To Bear an Iron Key (7 page)

Then Rusty said, “Bad enough I’ve stolen from your granny. Worse would be if you passed out, and I had to fetch her to make you better.” He shuddered.

Bromwyn narrowed her eyes. “As you can see,” she said coolly, “your fear was misplaced.”

“I’ll be sure to keep it somewhere safe for next time.” He stared at the Key. “So. An iron key. What does it unlock?” He perked up. “A treasure chest, maybe?”

“No,” she growled, “not a treasure chest. And it unlocks nothing. Its purpose is only to lock.” She pushed away from him and began pacing again, wondering whether her grandmother was insane.

After a time, Rusty cleared his throat. “Bromwyn, my darling, you’re pacing. That means you’re nervous. Shouldn’t
I
be the one fretting right about now? I’m the one who nicked from your granny. And from what you’ve said many a time, she’s got no sense of humor.”

Bromwyn halted and looked at Rusty, who even now was grinning a little more naturally, his eyes sparkling with mirth. He probably thought this was grand, like something out of a storybook. The thief who had stolen from a powerful witch! Now all he needed was an angry dragon, and a pile of gold, and a fair maiden to rescue—then he’d be quite the hero!

Rage coursed through her, causing her limbs to tremble. “Yes,” she replied, “you should be fretting. Tonight is Midsummer.”

“So?”

Through clenched teeth, she said, “Every Midsummer, my grandmother must greet the fey as they enter our world. She is their Guardian, the one who welcomes them to our land for the one night each year they are permitted to visit.” She forced her anger down, and when she next spoke, her tone was measured and flat. “More important than that, the Guardian is the one who makes sure that the fey follow the rules of conduct. And most important of all, the Guardian locks the World Door behind the fey when they leave at dawn.”

“Fey.” Beneath his wide-brimmed hat, Rusty’s brow creased. “That’s fairies, right?”

“Indeed.”

“So fairies are real?”

“Very.”

“But aren’t they tiny things? Pixies and elves and such?”

“They come in all sizes,” she said. “But the tiny ones tend to have the biggest appetite for human flesh.”

He blinked at her. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Oh,” he said, paling. “That’s not in the stories … ”

“No.” Bromwyn once again paced along the length of her mother’s rooftop. “But their penchant for stealing human children
is
in the stories. That and their preferred food are two of the reasons why there have to be rules in place. And that is why there has to be a Guardian.”

“The stories seem to leave out lots of things,” Rusty said uneasily.

“Oh, yes,” Bromwyn agreed. “They speak of the Midsummer Festival and all the dancing and music that the fey enjoy, but they do not mention Guardians at all, or what the consequences would be if a Guardian fails.”

“I don’t want to know this, do I?”

Bromwyn sniffed at him. “Yes, you do. If a Guardian fails, the fey would be free to return every night for a year, and wreak havoc among the mortals.”

“See, now that I know about.” Rusty’s voice took on a note of excitement. “Spoiling milk, nicking strawberries, knocking over furniture … ”

“Stealing children and eating their parents … ”

“Oh,” Rusty said, deflating. “Right. I guess they do that in between all of the music and dancing and such.”

“Having the fey walk among the mortals night after night would be ‘akin to setting a fox inside a henhouse,’” Bromwyn said, quoting from one of her mother’s tomes on the fey. “So the Guardian must be diligent and watchful and very strict. And powerful, of course, lest the fey challenge the Guardian for the right to walk the land every night instead of just during Midsummer.”

“Sounds like being the Guardian is no fun at all,” Rusty said. “And rather daunting. So it’s perfect for your gran.”

She nodded. “She is a very good Guardian. I once heard that the fey King and Queen consider her a peer.” For a moment, Bromwyn remembered a flaxen-haired pixie with piercingly blue eyes and a wicked grin. Then she pushed that memory away. “All of the fey respect my grandmother.”

“As well they should.”

