Chapter Four
Mary dreams of Lily sometimes.
Her hands.
The way she wakes with the sun, skimming her fingertips over Mary’s body.
The warmth of her laugh.
She would pull Mary into her, lead her along to the music. Lily was always such a beautiful dancer.
Tonight they’re in the kitchen.
“Have you checked on the chickens yet, love?” Lily asks, continuing to stir a pot over their woodstove.
Her hair is pulled up with a piece of bright red cloth Mary’s had for years. Her freckles light up her face in the sunlight.She looks at Mary so expectedly, eyes filled with so much life, waiting for her answer.
“No,” Mary says thickly, “I haven’t yet.”
“The sun will be going down soon,” Lily sighs, placing the spoon off to the side, striding towards her, Looping her arms around Mary’s shoulders.
You can’t touch in dreams, not really. But Mary really fucking tries to.
It’s there, somewhere. Just beyond her. The scent of lilac and honey. The feeling of home.
She leans into her, reaching for it.
“It’s almost over now,” Lily murmurs.
“What is?”
Lily’s voice changes. Grows. Slips away.
Someone is screaming.
“I promise, I promise it’s almost over.”
“Lily?” Mary bolts up. The sun glares in her eyes, but when everything comes into focus, Sirius is sitting behind James, holding him down. Regulus is working on his left arm, wiping it with a damp rag.
“James, love, it’s almost over, I'm so sorry.” Regulus’ voice shakes.
They’re cleaning his wound. An infection in this environment would be deadly.
“Fuck,” James croaks, somewhere between a gasp and a sob. “Fuck, please stop.”
“It’ll be over soon Jamie,” Sirius murmurs, holding him tighter with a grim expression on his face.
“Can I do anything to help?” Mary’s voice cracks, her throat is dry.
“How good are you at healing magic?”
Unfortunately, she’s never needed it.
“Cloves,” she says, which is utterly unhelpful to Sirius’ question.
“What?” Regulus snaps.
Mary is already standing, pulling her bag on. “I saw wild cloves and willows growing a little ways back, they help with pain. They’ll also help with infection.”
“That would’ve been fucking nice to know before,” James snaps, but it’s not directed at any of them. He’s always had a shit pain tolerance.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Now that the storm has settled, she can appreciate the view. They’re on a flat cliff face that extends out quite a ways, and below them is the woods. Birds above circle some unsuspecting prey, and Mary moves towards them. Somewhere in the distance is the ocean, Mary can taste the sea salt when she breathes.
They’d taken the most complicated way to their little shelter, and she’s able to scale down the side with little to no issue when she can see what she’s doing.
She doesn’t remember walking through this area of the woods, but she can still see the cliffside from where she is, so she knows she’s not lost.
It’s easy to find the cloves. The willowbark takes some more work, and eventually she finds it along a creek's edge.
She didn’t bring her knife, but her hands are capable of being just as violent. She digs her fingers into the bark and pulls.
“You should really ask before you take, you know.”
Mary jumps, whirring around. Behind her stands Dorcas. Except–Dorcas is dead. Or was dead. And this isn’t…this isn’t Dorcas. There’s something unnatural about her. A glow in her eyes. Like her body is a heartbeat for something bigger.
“My friend's injury doesn’t care whether the plants want to help him or not.”
“How can they help him if you don’t ask them to?”
Mary bites her tongue, and lets go of the bark.
“You look like someone I knew.”
The being wearing Dorcas’ face smiles, “you thought highly of her, then.”
“I did,” she struggles to keep the emotion out of her voice.
The being steps closer, observes Mary with a sharp gaze. Mary doesn’t move away. Letting her watch.
“You’ve lived a life, darling,” she tuts, compassion in her eyes.
“Who are you?” she asks, struggling to maintain an even breath. She felt it when she entered this place, but forests have always felt like home to her.
But this?
This is a welcoming to something she’s always sought.
A secret she’s held finally freed.
“There’s a lot of names for me,” a glimmer in her eyes and a smile. It feels like witnessing creation.
“Which one do you like best?”
“Oh, I like you,” she says, something so utterly Dorcas about her tone it makes Mary’s heart ache. “Call me…Hecate. That one seems to hold the most power here.”
Suddenly she’s in another forest. Alone with a wicked girl, her blood dripping onto the forest floor. Mary crosses her arms, a cold feeling washing over her.
“Stop. Please just–”
Empty eyes. Hands reaching. A knife cutting deeper into her than any mortal blade ever could. The words are a hiss, most in a language Mary didn’t understand. Not everything, though. An old saying, from the fairytales her mother used to tell her before she put her to bed.
