Chapter 2
Two
Mira left the ledgers on the counter and went to sit outside on the porch steps, the recipe book clutched to her chest. She couldn’t remember Uncle Lochlin ever using it.
Every potion, he’d made from memory. Mira vaguely remembered some of the times she’d helped when she’d been a little older, how he’d explained the steps to her until she’d gotten bored or someone had called her away for a walk or chores.
Not once could she recall him looking something up in the book she was currently holding. Or any others, for that matter.
She rested it on her knees and opened it again. It had a table of contents, with the pencil lines still visible that Uncle Lochlin had used to make it look all neat and professional.
Cough remedy; Sap of Dreams; Sun in a Bottle; for stomach aches.
Mira couldn’t help but smile. Somewhat professional, anyway.
She flipped through the book, stopping here and there to read one of the recipes marked with a little yellow dot.
The ‘easy’ ones. Easy seemed to be a flexible definition, though she begrudgingly had to admit that none of them looked overly complicated, not like Sun in a Bottle which appeared to have over twenty steps and multiple warnings underlined in red.
She ran a finger down the ingredient list for ‘plant growth (vegetables)’.
No. No matter how easy he claimed this was, she couldn’t.
Not only had this been dropped in her lap with absolutely no notice, she had places to be!
Find someone to handle the sale of the house, if Mr. Bowen wasn’t able to.
Clear out what was left inside. Go back home and return to her actual job!
Mira worried the edge of the page. Her actual job that was…
stable, for the most part. Boring, but at least a secure income.
Very much unlike her stories, which paid for groceries in some months and a cup of tea at the tea house on Friday in others.
The emporium wasn’t the most cheerful place to work, despite Golden River’s brightly coloured branding, but it wasn’t…
this. Wasn’t a mad jump into a profession she knew nothing about, at the behest of a man who probably hadn’t even known what kind of job she had these days.
A man who had been willing to rile up his entire family to make sure that she, specifically, received the house, the shop, and his last request.
Consider it, will you?
Mira huffed. What was there to consider? She wasn’t a potioner. Didn’t you need a permit and training for that, anyway? What was she supposed to do with a shop she couldn’t run? Sell empty bottles until her stocks ran out, then up and leave anyway?
“You can’t be serious.”
The woman walking past on the cracked pavement gave her a sidelong glance down her hawkish nose and picked up her pace.
Mira ducked her head. Served her right, sitting here and talking to herself.
Groaning, she stood and went back into the shop to put everything back and lock the drawer.
The key, she placed on the counter. Foolish.
A foolish request, and a fool the person who would even consider it.
She returned to the kitchen, to her paperwork and single bag full of clothes and a notebook.
Just in case inspiration struck. With daylight dwindling, Mira went to grab her purse and a jacket against the evening chill.
It was getting late, she was getting hungry, and one thing, she could do as Uncle Lochlin had asked.
She could poke around – see if the inn was still there and serving the kind of food travel writers liked to call ‘traditional’ and ‘hearty’.
Take a little walk and see if there were indeed still any neighbours around whom she recognised, and who might recognise her.
No harm in that. She could do that much.
If Uncle Lochlin had hoped that going exploring in town would sway her into staying, she wasn’t sure how that was supposed to work.
The house and shop were on the outskirts, on one of the properties with houses near the street and a lot of space out back.
The house opposite and to the right had a light on inside.
Mira could see the outline of a greenhouse when she peered around it.
A few houses further down the street also seemed somewhat lived in.
The rest though… Not just the house had seen better days, but the town as a whole.
Too many houses were empty, for sale, or simply abandoned.
What looked like it had once been neatly maintained stone flower pots on the pavement were growing more weeds than flowers.
A solid third of the gas lamps were flickering precariously, with several of them not even working anymore.
Though there were also trees lining the streets, some in bloom and emitting a sweet smell as she passed underneath.
