All Knowing for teaching her well the ways of magic.
After one last agonizing moment, her transformation was complete. Long legs, weak but willing, held her when she stood, so she tipped her face toward the daylight stars to calculate the distance home. Naked, but no longer at the mercy of the sun for warmth, she walked out of the marshland with the hot pulse of revenge beating beneath her breastbone.
CHAPTER TWO
Elena slipped the flimsy shoe back on her right foot and swore to make a fur coat out of the first fox to cross her path. She would never be able to grow that toe back, no matter how many concoctions she came up with. Not even Grand-Mère in her prime could work that magic. If only she had a little Saint-John’s-wort or mallow leaf with her, she could at least make a salve to soothe the blisters brought on by covering so many miles in another person’s shoes. Oh, to be tucked away in the storeroom again with her tincture bottles, powder jars, and dried herbs and flowers tied up with string. But she supposed all that was gone. She’d have to start again. The thought exhausted her.
Her magic had atrophied, of that she was certain. Manipulating the goatherd’s eyesight had been more difficult than it should have been. A quick pinch of ground-up chicory seed blown in the herder’s face was all that was needed to fog the memory of encountering a naked woman emerging from the woods, but it had left her shaky and unsure. And though she’d found a half round of cheese in one of the pockets, she debated the wisdom of not having waited longer for someone more suitably dressed to pass by on the road. Now she regretted how the stolen coat smelled of dung, and without the proper undergarments—some things were best left on the roadside—the goatherd’s woolen skirt chafed against her tender new skin. But she was nearly home, and she could bear any suffering if it meant she’d soon walk through the front gate of Château Renard and be greeted by the healing hands of Grand-Mère.
If her moon reckoning was correct, it had just turned November, time of the frost moon. And four days since she’d awoken from the curse. But what was the date? Had it been a year? Two? Certainly she hadn’t been gone a decade. Though her magic swam weak and watery in her veins, she did not feel the heavy stack of time against her spine. Her hair showed no gray, her legs were lean and strong enough to run, and her teeth did not pain her. If she was right about the time, he should still be alive. She thanked the All Knowing for letting her break the curse before he had the chance to meet a kind death by natural causes.
The prospect of revenge buoyed her again to her feet. As she walked, she filled her pockets with dried hawthorn berries, shriveled seedpods, and damp moss. A twist of shriveled celandine leaves, frost-hardy flower heads, the bark off a willow tree—she knew how to mix and grind them all into healing powders. She knew, too, as she sniffed the hardened seedpods of a dried foxglove, the deadly combinations that were possible. Potions that could drop a man to his knees with his heart exploding inside. She’d felt the murderous impulse when she awoke from the curse, but the desire seethed in her veins now that her fingertips caressed the components that would make it possible.
With thoughts of poison rooted in her mind, she bent to pluck a fringed mushroom off a rotting log when a whiff of smoldering grapevine snaked through the air. Despite her dark thoughts, she lifted her head and smiled. She’d caught the scent of home.
Elena ran in her ill-fitting shoes until she came to the crest of the hill. There the trees thinned, the sky spread open, and the rolling hills of Château Renard revealed themselves in the valley below. From afar, nothing looked amiss in the vineyard. It gave her the courage she needed to move closer.
Neat rows of blackened vines, old and twisted like the capable hands of Grand-Mère, greeted her midhill. The winter pruning had begun. Three men worked the field with their brouettes, smoke rising from the char cans where they burned the clippings from last year’s growth. The ashes, rich in nutrients, would be spread on the ground to feed the roots through winter in