A Spell for Heartsickness (The Rune Tithe #1)

CHAPTER 5

U pon returning to his flat, Briar was intent upon setting himself up for success.

He unpacked loose paint swatch cards he’d collected from hardware stores and arranged them on his desk in an appealing palette. Periwinkle blue, lavender, and dusky pink. With a calligraphy pen, he inked his to-do list on one of them in exquisite, curling lines.

Derringer had always told him, If you spent half as much time practicing spells as you did the calligraphy of your notes, you’d perhaps make a half-decent enchanter.

This wasn’t encouraging. Half-decent had always been the superlative prediction of his peers and masters, but Briar would not settle for less than fame and the undiluted adoration of the masses. Thus, he labelled the pink card Dreams and Aspirations. Below, he detailed those far-flung fantasies.

1. Make clothes. 2. Make clothes that make people happy. 3. Make lots of people happy so they remember me when I x_x

It brought him a measure of accomplishment to pin these to his corkboard and mount it on a rusty nail above his desk.

“Is that really necessary?” Vatii griped.

“It helps me organize my thoughts.”

“It’s procrastinating, but in a fancy way.” Vatii plucked up the card he’d yet to pin—the one with his immediate to-do list. “This is most important.”

The list, he’d thought, was simple, but looking at it now, a knot of worry formed in his throat.

1. Brew Diarmuid’s potion. 2. Find fabric? 3. Sew something nice for the shop. 4. Make amends with Maebh. 5. Gift for Rowan.

As the only thing guaranteed to bring in money, the first was highest priority.

Briar gathered ingredients and instruments and lit a candle for ambience. Cracking open a tome of elixirs, he flicked to the recipes for arthritis and joint pain. He had no clue which would be best for Diarmuid. Online research yielded inconsistent results, with some claiming any would do, others touting home brews and non-magical alternatives, and still more advertisements for patented market varieties with glowing reviews, which helped him not at all.

He wasn’t terrible with potions, but his master had always chosen the recipe for him. He’d had one project geared toward creating a recipe from scratch; the final test was to imbibe the potion yourself and see if it worked. Healers were on hand, but all the same, Briar had chosen to create a potion that made his hair turn pink.

That would not help him. Or Diarmuid.

Since Briar was the sort of person who required plenty of walks and sunshine to maintain equilibrium, and this task took him past midnight, candle burning low and no affordable solution in sight, he spiraled into histrionics.

“I’m a failure.”

Vatii peeked out from under her wing where she’d been napping.

“I’ll never find the perfect elixir, and then I’ll never find more work, and I’ll go bankrupt. I’ll fail to get my business up and running, and no one will ever love me.”

Gretchen chose this moment to reappear, floating around the kitchen counter. She’d vanished the moment Briar got home and the curtain-cloak pulled her back into the house.

“What’s wrong with him?” she said, perching cross-legged in her usual spot on the kitchen table.

Well used to his moods, Vatii said, “Nothing. He’s a drama queen.”

Briar whined, “What do I do, Vatii?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re the worst familiar.” He pressed his forehead into the wood table. “You’re supposed to advise me. How do I make money?”

“I’m meant to advise you on magical matters and give you guidance of a spiritual nature. Not that you listen when I do.”

Gretchen lurked over Briar’s shoulder and regarded the tome of potions spread on his desk. “I was quite good at potions, you know.”

Briar perked up. “See, Vatii? Gretchen didn’t even want to be my flatmate, and already she’s more helpful than you.”

Gretchen folded her arms. “I didn’t say I’d tell you for free.”

“What would you like in return? More walkies around town?”

She looked annoyed by the term “walkies” but chose not to argue semantics. “I’d like more control of them. Coming and going. It’s inconvenient, how I’m beholden to whichever times you’re home or not.”

Briar didn’t particularly want to wear a curtain everywhere either. “What if I left something from the house outside so you could come and go as you pleased?”

“Will that work?”

“We can try and find out.”

Gretchen considered that, floating three feet off the ground, her messy bun wobbling from side to side as she tilted her head. “A pint of water, two sprigs of chamomile, a tablespoon of turmeric, crushed blackberry, a wishbone, and a half cup of golden-eye lichen.”

Briar scrambled to grab his pen and parchment, scribbling as she spoke. “This isn’t any of the recipes I’ve found.”

“It’s my own blend,” she said. “Who’s it for?

Diarmuid?” Briar gaped at her. “Were you the witch he raved about?”

She beamed, the first smile he’d ever seen her wear. “When I was alive.”

Briar’s to-do list expanded to include: gather the ingredients for Diarmuid’s elixir and figure out a means to give Gretchen free rein of the town .

