The Moorwitch

by Jessica Khoury

“We’ve a journey ahead of us. There will be time for all that.” “Well,” I cast about, feeling as if I’ve stepped into a rushing current and lost my footing. “Can I know your name?” The faerie draws his hand to his chin, his lips curling into a dangerous smile. “My name?” “If I am to undertake this impossible and deadly favor, I’d like, at the very least, to know the name of the creature pulling my strings.”

sgian-dubh

occurs to me, suddenly and quite strangely, how very different he is from Conrad North, like winter and summer, like silver and gold.

Lachlan is an ethereal creature, all light and air, as if he might shift in and out of existence with a whisper. The laird of Ravensgate, on the other hand, is as solid as the earth, as much a part of the moors as its rocks and heather and rough, woolly sheep.

“This laird of yours,” Lachlan says. “Is he handsome?” With a start, I sit up straighter. “What?” “It’s only that, when you speak of him, the blood rises to your face, just here . . .” He leans toward me, one cool finger grazing the air by my cheek as if in a restrained caress. “How pretty you are when you blush. Should I be jealous?”

“Indeed. Of course. I should put Sylvie to bed.” He rises and lifts his sister into his arms, cradling her as effortlessly as a lamb. But at the door, he pauses and looks back. “Thank you, Miss Pryor.” I look up. “For?” “Piecing the world back together.” His eyes fall on the map. “Even if you did put South Africa upside down.”

“I can see that,” he says in a strangely coarse tone of voice, as if a rock has lodged in his throat. “And I would be delighted to continue our argument indoors. We can shout till dawn if it would please you. But please . . . cover yourself first. Otherwise, it makes it very difficult for a man to stay angry.” He grabs his coat and thrusts it toward me. I look down and realize then that the soaked linen of my nightgown is clinging in . . . deeply inappropriate ways. I wrap myself in his coat, feeling my face turn several degrees hotter. “Right. I’m going inside.”

it.” Wryly, I turn away from the stone. “Do

You will see. Humans will find faster, cheaper, more efficient tools. And then your threads will turn to iron, your needles to guns, and humans will forget, as they have forgotten so much already. And then, Rose Pryor, it is you who will become a faerie tale.”

and reshaped to serve your petty purposes, while their true names have been forgotten. We lasted longer than most, 170up here in the corner of the world, but the mortals found us still. How curiously cruel you humans are, that you must first kill your gods before you worship them.”

“Look at her. She is not the same shivering, wretched thing I found in that boarding house. That Rose’s cheeks are flushed and her eyes shine. She has come alive in this place, like an ember that required only a bit of wild wind to burst into flame.”

“The whole world overlooked you, but not I. The world expected nothing of you, but not I. I see who you truly are and how dazzling you could become.”

“You are not like other humans, are you, my little witch? You see deeper. You feel the currents of the world.”

And why he wove that mighty wind spell with spider’s thread.

The stones are, as I’d imagined, a great pegboard. He twines thread around and between them, but it is too dark for me to see the pattern he makes, though I can see that he does so with instinctive movements, working slowly but methodically. It is a pattern he knows well, has walked many times before.

I whirl from one faerie to another and feel a hand close on my waist, another slide against my palms, our fingers entwining. Unlike the others, this one’s skin is warm. “Wake up,” whispers the faerie. “Damn it, lass, keep your head.” Not a faerie. Conrad.

His face sharpens in my vision: human, gloriously human, his skin sun-warmed bronze, his tiger eyes reflecting the glowing lights all around us. His tailcoat is black, the lapels and shoulders crusted with dark jewels and silver embroidery; his cravat is white silk chiffon tied in an elaborate knot; his dark hair is dusted with silver. Lacy cuffs cover half his hands, and a sprig of elderberry and juniper is stuck on his lapel with a raven pin. He looks like a groom, or a faerie prince. We are a matched set.

I smile dreamily, reaching up to twist my fingers in his hair the way I’ve been dreaming of doing. Just as I’d imagined, the dark locks are luxuriously thick and buttery soft. “Dance with me, laird.” I tilt my head, smiling coyly up at him. 210 He curses and disentangles my hands from his hair....

