Free Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley

the first time she was asked.
But eventuaiiy, as that question or one like it went on being repeated, and
remembering Jeweltongue’s puzzlement about the apparent lack of interest in
Longchance in all [he magical professions, she asked in her turn, “Why do you
think so?”
    But most of those addressed looked uneasy and gave her
little answer. “The old woman was, you know,” they muttered over their
shoulders as they hastened away.
    A very old memory relumed to her: Pansy telling her that her
mother’s perfume smelt of roses. What she had forgotten was Pansy saying that
it was generally only sorcerers who could get roses to grow. And she thought
again of the green threads in the old fencing around Rose Cottage and how she
had never seen any animal cross that boundary. Even their new puppy had to be
let out the front door to do her business; she wouldn’t go out the back.
    But one woman lingered iong enough to say a little more.
She’d been listening, bright-eyed, to Beauty denying, once again, that she was
a greenwitch, and the farm wife who received this news went off shaking her
head. “There, there, Patience; we can’t have everything, and that’s a nice
wreath you bought yourself.” To Beauty she said: “We all know Jeweltongue, and
gettin’ to be your father’s pretty well known, that young scamp Salter, calls
himself a wheelwright, well, I guess nothing’s wrong with his wheels, but he
ain’t never learnt nothing about running a business, and your father had him
all tidied up in a sennight. And your firebrand brother, Lionheart, well, Mr
Horse wise knows how to ride a high-mettled lad, too, and a good thing for both
on ‘em! But you’re always home in your garden, ain’t you? My cousin Sandy had a
couple o’bottles of your pickled beets from your father last winter, which was
sweet of him as she didn’t expect no payment for what she done, but that’s how
we knew you’re home working hard.
    “My! Smell those roses! Don’t it take me back! Funny how the
house has stood empty this long, roses or no roses. It’s a snug little place,
even if it is a iittle far out of town for comfort. We knew when the old woman
disappeared she’d left some kind of lawyers’ instructions about it—but nobody
came, and nobody sent word, and for a long time we just hoped she’d come back,
because we was all fond of her, fond of her besides having a greenwitch in
Longchance again, which we ain’t had long before, nor since neither.” She
nodded once or twice and started to move away.
    Then the greenwitch who had made the fence charms had lived in Rose Cottage! Then it was she who had left the house to them?
But.,. Beauty reached out and caught the woman’s sleeve. “Oh, tell me more.
Won’t you—please?” she begged. “No one wants to talk about it, and I—I can’t
help being interested.”
    “Not that much to tell, when all’s said and done,” said the
woman, but she smiled at Beauty. “Who is it you remind me of? Never mind, it’ll
come to me. We don’t talk about magic much, here in Longchance, because we
ain’t got any. You have to go as far as Appleborough even to buy a charm to
make mended pottery stay mended. We’ve had a few green witches try to settle
around here—never at Rose Cottage, mind—but they never stayed. They said they
had too many bad dreams. Dreams about monsters living in our woods. We’ve never
had so much as a bad-tempered
     
    bear in our woods. In a hard winter the wolves come to Apple
borough, but they don’t come to Longchance. But dreams are important to
greenwitchcs and so on, you know, so they leave.
    “Miffs us, you know? Why not Longchance? We can’t decide if
it’s because we’re specialer than ordinary folk, or worse somehow, you know’.’
But it’d be handy to have our own greenwilch again, and them roses ain’t
bloomed since the old woman left, and so we’ve been hoping, see?”
    “The old woman—tell me about the green witch,” said