Chapter 28 Margot
28
Margot
Everything about the cottage is the same as Margot left it. Except, of course, that Yael is gone. Margot stands in the doorway, early-morning light streaming in, and considers the small room in front of her.
While they lived in Bloomfield, Yael had slept at the inn up until the last few nights, but they were frequently in Margot’s cottage before that for a cup of tea, which Margot always made, or to bring a treat from the bakery, or to borrow one of Margot’s books. Their scarf—a green one Margot had knitted in preparation for fall, even as the weather warmed by the day—is still draped over the back of a chair, awaiting cooler nights. The small strawberry plant they’d proudly grown from a runner sat on the windowsill above the kitchen sink. The last teacup they’d drunk from that morning before leaving for Ashaway was still on the kitchen table beside Margot’s.
Her eyes linger on the butter-gold teacup painted with bumblebee designs. Yael had loved that particular cup for some reason. They would sit at Margot’s table, hands wrapped around it, eyes sparkling as they told Margot a story or teased her gently about the lumpy pancakes she could never quite get right, though they claimed they preferred her pancakes to Clementine’s.
Margot swallows thickly.
“You are not going to get sentimental over a teacup,” Margot commands herself as she marches into the cottage, closing the door behind her. “Or Yael gods-be-warned Clauneck.”
She grabs the cup, fighting the urge to throw it against the wall. Or to rest her lips against the edge where Yael’s lips had been not that many days ago.
Making a disgusted noise at both herself and the ring of mold growing inside the cup, she sets it into the sink and drops down in the closest chair. A poof of dust rises up. Really? Dust? After just a week of being gone? Ridiculous. Margot’s bones ache from the all-night coach ride from Ashaway, and though she managed not to weep as she climbed into the nearly full carriage headed for Olde Post, she never did get to sleep, and had to walk the last two miles from the Queens’ Road through the outpost walls and to the doorstep of the cottage. Now a deep weariness sets upon her.
Did Yael sleep last night? she wonders. What are they doing now? Have they effortlessly slipped back into life with the Claunecks? Do they think of her as much as she thinks of them?
Will she ever see them again?
Margot plucks the everlasting daisy from her pocket, resting it on the table and swallowing against the lump in her throat.
It doesn’t matter. Margot simply can’t afford to let her thoughts linger on Yael Clauneck when she has so much work to do.
Another sob rises up to choke Margot, and she lets this one out as she stands to fetch a clean spoon from the cupboard and the last jar of heartbreak-healing jam. Perhaps a spoonful will make her feel better. Anything to take away this pain.
The jam is sweet on her tongue, coating her teeth with sugar and sliding in a lump down her throat.
It does nothing to ease the ache in Margot’s heart, though, which just makes her feel worse. How is she ever supposed to make the Natural Caster Potion when she can’t even get a simple thing like heartbreak-healing jam right?
Though perhaps there are aches worse than a simple jam can cure.
Letting the spoon drop to the table, she buries her head in her hands in the shadowy cottage where she and Yael might have had a life together and finally lets herself weep all the tears she’s held back since leaving Ashaway.
Much later, she wakes, her neck stiff and her back hurting even worse. She’d fallen asleep at the table after crying herself dry.
“Right,” she says, standing. “No more Greenwillow tears for the Claunecks.” She drops the everlasting daisy into a small vase on the table and walks away.
After changing out of her travel clothes and having a quick wash, Margot leaves the cottage, heading toward her greenhouses. It’s late afternoon and her stomach rumbles as she walks, but she wants to check in on things before grabbing something to eat at Clementine’s Tavern; she isn’t eager for company, but there’s no food left in the cottage.
Poppy sits behind the counter of the greenhouse shop, tinkering with a pile of gears spread out on the wood planks. She startles when Margot taps her lightly on the arm.
“Margot?” she asks, blinking like a surprised owl.
“Hi, Pop,” Margot says. She picks up Harvey, who’s curling himself around her ankles and purring happily.
“What in the world are you doing back so soon? We had bets going that you and Yael would be staying in Ashaway for at least a month…if not longer.” Here, Poppy peers at Margot and raises an eyebrow teasingly.
