A Spell for Heartsickness (The Rune Tithe #1)

CHAPTER 4

O nce Rowan finished evicting the spiders, Briar set upon his luggage to unpack. Equipped with cleaning essentials and gripping them like weapons, he got to work. From the detritus, he suspected the previous witch had very low standards of hygiene; the least pleasant but most useful discovery was the mousetrap still containing a skeleton of its victim under the kitchen sink. Bones were useful tithes, but Briar still wore gloves while scraping them into a jar. Most peculiar was the salt scattered across the floor, plentiful as the dust. Vatii identified it by taste for him.

Only once every surface was clean enough to eat from did he venture out to search for food. He returned with a bag of bargain bits. Beans on toast for breakfast, cucumber sandwiches for lunch, fish pie for dinner.

Stirring the pie filling together in a pan, he asked Vatii, “How do you think Rowan got that scar?”

“I think it’s none of your business.”

“The whole town has scars like it. Something definitely happened here.”

“I don’t see how that’s going to help you start a business.”

“He could be the man from Niamh’s vision.” Briar cast Vatii a questioning look. “He could be my destiny, Vatii! Niamh said a man with a mask and a heart of stone. He’s a bit mysterious. Quiet. Could be him.”

Vatii said, “Have you thought about what you’re going to make and sell?”

“Since I don’t have any capital for materials, I figured I would offer my services for any old magical tasks the good people of Coill Darragh need doing. Then, with that money, I’ll buy some fabric and make some clothes and—”

“That was a terrible idea when you first told me.”

“Well, I don’t know what you expect me to do!”

“Be more creative.”

Briar returned to his fish-pie filling, which smelled awful, frankly. Or burnt. As he ladled a spoonful into the instant mashed potatoes, something flashed brightly in his periphery at the same time Vatii screamed, “Get down!”

A cleaver slid out of the knife block and hurled toward Briar of its own volition.

He flattened himself to the floor. The air above his head rippled as the knife sliced past and sank into the wooden cabinet with a meaty thunk. He looked up to see two more knives—the paring and carving ones—slide from the wood block like the last.

Vatii abandoned him, hopping under the bed as fast as her skinny legs could carry her. Running out of the kitchenette, Briar did the only thing he could think to and knocked over the small wooden dining table. One knife went skittering across the floor behind him. The second hit the table with less force than the first. It bounced off and clattered to the floor.

Peeking over the table edge, Briar watched the cupboard blow open and a slew of weighty cast-iron pots and pans clang onto the floorboards. They didn’t make it far, scraping along a few inches before stopping. Another cabinet flew open, but nothing streamed out. Then the washing-up tray twitched, and it was over.

“Poltergeist!” Vatii said. “I knew there was a reason for all the salt on the floor.”

“If you knew, why didn’t you say so? And I can’t live in squalor! Rowan didn’t tell me this place is haunted.”

“Probably didn’t know.

He didn’t strike me as too bright.”

“He’s quiet, not thick.”

“You only think so because you fancy him.”

Briar rose from his hiding spot and assessed the disaster made of his flat. “What a mess.”

With a scrabble of claws, Vatii emerged from under the bed and flew to the counter. “What are you going to do about it?”

Briar picked up one of the cast-iron pans. “I have a plan.”

It took effort to find enough iron items to contain a ghost, but between the pots, pans, and filings packed into his tithe belt, he had enough. He arranged the items in a wonky circle. In charcoal, he sketched a sigil on the floor, then dug a few candles out of his trunk and lit them for good measure.

“You’re going to summon it? Are you insensible?” Vatii said.

“I just want to talk with them. Have you got a better idea?”

“Yep. Ask Rowan for the shop next door.”

“Then the second witch who moves here will have to deal with it. Might as well find out why this ghost is so agitated. Anyway, you’re the one harping on me to find a talent to capitalize on. This’ll be great practice for exorcism.”

Vatii croaked sourly. “Not the talent I had in mind.”

