Chapter 11
Eleven
“So, what’s it like, being a potioner?”
Rue leaned forward, a dark red droplet from her shaved ice narrowly missing her skirt because of it.
She sounded like she’d been waiting to ask that question for hours.
Since Mira had met them at the park, her and Gemma, to treat themselves to a little summer delicacy and catch up on everything under the sun.
“I’m not a potioner yet,” Mira replied, a little reluctantly.
It had been two months since she’d moved.
She should really have done more than she had at this point, at least it felt like it.
She had done a lot, she had to remind herself of that.
She’d written a lot of it down in her personal notebook one night not too long ago.
After she’d attempted a brand new recipe and burned a hole into her apron, after she’d realised she’d forgotten to order a new batch of ice for the ice box, and after a flock of birds had decimated the tiny, freshly planted vegetable patch by her back porch.
Listing everything she had actually accomplished had at least helped her feel a little less like crying.
“Really? I thought by now you’d be up to your elbows in cauldrons and bottles.”
“Come on.” Gemma nudged Rue gently. “It’s not been that long. Give her a little time.” She glanced at Mira over her plum-flavoured ice. “If you need help, you know you can ask, right?”
“I know. Thanks.”
Mira thumped her heel against the concrete. They were sitting on the wall of the decorative little canal that ran the length of the park. It didn’t lead anywhere, there was no river it could connect to nearby. It just sat there and looked pretty. Sometimes Mira felt very much the same.
“I’m working up to it,” she said. “It’s just a lot to do, between the house and cleaning the shop and learning how to actually, you know, make potions.”
“You said your uncle left you a recipe book,” Gemma said. “With notes and all. That’ll make it easier, I bet.”
“Ehh.” Mira ducked her head. “Some of the notes are… cryptic. Takes a try or two to figure out what he meant when he wrote ‘sprinkle in berries’.”
Rue frowned. “Wouldn’t you just…” She made a wide tossing motion with her free hand. “Like that?”
“You’d think so, but apparently what he meant was more like… putting them in one by one, so they don’t clump together.”
“Hm.” Rue wrinkled her nose. “Sounds exciting, I suppose.”
“If your definition of exciting includes scaring the neighbours into thinking there’s a fire. Twice.”
Rue giggled. “Oh dear. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. Clara and Hamish accepted the apology cookies. I don’t know if Yoni did, she didn’t open the door, and I left before I could talk to her. Her cat seemed interested though, so who knows if she actually got any. I tied a towel around the plate, but that cat is too smart for her own good.”
Rue perked up, and even Gemma looked a little more alert. “Who’s Yoni?”
“One of my three neighbours. Yes, that’s the whole neighbourhood.”
Well, there was the man who lived down the street, but he worked in Greengrass and sometimes didn’t even come home for the weekends, which he also mostly spent inside. Mira had seen him precisely twice so far, and hadn’t even had the chance to learn his name. Not much of a neighbour, that one.
Rue made an expression of exaggerated shock. “Just three?! You didn’t say you were becoming a hermit!”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds.” Mira hoped she sounded convincing, because if she tried to view it from her friends’ perspective…
Yes, it did sound that bad. “It’s just the outskirts where people have moved away recently.
The town proper is still lively.” Sort of.
Some of the time. Fridays at the Peckish Pelican were always nice and rowdy, at least. “It’s not like that’s everyone I ever see. ”
“Made any friends yet?” Gemma inquired. For a moment, Mira struggled with an answer. It was so early still, what was she supposed to say?
“There’s the town handyman,” she eventually settled on.
“We’ve met before, when we were kids, but it’s been a while.
And Cassia, she and her brother run the orchard, she keeps inviting me to ‘Town Talent Night’, which she insists is fun and absolutely not mortifying.
Apparently it’s once a month at the inn, and I dodged the last time by being on an unfortunately timed walk when it started. ”
“Aww.” Rue made a face. “That sounds fun, you should go!”
“I would rather stick my hand inside a beehive.”
“Ah, come on.” Gemma bumped her shoulder into Mira’s. “Can’t be that bad. Maybe some day.”
