Unbound (17 page)

Ranger wished the boy hadn’t, because his face was pale as the sheets on his bed and he sounded like he was dying, as if each wheezing gasp might be his last.

“It’s all right,” Sachie reassured the wolf, and the wolf wondered how the boy could possibly have read his mind. “Don’t look so worried, you silly old dog! I’m
fine
. I just get a little fluid in my lungs sometimes.”

Ranger wasn’t so sure he was fine, but he didn’t try to argue and took Sachie through the shortcut between Deb Brannigan and Harold Davies’ houses.

There was a little trail of wispy white smoke rising from Madam Watkins’ chimney, and the lights were on in her living room. A small branch taken from an elder tree had been nailed above the door. Ranger paused on her front walk to look up at it in wonder, before he remembered that elder was supposed to be very strong protection, so it made sense for it to be above an entryway.

He sat and warbled on the doorstep before Sachie could spend any time dithering about whether or not the wolf had brought him to the correct house.

If Madam Watkins was surprised to see them, she did not show it. She smiled broadly at them when she opened the door, ushering them inside and promising tea and cookies, and had they had lunch? She could make sandwiches, if they wanted. She had some leftover lamb roast cooked with garlic and rosemary just last night that would make very nice sandwiches.

Ranger wrinkled his muzzle in her living room. It smelled strongly of rotten eggs, and beneath that cloves and angelica and amaranth. Coarse black powder sprinkled on the floorboards crunched under the wolf’s paws.

“Witches’ salt and sulfur,” Madam Watkins explained. “For cleansing evil spirits. You can’t be too careful these days.”

Ranger glanced up at her, wondering in alarm why everyone was reading his mind today, only to realize she was smiling benignly at Sachie, who had clapped a hand to his nose and was wearing a disgusted expression.

“Sorry,” Sachie said, taking his hand away from his face, even though his eyes were watering.

“No need to be sorry, my dear,” Madam Watkins said. “Sulfur smells something wicked, and I’ve been burning it, which makes it that much worse. I’m not surprised at all. Come on through to the kitchen. It’s much less potent through there.”

Sachie and the wolf followed her through to the kitchen, where she had left her big stone mortar and pestle on the counter. Dried herbs in various stages of preparation were arrayed around the mortar, some of them still as whole leaves and flowers, others ground to a fine dust and sitting in little copper bowls. Ranger sniffed delicately at a brown, sweet-sharp smelling bark that he decided must be from a slippery elm tree.

The boggart was crouched on the counter, though when it saw Sachie and Ranger it hissed at them and scurried over to the windowsill where it hunched down with its spindly little arms wrapped around its knobby knees, glaring at them. The wolf rubbed his flank against the cupboards, wiping scent there and marking them as his own, and the boggart narrowed its eyes and pulled back its lips to show off a mouthful of pointed teeth.

Madam Watkins motioned for Sachie to sit down at one of the stools at the island counter.

“I recently received a new order for simple pouches of herbs meant for good luck,” Madam Watkins said to Sachie, who nodded but said nothing, his eyes wide, breathing still wheezy. “Did you want that tea, dear?”

“Uh… all right.”

Her whole face crinkled, from the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes to the creases of her forehead to the lines around her mouth as she beamed at him. “Excellent, excellent. Can’t get the younger generation drinking tea too early, you know. It’s very good for you.”

“Hot leaf water’s good for you?” Sachie said, somewhat dubiously.

She reached for the kettle and took it to the sink to fill it with water. “Depends on the leaves, but yes, it can be extremely beneficial to your health. Didn’t you know? Now, what have you come to see me for? Surely not my cooking. I don’t use sugar or salt in anything I make, and most people don’t find food without things like sugar very tasty. Did Claire send you? If she wants any more hyssop, she’s clean out of luck. She’ll have to wait until spring, or else order some online. My entire stock is gone.”

Sachie looked utterly baffled. The wolf thought it was hilarious.

“Dad said you could show me a boggart,” the boy said, then couldn’t seem to help himself, because he said: “Why’ve you nailed mistletoe above the kitchen windows? Christmas isn’t for ages.”

