Foxfire in the Snow Read online

  “I’m unguilded,” I muttered, unable to meet the man’s eyes. Anyone could be a trader, but to join a guild you had to first be an apprentice, and I had no formal education. “Since you’re not Queensguard, why are you here?” And why pretend, especially if you’re not going to steal the panel?

  The man snorted. “The grandmaster of witchcraft asked to meet with the master woodcutter. I don’t want to return empty-handed, so our girl alchemist might make a reasonable substitute, guilded or not.”

  I dropped my hands to my sides and raked my fingernails over my pants. There shouldn’t have been a grandmaster of witchcraft because the unbound guilds—witches and alchemists—weren’t beholden to any of the three countries and therefore couldn’t set up a guildhall. But that didn’t matter right now because my skin was too tight, all of a sudden. I gripped fistfuls of cloth to steady myself, to keep my hands busy so they wouldn’t find the skin of my arms. I snarled at the men, though tears collected in my eyes. Girl. Daughter. They burned as deeply as the smell of the bone oil. As interesting as the grandmaster of witchcraft might be, I didn’t care anymore about anything these men had to say.

  “Get out,” I hissed. I marched to the door; I would throw them out if I had to. But the shorter guard grabbed me by the wrist before I reached the threshold.

  “No!” I pulled back, turning to slap him, and just as I spun around, he let go.

  Laughter chased after me as I stumbled and caught my ankle on the doorjamb. My equilibrium was off from the bone oil fumes, and I hit the ground, elbow first. Now I too was slicked with mud and wet wood shavings, which kept my feet from finding purchase as I tried to stand and face the demeaning laughter. The tears I was determined not to shed burned my eyes.

  Before I could get my feet under me, thick fingers dug into my arms and I was hauled up and dragged forward. Their hands were wide, and their arms much stronger than my own, and when I pulled, their grips tightened. The mist was thick in my mouth as I sucked in gasps of air, trying to kick or somehow injure the men who held me.

  “I’m not worth anything. The only thing of value is that panel!” I yelled.

  “A master woodcutter would be worth more than a confused imitation,” the taller one said. “We’ll work with what we have.”

  “I am not a woodcutter!”

  We were at the cart now, and when the shorter man reached past my head to grab a rope that hung over the side, I bit his hand, separating flesh. The not-guard screamed and dropped my right arm. Blood splattered across my front as he flailed. The tall one tried to grab my wrist, but I fell to my knees, grabbed him between the legs, twisted, and pulled.

  He collapsed, howling, and I skittered back toward the house.

  “Leave!” I screamed at them. These things weren’t supposed to happen at Mother’s house. Wasn’t that why I was always here—to avoid this? What was the point of giving up apprenticeships, friendships, if I was going to be accosted in my own home?

  The tall one gasped and grabbed me by the front of my shirt just before I cleared the cart. I wrapped my fingers around his and tried to pull free, but he slapped me across the face and, for a moment, I couldn’t see. I babbled instead.

  “I have money,” I said. “In the house. I have wood species from across the world worth double their weight in stones.” I have solvents I could melt you with if you’d just come back inside.

  “We will have Amada the master woodcutter,” the short one said with a gap-toothed grin. “She’ll come for you, if nothing else, seeing as how well she’s kept you to herself all these years.” He grabbed my legs and, with the taller one, dumped me into the cart. The taller man secured my ankles to iron weights anchored to the cart bed, punched me in the stomach, and left me to lie, staring dumbly at the canopy overhead as he went to assist his partner. Mother would come for me, certainly, but it was the other part of the man’s words that clouded my thoughts.

  The cart began to move, jostling over the uneven forest floor. As I tried to regain my breath, my mind jumped, irrationally, back to the house.

  “You forgot the panel!” I wheezed over the noise of the grunting ox and snapping branches. To leave it seemed like a stupid waste, even if they had no interest in it themselves. It’d taken us two years to make that thing, Mother and I. Someone should have it, even if just ignorant kidnappers. It was worth more than my life, certainly. I had no guild mark, no formal apprenticeship, no friends to come looking for me, and an undocumented journey-woodcutter was worth only as much as their master was willing to pay. They were going to be very disgruntled when Mother did not appear. And if they found her…gods, if they found her… What did witches want with a woodcutter?

