CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Wulfecombe

Heartburn was the price Sage paid for pregnancy. It made it impossible tonight to lie down, so she paced back and forth between the sitting room and the tiny kitchen of the flat, back and forth to keep her legs from getting twitchy, back and forth to keep her anxiety down, back and forth to be a peaceful incubator for her child.

She felt haunted, ever so slightly off-center, and she couldn't pinpoint why. The bones had unsettled her, bringing up memories of Rosemary, that terrible loss so long unsolved, but it felt like more.

On impulse, she opened the book of recipes her mother had given her upon her wedding to Paula. It contained all the family favorites—Clare's cottage pie, and her grandmother's apple crumble; Levi's fried dumplings. A quarter of the way through, she found the sunflower bread, and although she didn't bake as often as she cooked other things, she'd learned this bread at Clare's side when they were both sad and broken. The smell of baking bread, her mother said, could heal anything.

She assembled the ingredients, most of them ordinary enough, and was pleased to find she even had flaxseed in a sealed container. Humming quietly, starlight shining through the window, she blended yeast and water, flour and flax, a little vinegar and the sunflower seeds, then left it to rise, donned a sweater, and went outside.

The moon had set, leaving behind a star-bright sky. When she lived in London, this sky had been one of the things she most desperately missed. Out here, away from the city lights, the night sky could be astonishing. She paused to step out into the little box of garden they enjoyed, and looked up, taking a deep breath of air, salty and fresh from the nearby sea.

"Do you see that bright one?" Sage asked, one hand on her belly. "That's Venus. Or maybe Mars. I get them mixed up, but we'll make sure to look it up properly when you're here. I hope you love the sky as much as I do." She smoothed her palm over the round of baby, up and down, feeling a swish, a bump, a gurgle.

She'd never imagined that she'd be a mother. Even at nine, she'd known she only liked girls, not boys, and even then she'd known that boys were required for babies. Not even for a baby could she imagine doing that .

But as time passed, as she fell into addiction, then climbed out of that pit, she'd felt a longing to know what it was like to generate life, to bear a child. Her arms ached for the shape of a small body, her nose for the smell of a baby's neck. When friends had babies, she played with their little bean toes and volunteered to babysit as long as they needed, singing to them in her low voice, a singing voice she was secretly proud of. Her own mother had sung to Sage, and she knew all the songs, the old songs.

Folk songs had led her to Paula. She'd heard her playing in a café in the nearby holiday town of Cloverly, a voice as pure and clear as a winter morning. It called Sage right out of the kitchen store where she'd been browsing and into the café, where a crowd clustered around the small dais where Paula sang and played guitar. She wore a red scarf over her magnificent, wavy blonde hair, and her cheeks were rosy red. She sang a ballad about the Green Man giving help to a lost child.

Sage had been in love once or twice, but when Paula caught her eye and winked without missing a beat, she was swamped with a sense of the future unfolding, a happy future.

With children.

And so it had come to pass. Sage thought it would make a good fairy tale. They'd both navigated tests and troubles, sought the advice of wise women and mages, and fallen to the darkness of a curse—Sage to drugs, Paula to an emotionally abusive relationship that had left her battered and torn. Paula adamantly wanted to raise children. They would have one from each of their gene pools, and then adopt lost children, too.

It took longer than they'd hoped to get pregnant, and the pandemic had delayed them even further. They'd winnowed down their wishes, and Sage had finally gotten pregnant. And she loved it.

Now, the past was seeping out of the woods, a miasma smelling of helplessness and sorrow. The thought of the child's bones they'd found haunted her. Had Rosemary been dragged away by a wolf?

Or was it something worse than that?

She didn't want to let it in. Didn't know how to keep it out.

"What magic is in the sky tonight?" Paula asked, behind her.

"Venus ... or maybe Mars," she said, and chuckled, leaning back as Paula embraced her from behind, her hands circling the mound of baby. "I'm really going to have to find out."

"Mm." They stood in the starlight a long time. Finally, Paula said, "Come to bed, sweetheart. You both need rest, no matter what the future holds."

Sage allowed herself to be led, stopping to tuck the bread into the fridge to rise overnight, and allowed herself to be held. Allowed herself to let go of the past and future and just curl into the now.