Read Online To Bear an Iron Key by Jackie Morse Kessler - Free Book Online

with a massive iron cauldron squatting over the blackened fire pit and a small bristle broom to clear away ashes. Overhead, attached by large hooks, hung copper pots of varying sizes. In the center of the kitchen was a wooden table, with four matching chairs.
    On the table was a piece of paper, held in place by a smooth stone.
    Bromwyn felt her stomach drop to her knees. She stepped into her grandmother’s kitchen.
    “Winnie?” Rusty called. “Should you be doing that when there’s no one home?”
    “This from the thief,” she muttered as she went straight for the table. She picked up the paper, and as she feared, it was a note addressed to her, written in her grandmother’s spidery script.
    Girl,
No, I am not here, so you can stop hoping that it will be as simple as you begging me to take back the Key. Gilla from Mooreston needed me to assist her with a problematic birth, so that is where I will be by the time you read this. As I am half a day’s journey from you, your thief friend will have to deal with the consequences of his selfish action all by his lonesome.
But that will not be the case, will it? No, you will want to help him, because he is your friend and you have a good heart, no matter what some people in this small village may think.
Know this: I will not take back the Key. I am done playing Guardian to the fair folk. After three score years of the role, I am all too happy to step aside for younger blood. And I suspect that the fey have become somewhat bored with me. They will be most surprised to see the new Key Bearer—and surprised fey are much less dangerous than bored fey.
Tell your friend to use all of the charm of his silver tongue when he speaks with the King and Queen. You should school him in the ways of the fey, and in what to expect. And tell him that the Witch of the Way of Death most humbly suggests that he consider a new pastime. Not all whose pockets he picks will be as lenient as I.
As for you, girl, keep your temper. Keep your wits about you even as you curtsey to the fey King and Queen. And keep in mind what they value most. Should you be successful, you will keep your magic.
I will be back after the Door has opened tonight. I expect to see things well under control. You are to be the Wise One of Loren. In my absence, you will act the part.
N.
    “Fire and Air,” Bromwyn whispered.
    She did not feel her knees give way—one moment she was standing and reading; the next, she was seated on the floor, hearing her heart beating wildly in her chest, beating the way the fey drums would be beating later that night in the dark of the forest. She thought she heard Rusty calling her name, but she could not answer him.
    And if you succeed, you will keep your magic.
    Her test of Witchcraft was upon her. Here, now.
    And she had no idea what she was supposed to do.

 
     
     

    SEEKING HELP
     
    “Winnie? Winnie, what’s wrong?”
    Bromwyn tried to catch her breath, but it was elusive as smoke. How could this be her test? She did not even understand what “this” was—it had been Rusty who had stolen the Key; Rusty, therefore, was the Guardian, not she. So what, exactly, was her test?
    “Right, now you’re scaring me. Can you hear me?”
    She blinked once, and then she turned her head to stare at her friend. Rusty was crouching next to her, waving his hand in front of her eyes.
    “Winnie?” His voice sounded small and scared.
    “Yes,” she said.
    He breathed out a “whew,” and he grinned at her. “You scared me! You all but fainted, and then you wouldn’t answer me. I thought maybe your granny had put a spell on her house against trespassers.”
    Her grandmother had, in fact, done such a thing—a particularly inventive and nasty spell at that. But Bromwyn saw no reason to mention it to Rusty. Instead she said, “Grandmother left me a note, and it … startled me.”
    Rusty plucked it from her numb fingers, and as he read it, his face blanched until he was whiter than the village