16) Mirror

The baby, Rue, grew quickly. It seemed that before Bronwyn even settled back into the tower on the mountaintop that the infant was toddling and then running. Seasons passed and her piping laughter rang through the trees with the summer breezes. The village children took to coming up the mountain on sunny days, flocking like birds in the meadow grasses. Her hair was as golden as sunlight, and grew in long curly locks. Lisel's twins, Hansel and Lisette, were particularly fond of wandering with her in the woods, often they were all watched after by Magda once her brothers were old enough to apprentice and she was deemed too old herself to need a nursemaid.

Bronwyn watched over the village with Gretchen's mirror, sometimes seeing a blessing or a tragedy as it unfolded. Sometimes she snatched up her cloak and pouch and flask and ran swiftly down the mountain to give aid where it was needed. She often went alone, but sometimes Grahme lent his strong hands or long arms to her cause.

The witch learned the sort of happiness that grows from loss and care, and cherished her adopted daughter with the love Gretchen had taught her. Sometimes she saw visions of a little boy, a year older than Rue, midnight hair and snow pale skin, and she pretended not to recognize her son as he grew. She shut away visions of his hand a little too tight on a horse's bridle, closed her heart to the way the servants began to flinch away from his tantrums and how the courtiers bowed and scraped and grimly commented on how splendidly like his father he was.

It was in Rue's fifth summer that The Mare first came to Bronwyn. A team of villagers were clearing a new field, chopping down the old growth trees and hauling the stumps and bigger rocks from the stony soil. Grahme was lending his strength to the efforts, and Bronwyn happened to glance away from the potion she was brewing at just the moment that the Mirror showed a tremendous limb falling on his broad back, bearing him to the ground with a crash she could almost hear from the mountain tower. Wordlessly, she grabbed pouch and flask, flung her cloak around her shoulders and ran headlong down the path towards the village. The new field was beyond the village, across the narrow bridge over the river. She never stopped until a trailing root caught her ankle, throwing her sprawling across the path. The impact drove the air from her lungs for a moment, and she was eventually able to choke down the cool mist of the forest. Her leather shoe was caught in the root and her ankle mangled painfully, bleeding and quickly swelling in her bare woolen stocking. Her next breath was a sob, pain and desperation and fear choking all thought into panic. The image of Grahme falling flashed before her eyes again and again and she carefully rolled onto her back, opening her arms wide to the branches above her, embracing her next breath and expanding her ribs.

Black shadows lay against the sky far above her, bright clouds shining through the tree limbs. Thunder rumbled in the far distance, and through the earth she felt the forest gather itself for the coming storm. She flexed her fingers and closed her eyes, gathering up the darkness and the thunder and the bright clouds between her palms, raising her arms above her, whispering a rhyme the children sang, about ponies prancing. She gathered the rising storm and finally brought her hands together in a tremendous clap. She waited a moment, listening, and finally rolled to her side, despairing of the aid she'd tried to summon.

Thunder rolled again, a long rumble that continued far longer than a mortal storm, and as she struggled to sit to begin to bind up her ankle, the noise became more distinct, and hoofbeats coalesced into reality. She looked up, impatient and afraid, as the night black horse came upon her. The mare was slender and lithe, emerging doe-like from the woods. Her face was marked with a narrow jagged blaze down her nose, a white lock of mane falling down between her ears. Prancing sideways a little, she stopped next to the witch and lowered her head to nudge the woman. Bronwyn raised her hand to stroke the velvet nose. The mare thrust her head and neck under Bronwyn's arm, and Bronwyn wrapped her arms around her withers and let the horse pull her to her feet. She was small, delicately proportioned, shorter than many of the hardy mountain ponies used by the villagers.

Bronwyn's ankle was a hot mass of agony, but the mare maneuvered until the witch was able to drape herself across a back mottled with gray thunderclouds. She jigged a little, bouncing Bronwyn into place, and then moved forward with a silky smooth gait that covered ground without jostling her passenger too badly. Bronwyn wound her fingers into the dark mane, and they proceeded faster than she'd been running, quickly coming to the new field.

Somehow they arrived just as the tree fell, bringing Grahme down abruptly and pinning him under the broad limb. Bronwyn urged the horse forward. "We must move it away," Bronwyn ordered, coming as close as she dared. "We'll need everyone to help, and ropes, too."

"Goodwife, we could just use the block and tackle and lift it up a bit, and yer horse could drag him from under?" The blacksmith stepped close, looking at the tangle of branches and giant. He lifted his hand up to stroke the mare's neck. Startled, Bronwyn looked down at him. In a few steps the lightly built mare had became a heavy draft horse, coal black with great feathered hooves pawing at the earth, haunches bunching and gathering beneath her.

"Yes, let's get it done. Georg," she called out to Magda's oldest brother, "when they move the branches off of him, go under and run the rope around his chest so the Mare can pull him free." He nodded, still young enough to be excited.