Briar finished lighting candles and sat facing the circle in a dining chair. He focused on the circle, but not intensely. It felt rude to drag the ghost out of hiding without permission.

It took time. Briar wasn’t patient, so he started to hum a naughty verse from a sea shanty he’d learned as a teenager while living above a pub in Port Haven. He hadn’t understood the words at the time. His mother had laughed and explained, kindly and factually, what was really happening with the barmaid’s tongue in the third verse. Briar had been equal parts horrified and delighted.

He didn’t make it far into the song. The candles flickered then guttered out in a violent draft. Light danced mirage-like in the circle. One pan gave an alarming judder, and Briar toed it back into place to keep the circle closed. The mirage shifted, purple and undulating, before resolving into a human.

The ghost had sleek black hair worn in a messy bun. She wore an oversized jumper, leggings with holes in the knees, and enormous boots with scuffed toes. She carried a miasma of gloom about her, shoulders slouched and hands stuffed in her jumper.

In a drawling voice, she said, “Well, this is inconvenient.”

Briar tried to sound friendly, but it was difficult when addressing a near-death experience. “It would have been more inconvenient if I’d lost my head just now. I wanted to ask you not to throw knives at me.”

The ghost looked at him as if she’d only just noticed he was there. “Oh. You.” She looked down at the iron pots and pans, nose wrinkling. “You know ghosts are allergic to iron, right?”

“That was the point.”

“It’s pretty uncool. Like if you were allergic to peanuts, and I trapped you in a creepy circle of them.”

“I’m not allergic to peanuts. And again, knives.”

“That was, like, ten minutes ago. Get over it. You’d be peeved too if someone came into your house and made it smell like a chum bucket.”

Briar sat back in his chair, affronted. Vatii cackled so hard she nearly took flight.

“Okay, my cooking needs improvement, but it wasn’t worth killing me over.”

“Ugh, the living. So obsessed with not dying. It’s really no big deal.” She somehow managed to sound aggravated and disinterested at the same time. “What do you want?”

“I’d like to not be haunted. But you’re not striking me as very agreeable, so maybe we can sort something out? What do you want?”

“I want you to leave me alone, obviously. And let me out of this dumb trap.”

“The second one I can do, but I sort of live here. Don’t you want to cross over? Be at peace?”

“Look at me. I was a witch your age. Just finished my apprenticeship when I got murdered. Would you be feeling peaceful?”

“Oh.” Now Briar felt awkward for asking. Her words plucked an uncomfortable chord, a flat note in a trilling rhapsody. It left his skin prickly and cold.

Her life had been cut short, just as his would be.

“To top it off, I’m stuck here. Spirit’s tied to the house ’cause I died here. I can’t leave.”

Briar perked up at that. “What if I found your murderer?”

“Fat chance. I don’t remember anything about them. I was kind of dead right after.”

“Well, what about leaving here? If I found a way to let you out so you could explore and live a little, or as much as you can, would that help?”

The thought seemed never to have occurred to her. “I don’t know if that’s possible.”

“I’ll find a way. Just promise you won’t try to kill me even if my cooking is bad.”

“And you’ll let me out of this trap?”

“Of course.”

Vatii chirruped uneasily, but Briar ignored her. Sometimes placing trust in people was the best means to convince them to behave in a manner worthy of that trust.

“Fine,” said the ghost. “I guess you should tell me your name.”

“I’m Briar.”

“Gretchen. I’d shake your hand, but I exhausted my ability to affect the real world by chucking the whole kitchen at you.”

Briar stood and nudged the frying pan again. The moment the circle broke, Gretchen’s transparent figure flickered before vanishing in ephemeral wisps of violet smoke.

She didn’t return for the remainder of the evening. Briar’s fish pie turned out barely edible.

