FIC: Palmistry [his dark materials, serafina pekkala]
Rating: R
Summary: Witches are born without lifelines. [Serafina Pekkala and Lee Scoresby and mortality]
Disclaimer: Nope.
AN: I have nothing to say for myself.
P a l m i s t r y
This is how to recognize a witch.
(Because you won’t, not if she doesn’t want you to. Daemons can be kept near, black silk can be taken off, hair can be combed free of cloud-pine needles. Stand a witch beside a woman and ask a man; he won’t be able to tell. Not at first glance. You have to know where to look.)
The thing about witches, you see, is that they haven't got any lifelines. Even the ones as old as millenniums, the rest of their bodies nothing but wrinkles within wrinkles - spread their hands out flat along a table, and there’s nothing, blank, just smooth skin.
It has something to do with the way they live and live and live: the line would be too long, maybe, wrapped once, twice, three times around the palm, and so it simply isn’t there at all.
There were witch burnings and that was how the church checked, when the forests and tundra were no longer safe and witches disguised themselves as women, taking to the cobblestone streets, hiding. Because no matter what they did - they smeared their mouths with flour to dull the red and wore lead-soled shoes to stifle their grace - it didn’t work. They were caught because you can’t hide something that isn’t there.
The method of execution promoted by the church was this: tie the witch to her own bough of cloud-pine, and set it alight. And witches aren’t familiar with many human concepts, but they know this one.
(Cruel irony.)
Because Yambe-Akka won’t come to you then. Not if you die like that.
There’s a scar on Serafina’s palm, right where her lifeline should be, and if you’re very careful you’ll feel one under your fingertips every time you meet a witch of a certain age. (They needed lifelines to hide, back then, and so they cut new ones into their daughters’ hands.)
Lee Scoresby is the only man to ever ask her about it:
When they’d met he’d taken her hand over the side of the basket of his balloon, in mid-air and on the way to save Lyra from the child-cutters so she could save them all.
He’d said: “Nice to meet you, ma’am.” He’d said: “Where’d you get this, then?” finger tracing across her palm and along the scar, the place where her lifeline should be but isn’t. And when Serafina had shivered it wasn’t from the cold, because everyone knows witches can’t feel it.
She’d told him a story about broken cloud pine boughs and careless hands that was all the more pretty for not being true.
There’s a superstition among witch-clans about the cut-lifelines and it goes like this: every witch with one will die young, only living long enough to match the length of the scars. There’s a saying that really isn’t one because not enough people say it (if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck…): you have the lifeline of a human and you are a human.
Serafina doesn’t believe it. The lifelines are only pretend, fake. She’s still here.
This is the story Serafina didn’t tell Mr. Scoresby:
Two years after they’d started burning down the forests, smoking witches out like animals, Serafina’s mother had taken her daughters and run.
Serafina sat on a stool with her hair plaited like a human, up to her elbows in ice-water and her sisters a hush in the corner. She’d been barely more than a hundred years old; a child’s body and Kaisa becoming a canary, a peacock, a loon in his nervousness.
But she’d waited on the stool - the human stool, in the human house, with her human braids. (To this day Serafina still remembers how to plait them; three strands, outside over and switch fingers, tie a ribbon on the end.) Her mother had sterilized the knife, blade into burning water.
You had to be very careful when you cut; not so deep as you could tell what was done, not so shallow it healed without a scar. And it would never look like a lifeline, not really; wouldn’t hold up to anything more than a cursory glance. The trick was to hope it wouldn’t have to.
Serafina had pressed closed her eyes, taken her hands out of the water, and lain them palms up on the table.
“So, is this destined too?” Lee Scoresby had asked when she kissed him, the words rough, half-lost in her. “Or could I have said no?”
She’d drawn back, surprised. “You could say whatever you wish, Mr. Scoresby.”
