Chapter 13: To Build Roots.

Two days had passed since the Inking, and my marks had grown.

They had not grown by much. The Sparks were slightly larger now, their edges less defined, as if the ink had begun to seep outward along pathways I could feel but not yet see. They did not grow past this point, no matter how I tried, and I certainly tried.

The Requiem’s black had deepened and the Cradle’s white had softened. Neither had become something else. Neither had become the Line I had seen on Marsh’s arm. Even this much was fast progress for people of this time, I was told. It took most dedicated users months before their Sparks grew, if they ever grew at all.

The Line. It was a simple word. Spark at least had some creativity. Perhaps this stage was named by an especially lazy creator?

I had settled into a routine I had not chosen -I trained at dawn, then trained again at dusk. The hours between were usually filled with people who would not leave me alone, despite my best efforts. Today, the village had found a new way to torment me.

Martha’s tiny kitchen smelled of flour and something faintly sweet.

I stood at the table with my arms folded, watching the old woman work. Her hands moved through dough with a speed that was hard to reconcile with her age. Every motion was practiced. I knew it well -the kind that only came from doing something ten thousand times.

“Your turn, Lily.”

“I did not agree to this.” And do not call me that. I almost said it. It would have been the fiftieth time. The woman would not have listened, and so I didn’t bother.

“Your friend said you’d be happy to learn.” Martha smiled without looking up. “She was very insistent.”

Ash -that treacherous wench. I would deal with her later.

The dough sat in front of me. I had faced challenges before and this was beneath every single one of them. I pressed my hands into it. It tore almost immediately.

“Go softer, dear,” Martha said, already beside me. Her hands guided mine. “It’s not fighting you, you can be gentle.”

I tried again, still using too much force. The dough bunched and split under my fingers. It was like being by the riverbed again, trying to work mud that wouldn’t take. These hands of mine were no better at kneading bread than they had been at making vases.

“Let your palm do the work,” Martha said. “Just your palm. Push gently with it, then ya fold here, and then you turn. That’s all there is to it.”

I pushed. The dough slid off the table and found the floor. Martha picked it up, brushed it off, set it back down, and during this she did not say a thing. I would have -my patience with my subordinates had always been thin.

On my new attempt, the dough held. It moved sluggishly under my hands, but it held. I pushed and folded and turned, and with each repetition the motion became less foreign. It did not become natural, it never would.

The door opened. Ash stepped in to fill a cup of water. She was already sweating through Martha’s clothes again -her work had started far before mine.

“Here you go love,” Martha said, handing her a cup without looking away from my dough.

Ash stopped. It was half a second, perhaps less. Her hand tightened on the cup and something in her face shifted before it settled into a smile. She took the water and left. I watched her go.

“What was that?” I asked.

“What was what, dear?”

I frowned, turned the question over. I could not recognize its shape.

The bread came out terrible. One side was the colour of ash while the other was barely cooked at all. It sat on the table between us. Martha cut a piece, ate it, and chewed thoughtfully. “Not bad for a first go,” she said.

I had heard many lies in my time. That one would have made my Court Whisperer weep with admiration. I ate a piece myself and it was dreadful, dense enough that it might have served as a weapon. I ate all of it. It was still better fare than I was used to, and I had made it, with no powers at all.

Martha watched me finish the last crumb with an expression I was beginning to recognize. It was the same one she wore when she refilled my bowl without being asked. The one I still had no name for.

I sat outside at my usual spot, by the low wall.

The afternoon had just begun. I was pushing mana through both Sparks simultaneously -Requiem on a stone with my right, and Cradle on a dead twig with my left. Days of this, and the motions had become almost comfortable. It was rather convenient to have the power to make and unmake. I moved the twig over to my right, the stone to my left and began again. I suspected this would not do anything, but I did it anyway.

Martha came out a few minutes later. She did not come to speak to me. Instead, she sat nearby, on a stool she had brought from inside, and began shelling a basket of dry beans. The cracking of the shells was rhythmic. That was a task I had not liked when I’d been forced into it.

We sat in silence for some time. I did not mind it. Her silences were different from most -they did not demand filling.

“Sara’s been making something new,” Martha said. Not to me, exactly -to the air between us. “Saw her down by the river this morning with a whole handful of clay.” I said nothing. “She started that after Edrin passed last winter.” Martha cracked another shell. “Think it keeps her hands busy.”

“And who is this Edrin?”

“Her father,” she said, still shelling. There was no change in the rhythm at all.

I said nothing. I did not know what I could say.

“Used to follow him everywhere, that girl. He taught her to work the clay and they made pots for the whole village. He wasn’t much good at it neither.” She smiled at something I could not see. “She used to make ’em too, with him. Never did again after he died.”

And then she had made one for me. Just because she’d thought I was pretty. No, maybe it had been more than that. Something inside of me twisted and pulled. I moved the stone to my right, the twig to my left.

“Doesn’t have a mother neither,” Martha volunteered without being asked.

“What? I have seen her with my own eyes.” She had been with the girl at the Inking. I had seen her.

“Oh, you mean Tamara,” Martha said, still shelling. “She’s the girl’s aunt. The mother died in childbirth. Now…now we all take turns caring for her, helps split the load. The girl doesn’t really take to many, but we try.”

Martha kept shelling. She did not seem to expect a response. That was good, because I did not have one. The stone beneath my right hand cracked. The twig beneath my left grew another bud.

It was mid-afternoon when I saw Ash walk toward the hut she had been avoiding for days. I almost missed it. I had been focused on the marks, running through another cycle of my new powers. When I looked up, she was already halfway there.

Her stride was different -slower and more deliberate than I was used to seeing. I watched from my spot. Ash reached the foot of the hut. The mother was there, as she always was now. The woman looked up and there was a moment where her face tightened.

Ash sat down on the ground in front of her. She stared at the mother, who held her son. She did not do anything besides sit there. If she spoke, I could not hear.

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I watched from across the village. A Hero, stripped of power, choosing to sit in the dirt beside a broken child she didn’t have the power to fix. What was the purpose of it? She could not heal him. She could not bring back whatever the boy had lost when those black veins had crawled up his arm. All she could do was sit there.

They stayed like that for a long time. Distantly, I saw the mother sit up a little taller. More distantly, I realized I had forgotten to train my marks altogether.

Ash came back later. She moved to walk past me and our eyes met. I thought of the night I had stood outside her door and heard her weep. The question still didn’t come. It sat like a lump in my throat. Still, I held her gaze for a moment longer than I needed to.

She held mine back.

Later that afternoon, Ash was helping patch the roof of a hut near the square. She was balanced on a beam, holding a bundle of thatch steady while an old man tied it down. A small crowd had gathered to watch. Ash’s strength made the work easy, and the villagers seemed to find this entertaining.

I had come to sit nearby, under a large tree. One needed small changes like this, if only to freshen the mind. That was why I was here.

“That girl’s worth three men!” someone called out.

“Five, at least!” another voice.

“Let me see those marks of hers! Sovereign, wasn’t it? Can’t believe I wasn’t here! Which one was-“