“It’s a tradition older than Christmas. Mistletoe is for protection against dark spirits. You put it up over windows and doors, and any other place they might get in,” Madam Watkins said, as she put the kettle on the stove and turned the heat on. “What’re they teaching you at school these days?”

“We haven’t covered magical and practical herb lore yet,” Sachie admitted.

“Good thing I’m an herbalist, then, isn’t it?”

Sachie pursed his lips, apparently deep in thought about something. “I thought you were a witch.”

Madam Watkins scoffed. “I can’t be more than one thing, dearie? Witch, herbalist, they’re the same in nine times in ten. Sometimes you get a witch with black thumbs – kill every plant she comes on – and sometimes you get an herbalist without a drop of magical talent. But most times, if you’re a witch, you also work the herbs. There’s a lot of latent magic in herbs, just waiting for the right catalyst, be it another plant, or perhaps a lick of your own magic.”

“Oh,” Sachie said, and he looked a lot like he was wondering whether he’d offended her. “So, do you have a boggart?”

The kettle whistled as the water in it boiled. Madam Watkins used the dish towel that was hanging from the front of the oven to lift the kettle off the stove and onto a wooden board on the counter beside it. “Don’t want to damage the counters with the heat,” she said. “I’ve already had them replaced twice since I moved in. Melted the granite mixing up a love potion about fifteen years back, now. Beware of love potions, dearest – they’re dangerous things, especially the proper ones. Rum and cherry blossom and sugar is just a placebo, really.”

Sachie stared at her. Ranger supposed that he might’ve stared at Madam Watkins too, if this were his first time hearing any of it.

“Humphrey also burnt the whole kitchen down couple of years ago. If you befriend a boggart, and he helps you around the house, you must always remember to pay his kindness back with oatmeal and honey and a bowl of cream, at least twice a week, or they’re inclined to mischief.” She chuckled to herself. “Now, if you want to see this naughty boggart of mine, you’ll have to believe completely and utterly – or else I can brew you a tea to open your eyes and let you see things you otherwise couldn’t. I have all the herbs on hand all ready, all mixed up. Won’t taste nice, though.”

“Uh,” Sacheverell said. “Okay.”

Madam Watkins crowed gleefully. “Excellent, excellent. I’ll set the tea steeping, then. Ranger, you’ll be having chamomile?”

Ranger wagged his tail. The old woman opened a cupboard and pulled out a couple of paper bags, each labelled with a different stark black rune drawn in mysteriously un-smudged charcoal. The wolf couldn’t read the runes – they weren’t standard Futhark but something else entirely. Then she dithered over her teapot collection for a while, before selecting the green ceramic one and the white and blue one that reminded the wolf of a Ming vase, painted with phoenixes and coiled, twisting dragons.

She measured the teas into the pots, poured the water into them, and left them to steep.

“Humphrey’s in the room,” she told Sachie.

“Really?” Sachie said. “Where?”

She pointed to the windowsill. Sachie looked at the sill, then he looked at Madam Watkins, and back at the sill again. “Beside the cat?” he asked, uncertainly.

“What cat?” Madam Watkins said.

Ranger peered at the hairy little boggart sitting on the windowsill, smiling toothily and swinging its warty feet backwards and forwards, and tried to see how it resembled anything like a cat.

“There’s a big ginger tomcat right there,” Sachie said. “Isn’t there?”

“That’ll be the glamour. You can’t accept the truth, so the glamour hides the true nature of things for you. Humphrey will be beneath the image of the cat,” Madam Watkins told him, kindly. “Never knew he presented as a tomcat. Well, the tea will be about strong enough, now.”

She rifled around in a cupboard for a couple of tea strainers, then poured Sachie’s tea into a blue and white cup that matched the tea pot, and Ranger’s tea into a saucer with a picture of a flower with purple petals.

“Let it cool for a moment,” she instructed Sachie. “Don’t want to burn your mouth. Then drink up, and you’ll be seeing fair folk all over the place.”