There was a pleasant lack of shouting and tram noise, and the dearth of traffic made the walk down the street more relaxing than any walk Mira had taken along the inner-city canal in recent years.
Mira didn’t meet anyone until she entered into the town proper, where a few people were milling about outside on the town square.
Some of them shot her curious glances, though most ignored her much like she was used to from Willow Harbour.
Mira hurried past them to the one building that was brightly lit and had a buzz of voices coming from inside.
She didn’t remember the inn like this, though she knew they’d eaten here as often as they had been able to afford to, so as to avoid cooking for twelve people in Uncle Lochlin’s poorly stocked kitchen.
The furniture looked newer, and someone had painted the walls a bright yellow instead of the previous rusty brown.
There was a tiny pot of flowers on every table, and a fire going in the large stone fireplace in the corner. Not the same, but inviting regardless.
Mira picked one of the free tables and sat, looking around as discreetly as she could manage.
Not a lot of business going on. A table of older folks near the fire, most of them with a mug of beer and very rosy cheeks.
A young couple by a window, lost in their own world.
A young man alone in a niche, a large yellow dog at his feet, which didn’t seem to bother the waitress, who walked past him as she approached Mira.
“Good evening, welcome to the Peckish Pelican! What can I get you?”
Mira peered around, but couldn’t find a menu, just a hand-written piece of card stock that advertised a ‘steak special’, which was a tiny bit outside of her price range. “Ah, dinner? If you serve that?”
“We do. Selection’s on the board outside. Pea stew with homemade bread, hash browns with apples and sour cream, and the grill platter,” she helpfully summarised. “We also have some pastries left from the afternoon, if none of that is for you.”
“Oh.” A far cry from the restaurants she sometimes splurged on with Gemma and Rue. “Hash browns sound good.”
“Drink?”
Weighing the odds that someone here knew what an apple spritzer was, Mira decided not to bother. “A beer, thank you.”
“Hash browns and a beer, coming right up.”
The food was good, and surprisingly cheap to boot.
With how few people there were, Mira had expected the owner to milk those few guests as much as possible.
Instead, she paid less than she had for a meal in Willow Harbour in a long time, and it had been better than most of them, with the hash browns perfectly crispy and the apples a decadently sweet contrast. When she paid and left, she felt the pleasant drowsiness induced by a perfect meal.
When she stepped outside into the cool evening, she almost bumped into the man with the large dog. He quickly sidestepped and pulled his dog aside with him, avoiding the collision.
“Sorry!” He straightened, looking out a little sheepishly from underneath a mess of blond curls. “Are you all right?”
“I am, no worries.”
He nodded, but didn’t say anything else. Instead, he studied her for a moment.
“Are you the one who looked at the potion shop?”
“Wh- Oh. Yes. Signing paperwork, actually.”
“Oh?” An odd tinge of excitement crept into his voice. “You bought it?”
“Not exactly,”Mira replied. “Inherited it. The owner was my great-uncle.”
“Your great uncle.” He narrowed his eyes. “Have you visited before?”
“I have.” A little confused, Mira looked at him a little more closely – and found him vaguely familiar all of a sudden. “Have we met?”
“Maybe? My grandfather used to fix things in the house. I remember the owner having children my age around sometimes. We used to play in the garden while they were hammering stuff and having coffee after.”
That did stir a memory, of hide and seek in the attic, and unauthorised expeditions into the Honeywood. “I think I remember. Kameron?”
He grinned. “Kayden. Walsh.” He held out his hand. “Jog my memory?”
She shook his hand. “Mira Gardener. My family used to visit a lot when I was little. I’m sure we played plenty, but… it’s been a long time.”
“It has.” He let go. “Sorry about the old man. He was one of my favourite clients. Always a coffee and a chat after I was done fixing things, just like with my grandfather.”
“Thank you.”
That sounded like Uncle Lochlin, who would’ve kept the milkman chatting for hours if the poor soul’s cargo hadn’t been in danger of curdling if he didn’t get a move on.
