“Tell me again what they look like, Fru Helga?” Hnossa said, dangling from Helga’s arm as the young woman swung her over a tiny stream. Helga lifted her skirt and took the long step over the rivulet herself, trying to think how best to describe fairy eggs to the little girl. It was early morning in the forest beyond Little Witchingham, and the sun had not yet dispelled the mist that wove between the trees and clung to their hair. Somewhere deeper into the wood, a nightingale was singing out the last of its dawn song before retreating from the coming day’s heat. Helga had awakened Hnossa just before sunrise and told her that today would be the first day of her education as a witch; she had never seen the girl move toward the door faster. Along the way, they had talked without ceasing, about magical creatures, about when to use magic and when to use one’s hands, about the runes carved on Helga’s wand, and about a million other things. Helga had to see what things Hnossa had already discovered for herself and what things she would need to be taught, and Hnossa talked for the sheer pleasure of hearing her own voice. Presently they had arrived at the subject of locating fairy eggs. They were in the forest, of course, to get some wood suitable to make Hnossa a wand; but to get wand-quality wood, you had to seduce the bowtruckles, and to seduce the bowtruckles, you had to feed them.

“Fairy eggs look like….,” Helga began, and then paused. How did one describe them? This was a little girl from a farmer’s cottage in a village surrounded by barley and cows. She would have never laid eyes on gemstones or a great lady’s jewelry, and so that comparison would be useless. After a moment’s thought, Helga knelt down to Hnossa’s eye level. “Have you ever been to a church with colored glass in the windows, Hnossa?”

“We came to the Witchingham church when Harald was baptised.”

“Well,” Helga went on, “imagine that someone took all that colored glass and broke it into a thousand tiny pieces, like barley grains – except each of those tiny pieces had a light inside it like a tiny star. And then imagine they took those pieces of glass to a waterfall where the sun was making a rainbow over the water, and they THREW those pieces up into the rainbow. Can you imagine what they would look like?”

Hnossa nodded in awe, her little mouth round and, for once, silent.

“Well, fairy eggs,” Helga said, standing back up and reaching for the girl’s hand, “look like that, except they’ll be in little clusters stuck to the backside of leaves on low-hanging plants. We need to collect two or three leaves’ worth – otherwise, the bowtruckles won’t let us anywhere near their trees.”

“How do we find the right leaves?” Hnossa asked. “There are a lot of leaves in a forest.”

Helga nodded. “Oh, yes, too many to search all of them. That’s why you first look for fairy butter, and let it lead the way.”

“Fairy butter? What’s that?”

“It’s just a plant,” Helga smiled. “Like a mushroom or a lichen. It’s bright yellow like sunshine, and squishy like the inside of an egg, and it grows in wet places in the forest on dead wood. Fairies like to eat it, you see. And so they lay their eggs on leaves that are close by, which is why you will always stand a better chance of finding fairy eggs if you look for fairy butter first.”

The two of them spent a peaceful quarter of an hour strolling the bank of the small stream, looking for anything bright yellow that caught their attention. Around them, the forest was beginning to awake into cascades of birdsong as the sunlight dripped through the foliage and into nests. After a few false starts (a cluster of buttercups, a yellow wagtail hunting worms), they finally found what they were looking for at the base of an alder. Hnossa wrinkled her nose at the sight of the golden fungus.

“Yick,” she said flatly. “It looks like guts.” And indeed it did; the gelatinous yellow formation clung to the side of the tree in sinuous layers that twisted side to side around each other like the reticulations of a snake, looking for all the world like whipped butter that someone had forced through a tightly woven net. Helga chuckled at Hnossa’s expression.

“Well, the fairies think it’s delicious. Now, start turning over leaves – you’ll know the eggs when you see them.”

Hnossa looked dubious, but she began dutifully lifting nearby leaves, watching for any hint of sparkle.

In the end, they found a whole bush full of eggs about two cart lengths away from the fairy butter tree. Helga bade Hnossa hold out her cupped hands while she used her wand to dislodge the eggs from their leafy nurseries. The little girl’s palms held two and a half leaves full of the sparkling little grains, and as they stood up and headed back toward the stream, Hnossa stared in wonder at the glittering heap she held. It looked to her like starlight glinting off multicolored water.

Helga picked her up under her arms, careful not to jostle her hands, and lifted her back over the little stream.

“Now,” she instructed as she hopped the water herself, “tell it back to me while we walk, so I know that you’ve learned it.” She led Hnossa further into the woods, where the thick canopy of leaves almost muffled the sounds of the Witchingham chapel bell ringing Terce. Hnossa kept her eyes glued to her hands even as she answered; she didn’t want to drop a single egg.

“Fairy butter finds the fairy eggs. The eggs are the bowtruckles’ favorite thing to eat.”

“And what is a bowtruckle?” Helga prompted.

“A magical creature that lives in the trees. If a tree has bowtruckles in it, it’s good for making wands.”

“Very good,” Helga smiled. “And why do we need to bring fairy eggs to the bowtruckles?”

“Because they guard their tree,” Hnossa recited, still eyeing her handful of eggs. “If we try to take a branch, they might scratch or bite us, so we bring them their favorite food to show them we are friends, and that we only want a little piece of their home.”

“Good,” Helga grinned. “You remember what you’re taught easily, and you’ll make a fine witch.” She punctuated this with a light kiss on Hnossa’s wispy blonde hair.