He cut a square of fabric from the curtain-cloak to bury somewhere and test the limits of Gretchen’s imprisonment. It meant he could wear his Rede cloak instead, which he honestly preferred. Floral curtains weren’t the statement he wanted to make as a budding fashion designer.

At lunch, he set out into the breezy air, ablaze with the campfire smell of autumn. The local apothecary was a mom-and-pop business, Gretchen explained. Though it had a similar smell to Odell’s, Briar found its low rows of individual troughs, full of different dried herbs, more tactile and welcoming than the sterile archive he’d grown used to. He shoveled ingredients into brown paper bags, but one gave him pause. Searching through the moss and fungi section, he couldn’t find any golden-eye lichen.

“It’s rare,” Gretchen said. “You might need to ask if it’s behind the counter.”

He had no better luck there. The shopkeeper said they hadn’t gotten any shipments of golden-eye in a few years, as its increasing rarity meant it wasn’t purchased enough to warrant restocks. She offered to custom-order it, but Briar couldn’t afford it in bulk, and a small order wasn’t cost-effective. If he were to continue making this elixir for Diarmuid, it would be catastrophic to Briar’s long-term finances. He left with the majority of what he needed, but the lichen presented a big problem. Gretchen said it was the most vital ingredient of the lot—no alternative would achieve the same results.

It needled Briar. This was meant to be a simple task. The money he’d saved over the summer wouldn’t begin to cover ingredients for even a rudimentary potion service at this rate.

He wandered, feet itching to move and stomach growling at him. He’d packed a cucumber sandwich for lunch, but it tasted of disappointment, given the smells wafting through the high street. He sat on the lip of the fountain in the town square to eat, chewing sullenly while townsfolk streamed by. He studied the statue pouring its potion into the pool below, a man with a severe set to his brow and a jutting chin. If he’d been flesh and blood, Briar imagined he would still seem carved of stone. A plaque at his feet read:

éibhear O’Shea

For his magic, which protects us still, and for the ones he left behind.

A group of teenagers in school uniforms chatted over their packed lunches. They discussed, loudly and in tones of self-import, the party they’d had that weekend, who kissed whom, who got blind langered, which of the popular lot failed to show. The conversation veered into recollections of a game of truth or dare where one boy was dared to go into the woods at the stroke of midnight. They guffawed at the notion, but in an odd way, danced around the subject of the forest as though it was benign and perilous. Malignant and silly. As if there was nothing to fear in it, but no one sensible would ever go in.

Local superstition prevailed, Briar thought, as the girls ran back to school at the toll of the church bell. Their conversation planted an idea in his mind, though. He looked down the lane leading out of the square. The forest crowned the houses, its canopy aflame in fall colors.

Feeding the crusts of his sandwich to Vatii, he walked until he reached the edge of the village, where the houses fell away to fields and the forest beyond. Perhaps it was all that superstitious talk, but looking at the woods, he felt as though they stared back.

“Vatii, lichen grows in forests, doesn’t it?”

She gave an affirmative caw. Beside them, Gretchen’s flickering outline solidified with a spasm of emotion, her face frozen in a mask of terror.

“You’re not that dim,” she said. “You can’t be thinking of going into the woods for some stupid lichen.”

“Why not? You insisted it’s important to the recipe.”

The purple haze of her swirled. Her moods swung between ambivalent and mildly grumpy, but now she struggled to articulate her meaning.

“It’s just—they’re not—” She growled in frustration. “Look, I can’t remember why, but no one goes into the woods. You heard those girls, yeah? It just isn’t done. You respect the woods. You look at them from afar like, oh, how pretty. In the abstract I would never set foot in there sense. Not without its Keeper.” She stopped. Frowned. Shaking her head, she added, “But you don’t go in.”

“What do you mean, its Keeper?”

“Nothing. I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

“I don’t like nature either, but it’s just a forest,” Briar said with a tone of sarcasm that riled her further.

“It’s not just a forest,” Gretchen said. “It’s old. It’s alive. Not in the normal sense, either. Those trees are all part of each other—pretty sure they’ve all got the same underground root system or something. Whatever, they can communicate .”

“So?”

“So it’s powerful. Can’t you feel it?”

Briar looked at the dark depths of the forest, listened to the way the wind whistled past like a rattling voice. He understood what she meant, and it made him shiver, but he didn’t have any other options. “How do you know all this anyway?” he asked.

Gretchen folded her arms. “I do remember some things.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t go,” Vatii put in. “That place could be full of wild magic—untamed and unpredictable. We should be cautious.”

“It’s the best shot I have of finding lichen. Witches used to forage for tithes from their back gardens all the time.”

