Weary from another day of harvest and aching from a hike up the mountain, I puff a sigh of relief at the sight of the Willowbirth Estate. It lies in a hollow wedged comfortably in the corner of two cliffs. A small pond sits nestled in the center of that hollow, reflecting the last of the sky’s twilight onto the willows draped around it. 

The house itself rises from the ground like a hill split in half with a window on each side of a deep-set door. One window, not but a round chunk of crystal held in with iron, eyes me suspiciously.

I pat the list of schools in my belt and, reassured of its presence, creep forward. It took me most of the last day to chase my family’s schools from them, and I'm still not sure I'll give them to Kitaryn. Though she doubtless meant for the list to be delivered by mail, I have questions. I’m not going to just hand over information because she asked. For all I know she could use it to convict us further. Or Trom will.

A magical potion. Confirmed. I don't believe it.

I slink between trees, hiding my approach in the falling dark. The first light of the full Harvest Moon shimmers in the leaves like silver as they sway in an almost imperceptible wind. I jog the last steps between the trees and the house and tap on the door. 

“I’ve got it, Athyr!” I hear Kitaryn’s voice not far from it, ready to intercept.

She swings it wide and I duck to the side for fear that the Ceann might be standing there. 

She spots me quickly where I’m pressed against the house's wall. 

“Aodan!” she hisses, her eyes bulging. “What are you doing here?”

“Delivery for Kitaryn Willowbirth.” I try to sound like a messenger boy, forcing my voice high and nasally.

“Who is it, Kit?” the clear voice of the Ceann carries from somewhere deep in the house.

“Just some mail delivery. Don’t worry, it’s for me!” she calls back. She turns on me with a glare that almost makes me feel sorry.

“I have a lot of questions,” I whisper.

“And you couldn’t wait another day?”

“I didn’t want to help you condemn us in the meantime.”

She scowls. “What? Is there some secret to your education now?”

“Is he still here?” His voice is nearer now. “I feel a draft from the door.”

Kitaryn flinches. “No, Athyr. It’s just a lovely night and I thought I would go for a walk.” She snatches her cloak from a hook and her boots from the stoop. “I’ll be back in a puff.”

She dives out of the door, pulling me along by the wrist. I’m dragged around the turn of the house’s slope and back toward a crag in the cliff. 

“Where are we going?” I try to yank my arm free and am rewarded with her claw-like grip tearing at my sleeve. 

“Somewhere hidden,” she says. 

She stops at the crag and pulls out her Willowbirth necklace, pressing it to the rockface. The stones shift, a doorknob appearing where there had been none. 

I gasp. “Kitaryn, was that magic?”

She shrugs and opens the door. “Likely so.”

Outrage surges in me. “And you're harassing my family for possibly using it–if we used it–by accident?” I enter the dark room behind her, my voice echoing in the doorway.

She finally lets me go. “That’s just the thing I want to address,” she says dryly, her white hair wisping away across the dim. “I don’t believe your family could recognize magic to avoid it.”

“Great, so we’re uneducated.” If she thinks she can sneak that insult past me, she’s wrong. 

The door scrapes behind me, enclosing us in the dark—together. There are misshapen shadows all around us.

She heaves a burdened sigh. “No, Aodan. I don’t know how it works, either. I only ever trained to recognize it for my job. When I first started using this space, I didn’t know that it was magic. I just copied what my Ars-Mho-Mattan was doing.”

I stiffen. The last thing I need is a Former-Ceann walking in on the two of us conspiring. Alone in the dark. Man and woman. “She isn’t going to find us, is she?”

Kitaryn huffs a laugh. “She moved out over half a century ago. She and my father can’t stand one another.”

I hear a few mysterious clicks, and then a lantern flickers to life in Kitaryn’s hands. It illuminates a room of oddities that I can only describe as a workshop. At the center of the room by Kitaryn, rests a large table covered in wood shavings and scrap blocks. Then, against one wall, half-finished paintings lean in deep stacks. On each painting, I glimpse something critically wrong: a too-long nose, discolored trees, misplaced eyes. Another wall is piled with crumbled pieces of clay with the occasional recognizable aspect: a tail, a leg, an ear. An armoire in one corner suggests clothes, and childish, bright pottery lines shelves on my left. 