They had now stopped at the edge of a grove of trees that seemed somehow different than the forest around them, although just how, Hnossa couldn’t have said. They were all the same kinds of trees as the rest of the wood – alder, blackthorn, sycamore, mountain-ash, oak – but they were bathed in a different sort of light here than anywhere else in the forest. The ground beyond the tips of Helga’s shoes changed abruptly from mixed grass and leaf litter to a thick, spongy moss that was an exquisitely vibrant shade of green. Hnossa made a little sound of wonderment.

“This is where they live,” she whispered, meaning it as a question but knowing it for fact as it left her mouth. Helga nodded.

“A witch or wizard will usually be able to feel them when they are near – if they learn to be silent and listen, like you are doing now. When I was a child, they lived all through this forest. Now they have retreated here to the center, to avoid the farmers clearing land at the edges. They go further west every year, and I’m afraid that one day there will be no bowtruckles in Anglia at all, they will all have fled to Wales.”

Hnossa stood quietly for a minute, taking in what she had heard. Then she pried her eyes up from her handful of eggs and asked, “Fru Helga, how do I choose which tree to take wood from?”

Helga’s grin widened. “You don’t.” When Hnossa wrinkled her face, perplexed, Helga laughed out loud. It was a rich and resonant sound in the quiet of the grove. “A witch or wizard shouldn’t choose their wood,” she explained. “You have to let the tree pick you.”

Hnossa looked dubious again, and Helga bent down to her and squeezed her shoulders.

“Close your eyes,” she advised. “Now, what you are going to do is walk into that grove with your eyes closed. You’ll take a few paces, and then you’ll listen.”

“To what?”

“To the sounds of the magic. If there is a tree in that grove that is meant to be your wand, it will call to you. You’ll hear it in your mind, the way you could hear your snake friend. You may hear it singing to you, or it may sound like the crackling of a fire or a wind rushing across your ears, but you will know from which direction it comes, and you’ll follow it. And the tree it takes you to will be the tree from which we’ll make your wand. Ready?”

Hnossa scrunched her hands closer around the heap of fairy eggs and nodded. Helga gave her a light push, and she stepped timidly onto the airy carpet of moss.

Almost immediately the air changed again. A wind from nowhere rustled through the heavy tree cover, rippling the leaf shadows across the moss and flickering sunlight sparks over the still dew-damp leaves. The light caught on the iridescent shards between Hnossa’s fingers and made it look as though she were holding liquid fire. Somewhere across the grove a bullfinch took off from a branch and fled the grove in a noisy flap of wings – as though it suddenly realized its presence there was no longer appropriate. Helga perceived nothing in that direction except the bird, but it was toward the bullfinch’s vacated tree that Hnossa began moving, and Helga saw the little girl’s posture stiffen with alertness. Smiling, she followed the child across the soundless moss floor of the grove until they stood looking up the straight trunk and into the wide-spreading vault of a large sycamore.

“This one,” Hnossa said reverently. Helga bent down and wrapped an arm around the girl’s shoulders.

“I had thought it might be a sycamore,” she smiled. Hnossa crinkled her nose, loosening the austere feeling of the atmosphere a bit.

“Why?”

“My grandmother carried a sycamore wand,” answered Helga, “and you remind me of her. Never wanting to be still. Always looking for new things. Easily tired of what you see often.”

“I would never be tired of looking at fairy eggs,” Hnossa said seriously. “Or of this grove.”

“Oh, yes, you would,” Helga laughed. “You would be tired of anything if you did it long enough. Now. Let’s wake the bowtruckles, shall we?”

Helga stood up and walked closer to the sycamore’s trunk. She reached out and placed her hand flat against the rippled bark. Hnossa opened her mouth to ask a question, but Helga brought her other hand up and placed a finger against her lips.

Without warning, three loose, leafy twigs dropped out of the tree canopy and landed on Helga’s arm. At least, that’s what Hnossa thought they were – until one of them stood up and opened a tiny mouth in a chattering series of squeaks.

“Fru Helga!” Hnossa gasped. She took a step backward as the three twig-like creatures all began chattering together, the first one climbing up Helga’s cloak toward her shoulder. They were the bright, acidic green of new spring leaves, and their black eyes glittered like beetle wings. Above their faces bobbed long, waxy leaf fronds that looked freshly sprouted; the bolder of the three, who was now chattering directly in Helga’s ear, had three of these fronds compared to his companions’ two. From the sounds they made, Hnossa couldn’t tell if they were angry, or only slightly miffed, or simply squeaky and frantic by nature.

“It’s alright, Hnossa!” Helga said, ducking her head down to her shoulder as the bowtruckle’s leaves tickled her neck. “These are the bowtruckles. Come on, say hello.”

“H…hello…,” said Hnossa unsurely. Helga reached up and scooted the more intrepid bowtruckle away from her collar.

“Kitla, behave yourself,” she ordered. The little creature responded by latching onto her hand with both tendril arms and squeaking faster. Meanwhile, the other two bowtruckles had been slowly clambering down her other arm, eyeing Hnossa with suspicion. Helga shook her arm to get them loose, but they held tight to her cloak and sleeve.

“What do we do now?” Hnossa gulped.

“We don’t. You tell them why you’re here – and give them what you brought.” At the word brought, the bowtruckle Kitla stiffened and rose to his full height, letting out a high-pitched chirp. Helga poked him. “Yes, Kitla, a present. Now attend the girl, you troublesome thing.” And she plucked him up by the shoulder joint and deposited him on the ground.

