I found a bone outside his door this morning, scorched black in spots. I don’t know how it got here without being noticed. I didn’t dare touch it, only opened the door and walked away. When I came to check on him in the afternoon, he had regained an arm.”

Another entry referenced the Tineroth pendant.

This magic is old. Old beyond the memory of our books and scribes, even beyond the knowledge of the Primus mages. A key and a map to vanished Tineroth. There is truth in every legend. I didn’t refuse the gift, though I have no desire to wear this strange bauble, nor any reason to seek this mad king’s help. He speaks little even now, but his eyes…I will be glad to see him go back to whatever so desperately calls him.”

Imogen rubbed her arms. She promised Niamh she would read her journal. She’d made no promise to seek out Cededa of Tineroth. Her hands, ungloved now, looked innocent enough, and she held them up, watching as sunbeams streamed between her fingers. Not until Niamh’s death had she ever touched another living person with her bare hands. Her affliction might have been easier to shoulder if it was limited to her hands, but death flowed in her veins. Could this king, immune to the very thing that cursed her, truly help?

The light had grown so weak, Imogen had to squint to see the writing. She closed the book and rose from her place. The flowers resting atop the grave waved their petals at her in the gentle breeze, as if to bid her farewell for the evening. Imogen lifted the book and gazed speculatively at the burial mound. “Who is this woman I’m reading about, Mother? She is a stranger to me.” Only the creak of the fir’s limbs and the growing chorus of frogs peeping answered her. She returned the book to her apron pocket and trudged back to the house.

Her dinner that night might well have been a bowl of mud for all the attention she paid to it. Niamh’s history, in the time before Imogen was born, read like the legends she’d filled her ears with in childhood. Lover of one man, savior to another. What had brought her so low in her later years?

Her gaze drifted to the box that still housed the Tineroth pendant. It rested back on its shelf undisturbed. Imogen had left the pendant alone, still unnerved by its odd abilities to come alive at unexpected moments. Her growing curiosity overrode her wariness, and she retrieved the box. Left unlocked by Niamh’s spell, the lid opened easily, revealing the pendant. A metallic wink greeted Imogen, and she carefully lifted the bauble by its delicate chain and held it aloft.

It swung from her fingers, silver catching the candlelight so that it shimmered. At some point, after Imogen dropped it back in the box, the pendant had again reconfigured itself. The serpentine knotwork was now a lacy filigree that reminded her of crossing paths and roads that led to endless loops.