Sister Margaret arrived on a Thursday, exactly on time, which is how I knew she was nervous.
She has never been early, and never late. When I was a child, she told me early was a kind of pride and late was a kind of theft. I watched her come up our road, walking very straight, with a walking stick she didn't need. Her hair under the veil had gone whiter.
Behind me, Noctavia sat with a book she hadn't read a page of since breakfast. She had changed her clothes twice. She had also asked me, in the voice of a woman asking about the weather, whether her tail looked "too much."
"It's perfect," I said.
"Idiot. I'm only asking because I don't want her to think I'm a bad host."
I'm scared she won't like me.
I opened the door.
Sister Margaret stopped at the edge of the doorstep and looked at me for a long moment. It was the face she wore when I came home from my first battle with a bandaged arm and a proud smile, and she couldn't decide whether to hug me or scold me.
She hugged me. It was brief and stiff, and she smelled like candle wax and old paper.
"You've gotten thin," she said into my shoulder.
"I've gotten married. It's very good for the appetite."
She stepped back and looked past me. Noctavia stood in the middle of the kitchen with her back perfectly straight, her tail held out stiffly behind her as if she'd been told not to move it. Her ears were already pink.
Nobody spoke. Noctavia's eyes flicked to the doormat, as if it were the first test of a war council.
Sister Margaret, who has wiped her feet at every door since before I was born, wiped them with grave care. Left. Right. Left again, to be sure.
"There," she said to no one in particular.
Noctavia let out a breath she'd clearly been holding. "...Good."
Sister Margaret had no idea she'd just passed anything. I decided not to tell either of them.
I have seen wars start with less.
Noctavia had made tea very carefully, with the good cups, evenly sliced bread, and a dish of Millbrook salt that had taken her an hour to place.
"I warmed the bread," she said.
"She bought the bread," I said.
"I warmed it."
"Then thank you," said Sister Margaret, "for warming it." She did not drink her tea. She looked at the cups, the salt, and the jar of yellow flowers on the windowsill. "It's very small, this house."
"It's cozy."
"There is no chapel."
"There's a garden."
"There is no bell, Elise."
"There's a chicken," I offered.
Noctavia made a sound that might have been a laugh and hid it in her cup.
Sister Margaret folded her hands on the table. I knew that gesture. It was what she did before telling a student they had failed.
"You are the Hero," she said quietly. "There are hymns about you. And you are living with a crooked chimney, planting tomatoes. I only want to understand. You cried over a dead sparrow as a child. Now you've chosen to share your life with..." She searched for a word. "...her. A very powerful, very old creature. It would not be hard for someone like that, even without meaning to, to bewitch..."
"Say it," said Noctavia. Her tail had gone still. "The Council used those words too."
Sister Margaret's face went pale, but she didn't look away. "Yes. Those words."
"Then ask her." Noctavia crossed her arms. "Ask what I did to make her love me."
Sister Margaret turned to me. "Elise. Tell me honestly. What does she do to you?"
"Well," I said. "This morning she called me an idiot. Then she said I looked ridiculous in my apron. Then she called me hopeless for putting the salt in the wrong place." I couldn't help smiling. "It was a really good morning."
Silence.
Sister Margaret looked from me to Noctavia like a woman staring at a theorem that did not work. Noctavia's ears had gone the color of ripe cherries.
"It's not enchantment," she said, strangled. "She was like this before. She came to my fortress and asked me to hit her again."
"It was an excellent hit," I said.
"STOP SAYING THAT."
A small hand smacked the back of my head. I was so happy I nearly cried.
Sister Margaret picked up her tea and drank all of it in one swallow.
"I need some air," she said.
She found the tomato.
She walked straight out the back door and stopped in front of the little patch of dirt with its single stubborn sprout and the stick propped beside it.
"A general stepped on it," I explained. "A demon general. She was very sorry."
Sister Margaret said nothing. A breeze moved the edge of her veil. In the kitchen window, a small figure was pretending to wash a clean cup.
"My brother was a baker," she said at last.
I blinked. "I didn't know that."
"He had a shop in Greywater. He made a cinnamon bun on Sundays. He joined the garrison because they were short of men. He said he'd be home before the harvest." She kept her eyes on the sprout. "You held the bridge six days, Elise. I know it was six. The hymn is wrong. But he was in the last squad you carried across, and he said you were the first soldier who asked his name."
I couldn't speak.
"I have spent every year since hating the things that took him," she said. "I was very good at it. I was good at it for so long that I forgot how to stop. And then you wrote that you were happy." Her eyes were wet, though her voice was steady. "I don't know where to put that."
I stepped forward. She raised a hand.
"I am not here to bless this marriage. I want that to be clear. You are fed, and healthy, and very well. But I still believe you would be safer at home."
"This is home," I said gently. "The cathedral is where I grew up, and I'll always love it. But this is where I live."
She looked at the cabin for a long time, crooked chimney and all.
"I will stay for dinner," she said. "Not the night. And I will not eat anything that glows."
"Nothing in this house glows," I promised, having forgotten the tomato incident entirely.
Noctavia had made stew. Sister Margaret said a short, exact prayer, and Noctavia sat through it with her ears down as if it were a spell she didn't know how to block. Then Sister Margaret took one small bite.
"It needs salt," she said.
Noctavia went rigid. "I'm sorry?"
"You have excellent salt. Why is it not in the stew?"
A long pause. Then, with a face of stunned hope, Noctavia passed the dish across the table.
Sister Margaret did not smile. But she ate two bowls.
At the door, she touched my cheek. "Write to me. Often."
Then she turned to Noctavia, who stood by the stove with her arms wrapped around herself, trying not to look like she'd been waiting.
"The stew was acceptable," said Sister Margaret.
"...Thank you."
"Do not thank me. I haven't changed my mind."
"I didn't ask you to."
"Good."
"Good."
Neither of them smiled. Neither of them looked away, either.
When the lantern had vanished down the road, I closed the door and hugged Noctavia from behind.
"She hates me," Noctavia muttered.
"She asked for salt, in your house, at your table. That means she stayed."
I waited. Her hands settled over mine.
"...Idiot," she said, very quietly.
That night I added two lines to the dictionary. "Acceptable" means "I'm trying." "Thank you" means "I'm trying, too."
"You spelled 'acceptable' wrong," said Noctavia, reading over my shoulder.
"I did not."
"There's an extra c."
I checked. There wasn't.
Behind us, the yellow flowers swayed in the draft. Far up on the northern ridge, a tiny light flickered and went out.
I didn't see it. I was busy being corrected by my wife, and I have never been so happy to be wrong.