“Hecate will bless you, darling.” A kiss on her forehead.
“Let Hecate be my witness,” Pandora had snarled. “Let her punish what was not your right to take.”
Mary had seen Pandora and her husband once, before their kingdoms were at war.
She’d had the sweetest smile. He bent down on one knee, a bouquet of Tigerlily’s in his hands. A young girl stood between them, their child.
Mary never knew her name.
“Don’t look at me like that, darling,” Hecate says cooly, “I’m not something you can fight.”
And Mary supposes she’s right, but the anger burns.
“I thought you were supposed to be a cup,” she says instead.
All it does is make Hecate laugh.
“You know as well as I how time warps a myth.”
“How does this work?” she asks, because if she’s going to wish this life away she wants to know the rules.
“Well, what is it that you want?”
Mary wants a lot of things. She wants Lily back, and she’s not sure if this wish will give her that. Time has warped her, and it scares her that this sacrifice feels worth it.
“Can you undo your curse?”
Hecate sighs, her fingers tilt Mary's face left and right as she studies her intently, “you really are my finest work.”
Something bitter settles in her mouth. A volatile thing growing in her chest. She holds it in. This isn't the fight she has a chance of winning here.
“But perhaps…” Hecate continues. It’s unnerving, seeing eyes she recognizes without the soul she knows by heart.
She’s spent a few lifetimes with Dorcas since she lost her in that fire, but she’s never quite left the guilt behind. The way she told Mary to run. That she would hold them off. The sound of her screams as Mary left her behind.
By the time they’d awoken, all taking her would have done is kill her slowly. Infection can be a worse curse than a quick death.
“Your body can be willed to die, your mind…” she trails off, tilting her head in consideration, “I think it’s for the best that we keep that as it is.”
“But is it possible?”
Hecate looks at her strangely, pulling her hands away from Mary’s face, it feels like the first chill of winter. “Do you think you could forget? Would you even want to?”
Mary thinks about the years on the coast with Marlene, the stories from Sirius’ adventure, her home and her family; the pottery shop she grew out of her own bones. She thinks of her children, all those centuries ago. With their little hands and brave smiles. So innocent in a big, cruel world.
“No, no I don’t think so.”
“It won’t be pretty,” Hecate cautions, “and it won’t be any more pleasant than it was the first time.”
“Best to get it over with, then.”
Now Hecate really smiles, a sharp, cold thing. For a moment she doesn’t look like Dorcas at all. “I knew I liked you.”
Mary leaves the woods on shaky legs and a churning stomach. The willowbark and clove gripped tight in her hands as she stumbles back to the cave.
Her skin feels rubbed raw, like something has been stripped from her cells. A mask taken off. She is bare to this world's winters, exposed like a nerve.
“That was quick,” Sirius comments upon her return.
James is sleeping now, or just unconscious. His brow is furrowed and he’s shivering. It is quite cold here, she hadn’t noticed before.
“It wasn’t hard to find,” she shrugs, bending down to gather some rocks to crush the herbs into a paste. Tedious but rewarding work, shortened by Regulus’ silent help.
Sirius goes to find something for them to eat, leaving the two of them alone.
“You care for him a lot, don’t you?” Mary asks when the silence grows boring.
Regulus freezes, a blush crawling into his cheeks. “I’ve known him all my life. His family took us in when we were young.”
“They sound like good people.”
“They are,” he says with a soft smile. “There aren’t many like them in the world.”
“No,” Mary sighs. “But I’ve met my fair share of good ones. It’s worth it.”
“What is?”
“Getting to keep them.”
They’re quiet for a while longer, until Regulus hands her the crushed herbs, and meets her eye. “You’re right,” he says. “I do…care.”
“You should do something about it then,” she teases. “Life is short.”
Due to James’ injury, they abandon their quest.
“Apologies, Mary,” Sirius says with that charming smile. “I swear we are successful sometimes.”
“I take the blame for this one, Pads,” James says, Regulus has one arm around him helping him walk until they can get back down to the woods to find a suitable walking stick.
Sirius and Mary are in charge of searching for one, but it takes them awhile.
“Where did you say you found those herbs, Mary?” Sirius asks suddenly, shielding his eyes from the sun as he looks up into the branches of an old pine. He looks puzzled, but deems it time to simply break a low-hanging branch for James to use.
“Just by the creek, why?”
“Nothing,” he grunts, almost falling as the branch breaks free. “It’s just that this forest is mostly pine, not much grows on the ground here.”
She looks around and sure enough, most of the earth is bare save for a litter of old, browned pine needles. And no matter how far she looks, there’s no creek in sight.