Becka found his direct manner refreshing and wondered if it was on par for his house or just his personal taste. “Don’t sound so optimistic.”
“No worries, youngster,” he snapped back. “I’ve had people trying to cure me for decades. You’re not the first, and you won’t be the last.”
Becka grabbed a chair and pulled it across from Langdon and sat in it, her knees mere inches from his.
“What’s the nature of his curse?” she asked Berak and Saana.
“Why are you asking them?” the elder spat out. “You would think if they understood it, then they would have been able to cure it by now, right?”
Neither Berak nor Saana said anything, and Berak took a step backwards. Becka bit back a laugh. After all she’d faced, this bitter old man wasn’t about to scare her. “My apologies, Elder. This is all new to me. Please tell me about your curse.”
He guffawed. “See, how hard is it to give a little respect? Yes, young lady, I will explain my curse. See, it started back when I was a lad.”
Becka was appalled. “Who would curse a child?”
“My older sibling, Radford, who I followed everywhere. He couldn’t get free of me. So much so, he used his newfound abilities to prevent me from following him around.”
“You’re from House Willow, so your powers are related to moon magic?”
“Yes, which gets artsy and melodramatic, if you know what I mean.”
“I’ve read about moon magic, but I have no direct experience,” Becka replied. Where was he going with this line of thought? “So how did his powers manifest?”
“See, Saana, I like this girl. No one ever asks about Radford much, despite him causing all of this muck.”
“Hmm, indeed,” Saana muttered.
It was all the encouragement Elder Langdon needed. “Radford was a poet. His powers came on during his teenage years, and like many, were wild and unmanaged during that time. He’d see the moon and stars and opine with such froth that his very feelings would take on physical manifestations.”
“That’s amazing. Can he still do that?”
Langdon shook his head. “Gratefully, rarely, and nothing like what he could during his years of teenage angst. Honestly, harming me with his gift inhibited his trust of it. He’s not been the same since.”
She heard a frog croak. Becka looked around, but as no one else reacted, she brushed it off.
“He hated having you on his heels, and in the throes of teenage angst, cursed you?” she asked, fearing it was true.
“Yes, he spouted off some poetry telling me to get rooted in the mud and leave him alone.”
Sure, she’d had friction with her siblings, but cursing each other? What consequences had Radford received for crossing that line, beyond fearing his own gift? Whatever they were, it paled in comparison to Langdon’s lifelong curse.
“Which damaged your feet?” she asked.
“Well, it wasn’t just Radford’s magic. My mama was constantly singing these nursery rhymes. There were a lot of us kids, she had migraines, and she would sing this one rhyme whenever we got unruly or raised a ruckus. It wasn’t meanspirited, more like all she could do to hold things together for yet another hour.”
“Let me guess, her song was about feet too?” she asked, enjoying the detective work of understanding his situation.
There was another resounding croak. Becka looked around again but didn’t find a creature to pair with the noise. Where was it coming from?
“Sort of. When she’d recite it we’d still be running around, but it would dampen the noise, as if our pounding feet didn’t even hit the earth.”
“Clever of her, if it kept her sanity and migraines at bay. So what do you think went wrong?”
“I know what went wrong. Radford hollered out his magic at the same time as our mother did hers. Somehow, they melded together, causing this.” He reached down and lifted his robes to his knees.
For a moment, Becka couldn’t quite make sense out of what she saw. Instead of feet, he had wide, bulky protrusions that reminded her of mangrove tree roots. Covered with moss, dirt, and patches of a bark-like substance, the deformity reached up near his knees.
Behind her, Hanna gasped, but everyone else was quiet. Becka shot her a quick look of censure, and Hanna hid her face behind her fan.
“It appears your legs end in… roots? Like you’re a tree? Can you still walk?”
“At first I could, but the growths have expanded over the years, so I haven’t been able to for some time. I can feel the wee tendrils reaching for something all the time. It feels the best when I soak them in a stream.”
Becka couldn’t take her eyes off Langdon’s legs. Stream soaks would explain that snail hanging onto his… maybe it was a toe? Did he even still have feet under all of that? In fae society, those from House Willow were commonly derided as hillbillies who lived in swamps and mangroves, living lives that were simple but close to nature. Although Langdon looked every bit the part, Becka knew his problem was more than a comedic punchline. As an outcast, she’d been pigeonholed plenty, and knew all too well that people were rarely the sum of their component parts.
“The challenge,” broke in Berak, “is in the combination of misaligned magic. Usually when fae work together, there’s a good deal of effort put into aligning the intention of the spells. Efforts to undo the magic have been hampered by our inability to untangle the threads.”
“So this is less of a curse, and more of misconfigured magic?” Becka asked.
“Is there a difference in practice?” Saana asked.
“I’m just looking for your insight. You’re the experts in testing magic and curses,” Becka replied.
“They’re experts at failed attempts,” Langdon said, laughing alone at his own jibe.
Berak and Saana took his jibe in stride, both more or less ignoring him.
A third croak resounded through the chamber. Where was it coming from?
Langdon opened a pocket near his chest. “Pipe down, will ya? I’m doing my best here.” He turned to Becka. “These jokers tell me you might be able to do something?”
Did he have a frog in his pocket? Again, no one else took any mind of Langdon, so Becka let it go.
Saana and Berak’s callousness toward Langdon’s plight worried her. Becka didn’t want him going into this without fair warning, which she wasn’t sure the testers had been fully forthright about. She needed to put all of the potential outcomes on the table and make sure he understood the risks involved.
“I can definitely do something,” Becka replied. “But I don’t know what will happen to you once I’ve destroyed the magic.”
“Destroy… so what, will I lose my legs?” he asked, appearing more curious than shaken at the prospect.
Saana cleared her throat. “Although that is a possibility, we really don’t know. You’ve had this disfigurement nearly your entire life. There is a high likelihood that resolving your curse won’t change the way your legs function. However, if she removes this magic, other things can be done to restore function.”
Langdon groaned. “You don’t have any clue. Never have on how to fix me up. What do you say, Becka?”