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  “Can you.”

  “…If you don’t mind, Orawne, I would like to introduce our daughter to her uncle, at some point, and later grandparents too, and if you do mind, I would still like it and will still try to manage it.”

  I rinsed off the baby. “Fine.”

  “Thank you.”

  “If,” I continued, “you use the fancy illusion magic to make it at least tricky and ideally impossible for any of these - people - to find my house without express invitations. I don’t want the place crawling with - people.”

  “Oh! Oh, of course - they wouldn’t show up unexpectedly anyway, but if - yes, certainly, I’ll make the whole place look like a bit of forest and if they show up when I’m not expecting them they’ll get lost, will that do?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Vercari was all dried off. I threw the towel at Millicent’s head and fetched the baby’s nightdress.

  * * *

  When we’d had Vercari for a month and four days, Millicent’s brother came by. He didn’t dress any more like a witch than she did, although instead of her favored pink dresses he seemed to prefer to garb himself like a mundane merchant tinker or something, all over pockets and straps and dangling tools and herbs like he didn’t know how to enchant a belt pouch. Perhaps he didn’t, at that. He held the baby, he had trouble pronouncing her first name, he wanted to know who exactly I was, he found the situation with the conflicting claims on her very funny, he hugged his sister, he left. It was in all relatively painless.

  “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Millicent asked, leading me through her illusion trees and managing to open the front door out of thin air. I rather liked the effect. Very secluded.

  “We are all still alive,” I acknowledged.

  “Do you really have no friends or family at all?”

  “Besides you and Vercari?”

  “Yes,” she said, turning a little pink. “Besides.”

  I shrugged. “There are people I talk to regularly in the nearest towns who buy my fabric or extra zucchini. People don’t visit.”

  “I must be a terrible lifestyle disruption.”

  “You help with Vercari. You bake. You do the laundry. I don’t mind you.”

  “Good.”

  “Yes, quite.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to mind me.”

  “Yes, that was clearly in the forefront of your mind when you originally proposed moving in to resolve our dispute, the sincere hope that I would not mind you -”

  “I needed Vercari. I can have more than one child and teach them all but if I ever give up a child I meant to keep I can’t claim any more. But it’s been - a while since then.”

  “And you did wheedle your way in offering pastry and chore details. I am not complaining,” I said.

  “Good.”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s only - I wouldn’t like it if getting Vercari meant antagonizing you. I’d rather we all - fit neatly.”

  “Well, I’m certainly not going to kick you out because the moon won’t have you or some such nonsense,” I said, putting Vercari down for a nap.

  “Earlier,” said Millicent, “the other week, you said -”

  “Yes?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Did I say something that had you thinking we were not fitting neatly…?”

  Millicent shook her head. “Never mind.”

  “If you insist.” I prodded the fireplace, determined that it didn’t need another log, and went to where I was accumulating my pile of straw things.

  “I mean it’s a general question, and I wouldn’t want to be misinterpreted.”

  “And?”

  “Well, when I was saying I couldn’t picture you with a lover…”

  “Eh, you were probably right. I don’t meet people, let alone attract them.”

  “And you said, ‘Him?’”

  “I have no intention of trying to homemake babies. It sounds unappealing even if I could.”

  “But it doesn’t necessarily follow that…”

  “That what?”

  “I - don’t know.”

  “Then I can hardly answer your general question, can I.”

  Millicent fussed with her hair. “In my village what with the taking of babies so out of fashion and -”

  “I’m not going to render Vercari interested in acquiring lady lovers as an adult if she weren’t already heading that way,” I said, question suddenly clicking. “It depends on the individual witch. My teacher dated men, when she dated anyone at all. I’m just, individually, fortunate that I don’t find myself a mundane expected to marry some - male, for mundane reasons.”

  “…Oh,” said Millicent, sounding dissatisfied with this answer.

  “I don’t even know how I’d go about doing such a thing on purpose,” I went on. “It would be much harder than changing her hair color or something.”

  “I wouldn’t know either… I like her hair color. Leave it.”

