Page 25 of To Hunt a Ruby Remedy

I brought my dishes to the sink and pumped water. “I don’t mean to twist him up.”

“No, you’d never do such a thing on purpose. But you have more power over my boy than you realize, Scarlette.” She placed a hand over mine on the pump, her skin tan and weathered from a life of hard work. “We’ll deal with the dishes later. Let’s go into the forest before the sun gets too high.”

I grabbed a basket and followed her out of the cottage.

True to her word, Grandmother Molle kept me busy for several hours. She taught me about the plants used to make the medicines that supplemented her healing magic. I learned the best places to hunt for feverfew, how to recognize bloodroot blooms, and the most efficient way to harvest bark from the beech trees.

Then the conversation shifted. I found myself telling her about my first meeting with Ranulf and the way he had sent me back to Wulfkin, only for Mistress Weslet to send me back to the cottage the next day. “That’s why it wasn’t as much of a shock as it should have been to discover Ranulf is the dragon, I think. I knew something was going on, because of how the villagers treated Gideon and their urgent need to tell Ranulf that a hunter was in the woods.”

“Ah. Yes, the villagers do their best to protect our secrets.”

“Why is it a secret?” I had asked Ranulf a few questions about his shifting last night, but I had fallen asleep before getting to that one.

“People tend to react to power in two ways. They either fear it or covet it. It is hard to convince them to be grateful for a power they don’t possess.” Grandmother Molle bent and added a few mushrooms to her basket. “After the Node Wars, the families with blood-locks had to learn this lesson. They had access to vast stores of power, but only in a limited area. Every family had to find a way to protect themselves.”

“I can see how some mages could protect themselves, but so many powers would be useless for such a thing.”

“Indeed. The barrier-mages could wall off their territory, and several did. To this day, there are nodes that people can only visit under direct supervision. The mages must personally allow the person through the ward. They are protected, but also isolated.”

I continued stripping bark off a tree, careful not to take too much. “But most of the nodes would be locked to other powers.”

“Yes. The rest of us had to be more creative. The Truthholders made themselves indispensable to the king and earned a duchy in the process. They protected themselves by amassing political power alongside the magical.” Grandmother Molle gestured for me to follow her down another path. “Most of us wanted an answer in the middle of the extremes. The war had finally ended, and mages wanted to enjoy their node-ties without isolating themselves or being forced to rely on political power to protect their hard-won peace.”

“Your ancestors made themselves invaluable to the communities surrounding them,” I said. “The villages are a buffer between you and the rest of the world.”

“Exactly, but a buffer can only do so much. They know our secrets, because we use our shifting to help them, traveling through the forest at speeds they can’t match in an emergency.” She shrugged. “Before the Node Wars ended, the mages of my family shifted into dragon form regularly. Their journals recount the glory of flying over the continent, tearing enemies to shreds, and raining fire down on armies. Our power was one of war, a thing to be feared.”

“That’s why Ranulf shifted into a dragon. He read those journals.” The temptation to live up to the legends of his ancestors must have been too much.

Grandmother Molle nodded. “He was young. He wanted to do something to catch his mother’s attention. I’m still not sure how he managed the transformation. After the war ended, my ancestors decided not to shift into dragon form any more. They only had enough power for the transformation if they stayed close to the node. They knew they’d be hunted. So, they let shifting become a thing of myth, a lost art. But though the family no longer passed on the knowledge that allowed a person to assume a dragon’s form, we never gave up shifting completely.”

Catch his mother’s attention. The mother who preferred roaming to living in the forest. For the first time, I wondered how much she had been around as Ranulf grew up. But I wouldn’t ask Grandmother Molle. It wasn’t my place to probe into such sensitive topics.

“What form do you shift into?” I asked instead, though the secrets I was learning no longer held much interest for me.

“A wolf. Some members of the family have studied other animals and mastered those forms as well, but most of us are content with shifting into wolves. It requires less power than many forms, because our mass stays about the same. If I didn’t mind draining myself and being stuck for a day or so until my power replenished, I could even shift into wolf form away from the node.”

I glanced at the two summons crystals Grandmother Molle wore on a necklace, just like Ranulf. “In an emergency, you can run to the village in wolf form to perform a healing.”

“Not all the way to the village. Magic is nearly impossible to manage as an animal. We retain just enough control to shift back into human form, probably because our bodies want to return to that natural state. When one of the villages summons me, I run to the edge of the node’s power and shift back to human form. The villagers send a rider out to meet me there. Well, that is what they used to do. These days, I let Ranulf carry me.”

It took me a moment to realize she meant in dragon form. I wondered what it was like to ride a dragon. Equal parts thrilling and terrifying, most likely. Not that I’d ever find out first-hand.

We returned to the cottage around noon. Ranulf and Gideon were both gone. We put together a simple meal of vegetables, bread, and the cheese Grandmother Molle had brought back from Ortfel. As we ate, I noticed the glass cube sitting on the table. As far as I could tell, it had not moved since I first set it there, asking Ranulf to make a charm for my mother.

I frowned and picked it up. “Grandmother? Can you tell if any magic has been put into this charm?”

She shook her head. “Unless I was the one to channel it, I wouldn’t be able to tell. Why?”

“This is the charm I gave Ranulf for my mother. He said it would take a week to make it. I understand that the arrival of the huntsman has caused delays, but it should be almost done. Except I don’t think he has ever touched this.”

I thought over the times I had seen Ranulf sitting in a chair, his fist clenched and eyes closed, as he worked on a charm. I had noticed the glass on the table and assumed that he had other charms to make, too. He couldn’t forget all his other responsibilities to help someone who couldn’t even pay him. And after the first couple of days, I had stopped worrying that he wasn’t working on my charm at all. I assumed he worked on it at other times, when I wasn’t watching.

But why would he always put it back on the table? How had I never seen him move it, even once?

Fear stabbed at me. Powerful, but muddled with an equal sense of confusion.

Grandmother Molle took the charm from me, patting my hand. “That doesn’t sound like Ranulf. If he said he’d do it, then he would. Even when he first sent you away, he’d still have made the charm and brought it to you. I’ll talk to him, see what’s happening.”

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