Hnossa took a deep breath. Looking down at the fairy eggs in her hands seemed to brace her. “My name is Hnossa,” she began, “and I’ve brought these fairy eggs for you.” She bent down and gently spilled the pile of glittering eggs onto the moss. The two smaller bowtruckles chirruped shrilly and set upon the eggs almost before she had retracted her hands. Kitla, however, tilted his head to one side and squeaked at her inquiringly. She looked at Helga, and Helga nodded encouragement. “I…hope we can be friends,” she went on, “and I wondered if I could have a small piece of your tree.”

Kitla reached over to the pile and took a tendril-ful of eggs and pushed them into his tiny mouth, his beetle-black eyes never leaving Hnossa.

“Please?” she added. “We won’t harm your tree. I only need a piece the size of my forearm.” She held out her arm to show him and the bowtruckle hopped onto it, still chewing his mouthful of eggs. Hnossa giggled; his root-like feet and tendril fingers tickled her skin. Kitla swallowed the eggs and looked up at Helga, squeaking questioningly.

“It’s all right, Kitla,” Helga soothed. “It will be just like last year when I came and took a piece of your friend’s oak tree over there for one of my neighbors. Do you remember?”

Apparently he did; Kitla squeaked a few rapid notes at his companions, then took himself another fistful of eggs before skittering back up into the tree. His companions followed him with bulging cheeks.

“Where are they going, Fru Helga?”

“They’re going to show us which branch we can take,” said Helga softly. As they watched the bowtruckles climbing the bark, she reached into her cloak and took out her wand. The three bowtruckles had congregated about halfway out onto the span of a branch about the breadth of a person’s leg. Kitla had stopped just before a large knot in the wood, and seemed to be indicating the area beyond where he sat.

“Tell him thank you,” Helga whispered to the little girl.

“Thank you very much, Kitla!” called Hnossa. “That is …a lovely branch.” The bowtruckle chattered amicably in return.

Helga nodded in approval. Then she lifted her wand and pointed it in the direction of the branch, slowly pulling the tip in a circular motion as though she were stirring a soup in the air.

“Taka,” she said gently. Hnossa watched, mesmerized, as a ring of amber light appeared around the bore of the branch. The glow pulsed and waned, growing brighter and fainter and then brighter again, the ring becoming smaller each time. It began to sink into the wood like glowing honey, and Hnossa saw that the branch was being cut through like a log of butter. When the ring closed upon itself, the end of the branch dropped a few inches, having been neatly removed at the knot. Below Kitla’s dangling feet, the place where it had been attached was neatly healed over and already covered in new bark. A sprig stuck out from the rounded stump, and the tip of it was the bright green of new growth. Helga twitched her wand as though playing a fish on a line, and the free-floating piece of the branch drifted slowly earthward, landing at Helga’s direction in Hnossa’s outstretched hands. “Flett,” she commanded, and the leaves and bark dropped cleanly away, leaving Hnossa holding a perfectly stripped sycamore log.

Up in the tree, Kitla was poking cautiously at the little green twig at the end of the amputated branch. Helga smiled up at him.

“No harm done, Kitla. See? It’ll grow back good as new, I made sure.” Kitla chattered down at her in response, and she laughed. “I promise. Now go on and take the rest of those fairy eggs to your nestlings, you great glutton.”

Chirping and squeaking, all three bowtruckles began scampering down the tree again to finish off the pile of fairy eggs lying on the moss. Helga patted Hnossa’s downy-soft hair and put away her wand.

“Come on. We’ll give this to my father, and by sunset, you’ll have your very own wand.”

*   *   *

The two of them took their time walking back through the forest toward Little Witchingham, as they had no schedule to meet now that the wand wood had been collected. It was not yet midday, but already the sun was bright overhead, piercing down through the tree canopy in golden bars that dotted the dim woodland. Hnossa carried her piece of sycamore wood with all the care of a girl holding her first child, although she did a great deal of skipping and hopping about with the lower half of her body to compensate. As they walked, she plied Helga with questions.

“Does your father make all the wands for Little Witchingham?”

“Yes, and he sells some to witches and wizards in Norwic as well.”

“Is it hard to make a wand?”

“It takes a great deal of practice, and a good teacher,” Helga explained. “Not everyone is able to do it, and some are better than others. You see, it’s not just about the wood. Every wand is made from good magical wood, but it also has something inside it that gives it life.”

“They’re alive?” Hnossa exclaimed, eyeing the protuberance of cloth where Helga’s wand tip stuck out against her cloak. Helga laughed.

“Not alive like you and me, but you could say that they have a sort of… quickness about them. The core of every wand is a strand of some magical substance – a dittany stalk, the heartstring of a dragon, the hair of a mermaid or a veela. And depending on the core and the wood, a wand may be better at one type of magic or another, or better suited to a certain kind of witch or wizard. A good wandmaker knows all these things about the materials they use, and the trick is getting the wood and the core paired up just so – and weaving them together with the right magic. And that is very complicated indeed. It’s why I leave wandmaking to Father – I have no desire to pore over complex details until my head swims.”

Hnossa looked as though her own little head was swimming, having just heard confirmation that things such as mermaids and dragons existed, and having no idea what a “veela” even was. She settled for the least overwhelming question she could think of.

“Why do we need a wand, Fru Helga? I’ve made the flowers blossom without one all this time.”

“That may fade as you grow older,” Helga said. “Most children can do magic quite well when they are small, almost as if there is too much magic in their little bodies and it must force its way out in great bursts. As you grow, and grow into your magic, doing it without a wand might become more difficult. And a wand helps you concentrate all your magic on one particular spell, and that makes it stronger.” She looked down at the girl, whose milky eyebrows were furrowed in thought. “Have you ever stood under a stream of water coming down from a high place in the rocks, Hnossa?”