  “I wasn’t planning to change it.”

  “Good.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  I made straw things. Millicent started a chicken pot pie.

  * * *

  “Orawne?”

  “Mm?”

  “Nothing.”

  “All right.”

  * * *

  “Her name is growing on me,” Millicent said.

  “I thought about it for a long time. It would have been Corlesen if she’d been a boy,” I said. I was trying Millicent’s milky potion recipe. It was like mine, but the ratios were different. Our general potionmaking seemed similar enough that I ought to be able to copy it.

  “What do you think of ‘Linda’, now?”

  “It’s all right for a middle name. It still isn’t very witchy. Maybe it’s witchy for the westlands.”

  “And ‘Millicent’?”

  “Same thing. I suppose the sound of it would be all right if mundanes didn’t use it.”

  “My parents sometimes call me Lissy.”

  “If they were going to call you Lissy why did they name you Millicent?”

  “It’s a nickname. You’ve heard of those, haven’t you?”

  “Yes. They just don’t make a lot of sense.”

  “It’s for - layers of closeness. The people in town call me Miss Murk, you call me Millicent, my parents call me Lissy.”

  “Are you saying you want me to call you Miss Murk?”

  “No. But you could call me Lissy.”

  I considered this.

  “Lissy,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “Just trying it out.”

  “And?”

  “I suppose it makes sense.”

  * * *

  “Can I help you make the straw things?” Lissy asked.

  “I’m… not actually sure,” I said. “If we were both my kind of witch and we’d taken Vercari together you could.”

  “What happens if I can’t after all?”

  “Then yours won’t burn when the time comes, and the fire might not be high enough.”

  “Is there a way to find out? Your fingers look like they hurt.”

  “A little. I could check the stars, see if they have anything to say about it.”

  “I’d like to help,” Lissy said earnestly.

  “You are helping. You do the laundry, you cook, you mind Vercari while I’m making them.”

  “But right now the laundry is done and there’s meatballs in the oven and Vercari’s asleep.”

  “I’ll go have a look at the sky, if you’re that bored.”

  “It’s not boredom. Just - it looks uncomfortable, doing that many of them. And you seem worried about the deadline, sometimes.”

  “I have to wait thirty years if I miss it. And I wouldn’t have Vercari anymore, would I?”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “If I didn’t dedicate her? Wouldn’t you whisk her away to your little westlands village with my claim expired?”

  “No,” exclaimed Lissy. “I mean, wouldn’t you still want her - don’t you like her?”

  “Yes, but -”

  “But nothing, I wouldn’t take her from you even if she weren’t going to - belong to the stars too. You aren’t the stars.”

  “So in this scenario you and Vercari would go on living here and she’d be a westlands kind of witch, complete with rattle and pointless animal and charming illusions, and I’d be…?”

  “Her mother.”

  “…All right. But I want to make the deadline regardless.”

  “Of course. Go check.”

  I went up to the balcony with my telescope and searched the sky. It had been a while since I’d divined anything, too busy with preparations of straw things and dedication ritual details.

  I slipped into meditative focus, and swung the telescope around to focus on different constellations until the answer came to me.

  I went back down and took Lissy’s hands in mine and showed her how to weave the simplest kind of straw thing.

  She beamed at me.

  * * *

  With Lissy’s help the straw things were all made by the time Vercari was four months old. There was suddenly a lot more time, then, although Vercari could fill it pretty effectively, wanting to be fed or walked around or changed.

  Sometimes, of course, the baby slept.

  “Orawne?”

  “Yes?”

  “When did you know that if you were ever going to have a lover it would be a woman?”

  “I don’t think it even crossed my mind till I was, oh, nineteen, to list characteristics for such an improbable person, I just didn’t meet enough people… once it occurred to me to ask myself the question, it was obvious. Why?”

  Lissy beat the eggs in her m
ixing bowl harder.

  “Lissy?”

  “Mm?”

  “You were married for reasons other than the desire for a homemade baby, weren’t you? I’d hope?”

