“You thought I wouldn’t notice?” she said. “Oh, Jack.”
“It’s nothing to fret about, Mum.”
“As I’m sure you’d like for me to say to you,” she countered. “Prove me wrong and take a few sips.”
He sighed but relented, lifting the edge of the bowl to his lips. He drank until his stomach began to churn, and he set it aside.
“What’s ailing you the most?” Mirin persisted.
“My hands,” he said, curling his fingers inwards. Every knuckle emitted a vibrant ache, and he wasn’t sure how long he would be able to play his harp.
“Have you seen Sidra about it?”
“No.”
“You should visit her. She’ll be able to provide you with tonics that will help ease your symptoms.”
“I don’t want something that will dull my senses,” he said.
“They won’t,” Mirin replied. “Sidra knows what to mix to avoid such things.”
She slipped out of the room, leaving behind the bowl of nettle soup. Jack stared at it, then flexed his hands again. After considering Mirin’s suggestion for a few more minutes, he knew she was right.
Jack had never been one to ask for help, but if he was to play this long ballad, he needed it.
He rose from his desk, packed up his harp, and walked to Sidra’s house.
Sidra wanted to lose herself in work. When she was in the company of her herbs, she didn’t think about Maisie being lost, frightened, or dead. When she held her pestle and mortar, Sidra didn’t think about being assaulted on the hill that had previously held nothing but good memories for her. When she brought ingredients together, she didn’t think of the new strain on her marriage to Torin, because the one thing they had built it on had vanished.
No, she thought only of nettles and bogbean, spoonwort and coltsfoot, elderflower and primrose.
When it was dark, she feared being alone in this cottage. But in the light? She wanted to be on familiar ground, working. She wanted to make something good with her hands, or else she felt utterly useless.
She wanted to be here, in case Maisie found her way home.
Torin and the East Guard had all been tirelessly working—searching homes for the kidnapper and the lasses, searching graveyards for the flowers—and Sidra had concocted a new tonic for them. One that would keep them sharp and alert, even on little sleep. She was almost done with a new batch when a tentative knock sounded on her door.
Sidra paused. She wasn’t expecting anyone, and she almost reached for her paring knife, her heart quickening.
“Sidra?” a voice called.
She recognized it. Jack Tamerlaine, the bard. One of the last people she ever expected to call upon her.
Sidra quickly answered the door. Jack stood in her yard, squinting against the sunlight. He had brought his harp, which surprised her.
“I hope I’m not bothering you,” he began, hesitant.
“No, not at all,” Sidra replied. Her voice was hoarse from weeping, from a long night with little sleep. “How can I help you, Jack?”
“I wanted to see if you could make a tonic for me.”
She nodded, motioning him to step inside. She shut the door and returned to her table. He was gazing down at all of her herbs, as if she had caught a rainbow and laid it over the wood.
“I want to say how sorry I am,” he said, glancing at her. “About Maisie.”
Sidra nodded. Her throat was suddenly too narrow to speak.
“And I wanted to tell you that I’m doing everything that I can to help find her,” Jack said. It seemed like he wanted to say more but refrained. He flexed one of his hands; the motion caught Sidra’s attention.
“Your hands ail you?” she asked.
“Yes. They ache when I play certain songs.”
“Is that all of your symptoms?”
“No, there are others.”
She listened as he described them. Sidra had assisted with enough magic-imposed illnesses to know Jack was suffering from one. Most magic wielders suffered from headaches, chills, loss of appetite, and fevers. Others developed hacking coughs, insomnia, pain in their extremities, even nosebleeds. It seemed Jack was experiencing several symptoms, which meant he had cast a powerful magic. And while she didn’t have the details of its inspiration, she knew the magic had to come from his craft. From his music.
She wondered if he had come home just for the missing lasses or if he’d inadvertently become caught up in the mystery after he arrived. There seemed little that a bard could do to help find the clan’s girls, even as talented as Jack likely was, but Sidra knew there was unspoken power in music. She remembered being a young girl, sitting in the hall on full moon feast nights. She remembered inhaling Lorna Tamerlaine’s songs as if they were air.
An unexpected peace settled over Sidra as she worked to make Jack two different remedies: a salve to spread on his hands when they ached, and a tonic for him to drink to ease his headaches. There was nothing she could do for the nosebleeds, save instruct him on how to apply pressure to ease the bleeding when it happened.
“That’s fine, Sidra,” he said. “It’s my hands I’m most concerned about.”
He sat in a chair and watched her work. She was lost in her thoughts when he asked, “Have many of your patients died prematurely from wielding magic?”
Sidra paused, glancing across the table at him. “Yes. Although there are many factors at play.”
“Such as what?”
“How often the magic is wielded,” Sidra began, crushing a medley of herbs and ingredients together. “How long the magic is cast. And the depth of the magic. A weaver, for instance, casts deep magic standing at the loom, and it takes a good while to weave an enchanted plaid. But someone like a fisherman, making an enchanted net, can work faster and not have to worry about details as much. The magical cost, then, is not as demanding for a fisherman as it is for a weaver.”
Jack was silent. Sidra looked at him and saw how pale he was. She should have used a different example, because she read his mind: he was worrying about Mirin.
“Your mother is very wise and cautious,” Sidra added. “She takes time between enchanted commissions, and she is very faithful about drinking her tonics.”
“Yes. But the cost has already stolen some of her best years, hasn’t it?” he countered.
Sidra finished making the salve. She picked up the bowl and approached Jack, hating to see the sadness in his eyes.
“I may know the secrets of herbs,” she said. “But I’m not a seer. I can’t foretell what is to come, but I do know that the people who wield magic are made of a different mettle than most. They are passionate about what they do; their craft is as much a part of them as breathing. To deny it would be like losing a piece of themselves. And while there is a cost and a direct consequence to spinning enchantments, none of them see it as a burden but as a gift.”
Jack was silent, scowling. But he was listening to her.
“So yes, the magic might steal years from you,” she said. “Yes, it will make you ill and you will have to learn how to care for yourself in a new way. But I don’t think you’ll choose to give up your craft either, will you, Jack?”
“No,” he said.
“Then hold out your hands.”