Kate did not return to the town of Ferrier when the witches visited it. The rest of the women left early in the morning, all of them ready before the sun had risen, dressed in their dark colors so they could, as Phillipa told her over breakfast, arrive in town before anyone saw their approach.

  Ida tried to convince Kate to go along while she ate, swirling the watery porridge that she loudly protested being made to eat— whose thinness was among the reasons that Rhea had decred they needed to buy supplies— while Kate served portions and she tended the fire. She leaned close to the pot to get a better look at her cooking in the firelight, and steam rising from the porridge singed her face. She kept forgetting that she could burn again, and making stupid mistakes.

  All the rest of the witches came and went, taking bowls and scowling at the contents. At least doing the cooking meant that Kate would go st and her portion would have cooked off the most water. The older women returned to their tents, while the apprentices had taken their servings and sat idling around the fire, waiting for someone to come and tell them to start marching.

  Ida, now with supposed reinforcements, resumed her attempts at persuasion.

  “You saved them! What if they want to give you a reward?” She cracked an egg into her portion of porridge and stirred it vigorously. “No one ever gives us a reward.”

  “That’s not true, you got a sack of potatoes from the old couple in Meticul,” Phillipa said, drinking her porridge from a cup. She never ate as much as the others, Kate had noticed.

  “That was potatoes. They were potato farmers.”

  “Potatoes are good food.”

  “Do witches not work for money?” asked Kate.

  “Mostly we do, like everyone else. But whatever we earn goes to our teachers.”

  ”We travel around for part of the year, looking for big spots of magic, and pces will pool money for us to get rid of it. You know, everyone pitches in a few coins, then we say it isn’t enough, so they threaten the lord unless he gives them a hundred more, that sort of thing.”

  “Ha! Maybe innd they have to pool the money. The cities on the coast deal with it out of their tax funds. It’s nicer that way, and they don’t tax tax money.” Eva was crouched in front of a tiny table, where she and Marsil were fiddling with tarokk cards, ying them out in lines and consulting a well-worn book whenever they added a new one.

  “No one’s taxing a witch,” Marsil said, ying out three cards in a row. Eva flipped to the very end of the book.

  “In Harduza we work directly under the lords. There’s a grand coven that oversees all the Harduza witches. They ensure that all the witches get good pay, nice houses… cool hats.” Joanna was lying down next to the fire, her eyes closed. “I met the Uzar head witch once. When I was little. My grandmother was sick and she came to help. Had her up and walking in ten minutes.”

  “The grand coven scares me,” said Marta. She was in between Marsil and Eva, her head in her hands, still half asleep.

  Phillipa nodded. “My mom told me once that their leader’s over a hundred years old, one of the most powerful witches alive, and that she can conjure hurricanes with one hand and cause earthquakes with the other.”

  “That sounds like a lie to scare children; besides, Rhea’s older than one hundred,” countered Kate.

  “Only technically.”

  “You have to do some great deed to be permitted into the grand coven, so they’re all freaky talented.”

  One of the older witches, who Kate had learned was called Dania Marrows, came over to their group, her great cloak always billowing behind her as if it was being pushed by an otherwise intangible wind.

  Ida called her Ms. Pomp behind her back.

  She looked at each of them, her eyes slowing as she passed over Kate. All of the older witches liked to watch her. She suspected that they were all waiting for her to jump up and decre herself a boy, that her gender was all a spell put upon her that had finally broken.

  When Kate didn’t give her the show she was waiting for, she looked to the cards that Eva was shuffling and nodded.

  “We’re leaving. Before portents turn against us.” The rest of the girls stood up and started piling their half emptied bowls together. “Clean up around here, if you’re really staying,” she said to Kate, then turned and went to the others. Rhea was on her donkey, the ntern she’d used to avoid the fire dark and inert on its pole, and the four other figures around her were standing in the shadows. Unlike Dania, they were perfectly still, and if Kate didn’t know they were there, she’d have believed them to be part of the forest.

  It’d be very ominous, if they hadn’t been making her and all the apprentices practice doing it every other day.

  Everyone but Ida followed Dania. “Please, Kate! They’re going to be so mad when they find out that you were a witch all along, you should have heard how stupid and rude they were when me and Dania went to help them before the fire. I’ve never seen her get so mad before. Her whole face was red. Let’s show them that the only reason they’re alive is because of one of us.”