  I had my breath back, so I sat up and leaned over the side of the cart. Even with the moonlight, it was too dark to see more than outlines, but I could just make out the taller one breaking away and moving back toward Mother’s house.

  Panic gave way to puzzlement as he entered. Had they changed their minds about the panel? I squinted into the night. Was he moving the panel then, or going past it? I’d not yet lit any oil lamps for fear of combustion during the extraction, and so the spark from the guard’s flint burned my eyes. Something caught in the guard’s hand—perhaps a ribbon of paper or a sheet of Mother’s veneer. Whatever it was, the man tossed it inside the house.

  “No!”

  I screamed it, I think. My throat hurt, either way. The guard jogged back to the cart, and I screamed again, nonsensically. The idiot. The absolute uneducated toadstool. If he didn’t quicken his pace, if we didn’t—

  Mother’s house exploded.

  Two: Earth

  Bits of roof and wood slats rained onto the cart. The ox bellowed and ran, as much as oxen do, and one of the men screamed. I screamed. I couldn’t tell one from the other as I stared at the burning house, my ears filled with the peppered explosions of bone oil and wood finishes. I had sought to leave Mother’s legacy behind, not burn it to the ground. If I got away from these men, what was I going to do?

  Another smaller explosion followed, and the screams of the man abruptly cut off. I sank as low as I could into the cart, curled in on myself, and tried to understand the ache in my chest as shingles and their fat, handmade nails slapped across my body. The cart hit a root, and the left side jumped into the air. My torso slammed into the right wall, my legs still held by the chains. The house…the shop…my extracts…all of Mother’s work…

  The home that was my prison. Gone.

  I refused to be killed by idiocy. When the cart bumped again and I was flung to the back, close to the inserts of my manacles, I grabbed the wooden frame with one hand. I used the other to untie the first pouch from my sash. Using two fingers on the outside of the bag, I cinched a clump of the red granules to the top and undid the tie, being careful to let none of it touch my skin. Blocking the breeze with my shoulder and trying desperately to not let the rocking of the cart spill the contents, I rubbed the top of the pouch around the edges of both ankle manacles.

  There was a cracking noise, hopefully too low for the remaining man to hear as we crashed along the path. I couldn’t see the reaction, but I didn’t need to. Instead, I counted as I tied the pouch back to my sash with shaking hands and, at twenty, brought my ankles sharply together. There was no clang. Instead, the two sides of the manacles collided into a spray of metal filings and grainy red crystals. I’d already turned my head, but metal fragments still beat into my left cheek. I cringed and brought my hand, the one that had been holding the frame, to my face. It came back wet. Well, I was already covered in blood. A bit of my own wasn’t going to make much difference. I scooted to the end of the cart and peered over the edge.

  When had we stopped moving?

  “Get back, girl.” The man came around from the side, his voice low. He had a dagger in his hand that remained pointed at me as he climbed into the cart. I pushed back. It wasn’t the knife I was afraid of. He said “girl” the way the villagers said “witch,” with a swish at the e
nd, and used enough disdain to curl the word into illegitimacy. When people spoke with their lips sneered up and their eyes narrowed, it didn’t matter what they said. The effect was always the same, and this time, it felt sharper with the screams of the burning man in my memory.

  “I’m not a girl.” I’d meant to enunciate each word and sound brazen, but it came out in a squeaky jumble. I had to get away before his words eroded my confidence and I became unable to think. It happened, sometimes, though not in recent memory, mostly because I’d not risked venturing even into Thuja, the village that bordered our land, for the past three years.

  The man snorted, the dagger tracking dangerously close to my face. I ripped the third pouch from my belt, pulled open the strings, pinched the bottom of the leather, and with a flick of my wrist, threw the entire contents in his face.

  He coughed first, as I leapt over the side of the cart and backed well away, then rubbed his eyes with fisted hands. In the moonlight, I could see the yellow granules clinging to his skin and clothes like pollen, When, furiously blinking, he tried to wipe himself clean, the yellow stuck to his palms and fingers.