Bromwyn shot Rusty a look. “No need to practice your flattery on me when it is meant for others.”

He held up his hands. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

She glared at him for a moment longer, allowing herself to feel her anger and her frustration, then she tamped those feelings down and continued her bristling pace. She said, “As long as I have lived, my grandmother has been the Guardian. But the rule is that the one who holds the Key is the Guardian.”

There was a pause, filled with the sounds of Bromwyn’s bare feet slapping the rooftop as she marched.

Rusty said, “Now that’s a stupid rule.”

“There are always rules, especially when it comes to magic and the fey.”

He harrumphed. “Inconvenient! Who created all these rules?”

“Witches’ rules of magic have been in place for thousands of years,” she said. “They were set to ensure that those who follow a Way of Witchcraft do not use so much of Nature’s power that they burn themselves out. The rules concerning the fey, however, were created by the fey themselves.”

“What? Why?”

“Out of boredom, I suppose.”

“That’s completely ridiculous.”

“They do not die,” she said, shrugging, “and for some of them, their power is almost limitless. I imagine that it is more fun to play games when you have to work your way around limitations rather than simply getting what you want whenever you want it.”

Rusty snorted. “If
I
were one of these fey, I’d be quite content with getting what I wanted all the time. I’d be happy to show them what they’re missing.”

“Do not joke about the fey,” she said sharply, halting in front of him. “Once you joke, it is easy to forget how dangerous they are, let alone how much trouble you are in. Thanks to your pick pocketing, you hold the Key. You are the Guardian. And tonight is Midsummer.”

Rusty was silent as he considered her words.

“Well,” he finally said, I don’t suppose your granny would be willing to just take the Key back, would she?”

Now there was an idea. “One way to find out.”

“I snuck away from the bakery only to run to the Wise One. This day isn’t going as I’d planned.” Rusty let out a mournful sigh. “I’m really in trouble, aren’t I?”

“Yes, you really are.” Bromwyn met his eyes. “But maybe my grandmother is in a forgiving mood today.”

“Likely?” Rusty asked as they started toward the door that led down to her mother’s shop.

“No,” Bromwyn admitted. Then she opened the door and let Rusty through, and she wondered how she could convince her grandmother to take back the Key.

A NOTE

Rusty was huffing and puffing by the time they reached the outskirts of the Allenswood.

“Damn me,” he wheezed, “why couldn’t you just magic us there?”

“That skill is beyond me,” Bromwyn said, not even breathing hard. “But even if I could, you would probably become nauseated should I have done so. Coaxing Nature to do something so extreme tends to unsettle the stomach.”

“My stomach is unsettled already. The whole idea of me being this fairy Guardian is enough to make me lose my breakfast.”

“Poor boy. At least the walk is helping to settle your tender belly.”

“It’s doing no such thing.”

“And it has given me time to think of how to approach Grandmother. Now stop complaining and put on your charming face. We are almost there.”

Rusty let out a beleaguered sigh, but he kept pace with her.

Bromwyn walked lightly, and despite the severity of Rusty’s situation, she couldn’t help but enjoy the feeling of the earth and grass under her bare feet (which were so filthy that they would have given her mother a case of the nerves). With every step, she felt the hum of the world pulsing beneath her, like a heartbeat buried deep within the land itself. And it brought a smile to her lips.

This was why she hated wearing shoes: Barefoot, she was connected to Nature. The few times she had to coax her feet into boots—when the snows came, for instance, or when the dirt roads were transformed to mud by the heavy spring rains—she felt half blind. When she was younger, she had asked her grandmother how she could stand to cover her feet every day. Niove had answered with a question of her own: “How can you stand the feeling of sharp rocks biting your heels, or baked dirt scalding your toes?” When Bromwyn had shrugged and said, “I just do,” her grandmother replied, “And there is your answer.”

Bromwyn had discovered at a young age that getting straight answers from her grandmother was rarely as simple as a “yes” or a “no.”