“I’m a-talking about hypothetically now, ma’am,” he went on. “’Cause if everything is destined, how do I know what to do? What if I do wrong and cause a rift in time?” And he’d said this while slowly pulling her back in, hands wrapped around her hipbones.
“I think,” she’d smiled, “that the risk of such a thing is very small.”
And she’d kissed him, hard enough that she could feel the line of teeth through his lips, the raised scars on her palms catching in his hair.
He had kept his hands on her hips the entire time, fingers biting into her skin even as she rode him, dominating the pace. She’d had bruises for days afterwards: four lines wrapping around her hipbones where his fingers had been and two thumbprints, one on either side of her stomach.
Serafina will never, not if she lives for a thousand years, forget the look on his face when she’d come; surprised, like he didn’t think she would. Like she was somehow too ethereal, too otherworldly for something so basic.
(So human.)
There is a rule among witches: don’t fall in love if you can help it, don't mention it if you do. “Love brings nothing but pain, sister,” they say, fingers clasping wrists, seducing the wayward back into the world of cloud-pine and open air. “Your heart can only break so many times, sister,” they say. “It isn’t worth the trouble.”
(There is another rule, unspoken: it is.)
Serafina remembers the whispers when Yambe-Akka had taken her mother. She’d left Fader Coram’s bed and his boat to return to her clan for the death-ritual, still in her Gyptian-clothes when they’d burned the body and crowned her queen, scarlet saxifrage petals in her braided hair.
She’d lain with Lee Scoresby afterwards, hot skin sticking and legs tangled, his hand in her hair, heavy against the back of her neck. She should have gotten up (this was how hearts were broken). She didn’t.
He’d traced the scars on her palms, back and forth, from one end to the other (from the beginning to the end to the beginning to the end to the beginning to the end to the end to the end).
“You’re shaking,” he’d said. And Serafina had held her arms out in front of her, gooseflesh breaking out, skin reacting to a chill it shouldn’t be able to feel.
(Sometimes, if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck.)
Serafina arrived too late to answer Mr. Scoresby’s call for help, and the arrow knocked in her bow was shot through empty air because there was no one left to kill.
She’d bathed his body before she’d spelled it against the elements, rinsing blood and sand off his face, closing his eyes (even though witches burned bodies, witches gave the ashes back to the earth). She’d placed one of the little red flowers in his mouth because she didn’t have a coin.
“I’m sorry,” she’d said to the body, the emotion new and unfamiliar in her chest.
Now the witch-queen flies across worlds, concerning herself with human affairs, with a human war. She ties more layers of silk around her skin than she used to, and wears her hair in braids, three strands, outside over and switch fingers. She loses her breath sometimes when Kaisa flies too far away.
(And maybe the rumours are true, lives spun to be cut, and Serafina has almost come to the end of her lifeline-that-isn’t.)
After the last battle, Serafina gathers Lee Scoresby’s ghost between her fingertips, atoms with atoms and wavering outlines and incorporeality, draped across her cloud pine.
“I killed you, Mr. Scoresby,” she says and she can see the curve of the horizon through his body. She can see the little saxifrage blossom in his mouth, resting on his tongue.
“Nah, ma’am.” He shakes his head, and Serafina shivers from the cold she shouldn’t be able to feel. “That was the Imperial Guard.”
When he kisses her goodbye, she keeps her mouth open against his and holds her breath even though he has none.
This is how you catch a witch:
Spread her hands out flat along a table and look at her palms. There will be nothing but smooth skin, even the ones whose bodies are nothing but wrinkles within wrinkles, because witches don’t have lifelines. They live too long; the line would have to wrap around their palms once, twice, three times, and so it simply isn’t there at all. They can keep their daemons close, take off their black silk, throw away their cloud pine branches, but you can’t hide something that isn’t there.
This is how you kill a witch:
You can take her and tie her to her own cloud pine and set it alight.
Or, you can break her heart.
Serafina is pregnant. Even if it is a boy, she does not think she will have to worry about out-living it.
(fin)