“Woof!”
A large, fuzzy head nudged against Mira’s leg, and she jumped a little. Kayden immediately grabbed the dog’s collar.
“Poppy, stop. Sorry. She’s bored and curious, terrible combination.”
“It’s fine. She just startled me a little, is all.”
Mira looked down at the dog, whose tongue was sticking out sideways as she looked up at Mira, from a pair of eyes that were much too green for a dog, though that faded into the background when Mira spotted the ears. All four of them.
“Uhm. Is your dog all right?”
She half expected him to take offence, but he grinned and scratched the dog behind one pair of ears.
“Right as rain, just a bit of a menace. Tried to eat a wood sprite as a puppy and got a face full of dust for her trouble, that’s why she looks the way she does.
Hasn’t hurt her at all, but does make for a great conversation starter. ”
Mira chuckled. “I bet it does.” She stuck her hands in her pockets, not sure how to continue. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, it’s just… It’s late, and I’ve had a long day.”
“Ah, of course.” He stepped aside so she could pass. “Don’t want to keep you. And welcome back to Emberglen. I’m sure you’ll like it here.”
At that, Mira simply smiled and nodded. No need to discuss her plans right now. She waved her goodbyes, patted the dog on the head, and left the town square behind.
The walk back was a bit more of a drag, mostly because at this point, Mira couldn’t wait to finally get off her feet and get some sleep.
Back at the house, she had to search for a lamp in the meagre light coming through the kitchen window from the flickering gas lamp.
With just about enough oil inside to last her the night, she finally dragged herself upstairs.
Without a bed, the only place to sleep in the house was the couch.
It folded out, but after hearing the ungodly noise the springs made, Mira decided not to.
She had at least packed a blanket, mostly because she hadn’t known how cold it would be out here this early in spring.
Now it was all she had. Curled up under it, the lamp extinguished and a sliver of light cast on the wall through the crooked shutter, Mira waited for her body to relax enough to fall asleep.
Her mind had other plans, it seemed. She watched the light flicker across the faded flower wallpaper, and imagined the summers back when she was a child.
The fire banked behind the wrought-iron grate with the little wood sprite in the centre.
The whispers of at least three different spooky stories told by older children to the younger ones.
Bickering over who got to take the couch and who had to sleep on a stack of blankets on the floor.
The creaky stairs when one of the adults had gone downstairs in the morning to start breakfast, and how Uncle Lochlin had always had a habit of skipping the worst of them to avoid waking anyone.
Mira, already awake and listening, had waited for that pause in the sounds and quickly followed.
Making breakfast with Uncle Lochlin had always meant a spoonful of home-made jam, first pick of whatever fruit was in season, and a cup of extra sweet tea while they waited for the house to wake up.
Stories, too, she remembered those now. The creakers and their close cousins, the groaners; those were made of rocks and lived in sheds, where curious little girls were not supposed to go because they were full of sharp gardening tools.
The wood sprites that lived all over the Honeywood, and sometimes visited the woods witch who lived deep in the forest and granted wishes.
They’d gone to search for her once, she and a few younger cousins, with a basket full of bread rolls and apples and a single flask of water between them.
Their search hadn’t lasted long, just until it had been time to go back for lunch, and they had all decided that the witch probably wouldn’t feed them unless they used a wish on it, and that just hadn’t seemed a good use of wishes.
They’d decided to go back some other time instead, but they never had.
Maybe something else had drawn their attention, and the witch had become unimportant again.
Mira had used a woods witch like that in a story once. It had gotten a good review, too, though the woman had called it ‘rather quaint’. Now, it seemed fitting. A quaint little story from a quaint little town, neither of which was of much consequence.
With a heavy sigh, Mira turned the other way and squeezed her eyes shut. If she kept this up, she’d run the risk of remembering this place far too fondly. Mustn’t risk it. She might just begin to consider Uncle Lochlin’s request after all.