord Regent himself, led up the path by Lisel and Robbie Longfellow. He was followed by a young woman in a servant's gown, carrying a baby slung across her breast. He looked exhausted and afraid, and when Bronwyn came to her door, flanked by her daughters, one fair and perfect, one dark and scarred, he knelt in the dirt of the path without regard for his fine traveling clothes. The servant woman did likewise, and the babe fretted a bit.

"What do you want, Lord Regent." Grief and worry turned quickly to anger.

"The Prince, your son, is gravely ill. He took ill while hunting, and is confined to the royal hunting manor, too ill even to return to the palace. He is blinded by fever and raving. The finest physicians in the land can't find a cure, but I wonder if their limitations might not be fear of failure, or..."

"Or fear of the brat if he comes to his senses and finds himself blind? Or fear of punishment if they do not actually want to succeed?" He looked back down at the ground. "Stand up, Fredrick. Did I not tell you what would happen if you allowed the babe to grow into a monster like his father? Did you bring this woman with you, bearing his bastard child in her arms, thinking to sway me to mercy with a grandchild conceived in hatred?"

"No, my Lady. I brought Cora and her babe because the babe is a boy, and would threaten Princess Janette's right to succession if he were known. Bringing them here, now, while he is not in the palace and does not know of the babe, seemed best."

Bronwyn stepped off the broad stone before the threshold and the servant girl stood, offering the tightly swaddled baby to the witch, afraid but weary. His eyes were tightly closed, his hair a wispy brown like his mother's. "Did you not want to marry the Prince and legitimize the child?" Bronwyn asked sharply.

"No, your Highness. The Prince does not love me, nor does he know of the babe. I do not want, ever, to return to the palace." Rue and Magda came to look at the babe as well, and Bronwyn took him, holding him up to the light of the afternoon. His infant eyes opened, and they were stormy gray, not hazel or golden.

"He has your eyes, my Lady Witch," Cora said, a barest tremor of hope in her voice.

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"Cora, can you spin, or sew? Do you have any skills to offer the village?"

"My father was a brewmaster, and my mother taught me spinning and sewing, and I can cook for large groups. I'll do anything, learn anything, and I will work very hard."

Bronwyn looked at Lisel, who stood back, quietly watching. "Would you see them settled in the village? We need a spinner, and the village has grown enough that we could use a tavern, if the council wills it." Lisel curtseyed.

The witch turned back to the Lord Regent. "The babe and its mother are safe. As for the healing, my husband is gravely ill. I will not come. I don't know if I could heal him, regardless."

Magda stepped forward, her dark hair swinging forward to cover the scarred half of her face, blue eyes fearless. "I will go," she said, resolute. Bronwyn looked at her for a long time and finally turned on her heel and returned to Grahme's side.

Magda left the following morning with the Lord Regent and his guardsmen. She wore her hair brushed over the burned side of her face, a kerchief securing it all. Rue went with her to the bottom of the mountain trail to see her off, and pressed a small packet of seed into her sister’s hand as they said farewell with a tight embrace. Bronwyn watched for her older daughter in the mirror as she tended Grahme, whose fevers continued. Magda was received with great respect by the palace staff, and great fear by the nobles. The prince raved with fever, and Magda pricked his finger, summoning a salamander to taste the blood. It looked deep into her eyes, and thoughtfully she began to mix herbs and infuse them into wine. This went on for days, but the prince's fever finally seemed to break, though he was gravely weak, and light pained him so much that Magda fastened a silken blindfold over his eyes. She threw open the shutters to let in fresh air, and in the window box she planted some of the seeds Rue had given her.

On the mountainside, black streaks began to creep up the giant's leg as the wound on his calf mortified. Grimly, the witch sent for the blacksmith and the butcher, and together they took the leg off at the knee.

After the amputation the giant began, finally, to heal. He was still gravely weak on his left side, and Rue and Bronwyn grew adept at helping him eat, making broths that were not too thin for him to manage through a mouth half slack. Each evening, Bronwyn went out at sunset and looked up into the clouds or the stars or the shadows cast by sunlight and clouds upon the mountainside. She felt the call of fate each night, threads cast upon her that she pushed away, some stronger than others, none as important to her as the giant who lay stricken in the bed in the rose covered tower on the mountain.

At last, one afternoon while Rue was delivering medicines in the village, he gestured for Bronwyn to bring him parchment and pen. The pen proved difficult for him to manage, so she offered a piece of charcoal instead.

"Had a gift for you, was lost?" he scrawled clumsily.

"Your pack was gone, I'm sorry," she said. He shook his head sorrowfully.

"A month south and then another to west," he wrote. "The rock where you slept. Love you, wife."

She smiled, tears in her eyes. "As I love you, giant. But I'll not leave your side, not for anything." The words tasted wrong as soon as she said them, and a great dread washed over her. She kissed his hands and stood, going to the mirror. All was well in the village, a new tavern being built just off the village square, near the place where Gretchen's cottage once stood. Magda sat reading to the fretful blind prince, unconcerned by his temper. A young merchant stepped up onto the deck of his first ship, and the Princess Janette and her knight hunted deer together on matching dapple horses. The mirror showed her a small cottage in a deep wood, but nothing of whoever lived there, and the Wolf stalking a girl carrying a basket of flowers and bread, a shadowy figure with an axe and a wicked knife stalking after the wolf.

"No. There is nothing to call me away from you, Grahme," she said, but there was a thread of doubt in her heart, and she saw infinite kindness and understanding in his eyes.

"Always free," he said clearly, and settled to sleep, exhausted.