Chapter 5 #2
I swung to face him; a customer had never offered to help gather supplies before. I nearly reminded him of the spectacularly poor navigation skills he’d demonstrated during our first meeting, but the earnestness in his expression stayed the teasing remark before it escaped.
I paused with my fingers curled around the scarlet fabric of my cloak, my pulse fluttering strangely at the thought of his company. “That won’t be necessary.”
I spoke without turning towards him, afraid that if I met those dark, quietly pleading eyes directly, my resolve might dissolve entirely. Even without looking, I could still feel his hopeful gaze fixed upon me, dangerously difficult to refuse.
In an uncharacteristic moment of weakness, I found myself tempted to accept.
Yet no good could possibly come from allowing a handsome, mysterious hunter I would only know for a handful of fleeting weeks to disrupt the carefully ordered solitude of my life.
I always worked alone. Before meeting Gabe, I had preferred it that way.
He stepped closer, boots soft against the wooden floorboards.
“Please, Cecelia.” Something about hearing my name in his voice made my heartbeat stumble.
“I know I’m likely slowing you down more than helping,” he admitted with reluctant honesty.
“But if something happened to you out there because of a request I made…” He lowered his gaze briefly. “I wouldn’t forgive myself for it.”
The quiet sincerity of the confession pierced straight through the last of my resistance.
Not politeness or obligation, but from what my hindered emotions could tell, genuine concern, simply because he couldn’t bear the thought of me wandering alone into the storm on his behalf.
The realization stirred something warm and frighteningly tender inside my chest, crumbling the last of my stubborn defenses.
I released a soft sigh and found myself nodding. “Very well,” I conceded. “Please wait for me outside the bakery. I need to check on my grandmother before we leave.”
His smile widened fully for perhaps the first time since we’d met, bright enough to soften the solemn sharpness of his features into something unexpectedly handsome. Relief and excitement flickered openly across his face before he quickly attempted—and failed—to compose himself again.
Yet a noticeable spring entered his step as he headed for the front door. I found myself staring after him several moments too long before remembering my purpose.
Shaking my head firmly, I turned back towards the kettle still resting near the hearth, steam no longer curling from the spout. I tested the water temperature gently with the back of my hand. Pleasantly warm now, just the way Grandmother preferred it.
I arranged a tray with tea and the few remaining lemon scones. Gabe must have enjoyed them more than he’d initially admitted; only two remained upon the plate. My lips twitched upward faintly.
Nutmeg followed close behind as I carried the tray, sniffing curiously at its contents before apparently deciding that she would have better success with Gabe and flitting back to the kitchen.
I carefully balanced it before quietly knocking on Grandmother’s door.
When no answer came, I eased it open a crack and peered inside to see whether she had fallen asleep again.
Instead, I found her sitting upright against her pillows looking more awake than she had in days.
Somehow she had managed to scoot herself into a half-seated position, blankets pooled around her waist while she watched the doorway with unmistakable expectation, as though she had been patiently awaiting my arrival.
“I heard voices from the kitchen,” she said by way of greeting. “Do we have a guest?”
“My apologies, did we wake you?”
She effortlessly sidestepped my obvious attempt to avoid the question. “Only my curiosity…especially as one of those voices sounded rather deep and distinctly male.” A mischievous glint lit her eyes, lending an unexpected healthy glow to her otherwise pale features.
Heat immediately rose into my cheeks. “It was merely…a customer taking refuge from the rain.”
“One whom you also invited to tea?” Leave it to Grandmother to have no qualms about asking such deeply personal questions.
“He requested an enchanted confection,” I explained briskly. “We’re going into the forest together to forage briarthorn berries, the final ingredient to bake an enchanted berry tart.”
Foraging was such an everyday occurrence I hoped the matter would be settled. I turned quickly towards the door, intending to escape before the conversation wandered somewhere even more dangerous. Unfortunately, my pace proved no match for Grandmother’s curiosity.
“Is he handsome?”
I stopped so abruptly I nearly sloshed tea over the edge of the tray. I hastily set it down on the nightstand. “Is he…” I sputtered. “Why would that possibly matter?”