His voice turns ragged. “Rose . . . you’re not thinking straight. Stop that.” “Why should I?” “Aren’t you a Moirene sister? Don’t you have celibacy vows or something?” I giggle. “That’s the stuffy old Edgithans you’re thinking of. My order makes no such vows. I don’t have to be celibate at all.” For emphasis, I rub my hand down the front of his coat. His heart thumps against my ear, racing faster and faster. I feel a rumble deep in his chest, a suppressed groan, as if he is fighting against himself. He pushes at me, but the effort lacks conviction. I lift my eyes to his again and drag my finger along his jaw, finishing with a tap of his lower lip.

over my shoulder. “You know I don’t like it when you keep secrets from me, Connie.” “She’s hardly a secret. She’s a terrible meddler, aye, but she’s just passing through. She’s no one.” “You don’t look at her as if she’s no one. You don’t dance with her as if she’s no one.”

He matches her gaze and nods. “It happened suddenly, but so strongly. The moment I saw her, I . . .” He glances at me, swallows, his eyes aflame as if holding back a wall of fury. He grips my hand so tightly it hurts a little. “It was as if I’d been enchanted.”

“That was some very fine acting back there, Miss Pryor,” he growls. “Where does a schoolteacher learn to kiss like that?” Acting. Yes, I was certainly acting. I snap back, “If you recall, sir, I kissed you once and would have left it at that. You kissed me the second time.” “Lucky for you, or you’d be a mindless puppet by now, dancing for Morgaine’s entertainment. She wanted a show, and I gave her one.” “Oh, is that all it was? A show?” I scrub at my lips and glare at the back of his head. He turns to me so suddenly I nearly walk smack into his chest. “Why?” he asks, his tone dangerously low. “Did you want something more?” His eyes crinkle slightly at the corners, enough to give away that he is mocking me. I knot my hands into fists and lift my chin. “Of course not.”

it didn’t mean anything more. His free hand slides up the back of my neck and into my hair, his fingers cradling my skull. Even with warning, I find I am not prepared for the intimacy of his touch, and I go rigid, my spine rising off the doorframe. “Easy, lass,” he says, as if I were a restless mare. “I’ll be gentle.” His eyes stay locked on mine as his fingers conduct their search, carefully and thoroughly examining every strand by touch. With his other hand gripping my hip, I have no choice but to endure. Unable to withstand the accusing heat in his eyes, I lower my gaze and find it snagging on the warm pink cushion of his lips.

I wrestle my thoughts back to safer ground, glaring harder at him. His fingers move to the hair behind my left ear, softly riffling through it as if he were thumbing the pages of a fragile book. If I had tied any spells in my hair—counter-wards against truth knots, for example—he would have found them.

my ear. “Are you satisfied, laird, or is there more of me you have to search?” His gaze drops to the low neckline of my faerie gown, his fingers tightening ever so slightly on my hip. My heart flutters treacherously, and I inhale the snowdrop-scented air, my beaded bodice glinting as it rises and falls with my shallow breaths. I watch his face as his lips part and a low, soft sigh rumbles in his chest.

“The tree . . . it was like nothing I’d seen before.” “There are many trees like the Dwirra, all over the globe. If this place is a tapestry woven by the Fates or the Norns or Matrones, or any of the countless other names the triple goddess has been given, then the Dwirra and its kin grow on the wrong side of the cloth, rising out of a chaotic tangle of threads, and in their shade our kind have found refuge. But instead of withdrawing completely, Morgaine wanted to leave a few pathways open, through the stone circles.

“Then why send me at all, if . . .” I look away, at the storm rolling in, feeling the air begin to stir with anticipation of the coming thunder. The horizon is curtained by a dark sweep of rain. Understanding strikes me like a bullet. My head whips around, my eyes locking on his. “You mean for him to do it,” I breathe. “You want Conrad to fetch the Dwirra branch, to betray the queen. And you think he would do it for my sake?” He says nothing, but I see my answer in his chilled gaze. I feel bile in my throat; all of this, from the beginning, has been his orchestration. We were all puppets in his play, dangling on his strings.

“You were irresistible to him,” he murmurs. “To put you in the path of that lonesome young man was my grandest stroke of genius. The day I first saw him, years ago—a wretched, lonely boy on the cusp of manhood—I knew exactly what his weakness would be. And I was right.”