  “That’s exactly why I don’t want to go. I’m not going to make trouble for no reason.” She didn’t want to go back somewhere where everyone was going to call her a boy. A few days being gendered right for the first time in forever and she’d already decided to never accept anything else again, but that didn’t mean she wanted to make a big scene about it in Ferrier. “Better yet, don’t tell anyone there about me at all. Let them be smug. Or tell them I failed, and you saved them. No one saw me doing it, they were too afraid of the fire, so that could work.”

  “I couldn’t have saved them. I spent the whole night here, safe and useless while Dania and the others fought the fire.”

  “They won’t know that.”

  “You sound like Rhea.”

  “They’re going to leave without you.”

  Ida put her hands on her hips. “We aren’t always together like this, you know. You’re gonna wish you came with us when it’s you, Eva, and Rhea stuck in a tiny little cabin for months and months.”

  “Then you’ll get to gloat!”

  She left to join the others and Kate found a bucket of water to wash out their dishes. Once that was done, she left the cookfire and looked around her.

  The campsite was scattered with the litter of over a dozen people. The older witches slept in a tight circle, each in their own tent or, in the case of Phillipa’s teacher, Oarie Felting, a hole in the ground. Seemingly, they kept all of their clothes and supplies in common, which meant that no one had bothered to clean any of it.

  Kate started there, gathering clothes out of the dirt and pcing them in the sacks and boxes that they belonged to. She didn’t worry that she was returning them to the wrong pces. If any of it had a true owner, then they could sort it out themselves.

  It wasn’t hard work, and if it helped everyone to like her better than she’d do it without compint. Besides, it was a chance to snoop and learn more about the older witches.

  She learned that Rhea had been sleeping in Dania’s tent, judging by Rhea’s spare boots by the entrance and the yer of leaves and dirt that had accumuted on the bedroll. Rhea always seemed to be covered in some kind of debris, more even than Oarie.

  Dania had to be decades younger than Rhea, so it felt all the more scandalous to put the clues together. All of the witches seemed entangled in each other’s lives and beds, the more she looked. The possibility that she was expected to join in on that kind of closeness with the other girls was hard to hold in her mind.

  Never mind physically, these girls had been expecting to live this kind of a life for years, probably. Kate had been thrust into it by circumstance, to adhere to the rule that only witches work magic.

  Then again, so had Rhea, and the pce she’d come from was centuries away.

  Ida had accepted her instantly, Phillipa and Joanna following her lead. Marta, and by extension Marsil, were nice too, and that seemed to temper Eva’s dislike of her, even if it meant all three girls kept their distance.

  The older witches, by dint of knowing her secret, were more wary. She’d win them over too, and cleaning felt like a sufficiently girl-esque task.

  When the adults' space looked more orderly, she moved back past the firepit and to her own side of the camp.

  The girls kept a more sprawling camp. They all held tight to their clothes— much to Kate’s chagrin, she’d have loved to try on some of the things Joanna kept hanging in her tent— and the group was split neatly into two sides. Marta, Marsil, and Eva against the stream where they drew their water, under a single tarp that they’d built walls around with sticks and branches; Ida, Phillipa, and Kate in the low, patch-ridden tent with the open sides that Kate had woken up in. They’d affixed another waxed tarp between them and Joanna, whose tent was a gift from her mother, and would have had room for all six of them if she hadn’t filled it with junk.

  Phillipa told her that she was only allowed to bring so much with her because she’d found a way to carry it all herself. Phil pointed to the corners of the tent, at magic Kate knew was there but couldn’t see.

  The st tent, a simple one with its own firepit, was a hundred steps back from the witches. The girl, who Kate still hadn’t been introduced to— Joanna had told her that her name was Sybil— kept to herself. Besides coming out in the evening and morning for food and to brush and feed Rhea’s donkey, Dorrish, she stayed in her tent, prodding her fire with a long stick.

  While Kate was shaking out a dress covered in dirt, Sybil slunk over to the cookfire and took the st of the porridge. She scraped the bottom of the pot and shook the burnt crips out into her hand and ate those first, watching Kate while Kate tried not to seem like she was watching right back.

  She wasn’t a witch. Probably. Ida and Phillipa didn’t know much about her either, just that she’d been with Rhea and Eva when they had all convened three months ago. Eva, naturally, hadn’t been forthcoming with the story.

  Kate moved onto cleaning her own tent, which was a much quicker chore, since she’d lost all of her things when the caravan abandoned her, and Phillipa’s teacher didn’t want her to have much to carry. Ida kept her clothes in a pile, and when she didn’t sleep next to Phillipa, she curled up on top of it in a way that reminded Kate of a dog. She beat the dust out of the piled clothes, and id out the dirtiest piece, an old jacket, on the bottom to keep the dirt off the rest. Trying to fold them would have been a fruitless endeavor.