“Yes,” the little girl nodded.

“Well, did you ever stand with the water tumbling onto your back and shoulders, and then hold out your arm so that the water followed the course of your arm and came off your fingers like a spout from a jug?”

“I like watching that!” Hnossa giggled, and Helga grinned.

“Me too. Well, that’s what a wand does for your magic. The magic in your body follows the wand out to its tip, and you can direct it exactly where you want it to go.”

“Will I— eeeEEK!!

The forest absorbed the echoes of the little girl’s squeal as both Helga and Hnossa stood stock still, staring at the charred hole that had just appeared in the trunk of an oak a few steps away. Little pieces of bark and wisps of smoke floated down in front of them. Helga had instinctively grabbed at Hnossa’s arm with her right hand; the other she now pressed over her heart as if she could slow its frantic pulsing by applying pressure. Hnossa was squeezing her chunk of sycamore wood as if it were a holy relic about to be plundered.

BANG! Another hole burst through the slim trunk of a maple sapling further away, slicing it neatly in half. Hnossa gasped and looked up at Helga in a panic.

“Fru Helga!!”

“Stay behind me,” Helga said in a much calmer voice than what she felt. Herding the little girl behind her with one arm, she reached into her cloak and pulled out her wand. Slowly, the two of them crept toward a distant clearing from which more bursting sounds could be heard. As they drew nearer, they realized that there were voices mingled in with the bursts, two voices that both sounded very bright and carefree, and the words were intermingled with spates of laughter.

“Not half bad!” called one of the voices.

“Yes, but you missed me again!”

“Only to get you to lower your guard!”

Helga crept up to a large spreading oak at the edge of the clearing, motioning to Hnossa to keep well behind the trunk. Cautiously, they both peeked out around the tree and looked into the clearing.

In the pool of sunlight that filtered down through the open space in the forest canopy, two boys were galloping about like spring colts, trampling wildflowers and white mushroom caps beneath their slippered feet and shrieking with laughter. One of them had a round face and thick black curls and looked to be about Hnossa’s age; the other boy was taller, perhaps a little older, with a wild fringe of brassy hair that kept falling into his eyes. They had rips in their tunics, the cloth wrapping their legs was loosened from much cavorting, and they had clearly been playfighting. Both carried wands.

“Discutio!” cried the dark-haired boy, and a turquoise jet of light shot from the tip of his wand. His companion dodged sharply to the left, and the jet slammed into a rowan trunk across the clearing, bursting another charred hole in the bark.

“You’re an idiot, and I should never have taught you that!” the taller boy complained, but he was masking a grin. “You can’t use discutio for sport, you’ll blow my head off!” He didn’t look particularly worried that this would actually happen. The shorter boy huffed.

“Well, so far, the only thing I cast at you that actually worked was the one that turned your feet into duck flippers. I had to try something else!”

“Yes, thank you for reversing that, and happily it only took three days for you to figure out how!” Both boys were laughing now, and Helga loosened her white-knuckle grip on her wand. Just children. Magical children, mind you, who were very recklessly playing at dueling, but children nonetheless. Helga didn’t recognize them – she knew all of the magical families in her village, and these were not boys from east Little Witchingham.

“All right, then, show me another!” the round-faced boy countered. His older friend put out a leg, making a courtly bow, and grinned.

“If you insist. Ventus!” He brought his wand swirling widely around his head, coming to a stop pointed directly at his companion. Nothing visible appeared at his wand tip; but the round-faced boy’s dark curls began to whip wildly about his head as though caught in a strong wind. He squinted his eyes, pursed his lips, and soon was holding up both hands in an effort to shield himself from the now gale-force blast of air his friend was sending in his direction. Helga watched until she saw the boy’s feet beginning to lose purchase on the thick grass. Then she squeezed Hnossa’s shoulder reassuringly and stepped out into the clearing, wand at the ready.

“Stǫðvið!”

The swirling wind died abruptly at the flick of Helga’s wand, and both boys snapped to attention, their eyes wide and startled. Helga crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow.

“Lady,” the older boy stammered automatically, going into a confused half-bow. After a second’s pause he leaned over and nudged his friend, who hadn’t moved, until he mimicked the bow. “I …regret if we have done injury to you or your ward in the course of our sport,” he muttered, in a very different voice to the one he’d been using with his friend. Helga saw that this was a boy who had been taught rules of decorum, for both the magical and non-magical world. She smiled at him reluctantly.

“No injury,” she admitted. “Only frightened us. But I worry that you do not know where you are. There is a village just beyond the fringe of this wood which is half úgaldr, and you might have been seen by them and had a great deal of explaining to do.”

“Ug-what?” whispered the dark-haired boy to his friend.

“It’s the Danes’ word for non-magic people,” the older child explained. To Helga, he said, “Those of us who are lettered in Latin call them mundanus.”

“You are both lettered?” Helga asked, surprised. The smaller boy shrugged.

“I, only a little. Just what my father had learned here and there. Aluric is the educated one.”

The boy called Aluric stepped forward, twirling his wand skillfully about his fingers before presenting it, handle outward, to Helga. “Aluric son of Alwin, of Flictewicce. My father, God give him peace, was lord of Flictewicce. My companion….” He held out an arm and beckoned his friend forward.

