Brown River Queen Read Free

and delivered with no box of fancy chocolates, but I reckon it was an invite all the same,” she said. “Now are ye comin’ inside or not?”
    I took off my hat and ducked under Mama’s doorframe and followed her into the shadows. Mama’s card-and-potion shop is never quite the same from visit to visit. On previous trips, I’d seen shelves filled with jars containing dried birds. I’ve seen neat rows of dead bats, each wearing a tiny mask, nailed in ranks to the walls. Once she even had the place covered with fine nets, inside which a thousand crickets crawled and crept and sang.  
    So I was prepared for anything — except, perhaps, what I saw.
    Mama’s tiny front room was immaculate. The shelves of dried birds were gone, revealing plain wood walls suspiciously bare of cobwebs and charms. A few tasteful paintings hung here and there. Candles in sconces filled the room with a golden, soothing light. The floors were swept and mopped and uncluttered. The black iron cauldron, which had been bubbling with something potently malodorous since the day I’d first set foot on Cambrit, was gone, leaving only a barely visible scorch mark on the floor behind.
    “You aimin’ to catch flies with that open mouth of yours, boy?”
    “Mama. What happened in here?”
    There was a small oak table set in a corner. It sported white lace doilies and a simple red fireflower in a plain crystal vase. Two chairs were pushed neatly beneath the table. Mama pulled out a chair, sat, and motioned for me to do the same.
    “The times is changin’, boy. And I’m changin’ with them. Folks is less appreciative of all that old-timey backwoods mumbo-jumbo these days. ‘Specially well-to-do folks.”
    The candles on the wall were arranged so that half of Mama Hog’s face was kept in shadow. She leaned forward and I could only see her in silhouette, her wild shock of hair lending a faint corona of light to her form.
    “Watch this, boy.”
    She closed her eyes and began to whisper, raising her hands beside her face as she spoke.
    A light formed at the center of the table, right above the fireflower’s blood-red petals. It was only a spark at first, but it flickered and expanded and intensified, rising and growing, first as bright as a candle and then brighter still.
    “Speak,” croaked Mama, opening her eyes.
    The light flared. Within it appeared a skull.
    A child’s skull, pitiful and small and very, very familiar.
    I cussed.  
    The skull clacked its teeth and issued a faint giggle and vanished. The light that held it flickered and went out as well.
    Mama clenched her jaw and crossed her stubby arms over her chest.
    “Buttercup, honey, come out,” I said.
    More giggling came from above and with it the telltale sound of bare little banshee feet scampering away on the rooftop.
    “Mama.”
    “Don’t you Mama me, boy.” She waved a finger in my face. “Look here. My niece left the family trade and took to finding. I ain’t got no other suitable kin. And I ain’t getting any younger. What’s the harm in usin’ that banshee a bit if’n it keeps a roof over our heads and soup in our pots? Ain’t neither free nor cheap, and you knows it.”
    “You taught Buttercup that trick?”
    “She’s always playin’ with that skull anyways, boy. You tried to take it away from her a half dozen times. So have I. But I reckon there ain’t no denying her that thing, and why not gain some good from it?”
    We’d rescued Buttercup from an ancient crypt a little over a year ago, and had been hiding her in plain sight by passing her off as Gertriss’s stunted daughter ever since. Mama sticks a pair of obviously fake wings to her back and claims Buttercup is a rare tame forest sprite. The neighbors snicker and nod and wink knowingly at each other, which is exactly the reaction we’d hoped for.
    The skull is a more recent and disturbing addition to our little family. The sorcerer who held it expressed a desire to see me dead — I’d declined to