“Grayling, come. Attend me now!” Her mother’s voice. The calling mingled with the croaking of frogs in the pond and the ting-tang of dewdrops, and it sounded to Grayling like a sort of music.
“Grayling, come at once, or I shall turn you into a toad!” her mother shouted again, much louder. Belike she would if she could, Grayling thought. By borage and bryony, I can do but one thing at a time. Why can she not do whatever it is herself and leave me be? Hidden as she was in the mist in the herb garden, Grayling could think such things, even though she could not imagine saying them.
She clambered to her feet, left the kettle to soak in the pond, and filled a basket with the remaining watercress and mint that grew at the water’s edge. Finally, swinging her basket at her side, she turned for the cottage and her mother.
The mist was clearing elsewhere, but the cottage was still obscured. Grayling drew closer. Everything was the same, yet somehow different. There was the steeply roofed cottage of wattle and yellow-tinted daub. Brass bells still hung from the eaves, and a swag of hazel rods and garlic yet festooned the little window. Smoke poured from the smoke hole in the roof and . . . that was it. Not mist but smoke shrouded the cottage! Too much smoke! Suddenly the roof thatch exploded into flames.
What had happened? Where was Hannah Strong? “Mother!” Grayling screamed. The flames chewed at the little house, but she darted forward. The terrible roaring of the fire hurt her ears, and the heat forced her back. “Madam, my mother!” she screamed again. “Where be you? Answer me!”
“Cease your clamoring, Grayling,” Hannah Strong said. “I be right here.” The voice was low and hoarse, belike from the shouting and the smoke, but her mother’s voice nonetheless. Grayling turned. Her mother stood at the edge of the clearing.
Grayling stumbled over and grabbed her hand. “What has happened? Come, run, before the fire finds the trees and we are lost!” She tugged at her mother’s hand. The woman swayed like a sapling in a strong wind but neither followed Grayling nor toppled over. She stood straight and strong and still.
Still? Grayling’s mother was never still. She was all color, bustle, and fuss, wrapped in crimsons and blues and the gold of the mustard paste served with sausages at the Unicorn’s Horn. There came a quivering in Grayling’s chest as if a flock of the grayling butterflies for which she was named were imprisoned there, and her face grew cold with fear.
“Why do you stand here, Hannah Strong?” she asked, her voice atremble. “Why do you not move? Come away with me, do!”
“Witless child, open your eyes and look,” her mother said, pulling her hand away and gesturing toward her feet. They were rooted into the earth. What had been toes were now spreading roots, and what had been soft skin was as rough and brown as a tree trunk.
“Oh, monstrous!” Grayling said in a rough whisper. She dropped to the ground and clawed at the bark on her mother’s feet. “Who did this? And why?”
Hannah Strong put her hand on Grayling’s shoulder. “Enough, enough. ’Twill do no good.” She shook her head, and dark hair fell across her face. “I know not the who or the why. Destruction came as smoke and shadow, fired the house, and left me as you see me.”
“What are we to do?” Grayling cried over the pounding of her heart.
Her mother shook her head again.
Grayling stood and wiped her hands on her skirt. She could not move for terror and barely breathed as she watched the progress of the flames. Her mother did not know. Her mother—wise woman, hedge witch, purveyor of potions to heal and to cheer; who had charms and spells and power; who was the wisest and surest and strongest person Grayling could imagine—did not know. Grayling felt a clenching in her belly and in her heart, and her hands shook.
No sound reached her ears but for the roaring of the fire—no twittering of birds, no chatter of squirrels or hooting of owls, no singing of the frogs by the pond. The flames finally took the cottage and the apple tree beside but went no farther.
After a time, what remained had cooled enough for Grayling to draw closer. The roof was gone, she saw, and the walls, though standing in some places, were burned through in others. She took a hawthorn stick to protect against evil and poked in the char and the ashes. Her mother’s clay jars, pots, and crocks of salves and potions were buried in ash. Some were broken, their contents spilled. Others were whole, dingy with soot, and still warm to the touch. Cooking pots were blackened, candlesticks melted into pools of tin. The two chairs by the hearth were gone, as were the beams heavy with drying herbs and the spinning wheel in the corner.