Homegrown Magic

Chapter 33 Yael

33

Yael

It’s well past sunrise by the time Margot and Yael ride out for Clementine’s Tavern, fortified by a fresh pot of breakfast tea and a scant amount of sleep. After catching Margot up, Yael had washed themself as best they could with her bowl and pitcher, then curled up in a heap in the tattered but beloved armchair, shoving Harvey off the cushion to claim it. They woke only a few hours later with stiff muscles, their hair in absolute chaos, and not particularly sweet smelling, but they were anxious to get going.

There are plans to be made before the Claunecks come to reclaim what they’ve taken.

Yael switches Sweet Wind to a halt by the tavern gate and slips down the steed’s cold clockwork neck while Margot dismounts from Gloom Stalker. A pleasantly cool breeze ruffles their clothing as they stretch out their back. Gone is the blazing heat that beat down upon them in Ashaway just yesterday, even though autumn is weeks away, and while the breeze brings relief, it also reminds them of the ticking clock hanging over Bloomfield. Fighting a flare of panic, Yael makes themself pause for a moment to tilt their face to the cloudless, cornflower sky and breathe in Bloomfield as it exists: ripe wild berries from the bushes in full bloom, and dew-damp oakmoss that clings to old tree trunks, and breaking bread…well, and still a bit of manure, thanks to the fields and the rambling beasts, but that can’t be helped.

“Are you ready for this?” Margot prompts, stirring them back to the moment.

Yael sighs. “Ready enough. I don’t expect a warm welcome.” Deservedly so, after their weeks-long absence and their silence. They’d bargained away their loyalty to Bloomfield along with their loyalty to Margot. That Yael spent six weeks unaware of this decision, only convinced of its correctness, doesn’t absolve them of making the choice in the first place.

But they aren’t going to lie down and wallow in self-loathing and self-pity or drink themself into forgetting again.

They came here to make things right.

Margot nods with her chin toward the propped-open tavern door and the sounds of townsfolk within. “Some may be angry,” she concedes, “or hurt when I tell them the truth I’ve been keeping from them.”

“They’ll understand. You’ve been carrying so much for so long, all alone, and I…I wish I’d been stronger sooner. I’m so sorry, Margot.”

“Yael, I—”

“No, I shouldn’t have…I owe you so much more than an apology. I owe you an explanation,” they say, swiping windblown strands of still-dusty hair out of their eyes with a shirtsleeve. In their haste to recount their findings in the Records Library, Yael has yet to describe the bargain they made with their patron. They’ve no idea how to untangle the events that have only just become clear to them in such a way that Margot might understand. That Margot might forgive…but that’s too much to hope for. “I will explain everything,” they promise, “but the town comes first.”

Margot murmurs her agreement. “Right. The town comes first.”

Yael clutches the satchel they borrowed from Margot, with the stolen file inside. Gathering their breath and their courage, they lead the way into the tavern to face the folk of Bloomfield.

Upon their entrance, a hush falls. Conversations cut short, spoons clattering back into bowls of perpetual summer stew. The faces of the folk Yael saw nearly every day for a season are inscrutable as they peer up at Yael and Margot together. Clementine stands behind the bar counter, of course, and there’s Dara the chicken witch with her sister, Poppy, and Mike with his reading glasses hooked in the neck of his vest, and Tulip from the Care Cottage. Arnav, who was kind and eager enough to trade with them on their first morning in Bloomfield. Beryl from the brewery, and Yvonne from the butchery, and old Estelle, her cheeks as plump as the bread dough she deals in. Rosiee, who welcomed them to every community dinner.

Nobody speaks to welcome them now.

When the stillness grows unbearable, Yael asks, “Have you got a good wine here? I bet you’ve got a good wine.”

Paused with a plate of cinnamon buns balanced on one palm, Clementine nods. “We do. But if you’re accustomed to the stuff they stock in Ashaway, we might not be to your tastes, Yael Clauneck.”

“Just Yael now.” They summon the pale ghost of a smile.

“Well, Yael.” Clementine sets her tray down on the bar. “Pull up a stool, if you’ve come to spend your coins.”

“No coins to spend, I’m afraid.” They lift the book and portfolios they’ve carried in. “But if you’ve got a scone to spare, I believe I’ve brought you something better.”

Though Yael had intended to make their pitch from atop the bar, Clementine’s saner mind prevailed, and she found a spot for them halfway up the staircase that leads to their old room, in full view of the tavern alongside Margot.

“I’ll go first,” Margot says, voice tight with nerves before she clears her throat. “I have something I need to tell you all,” she announces to the gathered crowd, which has grown as word has been spread throughout Bloomfield that a matter of great import was unfolding in the tavern.

“Is it that you and Yael are back together?” Poppy calls out hopefully.

Margot’s fingers twitch, and Yael reaches out to take her hand.

Only to comfort her, of course.

