Lavender-Green Magic by Andre Norton

pulled-tight hair made her look older than she was, Holly thought. Her skin was tanned as if she were out in the sun a lot, and she was not pretty. Her chin came to a too-sharp point, and her nose was somehow too long. However, when she smiled at you, you forgot all that.
    â€œYou are Miss Tamar,” Judy spoke.
    â€œI be Tamar,” the girl nodded. “Though there be others hereabouts as have other names for me. Thou art?”
    â€œI’m Judy Wade,” Judy replied promptly. “This is my brother Crock—Crockett. We’re really twins, but nobody ever knows till we tell them. And that’s my sister, Holly. We’ve just come to live at Dimsdale.”
    â€œDimsdale,” repeated Tamar. Now her smile was gone. “Aye, I be forgetting once again. That be not the Dimsdale that was, but the Dimsdale which
is
which thee knows. Still lies the shadow.” She shook her head regretfully. “Still lies the cruel shadow—”
    At last Holly found courage to speak up. “Where is this—this house? Grandma and Grandpa, they never told us about it, or you!” She wondered if she had spoken rudely, because Crock was glaring at her.
    â€œThis house be where it has always been,” Tamar answered,but not with the facts that Holly felt she desperately needed to know. “It was, is, and will be—for it be of the earth and gifts of the earth.”
    Now she was smiling once again. “Ah, ’tis good to have young faces here and guests beneath this roof yet once again. Aye, be that not, Tomkit?” She spoke to the cat as if she expected him to answer. But he only opened his eyes and looked at her sleepily.
    â€œIs Tomkit yours?” Judy wanted to know. “Grandpa found him on the dump, he thought somebody had thrown him there.”
    â€œTomkit be his own puss, he goes where he lists, does what needs to be done,” Tamar replied. “Aye, child, no one may own a puss. It be his choice to live under thy roof, or another’s. Tomkit I know, and he knows me. But never do I say Tomkit be mine to use as I will, for he hath a life of his own, and no man, or woman, or child, may own any life but his own. That be the Law.
    â€œDoes not that Law say plainly: ‘That thou lovest all things in nature. That thou shalt suffer no person to be harmed by thy hands or in thy mind. That thou walkest humbly in the ways of men and the ways of the gods. Contentment thou shalt at last learn through suffering, and from long patient years, and from nobility of mind and service. For the wise never grow old.’” She said those words solemnly, like the grace Grandpa said at meals.
    After a moment she ended: “So mote it be.”
    Those last four words echoed queerly through the room,almost as if they had been repeated very softly by other people. Yet none of the Wades had done so, and certainly Tomkit could not.
    â€œThere must lie truth within the heart,” Tamar said, as she reached again for the cooling pot and lifted it to stand on its three stumpy legs on the table, “lest thy every effort be doomed to failure. And there be truth in this syrup—that will I take book-oath upon.”
    She worked swiftly, lining up a half-dozen small, dull clay jars, and into each she measured by ladlesful the contents of the pot. It was from the thickened syrup that the perfume-sweet smell came.
    â€œWhat is it?” Judy wanted to know. “That smells like perfume and like something good to eat both together.”
    Tamar did not answer at once; it seemed she was deeply intent on the exact measurement of each of those ladlesful that went into the jars. Then she dropped the ladle with a clang into the now-empty pot and gave a sigh of relief.
    â€œ ’Tis done, and well done! What be it, thou asketh, child? It be a syrup of roses, which in turn may be used in many different ways: in sweetmeats for the eating, in cookery, in the making of that to