The Vine Witch (Vine Witch #1)(2)
If her moon reckoning was correct, it had just turned November, time of the frost moon. And four days since she’d awoken from the curse. But what was the date? Had it been a year? Two? Certainly she hadn’t been gone a decade. Though her magic swam weak and watery in her veins, she did not feel the heavy stack of time against her spine. Her hair showed no gray, her legs were lean and strong enough to run, and her teeth did not pain her. If she was right about the time, he should still be alive. She thanked the All Knowing for letting her break the curse before he had the chance to meet a kind death by natural causes.
The prospect of revenge buoyed her again to her feet. As she walked, she filled her pockets with dried hawthorn berries, shriveled seedpods, and damp moss. A twist of shriveled celandine leaves, frost-hardy flower heads, the bark off a willow tree—she knew how to mix and grind them all into healing powders. She knew, too, as she sniffed the hardened seedpods of a dried foxglove, the deadly combinations that were possible. Potions that could drop a man to his knees with his heart exploding inside. She’d felt the murderous impulse when she awoke from the curse, but the desire seethed in her veins now that her fingertips caressed the components that would make it possible.
With thoughts of poison rooted in her mind, she bent to pluck a fringed mushroom off a rotting log when a whiff of smoldering grapevine snaked through the air. Despite her dark thoughts, she lifted her head and smiled. She’d caught the scent of home.
Elena ran in her ill-fitting shoes until she came to the crest of the hill. There the trees thinned, the sky spread open, and the rolling hills of Chateau Renard revealed themselves in the valley below. From afar, nothing looked amiss in the vineyard. It gave her the courage she needed to move closer.
Neat rows of blackened vines, old and twisted like the capable hands of Grand-Mère, greeted her midhill. The winter pruning had begun. Three men worked the field with their brouettes, smoke rising from the char cans where they burned the clippings from last year’s growth. The ashes, rich in nutrients, would be spread on the ground to feed the roots through winter in the great cycle of life and death. She walked between the vine rows, her fingers brushing the newly clipped edges, the rough skin of the vines as familiar as her own.
“May I share your fire?” she asked of the first worker she encountered, a clean-shaven man with round wire-rimmed glasses and wearing a gray wool flat cap. He startled as if she’d materialized out of the smoke. “I’ve been walking for hours. My fingers are chilled to the bone.” She was cold, but more importantly she needed information before approaching the house.
“Where did you come from?”
She stretched her hands over the smoldering fire. She didn’t recognize the man staring back at her or the others who craned their necks to see her better. Where was Antonio? Margaretta? These faces were all new. “Is Ariella Gardin still the matron of Chateau Renard?” she asked.
“She lives here, yes,” the man said, unaware of how he’d eased her fears, “but if you’re looking for work, we won’t be hiring again until the spring.”
She was almost charmed by the man’s ignorance. Though given the state of her appearance, she could hardly blame him for his prejudice. She glanced up at the clouds, tapping into her intuition. “You’re lucky if you’ve got an hour before snowfall. Mind you keep those coals stirred so the fire doesn’t go out on you.”
The man blinked back in awkward silence as she gave her hands a final rub over the coals. With a shrug of her coat she walked toward the house. It was a full minute before the men’s whispers of sorcière started up behind her and the snip of the sécateurs resumed against the vines.
Elena stared at the grand old house as a shiver frosted the secret places inside her. The house, stately with six bedrooms, though certainly no mansion, was showing its age. The roof was missing three tiles above the door, and a sizable crack had opened in the stonework beside the front window. Houses settled and shifted over time, of course, but how much time?
Her knock went unanswered, so she tried the door handle. It resisted as if she were a stranger. There was much reacquainting to be done, she reflected, before slipping through the hedgerow to try the kitchen.
Peering through the back window, she spied an elderly woman in a black high-collared dress standing at the counter. The woman’s long hair was pinned up at the sides so that silver curls trellised down her elegant neck. She hesitated, a cup of flour poised unsteadily in her hand, before shaking her head and tipping it into a porcelain mixing bowl. Tears threatened to spill at the sight of Grand-Mère, but Elena quickly dried her lashes with her sleeve and tapped on the door.
“You can leave the eggs on the step, Adela,” the old woman said without looking up from her work. “The money is under the pot of geraniums.”
Elena opened the door a tentative crack. “You never used to encourage geraniums over the winter. You called them tedious.”
Ariella Gardin, grande dame of one of the oldest and most renowned vineyards in the Chanceaux Valley, turned in alarm, a pitcher of milk gripped in her hand. “Who’s there?”
Elena pushed the hair out of her face and took a step closer. “It’s me.”
The pitcher shattered on the tile, splashing milk the length of the terra-cotta floor and soaking their shoes.
Grand-Mère squinted back as if she stared at an apparition. “It can’t be.” Skirting the puddle of spilled milk, she reached for Elena’s hand. The old woman studied the lines of Elena’s palm, breathed in the scent of her hair, and then rubbed thumb and fingers together in the space over her head to check for enchantments. Elena endured it all happily.