They made quick work of it, and astonishingly enough, though the tree had flattened him and cracked a rib, Grahme lumbered painfully to his feet, dragging himself up by the rope tied to the Mare's massive shoulders.

"Well, then," he said, looking up at his wife for once. "Where'd you find this wee beast?"

The dark horse carried Bronwyn back to the village, where the midwife bound up her ankle. The creature had dwindled back down to her original size as Grahme led them back to the village. The old woman fussed about with splints and stitches and admonished Bronwyn against running anywhere before the end of the season at least. The giant gently lifted the witch to the horse's back, and they made their way back up the mountain. The mare was an incorrigible tease, her eyes bright with intelligence and interest. She arched her neck at him, blowing and widening her nostrils and whickering softly as they walked, and he laughed at her antics. She walked right into the tower and stopped next to the bed. Bronwyn slithered down off her back, and her husband arranged pillows under her wounded leg.

Their equine helper had made her way back out while they settled in the cottage, and they heard Rue squeal with glee and the little dog's excited bark. Grahme went to the door to check on them, and chuckled painfully. "Well, that's all good, then."

Days passed, and Robbie Longfellow fell in love with the Mare, and they would romp in the meadow with the children through long autumn afternoons, always looking up to see Bronwyn as she studied or moved slowly about doing her chores. The ankle was long to heal, no matter what poultice they devised for the gashes and no matter how they braced the broken bones, and she limped painfully even after the splints came off. When it was time for her to venture into the world, the Mare would be waiting patiently for her, sometimes even before Bronwyn knew herself that she was headed down the mountain that day.

The spring that Rue and the twins turned six, Magda's mother's house burned to the ground. The roof collapsed as the girl and her mother tried to escape, and the neighbors saw Magda dragged from the flames by a salamander the size of a mountain goat. She was badly burned, but would not let go of her guardian until Bronwyn and Grahme arrived, passing the frightened Rue off to Lisel to sit with her playmates. The witch tended the injured and giant used his considerable strength to help douse the flames, hauling horse troughs like buckets. Bronwyn pushed the salamander aside, looking closely at Magda's wounds. Terrible burns marked one cheek and half her forehead, and half her hair was burned away, the arm twisted and broken, hands scorched. Her breath came in terrible bloody coughs where she had inhaled the flames themselves.

"Hush, little Magda, it won't be bad for long," Bronwyn murmured to her. Reaching into her pouch, she drew out the woodsman's knife, the edge glinting. One of the village women cried out, but Bronwyn turned the blade against her own flesh, slashing her forearm thrice. She looked to the salamander, crouched at the edge of the firelight. "You. A fair trade. Witch's blood for healing for this girl."

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Blue hot eyes glowed with interest. "A witch's blood, but she is not of your blood. She has touched us, and we adore her courage, but we can not entirely touch her." Its voice roared like the blacksmith's furnace, deeper toned than that of the creature in her palace fireplace.

Desperate, the witch smeared her hand through the blood on her arm and marked Magda's forehead, cheeks, and chin with it, dripping it onto the girl's tongue, and then marked her own face, brow, cheeks and chin, with blood. "Blood of my blood, heart of my heart, and my daughter's dearest friend, I claim her as my own."

"Such oaths are generous, but never perfect," the salamander hissed, coming close again and lapping the blood from the girl's face and Bronwyn's arm. Where its tongue passed, the burns eased, scars twisting before the wave of generous, but imperfect healing. Its breath passed over Bronwyn's temple, and the rich black locks there faded to white in an instant. Magda fainted and Bronwyn lifted her, passing her carefully to Grahme and turning to Magda's mother. The spinner had died already of her burns, and Magda's brothers stood nearby, looking lost.

"Georg, Marle, can you stay with your masters?" she asked the two apprentices. The ferrier and the baker came forward, nodding. "I will take Magda home and nurse her. She has a knack for herbs and animals, perhaps she would be a good midwife." Bronwyn took Rue back from Lisel, trying not to see the woman's frightened gaze, or the way the other villagers edged cautiously away from her.

Once more by firelight, the witch went back up the mountain with her Giant, now with two daughters.

Afterwards, if the village children didn't come up to the tower in its green meadow as often, perhaps it was because Bronwyn was so often preoccupied with Magda's healing. She was still called often for birthings and healings, but the baker and the butcher refused to take her coin any more, and the weaver simply left her supplies at the top of the mountain path on market day.

Magda's hair grew back, falling dark and straight over her scarred forehead and cheek. Bronwyn's hair was thick and shining as ever, but the hair at her temple and brow fell white as snow among the midnight locks. Magda's voice remained a soft whisper, like the hiss and crackle of a hearthfire, or the blowing of autumn leaves, but her hands were quick and clever with herblore and bandages, and when she was thirteen and Rue was nine, Bronwyn began taking the older girl with her when she was called to a healing or a birthing.

