15) Coin
The next morning, Bronwyn dressed early and took Gretchen's water bucket to the village well to draw water, thinking wistfully of the indoor water pipes of the palace. Robbie Longfellow raced around her, excited by the sunlight and the dew, and by the small creatures waking for the day or going into their homes to sleep.
The world wavered around her for a moment, for as she glanced up at the well she saw a frail woman with hay-colored hair, struggling to pull her own bucket out of the well. Bronwyn shook her head sharply, like shaking rain off her face, and the scene solidified. The woman closed her eyes, lips moving softly as she prayed, or wished, or simply recited her morning's tasks. Bronwyn remembered her from the dancing the night before, the miller's new wife, moved to the village from several valleys over last fall.
"What are you wishing for?" Bronwyn asked as she lowered Gretchen's bucket into the well.
The miller's wife's hazel eyes filled with tears as she looked over at the witch. "Only what every new wife wishes for, a child to catch and stay in my womb." A desperate hope dawned in her face. "Can you help me?"
Bronwyn smiled and reached into her pouch, pulling out one of the coins. "I don't grant wishes, child, but this well certainly can." She pressed the coin into the miller's wife's hand, noticing that it wasn't copper, but silver. "If you have problems when you're with child, you need but call me or the midwife and we'll aid you." Drawing up the bucket, Bronwyn turned away but saw the woman clutch the coin tightly in her hand, and then cast it into the well with a gasp.
For the rest of the morning, Bronwyn turned the soil in Gretchen's herb garden, picking a place near the garden wall that got just enough sunlight, and just enough shade, and where the mint grew the same dark green as the eyes of a laughing gold haired girl, running to Bronwyn in a dream. She planted herbs to staunch bleeding, and herbs to ease pain. "Something special to nourish a sick body, too, I think," she mused, thinking of how painfully thin Gretchen was in her vision. Reaching deep into the pouch, she pulled out nine hard round seeds. These she poked deep and marked each with a pebble from the bowl on Gretchen's table.
Some weeks later, Gretchen produced a fine linen gown in shades of cream, simple in its lines and girdled with a sash of yellow and red flowers. Bronwyn made the journey down the mountain every other day, and made teas and possets and tended Gretchen's garden herbs, the nine little seeds growing quickly into thick succulent stalks with broad leaves. Gretchen seemed to rally against the pain and the darkness in her belly.
As promised, Bronwyn married her giant at the Midsummer Feast. Lisel's young swain offered the girl ribbons for her hair and asked his master for his daughter's hand in marriage. If there were more small forest creatures in the meadows around the village that night, if there were glints of blue hot eyes and dancing shapes in the bonfires, they were only counted as good omens, and Magda laughed brightly and played with the salamanders under the watchful gaze of her brothers.
The miller's wife had remained wan and barren, but after Midsummer she suddenly bloomed with health. Bronwyn went into her garden on the day of the first full moon after Midsummer and found that one of the nine little plants had been stripped of most of its leaves, the stalk dripping with sap like tears from the wounded stems. A man's boot prints led to and from that part of the garden, where it was neither too shady nor too sunny, and the mint grew a dark glossy green. Bronwyn noted the footprints sadly, and harvested the single remaining leaf from the mangled plant. She spoke with Grahme that afternoon and they agreed that she would stay with Gretchen most days and come up the mountain only on rest-days.
The next full moon, the second of the nine little plants was robbed of all its thick leaves, the stem cut to the ground. Bronwyn met the miller's wife at the well the next morning. "Remember, lass, speak to me or the midwife if you have any troubles with the babe," she said, hauling up first her own water and then the other woman's bucket.
The miller's wife cast her hazel eyes to the side, flushing. "All seems well thus far, but thank you." Bronwyn walked away, but she could feel the other woman's gaze on her back, and knew that if she turned to look her eyes would flash yellow.
Gretchen's discomfort only grew unless she had a weekly, and then a twice weekly dose of the powerful teas Bronwyn made, and as the miller's wife's belly grew, so did Gretchen's. A hard mass pushed out between the bones of her hips in a grotesque mockery of the pregnancy she had wanted so badly when her giant yet lived. Bronwyn looked through the pouch for more of the seeds, but found only seeds for poppies and simple kitchen herbs. Grahme cleared a sunny place in their mountain garden and she planted the poppies, fearing in her heart that they would never bloom and fruit in time to ease Gretchen's agony. At each full moon, another of the nine little plants would be stolen from the garden.
Grahme bartered with a glassmaker and worked with the smith to frame a little shelter around the shady place in Gretchen's garden, fitting a dozen panes of glass into the wrought metal and carved wooden frame of the little shed to protect the herbs from the frost and then the cold of wind and snow, heating it with a tiny brazier and burning through a dozen candles a week in the darkest of days. Desperate to keep the succulents alive, Bronwyn wrote to the Lord Regent and bought even more of the fine wax candles from her own coffers.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
On Midwinter's night, the sixth of the little plants disappeared, dug up by the very roots from the soil. The next morning, Gretchen started to bleed, and so did the miller's wife. The midwife tended the miller's wife even as Bronwyn prayed and sat staring into the fire, searching her soul and casting out with her mind for any subtle calling, any mystical instruction or half forgotten memory of a dream. The bleeding slowed finally, and stopped, and both the miller's wife and Gretchen seemed to rest more easily. Days lengthened and the snows melted away, and spring came early to the mountainside. The seventh plant disappeared as the first of the spring greens pushed out of the cool earth, and the eighth as the first tiny blooms opened their faces to the skies, and yet Bronwyn simply reminded the miller and his wife to come to her, or the midwife, if there were any further troubles with their pregnancy. They bobbed, and nodded, and cast their eyes aside, and as time passed they became happy but more furtive around her.