“Saeric, of Schornecote.” He tried unsuccessfully to mimic his friend’s wand twirl, eventually just holding out the handle like Aluric had done. “Son of Stephanus the freeman,” he added, as it seemed like he should say something else. Helga put her wand away, and they did likewise.

“Well, I am Helga Hunlafsdottir, of Little Witchingham, which is the village you were so close to without knowing it. And this is Hnossa, my student.” Hnossa crept out from behind Helga’s skirt, eyeing the boys suspiciously.

“I’m going to have a wand made from this,” she said by way of introduction, squeezing the log as if she thought they might steal it. Aluric put on a charming smile.

“Then let us hope it will be worthy of its holder.”

“Are we so very near Witchingham?” Saeric interjected, looking suddenly brighter. Helga nodded.

“We could walk out of the woods and reach my cottage before the chapel rings Sext.”

“Then we are almost there, Aluric!” Saeric blurted. “I got us there after all!”

“Where’s there?” Helga smiled. The younger boy had lovely hazel eyes that were only readily appreciable when he beamed as he was doing now.

“Botuna!” the boy chirped. “The last place we asked, they said Botuna was just the other side of Witchingham. Come on!” Without warning, he grabbed Aluric by the wrist and took off at a tear toward the edge of the clearing. Helga pulled out her wand and snapped it in their direction.

“Hǫndla!” Immediately both boys stopped short, the backs of their tunics pricked upward and outward as if grabbed by an invisible parent’s hands. Helga twitched her wand upward, and the boys rose a few inches into the air as if attached to it by a string.

“WhoaaahhHH!”

“Noooo no no, ground, ground!!”

Helga pulled her wand in a slow circle, and the boys followed it in a dangling path until they were back in front of her, where she put them down gently on the grass. Saeric looked simply confused; Aluric looked as if he’d just been threatened with hellfire and had escaped by a single fervent prayer.

“Why would you do that??” he gasped, clutching handfuls of grass.

“One thing at a time, boys,” Helga began. Using the same incantation she had just used on the children, Helga aimed her wand into the brush at the edge of the clearing and twitched. After a few moments’ rustling, a large log and two rounded lumps of sandstone came floating out of the treeline. Helga plopped them down facing each other, with a few feet of space between. She sat down on the log and patted the space beside her for Hnossa to climb up. The boys looked at each other, shrugged, and took seats on the two stones. As an indication that she did not intend to levitate them again soon, Helga put her wand down on the log on her other side, away from her hands. Then she laced her fingers in her lap.

“Now. Saeric. What’s so important that you must get to Botuna so quickly?”

Saeric looked surprised but pleased that she had addressed the question to him instead of his older friend. “My family is there, lady Helga,” he said slowly, unsure where to begin.

“You said you came from Schornecote? That’s almost in the West country.”

“I was born there,” the boy clarified. “It was where my father settled when he became a freeman after his service to the lord Alward ended. But he was born in Botuna, and he told me that should I ever find myself without him, I should go to his family there.”

“And… you have found yourself… without him?” Helga asked gently.

“He died of the spattergroit,” Saeric murmured. “In the winter. The mundani thought it was the …what do they call it, Aluric?”

“Mæseles,” supplied Aluric. “And you didn’t disabuse them of that notion, of course.”

“Right. Didn’t matter what took him, he died the same.”

“Fru Helga, what’s spattergroit?” whispered Hnossa. Helga smoothed her hair.

“It’s a sickness that only witches and wizards can get, just like only the úgaldr get sick with the mæseles.” She turned back to Saeric. “So when your father passed, you began traveling here to find his family. How did the two of you come to be traveling together, then? Flictewicce isn’t close to Schornecote.”

“I followed the old Roman road that came out of Cirencestre – I walked it until it split away near Oxenaforda, and then I just crossed and kept going north and east, asking directions along the way. One of the places I stopped was Flictewicce.”

“Which is where he collected me,” Aluric took over. He seemed to have recovered from his fears of being levitated. “My father had died last spring, and my rotten brother was lord in Flictewicce, which gave me no incentive at all to stay. I could do worse than to travel with Saeric here. I thought perhaps his father’s family would suit me better than my own.”

Helga regarded the boys quietly for a moment or two. They were an unlikely pair – a lord-ling and a freeman’s son – and at a glance seemed a very unequal partnership. But Helga suspected that they were now bonded inseparably by the simple fact that they needed each other on an elemental level. Saeric was desperate for someone to look up to, and Aluric (though he would likely never admit it) was being validated and praised for the first time in his life. Helga smiled warmly at them.

“Yes, you could certainly do worse. Come on, then. Home to the cottage.” She stood up and pocketed her wand as Hnossa tumbled down off the log behind her. The boys got up, each looking to the other for instruction.

“Not to Botuna?” Aluric said finally. Helga laughed.

“Eventually. But it’s nearly Sext and you couldn’t go wrong with a midday meal, now could you?”

“Do you have honey?” Saeric gasped. “I haven’t had honey since we left Aluric’s home.”

“If my brother didn’t eat it all before we get there,” Hnossa muttered darkly, shifting the weight of her sycamore log and marching off toward the far edge of the clearing. Helga gestured to the boys, and the three of them followed Hnossa’s stomping figure into the forest toward Little Witchingham.

