“What are you talking about?” I shove past the door flap and storm into the brew shed, folding my arms with barely restrained fury. “What medicine?” They can’t possibly mean what I think they do. Bascom is the baker, and he’s older than my father.
Catherine has the grace to look ashamed, her eyes cutting away from mine. She won’t explain, so it falls to Da.
“It won’t hurt you,” he says gruffly. “Just a little something to make you sleep. It’s past time you started living like a normal woman, and Bascom asked for you.”
“Promised us twenty pounds of flour for your hand,” Catherine adds, like that makes it better, not worse.
“I’m not yours to sell!” I snarl. The power comes, tingling in my fingertips. “I never was, but especially not now.”
“It’s nothing other women don’t do,” Catherine snaps. “You just need to lay back and think of something else.”
“Bascom is three times my age and he’s already got a wife!” That’s not even the worst part of this. I can’t get my head around it; that’s how awful and looming it is.
“She’s dying,” Da says in a toneless voice. “And he needs a helpmeet in his twilight years, someone to help with the bakery and warm his bed. You’ll do. I married your mother when she was younger than you! It’s time for you to contribute—”
“I’ve done nothing but contribute since I was small! And the fact that you married my mother when she was practically a child is nothing to brag about, you deviant.”
“How dare you. I loved that woman with my whole heart and—”
Slamming a palm against the wall, Catherine cuts off Da’s declaration, glaring at both of us. “You loved her, aye, her and her witchy ways. She ensorcelled you, she did, or you’d have been mine to start with.”
“Go inside,” Da tells Catherine firmly.
And she listens, albeit not without directing another hard look at me. Once she’s gone, I close my eyes, willing myself to be patient. But my resolve snaps when Da says, “I fed you. Clothed you. You owe—”
“Nothing,” I cut in. “I cooked. I cleaned. I assisted in the brewing shed and looked after my sisters. There shouldn’t be debt between parents and children, but if there is, then mine is paid in full. We will not discuss this again. I won’t eat anything you give me while I’m here, so don’t even try. I’m sorry Bascom’s wife is dying, but I won’t replace her.”
I take a step, planning to exit on that line, but then I realize I’ve been diverted from my purpose. I meant to ask about my mother, the one Catherine called “witchy.”
“Before I go, answer one thing.”
“What?” he snaps.
“Why did Catherine say my mother had witchy ways?” Did I inherit this from her?
He shrugs, eyes going distant. “She always claimed she was descended from the old baron, from an unofficial line. And your ma was beautiful, but . . . strange. Other-like. You remember how birds would come to her when she sang? Voice of an angel . . . squirrels would eat out of her hand. Nonsense like that had people talking, and it got bad before she died. They were talking about calling the witch finders because somebody’s milk went off. But why’re you suddenly asking about your ma? You know it’s hard for me.”
I sigh. Everything is always about him. He’s never once cared what might be best for me. I refuse to apologize. Not after what they planned to do to me. I say nothing, but he’s not done complaining.
“All the light left when she did,” he mutters. “I haven’t slept well any night since.”
“Yes. You’ve told me.”
So many times.
But it sounds as if my mother might be descended from one of the baron’s bodies? Some party long ago, where people drank and tumbled, a maidservant who left the keep with a seed planted? I’m only guessing, of course, but maybe it explains my connection to the keep and this power that awakened unexpectedly.
I’m numb.
I must be, because it doesn’t even hurt, staring at this man and knowing he planned to give me a sleeping draught and turn me over to Bascom, who would’ve done gods know what to my unconscious body with his wife dying in the other room. No wonder witches become evil—I feel myself slipping, wanting to punish Da for treating me this way.
“We would’ve had enough to eat for the whole winter,” Da says quietly. “If you were willing to help.”
“Why not boil me down to bones and gobble me up instead?” My voice breaks, and I hate that weakness. “You might as well consume me directly.”
“Such a sick mind.” Da takes a step back, like my diseased brain might be contagious.
“You’re the one who tried to barter me. I won’t stay the night.”
“It’s on your conscience if we can’t last the winter.”
“Why?” I ask, not expecting an answer. “I’m your daughter too. Why must I always be the sacrifice? You wouldn’t ask this of Millie or Tillie.”
“They’re just children!” His fury has weight, but I don’t step back.
I take in the broken veins in his nose, his unshaven jaw, and the silver threading his hair. Townsfolk would say I shouldn’t speak to my father like this; they would only call me disrespectful, unfilial, and strange—percolating with outrageous ideas, likely learned from books I ought not to have been reading when there was real work to be done.
“So was I, Da. Though you never let me be. Do you know I have a scar, here?” I bare the mark on my forearm. “From cooking when I was too small to properly lift the pan. I scrubbed until my knuckles bled and you only ever expected more. Why do they get to be little girls but not me?”
He has no answer for that, but I didn’t expect one either. Perhaps a small part of me hoped he would offer some explanation, maybe even an apology, because surely he knows—he sees—how differently he treats me from
