Phoenix and Ashes

Taking a greater toll on people's everyday lives was the rationing and simple scarcity, for there was no need to formally ration what simply was not available. The greater share of meat, white flour, fat, dairy, and sugar was simply taken to go to those who were fighting, or who, like the medical services overseas, were serving those fighting. The result had an impact everywhere. She wasn't sure if people were actually hungry, but it wouldn't surprise her.

There were no sweets in the village store for children, for instance, and when sugar was available, everyone rushed to get what they could. The butcher, Michael Kabon—to Eleanor's initial shock, he was a black man, from somewhere in Africa—made the most of every bit of meat and bone that fell beneath his cleaver.

Mr. Kabon was well-regarded in normally insular Broom, but then, when his personal sacrifice was so visible in his own flesh, Broom would have found it difficult to turn away from him, even had he not been as good-natured as he was. Whatever had moved him to volunteer, she could not say, but he was never going to go back to the lines again—not the way he fought for each breath after the dose of mustard gas that had also scarred his face and body.

And he had proved to be very useful for the village. Of course, here in the country, no one ever complained about eating organ-meat, so he had no trouble finding buyers for kidneys and livers, lungs and brains. But he knew of other options. People were poor where he came from; he had some interesting suggestions about how unlikely things could be cooked, and by this time, the women of Broom were getting desperate enough to try them.

Chicken feet, it turned out, did make a tasty soup when cooked long enough . . . and cow hooves were not all that far from pig-trotters and could be used to make more than jelly. So long as housewives disguised the origin of their culinary adventures, no one seemed to mind where the taste of meat came from. Any bone could be used to make a stock, and stock meant soup. It was amazing how much meat could be gotten when you scraped bones, too.

So, outside these four walls, families were dining tonight on chicken-foot soup and oat-bread, while within, the ladies of The Arrows thought it hard that they were reduced to a casserole of potted pheasant. If there was a sweet course on the tables of the village, it would probably be a jam tart—with the jam spread as thin as might be. Alison and her daughters feasted on sugar-frosted cake.

Eleanor wondered just what the reaction would be in the village if anyone knew this. Or knew that the innocuous parcels that came on a regular basis to The Arrows contained foodstuffs no one in Broom had seen for days or weeks, or even months.

Certainly Alison's reputation in the village would suffer the loss of some of its shine.

Eleanor had planned to go to visit Sarah tonight, but as she had gotten ready to add Sarah's herbs to the tea, something had hissed out of the fire.

She had turned to see a Salamander writhing on the hearth, watching her with agitation. When it knew it had caught her eye, it beckoned her nearer.

'Not tonight,' it had hissed. 'She walks and wakes tonight. Tomorrow.'

For a moment she had hesitated, but then had put the herbs away. The Salamanders didn't often speak to her, or even appear in the fire during the hours in which they might be seen by someone else. If this one felt it needful to deliver a warning, why take chances?

So she resigned herself to a night of hard work alone. If Alison was going to be awake, there was no point in fighting the compulsions and arousing her suspicion.

She stared at her own reflection in the window as she washed up the dinner dishes. In some ways, none of this made any sense at all. At this point, there were days when if Alison had simply come to her and said, 'If you sign over your inheritance, I will let you go' that she would have agreed in a flash. It wasn't as if, given all she had learned perforce, she couldn't earn a living as a servant.

Of course, that would have meant giving up a great deal of what made life tolerable. Servants didn't have a lot of time nor leisure to read. And once she did that, the life of an Oxford scholar would have been quite out of reach.

But why should she give up what was hers? Especially when Alison had essentially stolen it in the first place?

Because freedom was worth more than things. If she had learned one lesson in all of this, it was that. Freedom was worth far more than things.

She finished the dishes, and sighed. Alison would never let her go, not even for that. She knew too much. Ordinary people might not believe in magic, but there were more like Alison out there, and if she was ever able to leave these four walls, she would be in a position to tell them herself what Alison was up to, how she had bewitched Eleanor's father, and all the rest. Those people might not pay attention, but then again, they might. Alison would never let her go as long as there was a chance that her scheme would be exposed.

Because even if those people did nothing about what had happened to Eleanor and her father, they would be warned for the future, and any new scheme Alison had in mind could be thwarted.

She reached for a towel to dry off her hands, and made a face as she looked at the left. Well, there was