The Good People

‘Some folk are forced to the edges by their difference.’ Maggie brought an unthinking hand up to her scar. ‘But ’tis at the edges that they find their power.’

She remembered the dead ember hidden in the pocket of Martin’s greatcoat. Embers carried for protection. Where had it come from? From what hearth, what fire?

no plant is a poison to the one who knows how to use it.’

That in some irreparable way the world was changing, that it spun away from her, and that in the whirl of change she was being flung to some forsaken corner.

The herbs I pull are taken with prayer.

as though she were in that room again

There were those who did not catch to the fabric of the world.

Time no longer seemed to tread past in measured steps, but flung forward and back.

‘An old woman without a man is the next thing to a ghost. No one needs her, folk are afraid of her, but mostly she isn’t seen.’