“Sylvie . . . I am only a guest for a short time. I must soon leave, you know.” “You can’t leave us,” she says, dragging me to a stop and planting her small frame in front of me. “Don’t you see you make us better?” 255 “Better?” “You gave me magic, and you make Connie laugh. Anyway, I know he’s in love with you.”

I put my boot in his hand, and he lifts me into the saddle, only for my other boot to be left planted on the ground. “Ah.” He bends down and picks it up. “They’re a bit large,” I admit, flushing a little. “May I?” I swallow, then extend my stockinged foot. He takes my ankle gently and slides the boot on, then ties it more securely. I wait in silence, watching the top of his bowed head, as my heart flutters up my throat.

Moments later, I hear a timid knock. “Rose.” “Go away!” “Rose. Please.” I sigh and go to the door, to find Conrad standing like a wounded dog. The top of his head rests on the doorway, and he looks up at me through the dark fringe of his eyelashes. He is wearing a sprig of juniper in his collar today, just like the one he wore the night of the faerie revel.

“Well?” I whisper. “What is it you want, Conrad?” He doesn’t have to speak. His hungry eyes say everything. He leans forward and brushes his lips against my throat, and my breath, my heart, my very thoughts all stop—

But then I close my eyes and think of Sylvie, tearstained but triumphant in the road outside Blackswire as her tormentors fled. I think of Conrad, barefoot in his kitchen, telling me he’d do anything for his little sister.

Each section of the design corresponds to a different country.” I point out each one woven into the scarf, tracing the journeys of Vera North through Damascus, Crete, Rome, Paris, Lisbon, and more. But after a while, I become conscious of Conrad’s eyes on me, and not the fabric.

This is the sort of gift you give a queen . . . or a lover. I cross the room and sit heavily on the armchair, putting down the box because my hands are shaking, and I fear I’ll drop it. Leaning forward, elbows on knees, I run my hands through my hair. “Oh, Fates,” I whisper. “You have no idea what you’ve done, do you?” He rises to his feet and looks at me directly, his eyes fevered. The shawl drapes over his arm. “You’ve made me want things; don’t you realize that? Things I should never have wanted. How much easier my life would be if I had never met you!”

He growls, rubbing his face. “That’s not what I . . . I didn’t mean that. It’s only that—damn it, Rose, why is it so difficult to speak around you? You’ve ruined everything: my plans, my expectations, my very idea of the world.” He raises the shawl, giving it a small shake. “You made me want to go beyond the borders that have measured out my existence, to experience things I never dared dream . . . Rose.”

“Might I be half so constant in your thoughts as you are in mine?”

“Conrad . . . there is something I must confess.” “Confess that you hate me, and I will go now and never ask again.” The shawl slides from his grasp and drapes over the footboard of the 315bed. Then his hands take my waist, drawing me closer, forcing me to tip my head back to hold his gaze. “Confess you do not feel as I feel.” I cannot, and he knows it.

“Despise you? Fates, Rose Pryor. I could as easily despise the sun for rising or the stars for gleaming.”

“Nonsense.” He shakes his head, his hands cradling my face. “To me, you are faultless.”

“You came back,” he says, whether in appreciation or admonishment I cannot tell. “Of course I did, you fool.” I kiss him gently, quickly, a desperate press of lips and breath. Cradling his heavy head in my hand, I touch my forehead to his. “I left my heart here.” “That’s all right.” A languid smile spreads across his parched lips. He does not seem entirely conscious, but still manages to murmur back, “You can have mine.”

It’s morning, and I am in the queen’s grand bed in Elfhame. Conrad is sitting beside me, slumped over it in sleep. His head rests on one hand, while the other lies over mine, a bandage wrapped from his wrist 389to his elbow. With a flutter of alarm, I recall the sword he blocked to protect his little sister, taking the bite of steel into his own flesh.

“You committed the greatest sin a Weaver could. You touched the threads of fate, rewove the fabric of reality that is no one’s right to alter—mortal or immortal.”

She goes on to explain that Lachlan had spoken true: to touch the Fate’s threads is to pay with one’s life. But my life was not my own anymore. It was Lachlan’s, thanks to our twisted bargain. My thread and his, tied together, our fates bound in that final moment.