For a brief moment, her fingers are slack in theirs before she tightens her grip. “What I have to say is about Bloomfield. And about Granny Fern. When my grandmother passed, you’ll remember there was uncertainty and fear that my parents might meddle in Bloomfield’s business, as they were the inheritors. Or presumed inheritors, since Granny never left a will. We all knew she wasn’t great with paperwork—”

“That’s an understatement,” Estelle the baker shouts. “I couldn’t get her to fill out a single order form.” This brings a round of laughter from the tavern.

“Exactly. But my parents assured us all that they had no intention of changing things, and we believed them. I believed them. And I don’t think they meant harm upon the town, truly, but…The truth is murkier than that, to say the least. You already know that they lost our fortune, which led to our home being seized by their creditors…”

“The Claunecks,” Yael chimes in, just so Margot doesn’t have to say it.

In the room below, Mike is scowling, and Poppy no longer smiles hopefully. She shares a worried look with Dara while Estelle twists her napkin through her gnarled fingers.

“Right.” Margot presses forward. “I knew they’d been in a good deal of debt. But I didn’t know the extent of it until after they’d landed in the Care Cottage, when I found a letter from the Clauneck Company. That’s when I learned that their debt extended beyond the manor house and the bits of Greenwillow Remedies that remained profitable. The sum they owed…Well, it put Bloomfield itself in danger of seizure.”

Panicked chatter erupts from the crowd as neighbor turns to neighbor, voices tumbling over one another.

“They can’t do that! Can they do that?”

“What’s to become of us all?”

“Where are we to go?”

“Is the company on its way right now?”

“Will the Queens’ Guard come to drive us from our homes?”

“Surely something can be done…”

Yael opens their mouth, but Margot raises her voice over the crowd’s, determined to be heard. “I believed there was something to be done, a deal the Clauneck Company would accept in place of the land. But as I discovered only yesterday, it’s not something I can do. Or rather, I won’t do it, because the harm it will cause is too great to be worth the cost.”

Yael can see the muscles in her throat move as she works to swallow her nerves, along with the tears pooling in the corners of her eyes. They squeeze her hand again.

“I know…I shouldn’t have left it so long without telling you all,” she continues. “But I didn’t want the knowledge to burden you. I was so set on fixing things myself, on living up to Fern’s legacy. But Bloomfield is Granny Fern’s legacy, and she intended it as a place where nobody would have to make their way in the world alone. I should have remembered that and trusted in it. I should have trusted you all.”

“And what about you, Yael?” Mike calls. “Are you here to speak for the Claunecks?”

The crowd murmurs at this, waiting on an answer.

Yael grips the stairway railing, white-knuckled, with the hand that isn’t holding Margot’s. It would’ve been easier to let her explain everything, but they’ve come this far, and they owe the people of Bloomfield this much and more. “Listen, please! I’ll tell you what I’ve found out, but…first, I must apologize as well. To all of you. When I left, I—I didn’t mean to stay away for so long. I may not be a pillar of this community, but Bloomfield has felt like home, perhaps my first home, and I hope you can forgive me for it someday.”

There’s a second stretch of silence just before a plate-sized cinnamon bun slaps them in the chest. It leaves behind a swirl of icing as it thumps to the ground. Yael turns to find the source, eyes wide, and sees Clementine behind the bar counter looking as shocked as they.

“I…I thought you’d catch it!” she stammers, clapping her hands to her pinkening cheeks. “I thought we were doing a whole bit, and you’d catch it, and we’d all have a laugh. And then we could move on to the part where you help us save Bloomfield.”

“Ah yes, that part.” Yael rubs absently at the icing streak only to wipe their now sticky fingers on their trousers, making more of a mess of themself. “Well. As Margot says, she believed that everything that Granny Fern built—the estate in the woods, the greenhouses, the land upon which Bloomfield itself sits—went to her direct heirs in absence of a recorded will, as you all know. And when the Greenwillows let that fortune pour through their fingers, and my family swooped in to recoup the money that, frankly, they could’ve afforded to lose, the company would have been abiding by the laws of Harrow to seize it all. But when I went down to the company Records Library to confirm—”

“ You were working for the Clauneck Company?” Mike cries out from the crowd.

Yael can hardly blame him. “I was. It was a very big mistake. The biggest I’ve made in my life—if one of many. But listen. There was no official record of the company claiming Bloomfield. Because it was never the company’s land to claim.” Now Yael slips the file out of their satchel, holding the key piece of parchment they found inside it up in view of the townsfolk. “ This is Granny Fern’s will. A will that supposedly didn’t exist, but very much does. Its signing was witnessed by a clerk in Olde Post weeks before Margot came here to care for her grandmother. While Fern left a good deal of her wealth to her daughter and son-in-law, the land this town sits on was meant for Margot to inherit and care for, along with the greenhouses and the estate where the manor and cottage sit. Margot lost it all under false pretenses, and the Claunecks knew it. I daresay they’re responsible for it.”

In the crowd, Yvonne calls to Margot, “Fern never told you about any of this?”