Gretchen’s face contorted. “Fine! Go if you like, but take my curtain off. I’m not going in there with you.”

“I won’t make you. Either of you.” Briar fished in his pocket for the scrap of fabric he’d cut from the curtain cloak that morning. He found a soft place to dig a hole in the soil. The forest’s magic had sunk into the dirt and stung like nettles under his nails. Despite his bravado, the sensation and Gretchen’s warnings unnerved him. He wanted to get this over with.

He buried the fabric scrap and stood. “There. We’ll see if the piece in the ground is enough to let you roam freely once I get home.”

“You’re making a mistake,” Gretchen said.

“Vatii?”

“I think you’re a fool, but I’m coming with you.”

They parted ways, Briar heading up the dirt path as Gretchen faded away behind him until she wasn’t there at all.

From a distance, the forest was an abstract concept, but close up, Briar understood Gretchen’s aversion to it. All living things carried auras. Every plant, animal, and person. Each tree had a signature, and yet the forest as a whole exuded something utterly its own. Coill Darragh was a curious invitation in an unmarked envelope. It was the sting of a papercut as you slit the letter open.

The path ended. It didn’t snake between the trees—the grass swallowed it. No sign proclaimed this a dead end or warned him not to go in.

He exchanged a look with Vatii. With breath held, they entered.

Passing under the sprawling canopy, an immutable quiet enveloped them. Sunlight dappled the ground and danced over shrubs and fallen logs in defiance of physics. One step, dead leaves crunched underfoot. The next, moss squelched and sank. Leaves hissed, trees groaned, the earth rose and fell like something huge breathed beneath it. On some level, Briar understood these were natural phenomena. Moss and earth stretched tight over tree roots could rise and fall as the trunks leaned in the wind. The forest was alive, as all plant things were, and it changed and transformed with the world around it.

But on an instinctual level that went beyond Gretchen’s warnings, he sensed the forest wasn’t alive the way plants were. The forest watched. The forest knew things. And it yearned.

The thought crawled like spider legs across skin. Briar pushed farther in. He made note of landmarks to find his way back. Two cracked trees that formed the letter “M” with the peaks of their broken trunks. An irregular red-leafed bush amongst the green. A moss-covered stone speckled with flowers. The density of growth and lack of footpath made the search slow, but Briar eventually came to a landmark that stopped him dead.

An enormous tree riddled with bumpy sores rose up, tall and twisting. Around it, the forest shrank away. No toadstools or shrubs grew. No ivy climbed its boughs. He noticed even the surrounding canopy refused to touch it, creating a halo of sky around this tree’s leaves.

A scar—like the ones on the buildings in town, like Rowan’s—marred the trunk, but here it seemed fresh. Veins of magic twisted through the injury like barbed wire. They smelled of rotten meat.

“This is cursed magic,” Vatii said. “Wild magic. We should leave.”

Briar agreed, but he was incomprehensibly drawn to this tree. This fetid, stinking thing that was neither alive nor dead.

Briar wondered, If the forest could look back at him, perhaps it could talk to him too. “You wouldn’t happen to know where I can find some lichen?”

The wind picked up, and the trees around them moaned, braced against the gale. All but the twisted tree, which remained steadfast. Briar watched in silent terror as a fingering branch sprouted from the trunk. It grew in a zigzagging coil, coming close enough to touch. At its tip, a tangerine-colored lichen grew with spidery gold-green lashes framing each polyp. It grew prolifically, covering the bough, until the branch snapped and fell to the ground.

Briar hesitated. Stepping closer to the tree felt dangerous. He approached the severed branch and, after a pause, lifted it, examining the lichen. There was enough to make a hundred elixirs.

“Um. Thank you.” He felt he had to offer something back. But searching his pockets, he had nothing. Only his charcoal for flesh tithes.

As if reading his thoughts, the tree hissed in anticipatory revelry. It liked the idea.

Fear wound around Briar’s throat. It seemed foolish to offer the tree something of himself, equally so to give it nothing. He couldn’t ask Vatii for a feather—it felt treacherous to offer up his familiar. Much as they bickered, she’d come to him, chosen him.

Taking the charcoal from his pocket, Briar pulled up his sleeve and prepared to draw a rune. As he did, something intangible climbed up through the earth, through his feet, thickening his blood, loosening his muscles. The tree piloted his body as if possessed. The first scratch of dark ash across his skin was rough and shaky. His heart pounded. Why were all his childhood warnings about accepting candy from strangers, not bargains with trees?