*   *   *

An hour later, the dooryard of Hunlaf the Woodcutter was in happy chaos as the children worked off their lunch in a frantic game of chase. Helga finished a last sip of strawberry juice and stepped into the dim, sleepy interior of her father’s workshop, closing the door behind her. Hunlaf was paring down the sycamore cutting with a sharp chisel, occasionally working it one-handed while he took a bite of the hunk of bread that sat on the table beside him collecting sawdust. He could easily have brought the wood down to wand-size with one movement of his ash-staff, but he had told Helga long before that he preferred to do the first cuttings by hand instead of by magic. It was his way, he said, of talking to the wood. Helga watched him take another bite.

“One day you’re going to mistake which hand is for eating and which is for cutting, and I’ll have to magic your tongue back on.”

“So you’ve told me,” Hunlaf grinned through his copper beard (which was now peppered with flecks of shaved wood). He didn’t turn to look at his daughter, but she didn’t need him to turn to know his face. “So your mother told me, too, and in twenty years it hasn’t happened yet.”

Helga sat down softly on the heather-filled sack seat behind him, careful not to rouse Sœtr with her motion. The crup lifted his head and half-opened one eye, but when she stroked his cheek gently with two fingers, he nuzzled back down into the sack and resumed his slumber.

“When you went into the forest today,” Hunlaf went on, still carving, “there were only two children in our care. Now there are four. Are you multiplying them as an experiment with a spell?”

“I found them dueling in a clearing,” Helga chuckled. “They very nearly took off Hnossa’s head with a stray jinx. I had to tell them how close they were to a village.”

“The dark one is from the West country,” Hunlaf expounded. “The fair one is the child of an eorl from down Lunden-way, I wager. What are they doing in the Danelaw alone?”

“They’re orphaned,” Helga explained. “Saeric was trying to reach Botuna because his father had family there. He met Aluric along the way and they threw in their lot together.”

“Botuna?” Hunlaf said, and this time he turned around. “Oh, daughter, you’re going to have to have a hard talk with them tomorrow.”

“Why? Can’t they go to Botuna?”

“Oh, they can go to Botuna,” Hunlaf sighed, shifting his bulk in his seat and half-turning back to his carving. “But the only thing they’ll meet will be cats and owls. Botuna was raided a week ago. I heard it in Norwic.”

“Raided?” Helga gaped. “By ours, or theirs?” she asked, meaning whether it had been done by Saxons or Danes. Hunlaf shrugged his big shoulders.

“Does it matter?”

“No.”

“No indeed.” The woodcutter scratched sycamore shavings out of his beard and ate the last of his bread. “I think most everyone was killed or taken, and the ones who weren’t are long fled. I’ll open the fire tonight and ask Crickomer Rook in Norwic if any of the boy’s family fled there – slim chance, but better than no chance. But I fear that if that boy had some family there once, he won’t find them now.”

They were quiet together for a few minutes; the only sounds in the workshop were the scrape scrape of Hunlaf’s tools and the occasional soft huff of air through Sœtr’s nostrils. Helga patted him gently on his silky head, running her middle finger from his nose-tip back along the white stripe that divided his face neatly in half. His forked tail thumped once in his sleep.

“I suppose now I’ll have three students, then,” she said matter-of-factly. Hunlaf grunted, although whether in response to her or to a hard place in the wood, she couldn’t tell.

“I expected nothing else,” was all he said. Then, after a few more minutes of silence, he added, “Speaking of your students, have you thought what we’re going to put in the core of this wand?”

“Oh,” said Helga. She hadn’t, as a matter of fact. “I assumed you’d chose something out of your box of ingredients, whatever you thought best.”

“Used my last unicorn hair on Sönnungr’s wand two weeks ago. Should’ve bought some more cores when I was in Norwic, but Crickomer’s wife had just brought a new cheese up from the cellar, and—”

“—and you promptly got distracted from the market, I know.” Helga grinned at her father, who was nothing if not consistent. “Well, I suppose you’ll have to make another trip.”

“Unless you want to catch her something,” Hunlaf suggested. “I saw a family of unicorns over by King’s Lenn when I visited Ivar – although, I admit, I don’t think unicorn would be right for this wand or this girl. An augurey feather, maybe?”

“Maybe,” said Helga dubiously as Sœtr climbed into her lap searching for a new sleeping position. “But they’re so mournful, I don’t know that would fit her either.” Her hand was bumped impatiently by the sleepy crup, and she absently began petting him as she ran through lists of animals in her head.

“Bicorn horn?” she suggested. “They just finished shedding a couple of months back, I might still find some in the forest.”

Hunlaf grunted and blew a drift of shavings off his table onto the floor. “Can’t say I think that fits her either, and it certainly doesn’t go well with sycamore.”

Helga leaned back on the heather-sack and sighed; this disrupted the topography of her lap, and Sœtr gave a short, offended bark and hopped off onto the floor. Hunlaf scooped him up and ruffled his neck fur before walking over to his whetstone to sharpen his chisel.

“Yah, it was time for you to wake up anyway, you lazy beast,” he growled good-naturedly. The crup threw his head back and made a sound that was half bark, half howl before disappearing with a loud pop! He reappeared on the table next to the whetstone. Hunlaf tapped him reprovingly on the snout. “What have I told you about getting on my table next to sharp objects? Shoo!” He waved his big, calloused hand, and Sœtr leapt from the table. Forked tail held perpendicular, he wandered underneath the carving table to sniff about for bread crumbs. Hunlaf shook his head. “That animal gets into more trouble than Hnossa. Between the two, I’m surprised the cottage still stands.” He began sharpening the chisel, and then he suddenly halted. He placed the chisel down gently and turned to face Helga very slowly.

“What?” Helga asked, because there was an odd look on Hunlaf’s face.