He got into bed and lit a candle to dispel the lingering fumes of his supper. Sitting with his phone propped on his knee, he checked messages and status updates from his friends on Alakagram. He took a photo of Vatii with her head tucked beneath her wing to post with the caption, Settling into our new home sweet home. It took ages to upload. Likewise, the live video of Linden Fairchild hinting about his “super-secret exciting news” spent longer on the whirling loading screen than on his speech. The WitchiCom internet seemed dodgy as anything. He wondered if the wards affected it, or if everything here was ancient and dragging its technological heels.

Settled, he took his potion, as usual.

Before his journey, he’d had a checkup with his doctor. He’d had blood drawn and dripped into a beaker of water and honeysuckle pollen, which turned carmine. It had been scarlet when he was first diagnosed, and the slow darkening of the color was an indication of the curse’s progression. If he was on death’s door, it would be nearly black.

“That’s a bit darker than I would have liked,” his doctor had said.

Briar didn’t see the point in these annual tests. The curse would wreck him regardless. The potions he took mitigated symptoms, slowed it down, but that was all. They’d guessed that his mother had the curse for four years before her diagnosis, and she lived four more. If their estimates were correct, Briar still had six years to make a name for himself.

Where normal curses were cast by witches, Bowen’s Wane was like a small plague that had struck a couple thousand people eight or so years ago. None of the victims appeared to have any connection to one another, and no one knew who cast it. Where a witch’s curse could condemn a victim to never finding true love or forever having an unexpected item in their bagging area, Bowen’s Wane had no such template.

Only when it claimed its first victim, an elderly man by the name of Hubert Bowen, did the aim become clear. It was a wasting curse. A simple thing. It drained you, and then you died.

His mother’s had begun with chronic fatigue. A sense that no amount of sleep would ever be enough. Helplessly, Briar had watched as his fat, rosy-cheeked mother, who gave bone-popping hugs, was reduced to a shade of herself. Her aura—once as vibrant as basking in the first sunlight after a long winter—became a threadbare blanket that couldn’t combat a whispering draft. Her hugs were bony, her arms light as Vatii’s wings. She’d had seizures.

He still had nightmares about those.

The days to come would be critical in preparing his shop for opening, and he balked at the thought of making the vacuum of space below into a welcoming place for customers. He needed fabric, sewing supplies, ingredients for spells, and he honestly didn’t know where to begin. Wishbrooke had given him the skills but none of the tools and resources. They’d taught him how to fish and then thrust him into the world without tackle, bait, or even a boat.

He would have to muddle through. He didn’t have much time to figure it out.

In the morning, Briar searched the flat for anything that was tethering Gretchen’s ghost to the house. According to his textbooks, poltergeists had often suffered violent deaths. Trapped spirits could be tethered to a place by an object of importance or even a ward spell. Searching every cupboard and under loose floorboards, he found no such tether. Luckily, he had an idea to temporarily circumvent her imprisonment.

He’d simply have to take part of the house with him.

While making toast and boiling the kettle, Briar took stock of the flat’s available fabric. He had limited options between the floral curtains and the wool blanket but opted for the curtains. He tore out the lining. Between sips of tea, he pinned the rough edge into a hem and ran it through his sewing machine, stitches gliding into place.

Once complete, he performed a maneuver he’d used with his bedsheets as a child. He hung the newly stitched hem over his head like a hood, then pulled the corners under his arms and tied them in a knot. Putting the knot over his head, he managed to make a fairly stylish cloak.

“The flowers,” said Vatii.

“There’s nothing wrong with flowers.”

“ Those flowers.”

“It’s not ideal, but I haven’t got time for something elaborate right now. I want to look around town, get to know people, ask what jobs need doing.”

As if summoned by the prospect of leaving, Gretchen materialized, baggy-eyed and sleepless as the day she died. She sat on the kitchen table. “If this works, does that make me your tour guide?”

Despite how unenthusiastic she sounded, Briar said, “I’d appreciate it!”

He strode out the front door and awaited Gretchen. She hovered at the threshold the way cattle did before a bit of broken fence.

“Don’t watch. It’s embarrassing.”

Briar turned around while passersby stared. He waited, rocking on his heels, admiring the job he’d done on the hem of his cloak. He almost called to ask for a status update, but then Gretchen’s sour voice issued in his ear.

