Page 2 of Matches and Mistletoe
“Might I find a little place?” she asked Goodwife Lotte again, louder.
“We’re full here, dear,” answered the goodwife without turning around. “Try a bit farther down.”
Thistle walked a few more steps and asked again, only to be met with a similar answer.No room, move on.
Her heart thundered against the book she held to her chest like a shield. She bent her head, letting her hair fall on either side of her face, because her eyes were stinging sharply now, a sure omen of tears to come. She had walked the circumference of the table, and there was no place for her.
If Granda were alive, he would have saved her a seat. Everyone wanted him around, and he always wanted Thistle near him.
A the end of the table, Thistle turned sharply, intending to hurry home and weep.
But she collided with a wall of leather and wool. Startled, she sucked in the musky, spicy scent of animal hides and pine oil. The smell carried a metallic tinge that scratched at her nostrils.
Her head tipped back.
She was looking straight into the shadowed cowl of the Felwitch.
He wore a patchwork mask over the lower half of his face. Above it his eyes glittered, twin flecks of blue in pits of sooty darkness.
“Come,” he said.
She had never heard him speak. He always carried out his bargains in silence. The gravel in his low voice penetrated her skin, raising goosebumps.
“Come,” he repeated.
Thistle swallowed. “Why?”
“You are Unwanted. You will come with me.”
Her throat constricted, her lungs quivering, pulse stuttering. “No.” She stepped back.
“All that is Unwanted is mine. It is the bargain I struck with this village long ago. You return with me, or all that I have given for decades will be reduced to dust. The meal these people ate and the wine they drank will become dirt and rainwater in their bellies.”
Gasps of consternation and cries of horror rose from the table behind Thistle. A few of the children began to cry.
Thistle’s chest felt as if it might crack wide open and disgorge tears and blood, her heart sailing along on the tide of grief.
She had been wanted until Granda passed. But no more.
If she stayed, and the Felwitch’s words came true, she would be Hated as well as Unwanted.
“Where will you take me?” she asked.
The Felwitch lifted one heavily-draped arm. “Into the forest.”
Thistle looked beyond the thatched roofs of the cottages, to the treeline. Some of the trees were naked, shorn of leaves for the winter, but most bore thick boughs, dark green, laden with last night’s snow. Behind them piled more trees, and more, layers upon layers of forest mounded up, each one darker and higher than the one before. Endless forest, vast and arcane, a soundless maw opening to swallow her whole.
Thinking of openings, she stared at the Felwitch’s sack. “Must I go in there?”
“Yes.”
“Will I—” she choked on the question and paused to gather her courage. “Will I come out again?”
The Felwitch did not reply. He only stared.
Thistle turned to survey the table, her gaze skittering over the familiar faces, testing them for softness, for pity. She found a little of each. But the Felwitch’s magic was never wrong. None of them truly wanted her. One by one most of them averted their eyes.
Goodwife Lotte said, “Don’t be selfish now, Thistle. Think of our children.”
