Page 7 of Minor Works of Meda

For a moment he didn’t answer. He just gaped at me, at my dark curly hair and olive skin, a body so broad and strong I’d have made an excellent fishwife or kiln woman, if I could bring myself to care about those things—and if any man could look past my oddities. I was about to ask if somebody had cursed him into not being able to speak, except then I remembered he’d been talking with Eudoria moments before.

At last he seemed to find his footing.

“Theo is marrying Chare’s daughter tomorrow,” he said in a wobbling voice. He paused again, as if this was supposed to mean something to me; as if I were supposed to know who those people were, or to care, or to understand ah, so that’s why he’s come. Only then he thrust out the bouquet of scraggly flowers and I did understand. A sickening feeling took over my gut, pity for him. “Would you go with me?”

He didn’t know what he was asking. He’d regret it, immediately, if I agreed. Nobody who got to know me wanted to know me much longer than that.

“No,” I said, and I shut the door in his face.

I could hear Kalcedon and Eudoria talking softly, but their conversation cut off abruptly the moment I entered the kitchen.

“So that’s a no, then?” Eudoria asked.

“Of course it’s a no,” I muttered, as I grabbed a knife and the bucket of snails and set to work. It was my least favorite kitchen task, but Kalcedon hated it even more than I did. Even though I noticed he was taking his time finishing the beans, I said nothing about it.

“It’s one night. You could give him a chance,” Eudoria said.

“I’m not interested.”

Why had he asked me? Did he think a witch would make his life easier? Or maybe, worse, it was like the men in my home village all over again, and he thought a moon-eyed idiot would be easy to take advantage of.

“God’s peace, Meda. He hiked two miles just to ask you to spend time with him. Four miles, by the time he’s home,” Eudoria lectured.

I curled my hand into a fist, biting my nails into the flesh, and tried to keep from exploding. The words came out angry anyways.

“How’s that my problem? Why in horns should I want to be courted by some trawler’s son who smells like fish guts and doesn’t even know how to read?”

Kalcedon choked back a laugh, his shoulders quivering as he bent over his task.

“Meda,” Eudoria said. She sounded exasperated. “It would do you well to spend time with some of the villagers. Or you might wake one day and realize you’re too late.”

I scraped my knife against one of the shell openings with a frown. I’d been an odd girl back in my home village, awkward and bad at friendship and interested in nothing but magic. Everyone there had given me a wide berth, except those who realized I struggled with the word no and liked that about me.

“Did you put him up to it?” I said to her at last.

“Of course not. I have better ways to spend my time.”

“Well, so do I.”

“You ought to have friends. You ought—”

“Kalcedon’s my friend,” I lied, mostly to annoy Kalcedon.

“I am absolutely not,” Kalcedon told me.

“Marriage,” Eudoria continued, as stuck on the subject as a burr tangled in the washing.

“How come you’ve never gotten after him about it? He’s almost forty.”

“You think anyone’s ever come here with flowers for me?” Kalcedon asked dryly, glancing over his shoulder.

Of course they hadn’t. Not with his fae looks. It didn’t matter how pretty he was. Kalcedon was terrifying. His kind were the beasts our grandmothers told night-tales of. Even the grandmothers who had traces of fae blood. Most of the time, that blood hadn’t gotten there peaceably.

Monster, we used to call him in my village, when I was still a child. That monster in the seer’s tower. Thank the Veiled One they don’t live close.

“Kalcedon has a future as a great witch. You do not.”

“Oh, please. I’ve probably learned in three years what it’s taken him—”

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