The tree’s intent fled his body, leaving behind a spiral mark with rays around it and a series of arrows beneath. He didn’t recognize it. Swallowing hard, he approached the tree. The rotting smell made bile rise in his throat, but he pressed a hand to the gnarled bark. His flesh burned where it was marked. He bit down on his lip and watched the magic leak out of him in veins of bright light that bruised violet. The tree, no, the whole forest breathed a sigh. The magic fizzled out, leaving the symbol as a permanent addition to the rest on his arm.

He pulled his sleeve down. Tried not to shiver. It seemed disrespectful. This was a dangerous dance, and now he wanted to go home. “Thank you,” he said again.

A susurration of sound went through the leaves. The tree tugged at Briar’s heart like a question.

When will you return?

He shuddered. Had this bargain opened him up to communication with the forest? “I don’t know?”

Ours.

“What’s yours?”

You, soon. Your mother.

A bolt of real fear went through him then. His veins were vines, and they curled around something poisonous and sharp lodged in his chest. He understood with petrifying certainty what it was.

“ You ? You cursed us?”

Curse. Yes.

“Why?” Briar’s voice rose. “We’ve never even been here. We never did anything to you!”

The wind hissed ferociously, and the voice chorused in his head. Thieves. Killers! It was owed.

“But we never—”

He didn’t finish. The whole forest quaked, a shriek of wind in the boughs, and he realized suddenly that he was surrounded by things that had killed his mother, that would kill him, too.

The forest screamed, There is no you !

Vatii said, “Just go , Briar!”

He ran. Out of the clearing and into the woods, searching for the landmarks to lead him home.

But they weren’t there.

Not the fallen trees, the rock with the flowers, or the crimson bush. Everything had shifted, as if the trees had gotten up and walked off. He knew himself to be emotional, hyperbolic, given to flights of fancy, but he also knew the forest was warping his sense of direction. He could feel branch-like fingers in his hair, in his head.

He went faster, nearly tripping over roots and sinking pits of moss.

Come back.

Please let us go , he thought . I gave you what you wanted.

In answer, the woods said, More.

The forest floor was treacherous. He slipped on stones, caught himself on trees, then shrank away from them. The canopy above merged and closed, blocking out the sunlight. In desperation, Briar pulled out a lock of his own hair and scrunched it in his fist until the golden strands burned away and formed a floating torch above his palm. It only lit so far, though, and he couldn’t tell which direction led out and which farther in.

It was only a matter of time before he fell.

Soft tissue crunched as his ankle rolled off a smooth stone. Vatii took off, screeching wildly. Briar crashed to his knees, the lichen branch bouncing away from him. His magic light went out. Grit bit into his palms and broke skin. A scream tore at his throat as he felt the forest drinking blood out of the scrapes.

Let me go , he thought. He scrambled to right himself.

Ours. Cursed , said the Coill Darragh woods.

Briar tried to get up, but something coiled around his ankle. It swept his feet out from under him. Ivy twined around his arms and legs, the sibilant sound of it like a snake’s oily body gliding through dead leaves. Vatii snapped at the ivy, trying to sever it, but she couldn’t land for more than a second before the forest tried to claim her, too.

Briar’s eyes fell on the bracelet around his wrist, the stone that kept him safe from Coill Darragh’s wards. The sight filled him with dread as the ivy tangled around it in tight coils.

And began to tug.

“No!” Briar shouted. If the forest severed that bracelet, he was done for. He could sense the wards pressing in, their teeth at his throat, waiting to bite. He tried to unwind the ivy. The magic charm keeping the bracelet from falling off his wrist dissipated. A bit of leather twine broke like a violin string.

“Vatii, get help!”

“I can’t leave you!”

“Please, Vatii.” One of the wires on his bracelet melted at the ivy’s touch. The wardstone vibrated. “Get—” He shouted the first name that came to mind. “Get Rowan!”

“He won’t get here in time!”

“Then get my charcoal.”

He didn’t know what spells he could use. Wishbrooke hadn’t taught him how to combat a malevolent forest intent on devouring him. Vatii danced around the swiping vines and pecked a stub of charcoal from his pockets. She deposited it in his hand. He clutched it fiercely but could hardly move. Flat on his belly, ivy crawling over him, it took colossal effort to bring his arm close enough to draw on. His hand shook with the strain.

The first mark went down in a shivering scrawl. Then his bracelet gave an audible whine of tearing leather, and the last piece snapped apart.

The wards clamped shut around him. His vision went black, the forest obliterating the sunlight. Vatii called to him, desperation in her voice. He could feel her plucking at him. Then hovering over him, wings spread protectively.

He must have passed out and dreamed.

He dreamed one of the trees pulled up its roots and slashed away the vines. He dreamed it picked him up, cradled him to its trunk, and bore him away.

Then he truly blacked out.