  “What is it!?” he yelled through gritted teeth. “Your trick won’t work!”

  “Alchemy isn’t a trick,” I muttered, though I doubted he heard me. He brought a hand up to his face and scratched the skin around his cheekbones. A yellow film had formed there, and it pulled his skin tightly together. He scratched harder. The strokes of his nails became feverish and caught the edge of the film. It peeled off, taking his skin with it. It was horrific to watch, and yet, yet…a part of me couldn’t help but be proud. Those were my extracts. My alchemy. I might not be good with a sword, but I could definitely defend myself.

  “You useless piece of chattel!” His face bled, and still the extract continued to form sheets on his skin. It covered the right side of his face and down his neck. I took another four steps back. The novelty had worn off, and I wanted to run—gods how I wanted run and not watch the obscenity that was taking place. Unfortunately, he could still catch me if he wanted to, and if that pigment got on me as well… It was best for him to think I was too afraid to bolt, and let the pigment run its course well away from my own skin.

  As if he had just remembered his legs, the man jumped from the cart and grabbed for me—foolishly, for I was well out of his range—but his hand pulled back, and instead, he raked his nails over his other hand, now coated in yellow. I shuddered and swallowed bile. The man screamed—a horrible, dying hare scream—and I couldn’t force myself to look away as he fell to his knees and cursed me, his partner, and a host of men and women whose names were not familiar. He…he looked like he was melting, although he wasn’t, not really. More like binding to himself as his skin sloughed off… I looked away. He’d forced my hand. He had. He’d tried to kidnap me.

  The screams turned to a whimper as he fell to his side. He curled up like a bug, moaning and clawing. His noises became throaty as he gagged on his coated tongue. I took a step back, then another. He didn’t even look my way. I had thought my heart might stop pounding once the man was down, but it still rammed about in my chest, reminding me I’d been dragged from my home, chained to a cart, and all of this had been meant for Mother, my mother, who was missing.

  Missing, with witches looking for her. With a grandmaster witch looking for her.

  She was a woodcutter. What business could the grandmaster witch have with her that warranted thugs and kidnapping? And when had the witches erected a guildhall? Did the alchemists have one now too? I’d been cut off from the world for half a decade, but guilds were consistent. Unchanging. Maybe some of the rules had slacked, but they did not kidnap people.

  My hands still shook, so I shoved them into my pants pockets. My chin still trembled, so I clamped my jaw. The logical thing to do was to go back home and see if I could salvage anything, though I did have jars of bone oil stored throughout the various outbuildings, and everything was still burning. I might end up combusting along with the house.

  Still…

  No.

  I didn’t want to go back there. Hadn’t I been trying to get away from those suffocating buildings for the past five years? Hadn’t I put my life on hold long enough? Who knew what memories, what guilt, was waiting for me there, ready to bind me again to my mother’s house like I’d bound the man with the fungal pigment? This was Mother’s mess, and I wasn’t going to clean it up for her. Not this time.

  I was going to the capital.

  I was going to the alchemical fair.

  I tore myself away from the tree and the wet stench of blood and ran into the forest, my bandolier of fungal pigments slapping against my chest. I ran past redwoods and tan oaks, maples and hemlocks, stumbling toward the Thujan lake, the smell of Mother’s burning house behind me.

  I would not be a woodcutter’s unguilded apprentice for the rest of my life.

  It was time to be an alchemist.

  Three: Water

  It poured rain the entire boat ride to the capital. I spent the hour near the prow, watching smoke slip across the forest canopy of Thuja—thinking about Mother. She had been proud of her profession. I was proud of her profession. I was proud of her, just not proud to follow her, but really, none of that mattered because her woodcutting legacy was smoking to charcoal.

  By the time I disembarked from the long-tailed canoe, well after the rest of the passengers, I looked more like a sodden wharf rat than a guilder. The rain had washed off most of the dirt and blood but left me chilled. I had no cloak to protect my clothes, for I’d lost it amongst the cart’s many jolts through the woods, and the garments stuck to my skin like shellac. I ran flat palms down my front, trying to smooth the wrinkles and prevent bunching, but the cotton clung to my binder and accentuated my breasts.