  While she contempted whether or not to try and tackle the other’s things, Sybil had finished her food and walked over to stand at the edge of the tent. Eva’s things were strewn all over, while Marta and Marsil kept everything they owned in a locked chest.

  “If you clean it she’ll be mad you touched her things, but if you don’t she’ll be upset you didn’t.” Sybil’s voice was raspy and quiet.

  “Then she can live in filth,” Kate replied. The other girl nodded in agreement.

  “I like your clothes.” She pointed vaguely at Kate's travelling clothes. The only set she’d have for awhile, if all she could expect for an income was potatoes.

  “They’re not really my favorite style. The rest of my clothes are who knows where, with the fire.” The rest of her clothes were the same, but Sybil didn’t need to know that.

  “You’d probably prefer the witchy look?”

  “Uh, maybe?” She hadn’t thought about it. Rhea had called her an apprentice, and all the witches dressed the same, even Joanna with her fancy dresses favored the same dark colors and heavily yered style. “I’d prefer it to this, at least.”

  “I have some other clothes, if you want. I’d trade you for your set.”

  “Really?” Her clothes were not exactly in the best shape, and her sewing wasn’t that great either.

  “Yeah. I offered, didn't I?”

  The girl led her back to her tent, and to a rge sack that she had in the far corner, next to her bedding. She removed a witch’s dress and held it up for Kate to see.

  “Why do you have witch's clothes?”

  “You all think you have a monopoly over dark colors, don’t you? I can wear them too.”

  “Sorry.” Kate took the bundle of dark gray cloth when Sybil pushed it at her.

  “Don’t be. I do have them because I was supposed to be a witch.”

  “Why aren’t you?”

  Sybil bit her lip and stepped back out of the tent before responding. “Get changed, I want to try on your stuff.”

  Kate examined the dress before she did anything. It looked like it would fit, but she had no idea how to check for sure. Sybil was just standing there, her back turned but with no other barrier between them. She didn’t know who Sybil was, or why she was here, but she was presumably included in the girls Rhea had told her to be mindful of being around. Getting changed with her right there was definitely crossing that line.

  When she had washed herself in the river a few days before, she told Rhea and then went a good ways downstream, until she felt comfortably alone. The river had been wider and faster as it got closer to the ocean, and she’d made sure to keep a branch within reach in case she lost her footing. Joanna had asked about it when she got back, but everyone had seemed to accept that she wanted privacy.

  She couldn’t expin that to Sybil, who seemed content to think that her turned back was more than polite enough. It wasn’t like she was taking off anything more than her outer yers, anyway. The older witches weren’t even there, they’d all gone into town.

  She tore off her clothes and slipped the dress on as fast as possible. Through her nerves, she didn’t even stop to admire how much softer it was.

  A dark gray color like the mountains just after snowmelt, a high colr that could be buttoned to shield against the cold, and sleeves that were loose, but could be tied tight to keep out of the way when she had work to do.

  There were a few yers she had to adjust and pull on, and strings that tightened the fabric around her waist that she couldn’t quite reach, but it was a dress. She hadn’t had one since the grove.

  With a cough to signal that she was done, Sybil turned around. She nodded and walked a little half-circle around Kate. She was taller than her, and where Kate had room in the tent to stand, Sybil had to duck her head.

  “Looks good on you! Better than it did on me, anyway.” She went back to the sack of clothes and removed a belt. Cloth pouches had been attached with tiny metal hooks, and embroidered swirls circled the seams to reinforce the stitching.

  She helped Kate put it on, and tied the dress’s pull-strings for her. “You could take the hem up a few inches so it won’t get dirty, but now you look like a real Karoni witch. Or, wait, you’re from Harduza— they wear big pointed hats down there. You’ll have to find that on your own.”

  “Thank you,” Kate said, smoothing the dress and trying to get a look at herself.

  “Don’t thank me, this is a trade. It’s my turn.” She shooed Kate out of the tent and put on Kate’s abandoned clothes. She talked while she dressed, and Kate nodded along, letting the other girl carry the conversation. “I saw these in a newspaper when I was little, you know. It was the first time I saw women not wearing skirts, and I really wanted it. I asked my mother for years to get me one, but no, she hates the idea. She’s too traditional. And this is way too Wellosian, at that. I get that part, mostly, but that doesn’t mean the fashion isn’t interesting.

  “Then I started getting my own money, and she switched to a line about how I’d have to go to a city to buy it, and she’s not letting me go wandering around in a city until either I’m a grown witch or I’m married and my husband can go with me. I gave up on being a witch, and the only reason I’d ever want a husband is to steal his clothes. Actually, I’ve always wanted to see what I’d look like in a uniform.”

