Mother Marrow

SPOILER WARNING

**Mother Marrow** is a faerie hag who lives in Elfhame.

## Physical Description

Her fingers are twiggy, her hair is the color of smoke, and her nose is like the blade of a scythe. She also has clawed feet, like those of a bird of prey. She's old and powerful enough that the air around her seems to crackle with the force of her magic. Around her throat she wears a necklace of rocks, each bead carved with whorls that seem to catch and puzzle the eye. She wears heavy robes. Her voice is a purr. Her eyes are as hard and cold as the night.

## Personality

She does not use the language expected of the Folk when she address King Cardan. She calls the cloth she brings him a gift and a rare prize. She is sly and tricky.

## Biography

* The Wicked King
* The Queen of Nothing

Mother Marrow attends King Cardan at the Palace and brings him a gift of special cloth. It's blacker than the night sky, so black that it seems to drink the light around it. She and her daughter wove it of spider silk and nightmares. She claims that a garment cut from it can turn a sharp blade, yet be as soft as a shadow against your skin.

She tells Cardan that she is older than his father and mother, older than the stones of the palace, as old as the bones of the earth. Mother Marrow asks for Cardan's word that he will accept the cloth. Jude recognizes that it's a trick. Jude tells Mother Marrow that Cardan will only accept the cloth if it is freely given. Cardan asks him what the trick was and she tells him that she would have placed a geas that would allow him to marry only a weaver of the cloth, herself or her daughter.

Cardan is blissfully unconcerned and asks Mother Marrow where her daughter is. Cardan tells the daughter that he would make a terrible husband, but asks her if she would like a dance. At this point, Mother Marrow drags her daughter away.

Mother Marrow is seen later when Jude goes to the Mandrake Market. Mother Marrow offers Jude to come and sit by her fire. She then offers Jude soup. She tells Jude that if she had not cost her daughter her dreams she might actually like Jude. She then asks Jude why she came to the market and Jude replies that she came for a dress, she also tells Mother Marrow that her daughter might have not liked “a princess of the sea for a rival." Jude then buys a dress from her using the pearl earrings from the Undersea. Mother Marrow gives Jude a walnut, Jude is hesitant to take it which makes Mother Marrow ask, “Don’t you trust me, girl?” To which Jude replies, “Not as far as I can throw you.” Mother Marrow tells Jude that she does not like her but she likes the sea Folk less. Which Jude takes as her cue to leave.

Mother Marrow and Severin meet with Jude who wants to know if there is any way to break the curse on Cardan. Mother Marrow tells her that the difficulty is that Jude already knows how to end the curse. Jude is looking for a loophole so she does not have to kill Cardan. She says that while Jude may want another answer, "magic is seldom so convenient as to conform to our preferences." Mother Marrow and Severin also tell Jude how the Court of Teeth was planning on tricking her into binding herself and Cardan to them.