Part Two: The Bone Key, the Tea Ritual, and a Memory That Wasn’t Mine

 

The tea was already poured when I sat down, though I hadn’t seen the woman move. Three mismatched cups sat on a lace doily that looked like it had survived a few centuries and maybe a fire or two. Mine was chipped porcelain painted with violets — the kind of cup you’d find in a dead aunt’s kitchen. The steam curled upward in a perfect spiral, and it smelled like lavender, apple peel, and something earthy I couldn’t place.

“Drink,” the woman said, still knitting, her needles flashing like tiny swords. “You’ll need it to remember.”

Belladonna curled up on the windowsill with a huff. The crows had scattered, save one, now perched on the mantle. It stared at me, unblinking.

“Remember what, exactly?” I asked, staring at the tea.

She stopped knitting. Looked up. And that’s when it hit me — her eyes. I’d seen them before. Not hers, specifically, but the shape, the color, the shadow behind them. They were the same eyes I’d seen in a mirror once, after a dream I couldn’t shake. Eyes that belonged to someone who had survived a fire and remembered the smell of every burning thing.

“Drink,” she said again. “You’ll remember her name, and what she gave you.”

I took a sip.

The world tilted.

Not like a spin — more like the room took a breath and I fell into the exhale.

Suddenly I wasn’t sitting in the cottage anymore. I was barefoot in a field of heather, the sky pink with early dawn. My hands were smaller. Younger. I held a bundle of herbs and a carved bone charm in my fist. Someone was calling my name — not Brenna, but a name I hadn’t heard in lifetimes.

“Aven,” the voice said. “Aven, come back before the mist rolls in.”

I turned.

There she was. The woman in the cottage — younger, hair braided with wildflowers, a leather satchel over her shoulder. She smiled at me, and something in my chest cracked open like spring ice.

“You were my sister,” I whispered.

Back in the cottage, I gasped.

I nearly dropped the teacup.

The woman was watching me, gently now. Her knitting forgotten.

“You’re beginning to remember,” she said.

I nodded, dizzy. “Aven. That was me. Or… is me?”

“You’ve been her more than once. But not lately.”

Belladonna yawned. “Told you the crows would explain.”

I blinked at the bird on the mantle.

“Don’t look at me,” it cawed. “I just deliver the keys.”

The woman leaned forward. “Now comes the work. The threads are unraveling faster than ever. Something’s cutting them. Severing lines that should remain tied.”

I looked down. The red thread was coiled around my wrist now, like a bracelet.

“What do I have to do?” I asked.

She smiled, and it wasn’t comforting. “Find the places where the memory’s been buried. Stitch them back. And beware the ones who carry scissors.”

The kettle shrieked again, though no one moved to silence it.

I reached for the bone key.

It was warm now.

Behind me, the door creaked open — but not the one I’d entered through. This one led down. Into the dark.

The woman raised her cup in salute.

“Go on, Aven. Time to remember the rest.”

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