“What would anyone be jealous of?” The seller waved her hand, encompassing the stall. “I’m not exactly rolling in it.”
Kosara’s eyes fell on the wedding band again. “Your partner.”
“You know what, Mariam, he is a looker,” said the woman from the queue. Several other voices rose in agreement. Kosara couldn’t have hoped for a better audience.
Mariam pointedly ignored them. “What should I do?”
Get some sleep, keep hydrated, have a nice warm cup of tea. “You have to keep vigil for three days. Burn a candle in your bedroom and make sure it never goes off. You can’t leave it even for a minute.”
“Stay home for three days! But what about my stall?”
“Find someone else to mind it. There’s no other way.”
“Get your husband to mind it, Mari!” shouted the woman from the queue. “I, for one, would start coming twice as often.”
Mariam gave her a dark look. The woman giggled and raised her nearly empty glass of mulled wine in the air.
“Burn a candle,” Mariam turned back to Kosara. “Is that all?”
“No. You also need to make a potion by boiling a thumb-sized piece of ginger in a pint of holy water, and you have to take it every morning and evening.”
“And you’re sure that would lift the curse?”
“Positive.”
Mariam hesitated for a moment. Then, she sliced a piece of lamb and wrapped it in a steaming flatbread. Before she handed it to Kosara, she drizzled garlic yogurt all over it. “Perhaps I need a holiday,” she said. “Thank you.”
“No,” Kosara salivated so much she could barely speak, “thank you.”
“Oooh, do me next!” said the woman from the queue. After all her help, Kosara could hardly refuse.
“Me next!” came another voice from the crowd.
“And me!”
Kosara spent the next half hour prescribing potions, breaking curses, and predicting tall, dark strangers. By the end of it, her pockets were full of grosh. The flatbread seller had long closed her stall and gone home to drink ginger tea, but the queue didn’t disperse. More and more people joined it, lured by the promise that a real witch from Chernograd would tell their fortune.
It seemed that sticking out like a sore thumb wasn’t such a bad thing, after all. It attracted a rather large clientele. Kosara was aware witches were rare on this side of the Wall, but she’d never thought the Belogradeans would be so desperate for one.
Good thing Vila can’t see me now! Kosara’s old teacher would’ve been so disappointed to find her favourite student reduced to a charlatan in the streets of Belograd.
For a moment, something half-forgotten wiggled in Kosara’s stomach. Guilt. She quickly suppressed it. She had no other trade than witchcraft, and she had to eat.
Belograd didn’t need real witches, anyway. There were no monsters here. The locals themselves didn’t know how good they had it, the spoiled brats. Their problems seemed so minuscule: “Help, Miss Witch, my daughter-in-law always forgets my name day” or “Oh no, it’s going to rain next Wednesday when my date and I were meant to be going stargazing.” Try stargazing while fighting off upirs, why don’t you? Try eating name-day cake while hungry varkolaks nibble on your calves!
Kosara was exactly what their made-up problems needed—a charlatan. She would have stayed all night and squeezed those Belogradean suckers out of their last grosh, if she hadn’t been so tired. Her eyelids grew heavier with every blink.
“Thanks for your business, everyone,” she said finally. “I’m afraid I have to wrap up for tonight. It’s getting late.”
“Where can we find you?” shouted a tall man from the back of the queue. He stooped, his hand pressed against the small of his back. Devil’s claw would help the pain, Kosara thought automatically, as would white willow bark.
“I don’t know,” Kosara said. “I just arrived. I have nowhere to stay.”
At this, the crowd grew notably silent. So, this is how it is. They were happy to ask for her help, but none of them wanted to let a witch from Chernograd into their home.
“There’s a hotel just down the road.…” someone mumbled.
Kosara looked down at her purse. It was much fuller than it had been half an hour ago, but she knew it wouldn’t be enough.