Chapter 12
Intellectually, Marra knew that there had never been any chance of getting an early start. And I shouldn’t worry about it. One more day, more or less, is not going to change anything. If I wanted to be done sooner, I should have started sooner.
Nevertheless, she felt a pang as the sun crawled up the sky and noon passed with no sign of getting on the road at all. Agnes had cooked an enormous breakfast to use up all the food in the larder, then had packed, unpacked, repacked, and was about to start on a third round when Fenris gently stepped in and offered to carry the extra.
“Are you certain?” asked Agnes, blinking up at him.
“Yes, of course. Though I will beg a blanket or two from you as well, for the road.” Which sent Agnes off in a flutter to locate blankets for him, leaving her gear strewn across the kitchen table.
“She seems … easily distracted,” said Marra, determined not to say anything harsher after she had made such an ass of herself the day before.
The dust-wife also looked distracted, gazing after Agnes. A line had formed between her eyes.
“Something wrong?” Marra asked.
“Mmmm.” The dust-wife shook her head. “Wrong, no. Interesting. I’ll sort it out, I expect.”
Marra wrinkled her nose. “Interesting interesting, or dangerous interesting?”
The dust-wife peered down the hall. Agnes’s voice floated back to them. “Oh dear, this one has a hole in it…”
“Interesting,” said the dust-wife finally. “I can’t tell you more than that yet.”
* * *
Eventually they did get on the road. Marra thought, somewhat despairingly, that they’d be lucky to make five miles before they had to stop, but she kept her mouth shut. At least they were moving. And anyway, you just uprooted the woman’s entire life and yelled at her about being a lousy godmother. Half a day isn’t much at all. She flushed and stared at the road in front of her, embarrassed by her own frustration.
It’s because you’re too much alike. What did the abbess used to say? That our own flaws infuriate us in other people? How long did it take you to leave the convent?
Blissfully unaware of Marra’s thoughts, Agnes was walking alongside the dust-wife. Occasionally the godmother reached up to chuck the brown hen under the chin. The hen seemed deeply appalled but was apparently too surprised to resist.
“How does one become a godmother, then?” asked the dust-wife. “Is there training?”
“Oh dear. I wish there was! Maybe there is, if you know the right people. But I didn’t. Don’t.” Agnes waved her hands. “I knew that a godmother was a thing that people like me could be, you understand. So I practiced.”
“How does one practice something like that?” asked the dust-wife.
“On kittens, mostly,” Agnes said. “I think I blessed every barn cat from the time I was nine or ten on. Ducklings, too. And once I ran out of those, mice.” She bit her lower lip. “I tried everything I could think of. That they would live for many years, that they would find love, that they would never know hunger. Nothing took. You can feel it when it takes, you understand—it’s like stamping your foot down and then you see the footprint. I can see the print after the blessing. Marra’s still got it. And Fenris…” She screwed up her face thoughtfully. “There was a godmother at your christening, wasn’t there?”
“We don’t call them that in Hardack,” said Fenris, “but I believe our erl-wives perform the same function. Can you see it?”
“Oh yes. You will live with honor and never waver. Your shield will not break.”
Something about the solemnity of the words, delivered in Agnes’s thin but cheerful voice, made Marra want to laugh. Fenris smiled broadly. “That is correct,” he said. “And my shields never broke in battle, either. Mind you, I dropped a fair number of them over the years…”
“What about curses?” the dust-wife asked. “There are many stories about the wicked fairy at the christening.”
Agnes shook her head. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I always wondered if maybe those godmothers could only give bad gifts. And then you have to wonder if maybe there are lots of godmothers out there who don’t do anything because the only gifts they could give would be curses.”
“Have you ever tried to curse?” asked the dust-wife.
Agnes ducked her head, failing to hide a guilty expression. The dust-wife pounced like a chicken on a worm. “You did. And you found you could, couldn’t you?”