They walked on, and soon Rusty wrapped his arms around himself and shivered. “Did it just get cold?”

She nodded. “We just crossed the threshold onto my grandmother’s land.”

“I never get cold like this in your mam’s shop.”

“My mother is not a witch,” Bromwyn said abruptly. “And both the shop and our residence are hers, not mine. There is no magical threshold there.”

He rubbed his arms. “So it’s cold like this every time you visit your gran? Not exactly welcoming, is it?”

“Visit?” Bromwyn echoed. “The last time I
visited
my grandmother was just before I became her apprentice. I do not
visit
her. I work with her almost daily, and I have a bedroom there for those times when it is too late for me to travel back to the village.”

Rusty grinned. “So snippety, Lady Witch. And all because I asked a question. Which, by the way, you didn’t answer.”

She glared at him. “I was not being ‘snippety.’”

“You were too. And still being evasive with the answers, I see.”

Bromwyn narrowed her eyes, but all that did was make Rusty grin wider. So she sighed, and she reminded herself of her temper. “I feel a change as I cross her threshold, but it does not seem cold to me. More like there is a thickness in the air that I pass through.”

“Do all witches have these threshold things around their places?”

“Yes.”

He slid her an odd look that she could not interpret. “So when you and Brend marry, will I get cold whenever I walk past the smithy?”

His words sent spikes of fire up her spine. “The forge is Nick Ironside’s,” she said, walking faster. “It does not belong to Brend. And it will never be mine.”

Huffing to keep up, Rusty asked, “What about your house, then? Surely you won’t be living over the smithy, what with all the dust and the heat and the stink.”

“One hopes,” she muttered. With Brend, who could know? “What about my house?”

“Will it set my teeth a-chatter whenever I think of strolling by?”

“Why?” she asked, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice. “Will you be visiting me in my happy home, when I am Mistress Smith?”

“Not if it means I’ll need a winter cloak in the summer.”

“The cold is because of Grandmother’s Way. Mine is different. The threshold for my home should be more … ” She searched for the proper word. “Warm,” she said feebly.

“Good. I don’t like the cold.” He puffed out a frosty breath, as if to emphasize how chilly the air had become. “Makes the whole idea of paying a visit rather unpleasant.”

Bromwyn hadn’t thought about actually living with Brend once they said their vows, and now that she turned the idea around in her mind, she was very troubled. Bad enough she was being forced to marry someone she didn’t like, let alone love. Worse would be if Brend’s mistrust of her magic prevented her from making her magical presence known in their home.

Well,
she decided grimly,
no matter how he feels about it, I am a witch. I will not hide what I am just to appease his ignorance. Deviltry, indeed!

They walked the rest of the way in silence. Perhaps Rusty tried to engage her in conversation, but Bromwyn was so lost in thought that nothing short of a shout would have snagged her attention. In her mind, she was setting up shop as the Wise One of Loren right in her home, no matter what Brend thought of it. Even just imagining his bluster, she seethed. She had no doubt that her thickheaded husband would nail a horseshoe over their dwelling in an attempt to keep her dread power in check! Well, let him find out that such trappings were useless against a witch’s magic!

As they approached Niove’s cottage, Bromwyn’s chest seemed to tighten, and butterflies fluttered in her belly. Thoughts of Brend vanished as she swallowed thickly, and she was surprised by the metallic taste on her tongue. She was scared, she realized with a start.

And not for herself.

She glanced at Rusty, who was rubbing his arms and looking far too pale. But beneath his ridiculous wide-brimmed hat, his eyes sparkled with a manic glee, and his grin stretched from ear to ear. He was scared, like her, but he was also eager. The whole thing was an adventure to him; of that, Bromwyn had no doubt. He probably thought he could sweet-talk her grandmother into taking back the Key, and then he’d even steal a kiss and warm her old heart, and then he and Bromwyn would skip back to the village, laughing the whole way, and then celebrate with fresh sugar cookies from his parents’ bakery.