Work Text:
The rumors make her out to be seven feet tall, hunched and gnarled like oak branches steeped too long in winter rains, with river rock teeth and razor sharp nails that slice through waylaid hunters like ice through bones. In her wake trails the feathers of stolen chickens, the ribbons from young girls’ hair. Fearful, every citizen of Kaldahan boards tight their windows against the lingering chill and the shadowy threat lurking through long winter nights. They warned Ben against taking old Maz Kanata’s empty cottage on the fringes of town. Too close to the woods, they cautioned. Too close to the Wild.
But Ben paid them no mind then and he pays them no mind now as he stares down the approaching figure. Magic ripples from her, salty and persistent, stiff enough to tease the fir branches and pliable enough to seep through the seams of Ben’s wool coat. How to dress for Kaldahan’s blizzards – now that advice he should have taken.
He’s never been one for advice.
The rumors make out the witch on the edge of the Wild to be a crop killer, a child stealer, a guardian of winter, a stifler of spring. Curious, then, how the rumors fail to note the green limning her eyes, the curve to her mouth, the grace in her fingers as she stalks toward Ben, all thick cloaks and coarse scarves and a face rimmed in fur.
He should run, if the rumors are anything to go by, but his boots stay planted in the kriffing knee-deep snow he should’ve known to prepare for. He lets the ax fall from his hands, a promise to do no harm. She follows the gesture, stalks closer, raises her hands –
He does not flinch; her palms are empty. She picks up the ax from the snowdrift, swings it toward the mangled log balanced atop a stump, and splits it into serviceable firewood that even Maz wouldn’t sniff at.
She hoists another log onto the stump. She thrusts the ax back at Ben. She waits until he copies her hands, sliding one to meet the other on the downswing, splitting the wood with twice as much strength and half as much ease.
He waits. He does not raise the ax. He wonders if she can sense the Wild bubbling under his skin, threatening to spill from his mouth.
The townspeople can’t, that much Ben knows. After years of masking his mother’s gift, years of building a name for himself as a leading witchcraft scholar, he won’t ruin his credibility. Not with an upcoming publication and tenure at the University of Agamar on the line. They’d call him a fraud. Not that his magic negates his understanding of magic, nor the discoveries he’s made that landed him this fellowship in the first place.
It means nothing to her, this feral creature standing over him as he painstakingly chops firewood until the bundle at his feet grows big enough to heat the hovel. He likes her for it, if like can describe the foreign thrumming that answers his own, a heartbeat syncing with his to the rhythm of distant ocean waves that batter this force-forsaken island.
She bends to carry the logs from stump to hearth indoors. He follows, arms laden, and watches the way she eyes the herbs drying above the stove: bergamot for protection, meadowsweet for divination, verbena for purification. They make quick work of the fire; soon, flames chug merrily and the woodbox stands at attention, stuffed to the brim.
The rumors make out the witch to be fearsome, but every muscle under her furs screams tense and awkward, out of place as she studies his face, watches him uncover his hair and unwrap his hands.
He should introduce himself, prod her magical signature with his, ask her what stalks the Wild that leaves a trace redolent of iron and venom because there’s no way in the seven hells it’s her. But the fear of startling her, of breaking whatever spell they’ve managed to weave together, prods him to root through his cupboards and offer her what remains of the morning’s saltbread and a hunk of cheese.
She devours them standing, crumbs lining her lips and lips smacking obscenely. He can’t look away.
A porg taps on the window. She looks up from the last bite, the closest thing to a grin breaking her concentration and lighting up the hovel like midsummer. A familiar, Ben notes, fighting the urge to feel for the notebook stuffed in his breast pocket and scribble furiously. He feels for the connection tethering these two beings together, feels softly so she can’t sense him reaching.
Despite his best efforts to hide his magic, her head snaps up, eyes boring into his. She knows who he is. What he is.
Like calls to like, and for a moment, the hovel turns into a blizzard, nothing but white static snow and ice limning his veins. It chills him, heats him – this act of being seen – and he fights the pull even as he moves closer, one hand involuntarily creeping toward her cheek.
Her eyes widen, a startled hart caught between bowstrings, and she bolts for the door. The winter wind whips through the hut, shoving into the space she had just occupied and reducing the tug Ben feels toward her until he worries his eagerness for a paper worth publishing has reduced him to this: a lonely boy impersonating a scholar, tamping down the Wild, hungering for touch – any touch – the Kaldahan witch’s touch.
He dreams of the sea, of her hazel eyes and salt-sweet signature that twines with his. All night long, wind beats against the thick glass panes, the bolted door, the drafty chimney. When he wakes with the sun, he discovers fresh snow drifts piled up against the steps and at his door, a small bundle of logs that wasn’t left there before.
A gift from the witch.
The beginning of a connection that stretches beyond the town, past the rumors and Ben’s paper, past Agamar and Ben’s secret, to a world where their magic can intertwine.