  “Oh. Yes. I liked him, before he - before. Yes.”

  “I suppose if you hadn’t, the expiration of the handfasting would be a mercy…”

  “I don’t think I’m quite - look - with your kind of witches no one cares, right? Since the moon won’t have you it doesn’t matter?”

  “Right.”

  “So you might have heard of - is there anyone who likes both?”

  “Sure. My teacher’s co-prentice, he did, she told me.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you worrying about Vercari when she grows up, again? I guess it might matter if you find out how to give her back to the moon without undoing her star gift.”

  “It really doesn’t matter to me if she has no apprentices or makes them or takes them or whatever she likes,” Millicent said.

  “Good, because again, I can’t change who she’d want to bring up or not bring up her own apprentices with.”

  “I don’t expect you to.”

  “What’s for dinner?”

  “Omelettes. Orawne?”

  “Yes?”

  Lissy didn’t go on.

  “Lissy, what is it?”

  “I - it’s -”

  “Is it about Vercari…?”

  “No.”

  “Have I been waking you up earlier than you like in the mornings? Are you out of leavening? Is your entire extended family going to descend on my house tomorrow morning -”

  “No, no, no -”

  “Are you having second thoughts about staying here -”

  “No!”

  “I’m not going to guess, apparently, Lissy.”

  Lissy poured the eggs into the pan. They hissed.

  “I’m afraid,” she said. “That you won’t react well - that if you react badly enough you’ll want me to leave.”

  “Nightshade, Lissy, if it’s that bad - what do you want me to do, promise that you can borrow Vercari to teach her on alternate days no matter what you say?”

  Lissy nudged the edge of the incipient omelette with her turner. Apparently it wasn’t ready to have whatever was next befall it yet. “Maybe promise that she won’t be a - a pawn, if it comes to that.”

  “I’ll promise I’ll put her welfare first. I want a doubly witched apprentice as much as you do. Besides, you already told me that if I missed her deadline you’d stay here with her.”

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  “…And?”

  “I’m still afraid.”

  “I’m a witch, not a monster.”

  Lissy sighed. She sprinkled cheese onto the omelette.

  “Look, Lissy, whatever this is, is obviously important. Can I help?”

  “I like you,” she blurted. “I might be in love with you.”

  And then she turned away and folded the omelette, but not before I watched her cheeks turn beet red.

  I waited politely until she slid the omelette onto a plate before I kissed her.

  * * *

  We heaped the straw things around the firebreak around the basket.

  I took Vercari from the moon, which was turned away new; I burned the straw around her and when it was consumed and the air was smoky and dark I read the rest of her dedication, and our eyes adjusted, and she gazed up at the stars until one dislodged itself from the sky and fell and fell and fell and landed, tiny and cool and still bright, in her hand. It winked out, leaving only a faint white mark.

  “Is that it?” Lissy murmured beside me.

  “That’s it,” I said, stepping over the circle of straw ash to scoop up our child from her basket. “The star is hers, now. If you work out a way to make the moon take her back it won’t leave her regardless, I think.”

  “I think I’ll be able to figure something out,” Lissy said, and she stroked Vercari’s hair and then leaned over her and kissed me.

  * * *

  “Mother, Mother!”

  “Yes, Vercari?”

  “Cousin says stars don’t do the star things.”

  “Cousin is only one kind of witch, Vercari. He doesn’t know about the star things.”

  “But he said I lied!”

  “Well, he’s not very well educated, then, is he?”

  “When I have apprentices they will know about stars and rattles.”

  “Yes, they will. Lucky them!”

  “Just like me! Lucky me.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “Where’s Mummy?”

  “Mummy is talking to her brother. If you go find her maybe she’ll tell your cousin’s daddy to scold him for saying you lied.”

  “Okay. Mother?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thank you for star things.”

  “You’re welcome, Vercari.”

  “Aaaand thank you for the extra Mummy too. Because I like doing pictures too!”

  “You’re very welcome, Vercari.”

 

 

  Hannah Blume, Double, Double

 

 

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