Rue grew into a kind and beautiful girl, full of laughter and endlessly bringing home injured animals to nurse back to health or simply to befriend and have nearby. She loved Grahme's pigeons, and gladly learned to read and write so that she might correspond with people in far places. She delighted in telling her family stories in the evenings by the fire. When she discovered she could send the lightest of cargoes, the tiny seeds of herbs and flowers, and that her far off friends would send back seeds in return, their garden began to bloom with exotic species from the world over. She was especially fond of roses, though they did not grow well on the mountainside. She planted them anyway, and one irregular seed, planted and forgotten at the base of the tower, grew like a mad thing, climbing the stones of the wall til it was fully twice the height of the giant and bursting into hundreds of loose petaled ecstatic blooms.

One evening when she was twelve, she looked up from a letter. "Mama," she said to Bronwyn.

The witch looked up from her needlework, smiling. "Yes, my dear?"

"Did you know that there's a girl who lives in the woods with little old men?"

Bronwyn's embroidery twitched, the needle raking her forefinger. She stilled her hands, a drop of blood welling up to drop onto the white cloth. "Yes, I have heard part of her story."

"Well, she is wishing that she might find a young man, a husband." Grahme looked up from the book he was writing in.

"That's what women do, sweetness, when they are grown and ready."

"Would it be OK if we found a husband for her? She is lonely, and very dear to me. I have watched her in the mirror, and I want to do this thing for her."

Frowning, Bronwyn set aside her handiwork. "Do you watch her in the mirror often?"

"Well, not just her, all sorts of people. Sometimes people down the mountain, or across the big river, or in the castle with diamond windows, or the one with golden walls, or in the keep where the spring is only a day or two, and summer is only a week, and winter is the rest of the year. Sometimes, when you go to help people who have troubles and I miss you, I watch you, too."

"Do you ever see things from long ago?" Bronwyn asked carefully.

"Oh, no, it won't show me things from long ago, or a little while ago, and it won't ever show me things from tomorrow or next month, either. But it shows me things far away or near by, and I would really like to help Miss Janette." Rue knelt by her mother the witch and lay her golden head in Bronwyn's lap. “Please, Mama?"

"Well, Miss Janette is a woman grown, she's perhaps twenty five years old?"

"Yes, I think so. Her friends all love her so, but they're so very ancient."

"Who would you choose for her to marry?"

Rue looked up at her, and then across at Magda. "Magda, who would you think? Maybe the duke in the blue manor?"

"Oh, no, he married last year, do you remember?" The older girl thought for a moment. "What about his younger brother? He's never married, and he's quite kind."

"Not like the prince in the diamond castle," Rue agreed.

"Well, the prince is too young, anyway. Do you remember the brother's name?"

"Umm... it's... Poitr!" She looked back up at her parents. "Surely we can send them letters, and introduce them, and let them fall in love?"

Grahme cleared his throat, a low avalanche of sound. "It's never guaranteed, of course," he began, and the girls cheered.

Bronwyn frowned slightly. "We could write to the Lord Regent and to the young man's brother, and arrange for them to meet..."

"Well, he must go to her soon, a bad woman is watching her, too, and I don't know what will happen."

"What bad woman?" Bronwyn remembered her pricked finger and sucked on it gently to clean the blood away.

"The one with yellow eyes, who calls herself Grandmother." Rue looked up, listening to something in the night outside. "Time for bed, the bears will be here tomorrow."

After the girls were safely asleep, Bronwyn and Grahme stepped out into the starlit meadow where their tower stood. He wrapped his arms around her, feeling the pull of fate in her almost as strongly as she did.

"What should I do?" Bronwyn asked, though they both knew the answer.

"Dress warmly, for certain. I'm sure the Mare will be along in the morning to take you."

"And what shall you do?"

"I shall write yet another letter to the Lord Regent, and one to the young man's brother, and I will make sure that the young man is there in time to help you save your stepdaughter."

"If anyone comes, I suppose Magda can care for anyone who comes with an illness or a birthing. She's old enough, now, and skilled enough for most things." She fretted a little; she had traveled one day, or two days, but never had she gone down the mountain, past the king's city and into the deep wood where she had wandered so many years ago.

"Yes, goodwife, that she can, and I can help her as well. We shall be well, here, and Rue can show me that trick of hers, of watching you in the mirror."

"That was rather a surprise. My Lord Giant, if the Lord Regent will not dower Princess Janette, would you write to the Lord of the Exchequer and arrange for it from my own accounts?" She looked up at him, the white lock shining pale against her midnight hair.

"Of course, my Lady Witch. Just as long as you stay safe for us."

"I shall try, Grahme, I shall try." She kissed him softly, and they walked back to the tower, one starlight shadow stretching forward before their steps.