fields, muttering a plea to the All Knowing under her breath. They were the chanted words of someone afraid of the future, as if a spiteful god wielded the passing of time like a scythe in the hand. Had a fear of death nipped too close to her heels? Something was bothering the old woman, but Elena couldn’t find the right words to confront her about it. Time apart had allowed a tangled wall of tension to grow between them. Perhaps it was just ordinary cobwebs in the relationship, the inevitable result of years of disuse, but something blocked the easy flow of energy they once had.
Elena convinced herself it was also why she hadn’t told Grand-Mère the entire truth. She knew more about the witch who had cursed her than she let on. She’d spied one important detail before falling from shadow vision into the hex-void of the transmogrification curse. She’d spotted a pocket watch—small and made of silver, with a green dragon’s eye on the cover. The unusual timepiece practically winked at her as she collapsed on the ground at the hem of the witch’s robes. It was a distinct detail in the small world of witches, and one she hoped might help her find the traitor who’d thought nothing of stealing the life of a sister for the right price. Bastien, after all, wasn’t the only one who deserved to feel the sting of revenge. But until her veins thrummed with the pulse of her full magical power again, there was little she could do to satisfy her heart.
Still, she could use the time to refill her supplies. She was dreadfully low on even the most essential of potion ingredients. Her mind made up, she closed the spell book and picked up a basket. She might not be able to perform complex magic yet, but it was no reason to be unprepared when her strength did return. She banished the notion that it might not ever return out of her mind as she closed the storage room door behind her.
As she exited the cellar, she met Jean-Paul in the courtyard as he brought the plow horse in from churning the soil between the vine rows. She didn’t need to see his face to know he was angry. His aura blazed to rival the setting sun.
“What is it?” she asked. “Has something happened?”
“This,” he said, reaching into a bag he’d slung on the side of the horse. He produced one of her witch bottles caked with mud. “Care to tell me what this is for?”
Lie or tell the truth? She didn’t expect to be torn over which was the right way to answer. “It’s to protect the roots.” There, not a lie.
“Oh? And does it contain some sort of slow-release fertilizer I’ve never heard of?” He opened it and gave it a sniff, though he was obviously mocking her now. He tipped the bottle and poured the contents out at her feet. The wine and strands of hair splashed on the cobblestones. “I specifically said I wouldn’t tolerate this sort of nonsense.”
Nonsense?
How to tell him that the vines on the crown of the hill had been exposed to a spell encouraging black fungus and wouldn’t survive the summer if those bottles were not kept in the ground? “It’s an old custom,” she said, choosing the lie after he’d splattered her skirt with the remnants of her wasted work. “Joseph Gardin would never face a growing season without first paying homage to the earth, sky, sun, and water. Every grower knows that the hope for a good crop begins with humility. It’s like an offering to the gods of wine. Harmless, but hardly nonsense.”
His eyes narrowed at the mention of Grand-Père, the look of a man zeroing in on knowledge he wanted for himself. His respect for the old vigneron ran deeper than she’d first thought. And though she didn’t regret the lie—he’d just undone a day’s worth of work, after all—she did regret she couldn’t be candid with him about someone he obviously admired.
Joseph Gardin, as everyone knew, had been the best vine witch ever to work in the valley.
She waited for the lingering influence of her wish to strum through his heart until his posture relented.
“On second thought I suppose it was just a bottle of wine,” he said, backing down. “I can appreciate the symbolism in the gesture. Even a modernist like myself has a soft spot for the old Romantics and their reverence for nature.