“Don’t take this as a compliment or anything, but it worked.”

It wasn’t a permanent solution, but Briar allowed himself a moment of pride anyway.

His first port of call was the local pub. It was past noon, so seniors and regulars would likely be arriving for lunch and a light beer. Briar could acquaint himself with the townsfolk and see if anybody had work for him. Gretchen said the best pub was the Swan and Cygnet, an old barn conversion on the west end of the village, so they set off.

Only magically gifted people could see Gretchen, which would normally make Briar’s integration with the locals awkward, as it appeared he was talking to himself. Thankfully, with Vatii perched on his shoulder, most townsfolk assumed he was speaking with her and not a poltergeist.

As they walked past shops and through the town square, he wondered at how few recognizable storefronts he saw. Not a single Fabian’s Favours or Calysto’s Café in sight. The signs and doorways, handmade and painted in bright colors, had weathered a lot of rain and faded. Untouched by feverish modernity, Coill Darragh was as slow and meandering as its winding streets.

One particular shop stole Briar’s attention. The colors and glint of jewelry had him backstepping to take a closer look.

The hanging sign read Sorcha’s Textiles and Treasures . In the window display, custom jewelry lay on plush velvet and in carved wooden boxes. Decorative silver knots of promise rings, necklaces on chains light as lace. A bolt of rich red cloth draped onto the display, showing off the way it caught the light. Though enchanting to look at, none bore magical charms.

Briar longed to go inside, but the lightness of his coin purse made him carry on.

Gretchen floated to a halt in front of the Swan and Cygnet, attempting to tap its stone foundation with a toe but only phasing through it. Briar went inside. A few people, most of them wearing wellies, sat at the bar and tables. They chatted animatedly with easy familiarity, casting curious looks at Briar. He sat at the bar and studied the bottles lining the shelves behind it. Several looked like standard liquor; others had suspiciously viscous, bubbling contents. One, a tall, twisting vial of liquid steel, caught his attention.

Liquid courage. An apt addition to a pub’s menu.

Following his gaze, the barkeep said, “That one’s not for sale. I’d normally say you don’t need bravery here, but you just might.” Tall and broad-faced, the barkeep had an aura that rumbled like thunder and smelled of fresh-cut grass.

Briar recognized her. She was the woman he’d seen speaking to Head Seer Niamh in his bathroom sink.

Racking his brain to shake loose the memory of her name, Briar cringed upon recalling some of the unfavorable things he’d said about Coill Darragh. “You’re Maebh, aren’t you?”

“And you’re Briar. One of Niamh’s apprentices.”

He mustered his confidence. “I hope I didn’t offend you with my, er, disappointment?”

“You offended yourself,” she said. “No better place to practice magic than here.”

“Are you a witch too, then? A potion maker?” He pointed to the bottles.

“No, not a bit of magic in me, like. My husband was. Have you an order for me, or shall I go?”

“Oh.” Really, he ought to save what little he had for materials in case he got a job. “No, thank you.” Despite Maebh’s raised eyebrow and the sense he’d caused further offense, he forged ahead. “I actually wondered whether there’s any particular jobs for a witch in town?”

A muscle in Maebh’s jaw ticked. “Bold. Won’t order a thing, but you’re asking for work?”

Briar winced. “I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean any—”

“Offense. Yes, you said as much. Look, sure, we invite witches each year so as they can practice their magic in the real world, give you free accommodation ’n that so’s you can help the folk here. Ask around town. Plenty of people desperate like for the odd potion or enchantment, but I’ll not help more than that after the slight. Apologize proper with your actions, then we’ll see.”

Thoroughly chastised, Briar nodded in understanding. He hadn’t meant to insult Maebh. His disappointment would have been of equal measure had Niamh named any city but Pentawynn. That was the pinnacle. Every-thing else fell short. It didn’t excuse his attitude, though, and a mortified part of him wished he could turn back time, take back what he’d said.