“Very alike, the girl and Sœtr, hmm?” was all he said at first. Helga shrugged.

“I suppose so,” she replied. Under the table Sœtr’s tail wagged a couple of times at the mention of his name, but his search for crumbs went on uninterrupted. Hunlaf raised one bushy red eyebrow.

“Powerfully magical little beast, he is….” The woodcutter nodded his head ever so slightly in the crup’s direction and began to stroke his beard, separating one long russet hair from the rest and uncurling it to its full length. Then he pulled it gently – once, twice, thrice – not hard enough to pluck it, but enough that a little patch of his face rose into a little peak where the hair was anchored. Helga caught on, then.

“Aahh,” she smiled. “Yes, I bet he has more magic in one whisker than a bicorn has in its whole horn.”

Hunlaf grinned and stepped away from the table, bending slightly to get a good look at the crup underneath. “Oh, Sœtr….”

The crup’s forked tail stopped in mid-wag and shot into a straight vertical alignment at the tone in his master’s voice. Sœtr hopped, all four paws leaving the ground for a moment as he turned in midair. He landed in full alert, his tail immobile, staring at Hunlaf.

“Who’s a good boy, Sœtr?” Hunlaf began.

Sœtr let out a growling ruff! and then immediately began trotting toward the door, dodging Hunlaf’s hands as he broke into a run and shot between the woodcutter’s legs. Helga threw herself in front of the door and scooped up the wiggling crup as he made a dive for the exit.

“Oh, no you don’t,” she muttered, tucking him against her hip. Sœtr made a series of huffing sounds as he tried to wriggle free; then he seemed to remember that he was magical, and he disapparated from her grasp and reappeared behind her, aiming again for the door. “Ugh, fine,” Helga sighed and pulled out her wand. “Kyrr!”

The air distended in a ripple from her wand tip; Sœtr froze in place as it washed over him, one paw lifted in step and his muzzle touching the door to nudge it open. His eyes followed his mistress as she bent down and picked him up, but the rest of his body was immobile. Helga placed him on the table, and she and Hulaf bent down to meet him at eye level. His whiskers floated gently around his snout as though under water, but for all other purposes he might have been a statue. Hunlaf chuckled and took his staff from the corner.

“Now, let’s try that again, eh, Sœtr?”

The crup hissed out a whiny huff of breath that said he most certainly did not want to try that again. His deep brown eyes followed Hunlaf’s every movement.

“It’s alright, Sœtr,” Helga soothed. “We just need two whiskers, and you won’t even feel it.”

The frozen crup snorted, clearly not believing her. Hunlaf stepped forward with his ash staff.

“Taka,” he said, drawing the head of the staff in a circle around Sœtr’s two longest whiskers. As it had done for Helga in the forest, a small ring of light appeared around the base of each whisker, but this time the light sank down into the follicle and disappeared under the skin. A moment later it resurfaced as a small orb, each orb pushing the whisker out whole and unbroken. As the whiskers floated toward Hunlaf’s hand, new whiskers germinated in their vacated places and within seconds were as long as the original whiskers had been. Hunlaf plucked the removed whiskers out of the air and scratched his crup behind the folded ear. “There, now was that so hard?”

Sœtr gave a sharp, abrasive snort to imply Yes, actually, it was.

Helga gave him a loud kiss on the forehead, laughing as she pulled away. “Thank you, Sœtr, for being such a good boy. You’re free to go. Stǫðvið.”

Before her wand had even finished moving, Sœtr had shot off the table like an arrow. When he landed, he made sure to bark acerbically four or five times, hopping stiffly and vibrating his forked tail in righteous indignation. He shook himself all over as if ridding his coat of water, threw his head back, and howled; then he shot out of the woodshop as fast as he could run, leaving the shop door bouncing against the frame behind him. Helga put her wand away.

“And now he’s going to go sit under a log in the forest and ignore you when you call for him.”

Hunlaf gave a deep belly-laugh. “He’ll be back when he’s hungry and can’t be bothered to catch his own dinner.” Still laughing, the woodcutter ambled back over to his chair. He sat down with a groan. “Alright, daughter,” he grunted, placing the two crup whiskers gently in a box at the far end of the table and latching the lid. “Go out there and make sure the children haven’t lit the meadow ablaze. A couple of hours of quiet, and I’ll have a wand ready for the little one.”

Helga leaned down and kissed her father’s russet head.

“Just promise me you’ll come out with all your fingers still attached.”

*   *   *

The sound of the Witchingham chapel bell ringing Vespers echoed across the barley fields as an evening breeze whiffled across the meadow from the northeast, carrying with it a trace of salt air from the sea mingled with heady cornroses and early lavender. The wind played with the fire Helga had just lit out in the dooryard and ruffled the loose hair around her temples as she ducked inside the cottage to retrieve the loaf of bread she had sliced a few minutes before. She picked it up by the corners of the white cloth that wrapped it and carried it back outside to where the children sat around the fire watching steam rise from the stew pot that hung there. Harald was giddy as ever at the sight of dinner, and Hnossa and Aluric were giggling at some joke she had missed while she was inside. Saeric looked glum. Helga had taken him aside earlier and explained to him what Hunlaf had heard about Botuna – she had told him that they would try to find out if any of his people had gone to Norwic, but that they weren’t good odds. He had understood, and he had taken it generally well – after all, these weren’t people he had ever met. But he had traveled an awfully long way to be given such news, and (Helga suspected) the loss of these people probably brought up his feelings about the loss of his father.

