CHAPTER 14
Brygida blinked up at the blurry clouds floating past like dandelion seeds on the wind. They blurred and blurred and blurred, until she wiped her eyes with an already damp sleeve. Tall grasses cocooned her, wrapping her in their embrace. If only she could sink into the soft earth, escape it all. As she’d run through the embrace of the ferns, the ordeal of the thorns, the barrier of the oaks’ branches, Mama’s words had sunk deeper and deeper, clawing their way in as she clawed her way out.
Beyond her witchlands, in these barren fields, she could breathe again, true air that had never deceived her, on land that had never held the secret of her birth, among spirits who hadn’t pretended away the ugliness in which she’d been born.
All of it hurt. Parts of her she’d never felt thro