The poppies bloomed early, and both Gretchen and the miller's wife took to their beds. Bronwyn stayed at Gretchen's cottage day and night, tending her friend, and Grahme brought her the herbs and flowers she asked for, begging her to stop and eat from time to time. He sent word to a merchant friend in the city, and a messenger returned to him with a package on the morning of the miller's wife's first labor pains. Gretchen felt well enough to sit up that morning, though Bronwyn kept the mirror covered and turned to the wall for good measure.
The midwife was across the valley, tending the birth of Lisel's twins, come a month early into the world. Grahme carefully opened the package at the kitchen table, laying out the coiled bronze strings for the mended harp as Gretchen and Bronwyn watched. The miller himself burst through the cottage door, panting and shouting at them, grabbing Bronwyn by the arm to drag her towards the lane. "You must help her, Goodwife Bronwyn, there is so much blood!"
Bronwyn slapped him, shoving him back through the doorway to fall into the dust of the road. Villagers stopped on their errands, men with tools to mend and women with buckets to fill or empty. "So, I must help her now, must I? Miller, you have stolen my most rare and precious herbs moon after moon, taken a beloved life from me too soon, and now I must help your wife? What will you give me in return? What price will you pay for stealing something so dear from me?" The bright morning sunlight dimmed a little and the birdsong fell silent as clouds rolled across the sky.
"Anything, I'll give you anything, I swear, just help my wife and save our baby!"
Bronwyn was shaking with her rage. "A life for a life, then, and witnessed by all here. On the day that my sister dies, you will give me your daughter." A few houses down the lane, the miller's wife cried out in agony.
The miller crouched in the dust, groveling before the witch as Bronwyn stood over him. "Yes, anything, just come now, I beg you!" She turned and jerked her cloak off its peg, and the pouch and flask off the table beside the door. Her rage and grief dimmed just a moment as she looked at Gretchen and Grahme. "I will return soon, I promise." As they passed the garden gate, she paused only to pull the last of the herbs from the soil with a tenderness that was terrible to behold as the rage poured off her shoulders in waves of heat. Only the child Magda and her brothers were brave enough to follow them to watch, a salamander scorching the homespun of Magda's smock as it clung to her arm.
The miller's bed was awash with blood already, and the birthing was difficult. Bronwyn made a decoction of the entire plant with well water, making the woman drink it all to ease her agony and labors, and set aside the mashed leaves and stems and roots as a poultice to stem the flow of blood after. Sometime in that long day, a soothing melody grew up around them all, and Bronwyn's anger eased, receding as the harp notes fell down among them.
Bronwyn finally caught the babe with practiced care, and the mother's exhausted gasps slowed and stopped, unnoticed by anyone but the miller. The infant girl opened dark green eyes and looked up at the witch with the puzzled blurry gaze of a newborn. Shaken to her very core, Bronwyn stared at the babe as it drew its first breath, and then a second, the silence filling the world and even the lilting notes of the harp falling still as the babe wailed her astonished joy at being thrust into the world. Bronwyn's head snapped up as the music ceased, gazing towards Gretchen's cottage. "No!" she cried out, holding the baby tight to her breast with bloody hands, careful despite her grief.
"No!" the miller sobbed at the same moment, pressing his face against his wife's unmoving chest, shaking with his tears.
Bronwyn walked out of the miller's house and the few steps up the road, babe in one arm, cloak and flask in the other. Magda followed with the pouch and tiny salamander, her brothers bringing up the rear of the small procession. The villagers had gathered outside Gretchen's cottage, and silently parted before Bronwyn and the babe.
Gretchen lay on the bed, the harp and stool nearby. Her breath came in shallow pants, and Grahme held her hand. Absently, Bronwyn gave the baby to Magda's mother as she passed through the door. "I heard you playing, dear heart," she said softly to her sister-friend.
"I'm so glad." Gretchen tried to smile around her pain. "It's time, I think." Bronwyn nodded, dry mouthed and dry eyed. Grahme put the teakettle over the fire, but his wife, his witch, shook her head silently, face pale. Bronwyn knelt beside the bed, pulling the stopper from the flask. Her hands steadied the flask as Gretchen drank, the slim golden wedding ring on Bronwyn’s bloody finger glinting in the firelight. The stricken woman smiled, relieved as finally she slept, the pain forever gone.
Bronwyn reached out and took Grahme's hand, leading him from the cottage as she invited the salamanders into the cottage and the flames licked up into the eaves. He stopped only to cover the harp and pick up the mirror. She took the baby and her giant carried the mirror and they went up the mountain. Hers was the only dry face in the village that day.
The miller stayed by his wife’s body for two days, unable to leave her in his desolation and sorrow. On the morning of the third day his broken body was found on the river bank far below the narrow bridge.