She watched me with utterly unrepentant delight brightening her wrinkled countenance. “It certainly makes the task easier.”
I gaped at her in disbelief. “Are you encouraging me to fancy a customer?” Grandmother not only knew about my adamant disinterest in romance, but had always been deeply concerned with propriety.
“We can serve them and admire them from afar,” she replied innocently. “Back in my youth, I flirted shamelessly with many handsome young men who came seeking magical desserts.”
Her expression softened into something wistful and distant, as though memory itself had briefly carried her somewhere warm and long ago forgotten.
I frowned suspiciously down at the teapot on the tray. There was definitely something in the tea today. I sighed. “First Nutmeg, now you. Truly, it’s as though neither of you know me at all if you think I’m suddenly courting a stranger.”
Grandmother’s amusement faded slightly at that, though gentleness remained in her gaze. “And what if you chose to?”
The question unsettled me far more than it should have.
The complications of falling in love already seemed impossibly troublesome under ordinary circumstances.
Attempting such a thing while scarcely capable of feeling emotions sounded even more disastrous.
Friendships would already be painful enough to lose once the bakery inevitably moved on beneath the next full moon. Romance seemed objectively worse.
I wasn’t entirely certain even the strongest spells could fully erase the devastation of losing someone beloved.
Though the grief surrounding my parents’ deaths had long since been dulled and scattered amongst countless enchanted recipes, I still possessed factual memory enough to know the experience had once been deeply unpleasant.
Not something I would willingly choose to endure again.
“I simply don’t see the appeal,” I said at last, focusing carefully on pouring her tea. “People leave, the bakery moves on. Feelings only complicate things unnecessarily. And since my ability to feel shrinks with each day, love is impossible.”
She tilted her head thoughtfully but didn’t respond.
Though I cared for Grandmother as much as I was able, I knew ours was not the same effortless closeness shared between many grandmothers and granddaughters.
Still, sometimes I found myself marveling at how different our relationship had become compared to when I first arrived at the bakery all those years ago…
back when I’d still possessed every emotion in painful abundance.
Prior to living here, Grandmother had existed more as a story than a person.
The bakery only occasionally transported within traveling distance of our tiny village, and during those rare visits she would appear like some wandering fairytale figure before vanishing again beneath the next full moon.
With each visit, she appeared markedly older than the last time I’d seen her—her steps slower, her hair more heavily streaked with silver, more frequent sitting to catch her breath.
My mother often looked quietly pained whenever Grandmother’s name arose in conversation so I learned early not to ask questions. At the time, I thought her sorrow strange; I didn’t yet understand how deeply emotions could wound a person…not until the epidemic came.
Even now the memory remained fractured and dreamlike in places. I remembered waking one night drenched in sweat while moonlight swam hazily across the ceiling above me. My thoughts drifted in and out beneath the fever’s crushing weight while my parents moved constantly through the tiny cottage.
Cool cloths against my forehead. The bitter taste of precious medicine. My mother’s trembling hands trying to coax me to drink water. My father feeding another log into the hearth long after midnight. Their whispered conversation when they thought I slept.
“We only have enough left for one more dose.”
“Use it for her.” It was the last words I heard before darkness swallowed everything again.
When I finally awoke, it was to a world where nothing would ever be the same for me again.
The fever had broken sometime during the night, leaving behind only exhaustion and a strange hollow stillness.
Weak sunlight filtered through the cottage windows, the only measurement of the time that had passed while I drifted in and out of consciousness.
At first, I thought the quiet meant my parents had gone outside. But there were no footsteps, no voices. No movement within the cottage at all. Only silence, and the absence of those I loved.
Grief consumed me with a violence I had never imagined possible, hollowing me from the inside out until even breathing felt unbearable.
Worse still was the terrible guilt twisting through every thought: I had survived because my parents had used the last of the medicine to save me instead of themselves.
I sat alone on the cottage floor unable to stop shaking, surrounded by the lingering scent of herbs and sickness while the world continued onward as though nothing had changed at all.