Page 23 of Matches and Mistletoe
Money was magic and power. Money could get her lodging, food, and books—maybe even some warmer clothes. Then she must find work. She could cook and clean, chop wood, build snares, garden, mend, and forage. Surely there was someone in need of those skills.
Her first steps onto the snow-crusted cobblestones felt like springtime. She stole glances at the passing townsfolk through the shawl’s raveled edge. Her gaze darted from side to side, taking in the rows of two-story houses while she listened to the ringing stamp of horses, the clanking rattle of wheels over stone, the creak of frozen snow under leather soles. Along the street twisted the tempting fragrance of sizzling onions, hot fresh bread, and melted sugar. She could smell the sweating flanks of the horses, the acrid reek of dung in the gutter, a whiff of unwashed body from a man who swept roughly past her.
Heavy soft clouds had crawled across the sun, and from them floated large white flakes, feathery in the air and wet against her cheeks. Ember had never seen anything so beautiful as the quaint brown buildings and the black cobblestones fringed with frost. Flecks of cottony white drifted down like a New Year’s Eve blessing.
No one paid her any attention, which loosened the knot of coiled tension in her stomach. She found the town square—a stretch of broad paving stones around a frozen fountain. The scent of cake and buns rolling from the baker’s shop made it easy to spot. She stood on the street corner across from the bakery, a step or into a blue-shadowed alley, and she unslung the bundle of matches and set it down on the snow.
The knot in her stomach tightened again as she realized she would have to call out to the people passing by, to catch their attention and sell her wares. She’d never spoken to anyone but Gammer, though she’d read a few books with dialogue in them.
Grimly she took a box of matches in hand and held it out. When a woman walked by, Ember tried to say, “Matches, three pennies a box,” but her voice was a terrified wisp.
She tried again, and managed to croak the words loudly at a man, who glanced at her, startled, and hurried on his way. For hours she tried, arranging herself in different positions, trying different tones and words. The blue shadows in the alley behind her deepened, and the windows around the town square began to glow rich amber, spilling gold onto the cobblestones and onto the crusts of snow.
Ember was shaking with cold. Her fingers hurt, right down to the bone, and the tip of her nose had lost all feeling. At least back at the cottage there was firewood, and walls, and some semblance of warmth, though the fireplace smoked terribly. Out here, there was no protection from the savage cold that bit through her shawls and her skin, or from the hunger in her belly that gnawed her insides.
Weak and desperate, she caught the sleeve of a woman in a green coat. “Please, could you tell me where I might get warm?”
The woman jerked her arm away and walked on.
With numb hands, Ember fumbled with a box of matches, managing to slide it open enough to extract one match. She struck it sharply, heartened that she could feel the grating vibration through her fingers. They weren’t entirely dead to sensation yet.
The match spurted hot and bright, and she dropped the box so she could cup her other hand around the flame. Its heat was like a love letter, singing to something deep in her bones.
True to the lettering on the box, the match burned for nearly a full minute, but eventually it burned down. When the dying flame touched her fingers, it didn’t hurt, but soaked into her skin and glowed there for a few seconds. Fire had never pained Ember, though it had seemed to sting Gammer whenever she’d come in contact with it. Once Ember had asked why the two of them were different in that way, but Gammer had only grunted and shrugged. There was no drawing an answer from her unless she wanted to give it.
Ember let the blackened match fall in the snow, then bent to pick up the box she had dropped and the matches that had escaped it. As she bent, her fire-bright curls tumbled out from beneath the shawl.
“You shouldn’t let matches get wet,” said a voice. A male hand reached down, collecting a few of the matches.
Ember recoiled like a threatened cat. The young man straightened and smiled, holding out the matches he’d picked up.
“They’re special matches,” she muttered. “They strike even when wet.”
“Is that so?” His eyebrows lifted. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
His face creased in an appreciative smile as his gaze traveled from her face to the curls spilling over her breast. But two other young men came up behind him and gripped his arms, pulling him away. “Are you mad?” one of them hissed. “Everyone knows you don’t buy those matches!”
“Those are the witch’s matches,” added the third boy. “They show you foul, sinful things. I struck one for my mother’s candle once, and up sprang an image of the tanner’s daughter, stark naked and dancing! My mother cuffed my ears so hard I couldn’t hear for a week. She thought I’d been dabbling in the dark arts, you see.”
“Come away,” said the second boy, eyeing me suspiciously. “Come away, and leave the witch’s spawn alone.”
The young man who’d helped Ember with the matches shrank from her, his eyes darkening with caution and hostility.
As the trio walked away, Ember puckered her cold lips, trying to keep tears from escaping her eyes. Her first time speaking to a man, and it had ended as bitterly as Gammer had warned her it would.
The three young men must have spread word of her presence, because no one passed near enough for her to call out or touch them again. When villagers noticed her standing there with her boxes of matches, they circled wide or crossed to the other side of the street to avoid her.
After a while no one came down the street at all. One by one each shop was shuttered and locked.
Far down the street, nearly at the end of sight, Ember could make out a small chapel with open doors, admitting dark figures for a New Year’s Eve service. She thought briefly of creeping into the building with the church-goers and enjoying a bit of warmth; but the sight of the cross atop the spire sent a twist of nausea through her stomach. She felt an unaccountable revulsion at the idea of going inside that place of God.
Besides, the villagers would likely have turned her out. Witches would not be welcome in the house of the Lord.
Ember shifted further into the alley, trying to avoid the bitter sting of the wind that rushed through the town square. How she longed to pass straight through the doors or walls of a house and enjoy the blessed warmth inside! It was cruel how many buildings shed smoke into the sky and light onto the street, yet there was no room for a single slim girl.
She struck another match and held it closer to the alley wall, with some idea that it might reflect the heat back at her—and she nearly screamed when the stone began to glow and melt away in the heat of the flame. The match seared a fist-sized hole right through the stone, revealing the warm room beyond. Ember could see an iron stove much larger than the tiny one in Gammer’s cottage—large enough, it seemed, to fit a whole person inside. Brass fittings gleamed on its doors. And then someone whisked past the hole the match had made—without even seeming to notice an openingright through the wall—and clanked a pot onto the stovetop.
The match blackened and curled, its last bit of heat fading into her fingers.