The sky in the west over the village was turning from daylight blue to a creamy orange, while the horizon in the east had just begun to deepen into cornflower. Helga tapped the spoon that rested in the stewpot with her wand, and the spoon began to stir the soup within in a steady circle. She placed the loaf of bread on a stone beside the fire within easy reach of the children’s hands and began to pass out wooden bowls. Aluric was in the process of showing Hnossa his wand while she waited anxiously for her own to come out of Hunlaf’s workshop.

“It’s made of elm wood,” he was saying as Hnossa took it from his hands. It was slender and elegantly carved, and both the fire and the sunlight glittered on its polished bore. At the handle end was a smooth garnet, perfectly round and so deeply red that it looked like dark heart-blood. Helga was impressed.

“It’s beautiful,” she said softly, passing out slices of bread. Aluric nodded as if this was the expected response.

“My father had it specially made – that garnet is a piece of our family’s ancient treasure. He collected the wood and the core himself, and then brought the materials to a wandmaker in Lundenburh who is supposed to be the best in the business. He wanted to ensure the craftsmanship was exceptional.”

“What’s inside it?” Hnossa asked as she gave the wand back to its owner. Aluric lifted his chin regally.

“The tail hair of a centaur,” he said with great pride. Helga twitched her wand toward the cottage door and held out her hand as a jug of milk floated out to her. Both her eyebrows were raised high.

“How ever did your father get that? Centaurs are not the most social of creatures.”

“No, they aren’t. My father spoke sometimes to a centaur who lived in the forest near Flictewicce. The rest of his herd were suspicious, but this one was friendly enough – for a centaur. My father respected him, and asked him sometimes for advice in matters of governing his land. When I was born, he asked him if he might comb his tail and take a hair that might come loose, and the centaur obliged him.” He put the wand away as Helga handed him a cup of milk. Saeric, looking a little less glum now, produced his own wand and passed it over to Hnossa.

“Here’s mine!” he smiled. “It’s made of willow. It’s not fancy like Aluric’s, but Father told me that willow is a wood that doesn’t like to be tampered with. He says it’s better when you don’t carve it or polish it too much. Leave it looking like the tree it came from.”

Hnossa turned it over in her hands, examining the curves and bumps of the wood that had been sanded smooth but left to follow its own grain. “It has freckles!” she exclaimed, giving it back to him. Indeed, the pale wood was dotted with tiny spots of darker grain that covered it in no discernable pattern. Saeric grinned.

“It matches me, I suppose. The core is a dittany stalk,” he added sheepishly, as though he was embarrassed by it. It was hardly as impressive as a centaur hair, after all. Helga gave Hnossa her milk and patted Saeric’s hand.

“So is mine,” she reassured him.

“Really?” Saeric said, brightening. Helga nodded.

“Really. And don’t ever let anyone tell you that makes it a lesser wand. You’ve seen me use mine today, haven’t you? HARALD, stop eating your sleeve!” She reached over and tugged the little boy’s sleeve hem out of his mouth and replaced it with another piece of bread before he could start whining. When she turned back to Saeric, he was looking at his wand thoughtfully.

“I’m awfully bad at dueling,” he said dubiously, and Aluric took a drink of milk to hide the fact that he agreed. Helga chuckled.

“Well, so you might be. But if you have a dittany and willow wand, then your magical strength won’t lie there anyway. You have the wand of a healer, Saeric. It’s no wonder you struggle to use magic for sport or combat. I wager you’ll be an easy hand at healing spells.”

“Good, he can use them to heal up all Hnossa’s wounds that she gets from running about with this.”

The five faces at the fire turned to the workshop door, where Hunlaf had just emerged, covered in sycamore shavings and carrying something wrapped in a piece of cloth. Hnossa jumped up from her seat, her little hands clenched in fists under her chin.

“Is it ready??”

In lieu of an answer, Hunlaf walked across the dooryard to the fire and held out the parcel in front of him. With great ceremony, he pulled back one flap of cloth, then the other. Hnossa gasped. The wand lying in Hunlaf’s outstretched hands was utterly straight and had very little taper along its smooth white length. The grain of the wood was shimmery and quite visible, looking like raindrops hitting the surface of a pond. Here and there a hair-thin dark streak cut through the light wood. Hunlaf had left the knot intact, and it formed a rounded pommel at the handle end of the wand. Hnossa’s milky-blue eyes were as round as cart wheels.

“Can I—?” she stammered.

“Go on,” said Hunlaf, grinning in spite of himself. Hnossa reached out a timid hand and took the wand slowly from its cloth. As soon as her fingers had closed all the way around it, a shower of soft blue sparks gusted out along the whole length of the wand and fluttered down to the packed earth of the dooryard like a rain of glowing dandelion seeds. Wherever they landed, tiny blue flax blossoms sprang up.

“It knows who it belongs to,” Hunlaf said quietly. At the fire, Harald stopped eating long enough to clap and giggle at his sister’s magic. Hnossa was staring at her new wand in awe, and Helga leaned down to kiss her on the top of the head before guiding her back to her seat. She handed her father a wooden bowl and tapped the spoon in the pot to stop it stirring.

“Well now we’re all here, let’s eat before the sun sets and we can’t see our stew. Hnossa, dearest, you’ll have to put that down until you’ve finished eating.”

“I’m a real witch now,” the little girl whispered, reluctantly tucking the wand tight between her knees as Helga filled her bowl with soup. The young woman smiled at her meaningfully.

“You’ve always been a real witch. Now you get to start learning what to do with it.”