Daphne Moonwhisper's Arc

Chapter 2 of 1

Daphne knelt on the clean floor with the salt in her hand. The goddess stood near the door, watching, barefoot, a shell at her throat. Daphne's own necklace pulsed warm against her skin, a pink heart-shaped shell on a woven chain. She unfolded the cloth. She laid out the hair. She started the whisper. Then she stopped. "Why won't he stay?" Daphne asked. "Tell me that, and I'll cast it right." Aphrodite did not move. "The charm pulls a man to the want he feels in you. He will feel it. He will answer it." She paused. "Then the want will change, and he will have nothing to hold." Daphne shook her head. "I want him. I've wanted him for weeks." "You want what he stands for. A room of your own. People who stay." The goddess's voice went flatter, stiller. "You carry a list. Women with the gift. You lost them at the tavern door." Daphne's hand closed over the salt. The list sat in her apron pocket. She had never said it aloud to anyone. "That's not the charm's business." "It is the only business." Aphrodite stepped closer. "Cast it. He comes tonight. He leaves by the new moon. The charm feeds on the wrong hunger, so it starves." Kallista spoke from the doorway. Daphne had forgotten her. The priestess leaned against the frame, arms crossed, a bowl of shells cradled in one hand. "I read four generations of records," Kallista said. "Women cast love charms through this temple for lovers they thought they wanted. Not one line says the charm held." She set the bowl down. "They wanted something the man was standing in front of. A home. A circle. They aimed at his face and missed." Daphne looked at the salt. Then at the hair. Her hand was shaking. The traveler's slow laugh, his ink-stained fingers. She had built a whole life around that laugh. But the laugh was never the thing. She had wanted the chair by his fire to be hers. She had wanted to stop losing people at the door. "If I cast this," Daphne said slowly, "I spend my strongest working on a man who leaves." "Yes," Aphrodite said. Daphne folded the cloth back over the salt. She closed the hair inside it. Her chest hurt, but her hand went steady. "Then I won't waste it." The room did not change. No light, no sign. Aphrodite only grew more still, the way she did when something mattered. "Good," she said. Daphne stood. She touched the warm shell at her throat. "The records," she said to Kallista. "The gifted women. Do any of their names still live near here?" Kallista's mouth moved, almost a smile. "Some do." Daphne put the salt in her pocket, uncast. She had come for a love charm. She left with a different list to fill.