My gaze comes to a rest on her as she shoves on her boots over thick, woolen socks embroidered with similarly imperfect stitches. 

“What is this place?”

Her cheeks take a pink turn as she taps her toe into place. “Oh, my crafts room, I guess. I tend to call it the Library of Abandoned Projects as a joke on the Libraries at work.”

“You made all this?” I marvel again at the many, diverse attempts at art. Much of it has gone so wrong that it borders on the grotesque.

“Yes. Can we focus? You said you had questions.”

They all leave me as I watch her shift uncomfortably. Instead, I'm almost overwhelmed with the urge to cross the floor, cup her high cheeks, and tell her how cute she is, even if she has the attention span of a human. 

I keep my feet planted. “Right, so why my family’s schooling?” Looking at her now, standing in the middle of her own humiliation, I can't bear to ask my real question: Why should I believe you would help us?

“We both agree that schooling on magic is insufficient if not non-existent, right?” 

As she searches me, I guard myself. It could be a trap. I choose my words carefully. “I can’t disagree with you. All I know is magic can do the unnatural, and it’s supposed to be dangerous.” 

“Exactly,” she affirms with gusto. “So we must prove it to the Council.”

I blink at her. “The Ceann Council?” I ask, feeling every bit the uneducated country boy she believes I am. It seems like a tall task to prove to the nation's leaders that my family could not have known whether we used magic. But then, maybe I'm forgetting who I’m speaking to.

“Aodan, have you never attended a trial?” If disbelief colors her words, I think disdain shadows them.

I grit my teeth. In a given trial of importance, one representative of each family is required to appear as a witness. As long as my mho-mattan lives, the duty is shared among the uncles, aunts, and cousins. “Once, in place of my father. I’m not exactly called to serve on my own.” 

Kitaryn's shoulders drop their judgement and her head cocks. “Oh. That’s right. I guess you wouldn’t be.”

We are silent, each realizing the differences between our families: mine loaded with cousins of the first and second generation, while Kitaryn has never mentioned any Willowbirth relations. I know  her mother married into another household and everyone knows her grandfather passed away barely into his Ceannship. That means the great-grandmother she’d mentioned might be the only other Willowbirth. Though, as Ceann, her father already attends every High Court trial. Does she also have to go? 

Kitaryn smooths the hair at her ear, which has untwined from a braid there. “I suppose I should explain it all, then. At the trial, The Ceanns present the testimonies that have been prepared for them to the court. They then ask questions of the accused, and the accused must answer in defense. After that back and forth is complete, the Highfather hears formal recommendations for sentencing from the Council, and then it ends when she issues a decision that compromises between their recommendations.”

Some of this I know. I squint, searching for her point. The Ceanns present the testimonies that have been prepared for them. “Wait, the Ceanns say all of the evidence?”

She nods. “Yes. They’re limited to whatever their administrators have brought to their attention. Whoever among them has evidence makes a request beforehand to testify in court.”

I press my hands to my head, nursing the desperate ache forming there. “We stand no chance. None of them are going to testify on our behalf. And Mho-mattan–she’s upset enough to just spit insults during her part. She’ll be jailed forever.”

“Right, so that’s why we must interfere. We need to bring it to the attention of the Ceanns that you–all of you–couldn’t have known. Even your mho-mattan. All before the trial.”

I squeeze the hair in my hands. Despair fills me. I promised Mho-mattan. But I can't hope to meet a non-Cultivator Ceann, much less convince one of anything. Perhaps, given time, I can plead our case to our own Ceann, Sunbright. 

I drop my arms to my sides. With Kitaryn’s help, I stand a better chance. I regard her: the noble line of her nose and how it bulbs playfully at the end, the intelligent spark of her eyes, and the passionate arch in her lip that turns downward, as though sad, when she isn’t smiling. Even after all I've done, I can't detect any ill will in her. Even more, I want to trust her. But that means that Mho-mattan has created a potion. By accident.

“Fyr-Ceann, I don’t understand. Why are you trying to help us? I… wronged you.” 

Her head raises, back straightening not with fake propriety, but determination. Her mouth opens, but then somewhere on my left, metal clicks. I spin to see a heavy wooden door cracking open.