The Hedgewalker

Aletris had heard whispers of a small town to the south, a place said to welcome those with certain gifts. Each day in her hometown had become fraught with suspicion. Despite her best efforts to help with births, prevent unwanted pregnancies, and tend the frail, suspicion dogged her every step. Some women averted their eyes when she entered town; men sneered with open hostility.

After weeks of gnawing unease, Aletris packed her few precious belongings, tucking her most prized herbs and notes into a leather satchel. She boarded a wooden ship bound for the coast of North Carolina and watched the shoreline fade into the horizon. Breathing the salt-tinged air, she felt a spark of hope for the first time in months.

Catalina brushed damp curls from her forehead. She had been traveling for weeks across the southern landscapes of America. A tribe had given her food and shoes in exchange for her horse, leaving her to continue on foot.

Her village on the Gulf coast had suffered under Catholic zeal, French pirate raids, and disease that carried away its children. Though Catalina healed and protected as best she could, her defiance of the new priests drew suspicion. Her kin did not shield her. One balmy night, rocks and filth were hurled until she fled.

Only a cousin whispered a name before she left: a distant town where she might find safety. Catalina pressed onward with nothing but hope and a few crumbs of food.

Aletris settled quickly aboard the ship. At first the sailors eyed her warily, but suspicion softened when she aided the ailing cook. She scrubbed pots and stirred stews with herbs to ease seasickness.

The captain often lingered in the galley, savoring the scents that rose from the cauldron. Its copper was etched with strange symbols. When she asked about it, he smirked: it had belonged to a mistress rumored to be a sorceress. She had sworn to curse him if he returned to her village.

When they sighted land, the captain pressed the cauldron into Aletris’s arms.

“Better with you than with him,” he said.

Dusk crept over Catalina’s small camp in the woods. She stirred a thin broth of foraged plants, the fire barely coaxing it to bubble. Hunger gnawed at her.

A buck burst from the brush, pursued by a dark-eyed boy. Blood streaked his back, his bow shaking. The arrow he loosed fell short, and he collapsed. Catalina ran to him, lifted him easily, and carried him to the fire. She wrapped him in her blanket and spooned her broth into his parched lips until he slept.

At dawn, the boy was gone. In his place lay a carved staff, etched with animals, feathers tied to its crown, a quartz crystal gleaming at its tip. Catalina gripped it, strength rushing through her body. She understood then: the boy had been a test of the spirits. And she had passed.

The village of Brambleridge stirred with unease. Lukas, gifted with sight, had foretold the arrival of two strangers—one with a staff, the other a cauldron. Whether fortune or ruin would follow, he could not tell.

Two cabins were raised on the bramble-ringed patch of land at the village’s center, a place long avoided for its strange power. Lukas insisted: the strangers belonged there.

On the night of the full moon, Aletris’s heart clenched. She rode with a farmer who would go no further than the outskirts.

“Outsiders don’t enter Brambleridge,” he muttered, and left her to walk the last mile alone.

The woods closed in. A sob drifted on the wind: “Help me… help me…”

At the marsh’s edge lay the ship’s cook, naked and bloodied. She dropped her cauldron, gathered kindling, and built a meager fire. She boiled water with herbs, fed him what she could, and prayed he would last until morning.

At dawn, he was gone. Only blood stained the earth. A raven perched on her cauldron, black eyes fixed upon her. Shuddering, Aletris gripped the vessel and turned toward the faint path to Brambleridge, certain the woods had tested her—and that she had failed.

At daybreak, Lukas saw them emerge: one bearing the staff, the other the cauldron. He blew his ram’s horn, summoning the villagers.

In silence, the women were escorted through cobbled paths, past ivy and gardens heavy with herbs. They were left at the twin cabins, the bramble hedge dividing their plots. Doors closed. Solitude claimed them.

Weeks passed. The silence broke only when the snow fell thick.

Catalina scooped a ball of snow and flung it at Aletris. Aletris shrieked as it slid down her collar, and Catalina giggled, rushing across the yard. Apologies turned to laughter when Aletris hurled a heap of snow back, striking Catalina squarely.

The two women tumbled in drifts until their cheeks burned and their breath steamed. From the edges of the village, the people of Brambleridge watched in silence.

Months passed. The women grew inseparable.

Aletris brewed potions in her cauldron, keeping the village untouched by pox. Catalina, guided by her staff, felt the pulse of the earth and told farmers where to plant and burn. Under their care, Brambleridge prospered.

On the anniversary of their arrival, the villagers gathered. Moonlight glinted on Catalina’s staff, and the crystal cast a beam against Aletris’s cauldron. The raven cried as light shimmered at the garden’s edge.

From it stepped the boy and the cook.

The raven swooped down, talons clutching the cook’s shoulder. Man and boy pressed together, shadows twisting, until one figure emerged: a tall woman, beautiful and terrible, her arms painted with symbols of lion, buck, raven, and earth.

“You were brought to be weighed,” she said, voice both song and threat. “The prophecy spoke of two, but only one may remain. The Hedgewalker must guard the portals. The other must pass beyond, forever wandering.”

She reached for them.

Catalina recoiled. “No! I will not go!”

Aletris stepped forward. “Then I will. A year here has been more than I dreamed. You deserve to remain, Catalina.”

But when she neared the portal, the woman hurled her back. Her voice fractured into the tones of a child.

“Do you remember me? The boy in the woods?”

Catalina’s staff shook violently in her grasp. Pain wracked her body. She fell to her knees. “Yes!”

The voice pressed. “Do you know what you did to me?”

Her sobs split the air. “I killed you.”

Aletris stared, stricken.

Catalina’s words tumbled out. “I was starving. I could not save him. I brewed herbs to send myself into endless sleep—but instead, I spared him suffering. I took his life. And when I woke, the staff was left for me.”

The cook stepped forward. His voice was low. “The staff was a test—to see if you would resist power born of loss. You failed. And now, you will leave.”

The portal flared. Catalina screamed as unseen hands dragged her in. Aletris lunged, but it was too late.

The light snapped shut. The bramble garden fell silent.

Aletris sank to the ground, clutching the cauldron to her chest. Overhead, the raven wheeled once and vanished into the night.