Chapter 17: The Hedge Witch

"You're the one who burned it into me," I said.

The old woman in the green shawl did not deny it.

She sat on the stone wall with her basket in her lap.

She looked at me with a patient, dry face.

"I was paid," she said. "Two sacks of flour and a dying man's tears. It was a small job."

Caius had stopped beside the car with his hand on the door.

"Your wolves came into my hills," she told him. "I left the cabin before they did."

"I know where you are now," Caius said.

"And I know who you are, so we can skip that part."

She turned back to me.

"I came to you, not him."

"Why?"

"Because the stone took my mark off your neck, and it didn't take the rest."

She opened the basket and took out a tangle of grey thread.

It was the same grey as the knot that had been nailed to her door.

"A forged bond needs two parts," she said.

"The mark on the skin, so the pack believes it."

"And a thread through the healer's own gift, so she can't leave."

"Through my gift," I said.

"Sewn in. It runs from your hands down into the ground of Silver Creek."

I thought of Orrin's poison dragging at my palms, the last night in the sick room.

I thought of the headaches that came every time I healed anyone far from the lodge.

"It's pulling on me," I said.

"It's been pulling for three years, and you took it for work."

"What does it do?"

"A thread pulls tighter the further the gift strays from the ground that holds it."

"Your king's mountain is a long way from your pack's creek."

She shrugged.

"It was never going to stop. In a season your hands won't answer you."

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