She shakes her head. “By the time I came back to Bloomfield, Granny was gone. And she never liked to dwell on the future, anyhow. I wish that I’d asked, I should have asked, but…I suppose I wasn’t prepared to consider a world without her.”

“What matters is this: Margot never should have been held responsible for her parents’ debts. It’s against the laws of Harrow. And while we may not be able to prove that the Claunecks had a hand in the will’s disappearance from local records—though we might try tracking down this clerk from Olde Post—we can prove by their possession of the will that they’re wrongfully threatening Bloomfield. And were we to make this known throughout the kingdom, it may just prompt present and former clients to take a closer look at their accounts.”

“So we’re not going to lose Bloomfield?” Tulip asks.

The crowd erupts with excited chatter.

“Not today,” Margot raises her voice to assure them. “And Yael and I have spoken about how to make sure that nothing and no one can threaten our home like this again. The land shouldn’t be owned by one person; it should belong to all of us, in equal measure. I know that’s what Granny Fern would’ve wanted and likely would’ve set up herself, if she’d known how. If she’d had more time.”

“Is that possible?”

“It is with a community land trust,” Yael says. “It’ll take some doing, but I happen to have studied law at Auximia. Granted, it was more of the potatoes-into-gold and gold-into-potatoes type of law, but I know enough to help. And I will. Whenever I’m not working in the greenhouses, of course.”

“Did you mean it?” Margot asks as they trot side by side down the forest road, out of the town proper and toward her cottage. “About wanting to work in the greenhouses again?”

They’d lingered at Clementine’s for a long while, making furious plans with the townsfolk over a fresh batch of blackberry apple cake—and all right, yes, wine and ale—emerging to the lengthening shadows of late afternoon. Yael’s not sure what to do about the night ahead of them. Ride back to the tavern to beg Clementine for their old room, they suppose. Perhaps she’ll let them sleep behind the bar counter, if it’s been taken since. But it seemed right to see Margot home first. Despite all their plotting in the early hours of the morning, there’s so much left to say.

Beginning with this. “Yes, I meant it. I’ve got some moves to make before we’re out of this completely, but without the constant threat of the Claunecks coming to seize the shop, I thought you might be able to spend more time on your remedies—perhaps one that might help your parents—without my parents breathing down your neck about that vile potion.”

“I see.” Margot stares at the road ahead as she contemplates.

“And anyhow, I’ve come to love growing things. I should warn you, I haven’t got a scrap of magic left in me, and no hope of getting it back. But I never had much to begin with. And I’ll learn everything I can from you first, if you’ll have me. As an assistant, or…or an apprentice, if that suits,” they assure her. Yael dares not hope for anything but that she accepts their help. Surely, that would be enough.

“Wait, go back a moment,” Margot says. “What do you mean, no magic? How does a warlock lose their magic?”

The only explanation is the full explanation, and so they recount their time in Ashaway in full, beginning with their lie. “That night, on the balcony—I never blamed you for any of it, Margot, I swear. I thought that…I thought I was saving you. From living under the power of the Claunecks, or living without Bloomfield. I thought that any life we might have together could only cost you everything. I wanted to spare you from that, and from the burden of choosing your own ruin. It was wrong. Margot, I was so wrong.”

Margot shakes her head and starts to speak. “I thought this might be the case. Or at least I hoped it might be when I saw the daisy.”

They draw in a sharp breath, remembering the flower they’d set on Margot’s pillow in the inn just as they left for the masquerade. Spell or no, how could they ever have forgotten?

“But then I never heard from you after, and I really began to doubt…”

“Wait,” Yael insists. “Please, let me tell you everything.” And they do. They recount their desperate, regrettable bargain with Clauneck; the weeks they spent believing that their decision to stay was all their own, and that Ashaway and the Clauneck Company were where they belonged; their visit to the perfumery greenhouse, and the secret garden of the girl from the Rookery; the chain reaction of choices it had set off inside of them, which soon brought down the outpost walls of Clauneck’s spell, thrusting Yael back to themself; how Clauneck had withdrawn their patronage for good, leaving Yael as alone as they’d ever been, and more certain of their place and purpose in this world than they’d ever been.

“I see,” Margot whispers once again when they’ve finished, barely audible above the birdsong.

“But I don’t want you to think that I’m making excuses,” Yael hurries to say. “It was cowardly beyond measure for me to make that bargain.”

“Well…maybe. But it was brave of you to leave again.”

Yael flips the switch to stop Sweet Wind just before the turnoff to the cottage path, and Margot follows suit with Gloom Stalker, watching them curiously. With a deep breath, they confess, “I have never been brave, Margot. I have always walked the path carved out by the Claunecks and faulted myself when I stumbled. But denying the life I was born into was no help to anybody, and neither was hating myself for it. So I am here to make things right, as best I can. And…and I am here to tell you what I should’ve told you in Ashaway, had I been brave enough: that I love you, Margot Greenwillow. It needn’t change anything between us, because whether you can forgive me or not, I’m going to stay, and I’m going to be of use. But I love you all the same.”