The wolf watched Sachie look doubtfully at the contents of the cup in front of him, sniff it, and wrinkle his nose in disgust. “This smells like dirt. Can I have sugar?”

“No. It’ll neutralize the effect.”

“Oh.” Sachie tapped his fingers on the counter in front of him. “So, there are herbalists and witches. Are there wizards, too?”

“No,” Madam Watkins said, moving around the island to sit down beside him.

“What are the men, then?”

“Witches, of course,” she said, and when Sachie gaped at her, she went on: “None of that gender nonsense, now. Witches can be men or women, same as a druid or a shaman or a magician can be a man or a woman.”

“What’s the difference between them?” Sachie asked.

“Witches pull their power from themselves, though they might ask a god for help if they’re doing a particularly difficult spell. Druids ask the trees to lend them strength. Shamans ask the old spirits. Magicians bind down demons and take without asking. Vile lot, magicians.” She made a face to express just how much she loathed magicians. “All of them are spellcasters, in one way or another.”

“Can anyone be magic?”

Madam Watkins laced her fingers and shook her head. “No, dearest. It runs in families, for the most part. The seventh son of a seventh son, or the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter is also born with the ability.”

Sachie thought about that for a long moment. “How come I can do magic, then?”

The old woman glanced at him in surprise. “I just told you it runs in families, didn’t I? Your mother had it, and your father’s mother. I never knew your mother’s parents, her real ones, but I assume they must’ve had it too. Now drink your tea.”

Obediently, Sachie picked up his cup and took a sip. Then he choked and coughed and went pale. “Ugh. What’s in that?”

“Bit of this, bit of that. Herbs to help you
see
. Jimsonweed, nutmeg, a sliver of mandrake root, a pinch of belladonna, some poppy, digitalis. You might be sick after you finish the cup, but it shouldn’t matter. You should start to feel the effects in just a minute. Have some more.”

Sachie stared at his cup for a long minute, apparently debating whether or not he ought to do as she said, and took another sip. He shuddered after he swallowed it, squeezing his eyes shut and hunching his shoulders up around his ears.

The clock out in the hallway chimed.

“Oh,” Madam Watkins said. “Excuse me. It’s four. I need to go take my medication – I’ll be right back. Finish your tea, dearest.”

She bustled out of the kitchen.

Sachie immediately got to his feet, moved around the counter with his cup still clutched in his hand, and dumped the last of his tea into Ranger’s saucer. On the windowsill, the boggart leered at them, mouth stretched so wide it seemed to split its ugly little face in two.

“I’m so sorry, boy,” Sachie whispered to the wolf. “I just – I’m going to puke if I have any more of that, and I don’t know where the bathroom is, and I feel like it’d be really,
really
rude if I threw up in a stranger’s sink. She could’ve at least given me a
bucket
if she knew it was this bad. You don’t have to have it if you don’t want.”

The wolf wagged his tail to let Sachie know it was okay, then drank up the scalding hot tea in just a few laps of his tongue. It was disgusting, and tasted sweet and bitter and like dirt all at the same time.

“Thank you so much, Ranger.”

Ranger whined.

Madam Watkins came back into the room. “How are we feeling?” she asked.

“Okay, I guess,” Sachie said.

“Look at Humphrey, and tell me what you see.”

Sachie looked at the windowsill, blinked and shook his head, wiped at his eyes. “A cat?” he said, hesitantly.

“What do you really see?” Madam Watkins said.

“Shadows,” Sachie replied. “And cobwebs. And a giant spider. Or… maybe it isn’t a spider. Maybe it’s a very small goat.” He rubbed at his eyes with balled fists for a long time, muttering under his breath. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

She tittered to herself. “You’ve had too much,” she announced. “Gave you a very small dose of the tea, but you must be sensitive.” She looked at Ranger. “We won’t get any sense out of him, now. You’d best take him on home. He needs to sleep that tea off, and it’d be better if he does it in his own bed.”

Madam Watkins showed them to the door, lending Sachie a hideous furry purple scarf and lurid orange mittens to wear on the way home so he didn’t get cold.