  I scowled, then wrapped my arms around my chest and stepped from the boat onto the soft sand of the west dock, taking long, calculated breaths that weren’t slowing my heart at all. I cursed the water and the cotton binding. It was looser, now that it was wet, and I could breathe easier, but I’d have to walk through the city like this, to get to the square where the other potential apprentices were being interviewed. I didn’t care about the stink or the dried, caked blood, or looking like a waif, but I wasn’t sure how long I’d make it, looking like a girl.

  I tried to ignore the gathered fabric and the shivering that was from more than the cold. Ahead of me, the access road swarmed with fishmongers and fruit peddlers, all with their wooden pushcarts. The smell of Sorpsi’s river and lake ports was distinct, each of them, but this one was by far the most fragrant. I’d played here often as a child, while mother delivered marquetries or had meetings I was not allowed to attend. Today, it looked…busier?

  I squinted into the distance, down to the next row of pilings where three more long-tailed canoes floated, tethered and heavy with passengers. No, not just any passengers—guild passengers, although there were a fair few dock workers and sailors as well. But there was at least one guild family on that boat, and while I couldn’t make out the guild tattoos on the necks of the adults, I could see enough of a dark smudge to know they were there.

  A group of four people dressed all in leather boarded the first boat. The person in front scoured necks and forced each passenger to look at them in turn, but ignored the scruffier hands—the dock workers, the tattered children, the beggars.

  I took a few steps forward, then stopped when the family was led from the boat, surrounded by the leather-clad people, and marched in a line toward the palace.

  “What?” I said to myself but apparently loud enough to attract the attention of an old woman standing next to me.

  “For-hires,” she said. “They’re rounding up guilders, though all that are around anymore are apprentices. Did you want some pineapple? I have some leatherwork, too, in the bottom of the cart if you’re interested. Get it now before the price goes up.”

  None of that made any sense. “Before the price—why?” I asked. “Wh
at are you talking about?”

  The woman sniffed and crossed her arms.

  It took me a moment to realize what she was waiting for. Wasting her time answering my questions would cost her sales. I fished in my pocket and took out the first stone I had, not even looking at its value.

  The woman eyed the stone, and me, then waved dismissively. “Just keep it. I’m talking about relocating. Insurance. The woodcutters just lost their grandmaster. Dead. The same thing happened to the River Guild, but their grandmaster just straight up quit, I heard, ’cause of the steamboats moving in from the west. The other guilds of Sorpsi probably aren’t far behind, and it is a census year, after all. Where have you been, especially looking like this?” She frowned. “You do look kind of like the master woodcutter, from Thuja. Anyone ever tell you that?”

  “What?”

  “Yeah.” She made a circling motion with her finger around my face. “Same curly black hair, same funny little dimples. Same body shape. You got that curled bow lip thing my husband thinks is beyond attractive.” She snorted.

  Guild problems seemed really far away, all of a sudden. I looked down at myself, dripping muddy water, my clothes torn, my brown skin scratched and welted from the wood cart. The binding under my shirt was only sodden, not unraveling, but with my shirt clinging so close, I looked unquestionably female. I’d pass easily enough for a dockworker, but I couldn’t be seen like this. I could not. They would know, the fishmongers and the fruit vendors and the tailors with their treadle machines. They wouldn’t see the woodcutter’s daughter, for I was too covered in grime, but they would see a woman—a girl—and that was wrong.

  I’d be a witch before I’d be a woman.

  But I couldn’t go to the alchemy fair looking like this, or I’d spend the whole time huddled in a corner, trying to mash my chest down. I needed clothes, and I had a few stones in my pocket—enough to buy the high-quality cotton that had the correct tautness of fabric. I knew where to go—I’d always enjoyed the capital’s textile district back when Mother had let me travel. It was still morning, and the masters wouldn’t leave until sunset. That was plenty of time. I could do this.