But there was no such magic. He would have to make up for the insult, as Maebh said, with his actions. “I will,” he told her, and she left to converse with her regulars.

Briar exited the pub with Maebh’s words and all his future fears nipping at his heels. Gretchen, who’d remained silent throughout the exchange, whistled as if impressed.

“You really pissed in her cornflakes.”

“Yes, I gathered. Why don’t you get out the stocks and throw rotten fruit?”

She seemed to admire the idea.

They made their way back by another route. Gretchen pointed out landmarks—the weeping religious statue, the bell tower—but Briar only paid half a mind. He felt terrible and didn’t know who he could ask, beyond every stranger on the street, about a job.

His anxious inner monologue quieted as the smell of fresh bread wafted down the lane. A bakery with window decals of croissants and pies exuded delicious smells. He wasn’t the only one drawn in—people crammed inside, queuing to order.

Vatii said, “Something small wouldn’t hurt.”

“You just want me to share.”

“It’s your first day, and things haven’t gone well. Just a treat.”

Briar chewed his lip. “Oh, twist my arm, why don’t you?”

They joined the throng. Gretchen, grumbling about how she didn’t appreciate when people stood on—or in—her, decided her tour was complete and ventured off to see how much range Briar’s curtain-cloak gave her.

Briar waxed philosophical about which treat would be the best use of his money until Vatii pulled on his plait and pointed with her beak behind them. A familiar figure loomed in the bakery’s doorway.

Rowan should never have fit inside, with the crowds of people thick as they were, but they parted like a wake around him. He wore boots caked with mud, and when he spotted Briar waving at him, he waved mildly in return.

None of the other patrons said hello to him, even though he was the alderman. Briar gave up his place in the queue to join him.

“Morning,” Rowan said.

“Morning,” Briar returned, smiling. “Got any recommendations? I’m flirting with the cinnamon buns and the pain au chocolat, but I’d rather flirt with you, so tell me what you’re getting.”

Rowan cleared his throat, looking askance. Whether because of the flirting or the townsfolk staring, Briar didn’t know. “Ehm, can’t go wrong with a cherry bakewell.”

Briar tilted his head to the side. “If it’s disappointing, on your head be it.”

At the tills, Briar let Rowan go ahead of him.

“I think the townsfolk are scared of him, you know,” Vatii whispered. “They look at him like he might bite. I know the look. I get the same one plenty.”

Briar couldn’t mistake the way the other patrons stared. “But you do bite.”

“My point exactly.”

Rowan turned around holding two paper bags. Briar stepped forward to order but was met with one of Rowan’s fists holding him back by the chest. In his hand was one of the paper bags.

Briar looked at it, perplexed. “For me?”

Rowan nodded. Briar opened the bag to find the cherry bakewell, alongside a pain au chocolat and a cinnamon bun. In shock, he allowed Rowan to corral him out of the shop.

“Thank you, but you didn’t have to—”

“Not a bother,” said Rowan.

“I didn’t mean to make you feel like you had to get them all for me in case I didn’t like your recommendation—”

“You’re grand.”

Briar watched him go, the buns warming his hand through the paper bag, and a not dissimilar feeling welling in his chest. It was the sort of kindness he itched to repay, and the kind of generosity he struggled to mirror. Not for lack of wanting.

Pastries aside, his trip into town had borne nothing. He asked the baker and a few people waiting outside about work, and they looked at him as if he’d asked where he could buy poison for humans. It was not that they were unfriendly—they engaged him in conversation with eager curiosity—but at the mention of working with him, grew leery. He didn’t understand how he was meant to make a livelihood in Coill Darragh when the townsfolk mistrusted outsiders, and with so little to his name that he could barely afford a pastry. A snarl of varied emotions tangled in his head. He’d worked hard through his apprenticeship, but even now that felt like only a tiny step on a ladder upon which others who had been born to higher rungs already stood.

Everything always cost more when you had less.