Margot flinches at Yael’s name. She’s going to have to stop doing that. Because of course everyone whom Yael won over in Bloomfield—which is everyone in Bloomfield—will ask about them. What is she supposed to say? That Yael has perhaps tried to do something noble but shattered her heart in the process? Or that the town is in more danger than they can possibly imagine and she has no real way to help them? Guilt claws through Margot, and she avoids Poppy’s gaze, burying her face in Harvey’s fur instead, which he allows for a moment before hopping out of her arms. “Yael had…business to attend to in Ashaway,” she says after a long moment.
“Will they be coming back?”
Tears rise in Margot’s eyes, and she turns from Poppy to brush them away. “I don’t think so.”
Poppy remains silent, clearly unsure what to say. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs at last.
“So am I. Now, why don’t we take a quick walk around the greenhouse, and you can catch me up on everything I missed?”
Hours later, after Poppy showed her the new, impressive watering systems she’d rigged up, and she walked alone among the plants—all of which are growing beautifully—Margot is feeling a bit better. Maybe it’s the two bracing cups of tea she drank, or maybe it’s just being back with her plants and with people who know her for who she really is.
She’s closing up for the night when the silver compact in her pocket chimes. She hasn’t heard from Sage since Rastanaya’s show, when her friend had been soon to depart for the Serpentine Sea with a new adventuring party. Expecting to find a hastily scrawled message, Margot flips open the compact…and nearly drops it as Sage’s face beams back at her from the mirror.
“Hi, Margot!” she calls, her voice muffled by a bracing wind that tousles her short blond hair. Behind her on a pale beach, the sea crashes and foams.
“Sage, how—”
“Neat, isn’t it? I did a favor for a wizard we met in a tavern in Ironspine, and he gave me a scroll to turn a sending spell into a seeing spell. Temporarily—it’ll only work this once—but I wanted to show you the Serpentine Sea at sunset.” Sage steps beyond the frame of the mirror and angles her own compact so that Margot has a full view of the sky striped pink and lavender and orange, and the sea painted golden bright.
Almost the color of Yael’s lips at the masquerade. Almost.
Margot swallows back a sob. “It’s lovely,” she says over the whistling wind.
Sage returns, grinning. “Thought you’d like it! Been a bit of hard travel these last few days, but worth it for a view like this.”
Eager to speak about anything other than her own problems, Margot asks, “How’s the expedition going? Making any friends?”
Sage opens her mouth to reply but is drowned out by a loud growling and the far-off sound of a horn. Her eyes dart to the side, and she grabs her knife from the sheath at her hip. The noises quiet after a moment, and Sage shrugs, returning the knife to its place.
“Things are going well enough.”
“What was that noise?”
Sage shrugs again. “Something that wants to eat us? Not sure. It’s been a rough one, honestly. Our party leader is…well, let’s just say I’m glad I never sign on with the same party twice. But I’ll survive. How are you? How’s your garden assistant and their cousin?”
Margot is surprised when a choked sob leaves her mouth rather than the calm, collected fine she had prepared. Her face crumples, and suddenly she’s weeping all over again.
“Margot?” Sage’s brow furrows in concern. “What’s happening over there?”
“Nothing, it’s nothing.”
“Certainly looks a lot like something.”
“Perhaps I’ll tell you the story when you’re not standing on a windswept beach surrounded by things that want to eat you,” Margot says, swiping at her tears. “I really am concerned about you.”
Sage glances over her shoulder and then turns back. “Thought I heard someone being eaten, but nope. It’s just the wind. And nice try, but we’re talking about you. What happened?”
Margot can’t help herself. Although she told Sage about her own feelings for Yael as the months with them passed, she had kept her true indebtedness to the Claunecks a secret. Now she lets the whole story spill out, from the letter she’s carried around for years and the Natural Caster Potion she’s tried and failed to make, to the first morning after the show when she woke up beside Yael, to Yael ending things on the balcony and her subsequent flight from Ashaway. To the fact that she’s not sure whether the plan to repossess Bloomfield still stands.
“Oh, Margot,” Sage murmurs. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m sorry too,” she admits. “I really messed up and I…well, I miss them already, and I’m miserable.”