  “You can buy men’s clothes, you know. They don’t actually stop you, just give weird looks.”

  “Exactly! So there’s no point, but if I told her that I’d never be allowed to leave home again. Not being a witch is bad enough.”

  “She expected you to be a witch?”

  “Oh yes. So did everyone. The only daughter of the time traveller? They wanted me to be a great witch from the time I was a baby.” She tapped Kate on the shoulder, done dressing.

  The travelling clothes looked much better on her. Kate had always oversized them to help hide her body, but Sybil was taller, and they hung off of her rather than hid her like they did Kate. She seemed so much more confident, just like the drawings that the clerks always had up when Kate had bought them. It was how she carried herself. Confidence that Kate never learned.

  She’d taken her hair down too, and pushed it back with one hand, while the other rested on a belt loop. “How do I look?”

  Kate was too distracted to put together that she’d said that she was Rhea’s daughter.

  “Uh, good… good! Sorry it’s not the most clean.”

  “Whatever, we’ve been living on the road for months now, so that is only clean because I’ve refused to wear it.”

  “Because you won’t be a witch.”

  “Yes. I get that you’re for it and all that, but really, doing this every year sounds miserable.”

  “I didn’t get much of a choice. I need magic for… something important, and being a witch looks like the only way to get it.”

  “That’s nice, a goal. I like that better than all the other girls' answers.” Sybil sat down on the bag of clothes. “So why the cream and blue?”

  “What?”

  “The clothes. Cream and blue isn’t exactly practical for keeping stains off. Not exactly what I’d expect from the fire-prood merchant girl. Maybe a nice solid brown, or green and gold if you wanted to appeal to the Entacher clientele.”

  It had been the one way that she’d been able to express herself, with the caravans. “I didn’t do any merchant-ing, just kept their fires. I picked cream and blue because I like the colors, they’re pretty.”

  “Fair enough. So, what’s Harduza like?”

  They talked the rest of the morning and when the witches returned, Sybil even came with her to greet them. Probably she wanted to see the look on her mom’s face when she saw her wearing Kate’s clothes, but it was nice to have her there anyway.

  And she really was Rhea’s daughter. They looked so simir, the longer that Kate interacted with her. Granddaughter was far more believable, great-granddaughter even, given that Rhea had to be in her eighties, but, no, Sybil had confirmed it. Rhea was her mother. She’d waved Kate’s questions off with “magic,” and not said anything else on it.

  Ida rushed over to her, dropping several boxes and bags as she went, and made Kate spin in circles while she looked at the dress. “It suits you so much better than that other stuff! And wow, you have really nice shoulders for this style, huh? I think mine are too slopey to pull it off.”

  “You swapped with Sybil? Who knew she was hiding something so nice?” Joanna said, pinching at the material on Kate’s sleeves. Phillipa and Marta also came over to look at her, but behind them Dorrish pushed his way through the crowd, Rhea along with him.

  The old woman slumped off the donkey and quirked her head at Kate, expression as unreadable as ever.

  “Needs tailoring, or you’ll ruin the hem. Taking in at the hips too. Borrow something from one of the others and bring it to me after we have unpacked. I like to sew before the sun sets.”

  “Right, of course. Thank you.” Rhea nodded and turned away, handing Dorrish to Sybil, who took him and led him back to her tent.

  “Inevitable…” Rhea murmured as she watched Sybil in Kate’s clothes. “At least someone will look pretty in that dress, instead of it rotting away wherever she’d stashed it.” She turned and went back to the other women, leaving Kate and the girls gathered in a silent cluster.

  “Come on, girls, let’s get everything out so we can have a nicer lunch than breakfast, alright?” said Oarie Felting, shooing them all away from where they were standing around Kate.

  “I think that was a compliment,” Ida said, as Oarie took her shoulders and steered her towards the boxes she’d dropped.

  “In her own way,” said Oarie. “Right, now someone besides Kate start the fire up, please, or she’ll burn herself again. Thank you.”

  “Oh, yes, Kate!” Dania met her with a rge sack, and pced it in Kate’s arms. “Your reward! I told the vilgers all about you, and while the mayor wouldn’t cough up the actual reward for you once he found out you were one of ours, some of the farmers did want to give you something! So, potatoes!” Dania’s smile showed her teeth, which were oddly pointed. “Use them how you wish, they’re all yours. I’m partial to hasselback myself, if you were needing inspiration.”

  Ida passed them, scowled at the sack, and said, “see? Always potatoes with these people.”