The injustice of it stung in older, more grievous wounds. If his mother had been alive… She’d been the sort to send care packages, to make him a cup of tea when he was disheartened. Vatii could advise him, but she couldn’t pick him up when he fell.

He had to help himself.

He’d wandered far without taking note of where. The houses weren’t packed so closely together, giving way to farmers’ fields and dirt lanes. Preferring the fresh air over returning to his empty flat with nothing, Briar walked and looked out at the green fields, dotted white with sheep and glazed with fog. Beyond that, the canopy of the Coill Darragh woods seeped into overcast skies. Though nowhere near the forest’s edge, its aura throbbed like a heartbeat in the soil beneath his feet.

Vatii said, “Maybe we should go home. Have some tea. See if we can come up with something.”

Reluctantly, he agreed. Back toward town, he spotted a figure bent near a fence. An elderly man, wearing a tweed cap and grass-stained dungarees, stooped to examine a broken gate. His legs quaked, and he only bent halfway before having to stand again, rubbing his lower back.

The farmer’s stilted movement reminded Briar of his mother precariously climbing stools to fetch things from the top cupboards.

Quickening his pace, he called out to the farmer, who surveyed his approach with a crinkled expression. “Need a hand?”

“Might just be a lost cause,” said the old man. “I’ll be hiring a carpenter by day’s end, make no mistake.”

Ivy covered the gate like a spider’s web. The weight of it, or perhaps the wind, had torn the gate down and rent a great hole in the sod where the support posts once stood.

Briar tried hefting it upright. It was a lot heavier than it appeared, but the difficulty lay in the vines. They bound the gate to the soil. As Briar’s fingers brushed a leaf, magic tickled like pins and needles up his arm. He couldn’t free the gate.

“It’s banjaxed, I’d say. Don’t bother yourself, boy.” The man said this last word in an intonation that had none of the chastising implications of Briar’s teachers saying it. Instead, it sounded familiar, friendly. And more like “bye.”

Vatii whistled and flitted from Briar’s shoulder to the stone wall bordering the collapsed gate. “A flesh tithe would do it, I think,” she said.

Maebh had told Briar to help people around the village. Determined, he said, “Give me a second.”

He turned his back and pulled charcoal from his pocket. Rolling up a sleeve, he drew a quick rune on his wrist. The powdery scrape of charcoal was comforting, familiar, but he didn’t want this stranger to see. Perhaps he imagined it, but he felt as though the woods watched him work.

He let his sleeve down to obscure the rune and bent to draw a second symbol on the stone wall. An anchor. That done, he straightened and put his hands on the beam of the gate. The magic coursed through him, a pulse beating its way to the surface. He recalled how it had once been like water barely restrained beyond a dam. Now, it trickled out of him and into the wood, securing loose nails, mending torn earth. The ivy crept back, loosening its hold, until he could raise the gate into place. His magic packed the soil around the post. When Briar lifted his hands, they shook, but the gate stood as sturdy as the dry stone flanking it.

“Ah sure, that’ll do it!” The farmer gave the gate an experimental wiggle. “You must be that new witch in town. What’s your name, boy?”

Extending his hand, Briar introduced himself, the farmer’s grip stronger than his own after the spell. The man gave Briar’s elbow a slap, his aura overwhelming with a smell like ripened figs.

“Briar? I’m Diarmuid. And what’s your particular talent?”

“Ehm,” Briar hedged. “A jack-of-all-trades? I specialize in enchanted clothing, but—”

“We had a witch here several years past,” Diarmuid interrupted. “She made the best potions. My joints haven’t known peace since she passed, they haven’t.”

Though the rune tithe had sapped Briar’s strength and left his mind foggy, he knew an opportunity when he saw one. “I could try my hand at an elixir, if you like.”

Diarmuid fixed him with an assessing look. Briar wondered if he’d toed some invisible line, asking for paid work from a stranger. He needed this opportunity badly. Something, anything to make some money.

“Ah, sure!” said Diarmuid. “If you can make my bones sturdy as this here gate, that’d be grand.”