Talen nodded. She’d died in the pox plague year. Died of stress and worry.

“You think you know: laid into the ground, she was, without a blemish upon her. Perfect and whole, broken with grief for her little boy who was covered with the ugly rash, all blisters and pus. This is what you think, but grief did not break her, brother. Grief could not have broken that woman, not in a million years.”

She paused.

“It was love that broke her. Your little body was consumed with sores. Da called every healer he knew; we tried every herb known to have any effect. We danced and sacrificed to the ancestors. But the disease only grew. And so Mother and Da did what any loving parents would do. They gave their Days to make you whole.”

Surely, she was talking about a Divine’s gift. “They went to the temple?” he said.

River shook her head, and dread came over him.

“You were broken in body and soul. Da could not see how to heal you and steeled himself to losing you. He had given up. After all, many families lose one here or there. But Mother would not give up. She saw possibilities invisible to him.

“You struggled a week, then two. Everyone marveled at your spirit. But then Da discovered one night it was more than your tenacity keeping you alive. He caught Mother pouring her life into you. Her Fire flowed through you and held you together. And when you finally vanquished the disease, she was spent. A whole lifetime spent in two weeks.”

River smiled, but her eyes glistened in the dim candlelight.

“She died in the morning the day after your fever broke, holding your hand.”

Talen could not speak.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?”

He nodded. But it just couldn’t be.

“Your veins, brother, run literally with our mother’s Fire.”

“But-”

He glanced at Nettle. His expression was unreadable. The girl stood behind him in the doorway. He hadn’t noticed her come.

“Shush,” said River. “Mother said that parts of you, parts of your weave were… twisted. Most of that she was able to heal. But as she delved into the fiber of your being she found other parts that defied her knowledge. Parts that she said were complex, beautiful, unlike anything she’d ever encountered. There are things about you she could not change. Things she dared not change.” River paused. “At the end, she was half mad with the effort and kept telling us you needed a flaw. She thought you were perfect. We’ve all been waiting to see what you would become, to see what gifts the wisterwives had bestowed.”

Talen felt lost. It was all too much. Wisterwives, Sleth, weaves. “Nobody’s seen a wisterwife,” said Talen.

“They are elusive, but Mother and Da found the charm.”

“The charm? You mean that odd necklace she used to make me wear?”

“The very same. Legs has it now. Mother gave it to Purity when he was born, thinking it might still have some virtue.”

“It was yours?” the girl asked in confusion.

River nodded. “Mother woke early one morning to find the shutters to her room open and the mosquitoes buzzing about her face. The charm was lying on the chair inside the Creator’s wreath. Something had taken the wreath from above the door to the house and brought it inside. Mother looked out the window. A troop of ferrets stood about the yard gazing at her, still as stone. They stood for some time, considering her in silence like wise little men. And then, just before the light broke above the hills, the little creatures turned and disappeared into the forest. Mother conceived Talen with that charm about her neck, and he wore it for the first few years of his life. But when Legs was born, she thought it had a better purpose.”

Talen had heard about the ferrets, but not the charm.

“But my da said it was given to us,” said the girl.

“It was, but not by a wisterwife,” said River. “He probably didn’t want to repeat the story. Such encounters are special, and should be treated so.”

“Did she see the wisterwife?”

“No, but how else do you explain the curious charm, the ferrets, and the wreath?”

Talen wondered. Wisterwives were said to bestow great blessings upon humans. Some said they served the Divines. Others said they served none but themselves.

It puzzled him that his family hadn’t said anything about this. Of course, a wisterwife’s charm was a rare and precious thing because it gave fertility and health. He supposed if people knew the source of that necklace, they would have stolen it. Perhaps that was the reason for the silence.

“Regret has servants as well,” said Talen. “How do you know it was a blessing? How do you know it even has anything to do with me?”

“I don’t,” said River. “I am trusting Mother’s judgment.”

“I might not manifest anything at all,” said Talen. “Maybe those changes were already in the bloodline. Traits can sometimes skip generations.”

“That’s true,” said River. “But your differences were exceptional.” She shook her head. “And they needed exceptional care. Da was reckless. I have no idea how much of your life you’ve lost. Nor whether you’ve burned yourself to the core.”

River’s description of his “weave” bothered him. “You talk as if I’m some piece of wrought jewelry.”

“We all are, Talen.”

He didn’t know what she meant by that. “So what was different about me?”

“I don’t know. Mother died and took her secrets with her. But there’s this: Fire can be eaten only very slowly and so it must be given only very slowly. To do otherwise is to risk the life of the person you’re giving it to. How she transferred a lifetime of Fire in the space of only a few days is beyond us. It should have killed you. Your exhibition tonight should have killed you. You were pouring forth quantities of Fire that would have killed ten men had they tried to tap into it. The amounts of Fire you’re able to handle is astonishing. On the other hand, Da’s charm: that should have had only the slightest effect on you.”

“You’re talking about that godsweed charm, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” said River.

“That was a weave?”

“Yes.”

Talen looked at Nettle and the girl. Both of them were standing aside with grim faces.

Too many thoughts coursed through Talen’s mind. But one stood out from the rest. Mother and Da had been using lore for years. These hatchlings hadn’t subverted them.

“You’re saying we’re soul-eaters,” he said.

It couldn’t be, but a number of things that had puzzled suddenly made horrible sense. Harboring the hatchlings, for one. Da’s dislike of the Divines, for another. His demonstrations of uncanny strength when there was nobody but a son to see them, his odd lack of sickness.

Talen thought of Ke. His brother was as strong as stone and just as unmovable. Yet, at other times he was lively as a cat. Talen remembered once a few years ago spying Ke upon a cliff in the distance. One moment he was standing on a ledge, then next he was moving, leaping and scrabbling up the rock like a mountain goat. Talen knew that cliff. He’d asked Ke how he’d done it, and Ke had said he had a rope. And that Da was pulling him up. It seemed plausible and Talen had dismissed what he’d seen. But now it made sense. Ke hadn’t used a rope. He’d jumped, just as Talen had jumped and scrabbled up that elm earlier today.

Dozens of such events came rushing back to him. River swimming out in impossible seas to help Blue. A deer Da brought home from the hunt with a broken neck and nary an arrow wound. The time Talen went out to chase after Ke, who had just disappeared down the trail, only to find the trail was empty for as far as he could see.

Talen thought about his earlier daydreams of hunting and catching Sleth. There was nothing like this in the old stories.

“Am I not myself then? I’m just bits and pieces of what Mother stole?”

River cleared her throat. “That is the difference between us and them. When you give Fire freely, it flows between two people as clean and easily as the wind. Freely given it is without taint. You haven’t a speck of her soul, Talen. What she gave was all Fire-pure and brilliant and sweet. It is only when you forcibly take, as the Divines and soul-eaters do, that you contaminate. Taking tears the soul and brings madness to the thief. The Divines think to avoid the consequences with their filtering rods. But you cannot filter away the darkness such deeds sow into the heart.”