Veilmint

Overview

Veilmint is a wild mint of the places where the world wears thin: old shrines, boundary roads, crossroads stones, and the thin places at which the Veil lies close. Those who must cross the Veil chew a leaf to keep their minds on where they are going, since the Veil answers a traveller's intent; and every crosser learns that a second leaf does the opposite of the first.

Appearance

A low, creeping mint with square stems and small, paired, rounded leaves, grey-green and softly hairy, silvered on the undersides so that a patch shimmers when the wind turns it. In late summer it carries small whorls of pale grey-violet flowers up its stems. Crushed, it gives a cold, sharp, peppery scent stronger than any garden mint, that clears the head and makes the eyes water; it tastes of the same, with a bitter finish.

Habitat and Range

It grows in poor, trodden ground where people have stood and turned back for a long time: at old shrines, way-markers, boundary stones, and crossroads, and above all at thin places, where it grows thickest. It is scattered across the cradle-web and the far side alike, and travellers say a patch of it on an empty road means a thin place near.

Abilities

A leaf chewed slowly sharpens the mind and steadies it on one aim, which is what the Veil's Law of Intention rewards. A crosser who chews it holds a course longer. More than a little does the reverse: the sharpness turns to a light, drifting clarity in which every thought seems equally worth following, and in the Veil that is the beginning of drift.

Life Cycle

It spreads by creeping roots into broad mats and is very hard to kill. It dies back in winter and returns in spring.

Uses and Dangers

Crossers, guides, and the Kindred circuits that walk thin roads carry a few dried leaves among their focus anchors, with the map and the mantra, and chew one at the threshold. Healers use it as a common remedy for headache and fainting. The danger is the second leaf, and the third: those who chew it to feel bolder lose their way faster, and guides tell of crossers who went into drift chewing.

Lore and Belief

Folk say Veilmint grows where the dead walk the roads, and some will not pick it at shrines. Crossers say "one leaf to go, none to stay": chew one going in, and none while inside. The Salvage Peoples plant it at their own way-marks to find them again, and some say it marks every thin place, which is not so: it marks where people have stood, which is often but not always the same.

Smugglers who use the thin places as hidden roads carry Veilmint by the sack, and the songs of the boundary roads tell of the smuggler who chewed one leaf too many and is still walking somewhere in the fog with his cargo.

Where It Appears

• Overview: Plants and Fungi