Sage nods. “Love will do that.” Her words are heavy, like someone who’s known too much suffering at the hands of love.
“Love is nonsense,” Margot mutters.
“Complete nonsense,” Sage agrees. “But that doesn’t make it any easier to lose.”
Margot has never heard Sage speak of heartache before—honestly, Sage has never spoken much about any aspect of her life before the two of them met at college—but it sounds as though she knows what she’s talking about.
“I wish I were there so I could buy you a drink at Clementine’s,” her friend continues. “Or better yet, I wish you were here. Want to join us? I could meet you along the road and we could have our own adventures. Like I’ve said, an adventuring party can always use a plant witch. Think about it!”
For a moment, Margot’s very, very tempted. But then there’s a loud crashing sound from Sage’s side of the compact, and a scream rends the night.
Before Margot can say anything else, Sage swears loudly and draws her knife again.
“What’s happening? Are you okay?”
“Just a little trouble with bandits, who may or may not want to eat us. I’ll be fine. Go get that drink at Clementine’s, and Margot? Talk to the people who care about you in Bloomfield, okay? This isn’t something you should carry alone!”
Then Sage’s compact slams closed and Margot’s mirror goes dark. The silence of the greenhouses descends again—well, not really silence, since the willow sprigs are whispering to one another and the bluebells are singing softly. But still, after the excitement of Sage’s call, it all feels so lonely. So empty. So entirely without Yael.
It feels exactly like it did months ago, before Yael walked into her life. Well. That’s fine. At least Margot knows tonight that she can go to Clementine’s and drink in peace without bumping into any Claunecks.
Clementine greets her with an exclamation of happiness and a warm hug. “Wasn’t sure when you’d be back, especially when someone came for all of Yael’s things earlier today.”
“Who came for Yael’s things?” Margot asks quickly. Was it too much to hope that they were back already?
“A representative from the Claunecks,” Clementine says, going behind the bar. “Surprised me a bit too, but she told me Yael would no longer be staying here.” She pours Margot a frothy glass of ale.
Margot sits down on a barstool, pulling the ale toward her.
This is the worst thing about Yael having made a home in Bloomfield over the past months. Everyone here knows them and loves them, and that means they’ll all want to know where Yael has gone. Why they’ve stayed in Ashaway. Why Margot is alone again in the greenhouses. “What did this representative look like?”
Perhaps it had been Araphi with a message from Yael that this was all a misunderstanding.
“Handsome young woman, blond, had on a fancy suit and showed a business card. Nicest carriage I’ve ever seen—even nicer than the ones that arrived for the fashion show. We figured the two of you were staying in Ashaway awhile longer, but…”
“Things…changed,” Margot says, taking a long pull of her ale. Her voice catches on the last word, and she swallows the drink.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Clementine asks, leaning over the counter to pull Margot into a half hug.
“Not yet…” Guilt sits heavy in Margot’s stomach as she looks at Clementine’s open, friendly face. How in the world is Margot supposed to tell her that she could lose the tavern? Her home? The whole village? That’s not for tonight, and besides, maybe Yael’s staying—their likely sacrifice for Margot—will change things. “Some other time, I’ll tell you everything. I’m just glad to be home.”
“We’re glad to see you too. And don’t worry, people might come and go, but Bloomfield will always be here for you.” Clementine gives Margot’s arm one more squeeze and then moves down the bar to help another customer.
Panic overtakes the guilt in Margot’s belly, making her heart race as she runs a hand along the smooth, stained oak of the bar. It’s been here since Granny Fern drank at the tavern—and Fern’s name is carved into the wood two seats down from where Margot sits. Across the room, beside the welcoming, familiar hearth, Mike and Dara sit in a corner booth, arguing over the books they’re both reading. Tulip is at a table near the back of the room, chatting with several other women from the village. A low hum of conversation, music, and laughter fills the room. None of them has any idea how close they all are to losing everything.
Margot’s eyes fill with tears. Bloomfield might be here for her in spirit always, but it certainly won’t be here for her if she doesn’t figure out the Natural Caster Potion, whether Menorath follows through on the promised extension or not; either way, it’s only a matter of time.