“Maybe.” Mira scraped at her ice. “So, now that we’ve established that my foray into a new life is as boring as can be, what’s going on here these days? Is Lewis still an ass about everything?”
“Everything and then some,” Rue groaned. “He wrote me up because someone brought a dog into the store and it chewed up a pair of shoes. I told the lady to leave! She just wouldn’t, and if we kick a customer out-”
“-we get written up, too.” Mira sighed. “So, everything is exactly the same?”
“Not quite.” Rue kicked at the concrete wall.
“They transferred a few people away from the store, and you get one guess at whether they replaced them.” She snarled in frustration.
“I am so close to throwing in the towel.” She glanced sideways at Mira.
“Say, you don’t need someone to man the till at your shop? ”
Mira grimaced. “Not yet. If I ever become that successful, you’re the first to get the offer.”
“Please hurry, I don’t think I can take much more of this.”
Gemma reached over and patted her knee. “You know, I could always put in a good word for you.”
Rue’s smile was a little pained. “Thanks, but I don’t think sweeping the floor at a bakery is quite going to pay the bills. Seeing as I’m probably not qualified to do anything else.”
“Eh, we’ll train you up, don’t worry. If Mira can get the hang of potion making, you’ll be baking little heart-shaped cakes in no time.”
Mira nodded with as much enthusiasm as she could muster.
Poor Rue. It seemed a little unfair, leaving her here while Mira would go back to running her own business.
Well, attempting to. Still, she was suddenly acutely aware of the once-in-a-lifetime chance that had been dropped in her lap.
If she had this while others didn’t, she couldn’t just fumble this now, could she.
No, she’d do all she could, and she would make it work.
If only to avoid disappointing the very few people who believed in her.
Being back at home was both familiar and strange all at once.
Mira hadn’t realised how much she had gotten used to the peace and quiet of her home in Emberglen until she sat at her parents’ kitchen table, listening to Paul rehearse a presentation in the other room, the neighbours fighting upstairs, and two people having an animated discussion below the open window.
She’d used to sleep like this. How had she been able to sleep like this? She certainly hadn’t the last two nights on the couch, which was only marginally less uncomfortable to lie on than the one in her own living room. At least it didn’t smell like mothballs.
“…aunt Helen is going to need some more help, but of course your cousins are all too busy.”
Her mother, back to Mira, was somehow still finding new gossip even now.
Mira had assumed she’d exhausted it all on that first evening, but apparently there was simply too much to talk about to fit it all into one dinner conversation.
The second evening, Mira had managed to escape it by virtue of having an entire birthday party’s worth of people to catch up with.
She’d spent the morning with Rue and Gemma, but now she was peeling carrots for lunch and thus had no way to escape whatever juicy news her mother thought she needed to know about.
Chatty as she was, Harper had nothing on Willow Harbour’s coal quarter gossip train.
“Did Willa move out already?”
Her mother huffed. “No, she’s still living with Helen. Very busy with her training though, reading all those books all day long. Says she does her share of chores, but would it hurt her to spend an afternoon with her mother going shopping?”
“If she has classes, she can’t just skip those,” Mira reminded her. Her mother didn’t say anything, but Mira knew she was rolling her eyes.
“So I said-” A dry cough. “Anyway, I said to ask the neighbour’s son, he’s a good lad, he could go with her and carry all those heavy things, not that the boy is likely to be very fond of shopping.” Another cough, and her mother sighed. “Oh, it’s hot in here. Where is my water?”
Mira put down the knife and stood. “I’ll go fill up the jug.”
Her mother waved her off with the spoon she was using to stir the stew pot. “No, no. Go check the pantry, it’s in there.”
“Your… water is in the pantry?” Mira slowly turned to the door next to the ice box. “Did you get a pump installed?”
“What? No! It’s the bottles.”
“Why are you buying bottled water?” Mira went inside the pantry, leaving the door wide open to let in enough light to see. “That’s so expensive.”
Careful not to trip over the sack of potatoes or the box of apples, she searched the shelves until she found what her mother had requested. Half a dozen bottles of water. She grabbed one and took it outside to pour her mother a glass.
“Where did you buy that, anyway? Who is selling bottled water here?”
“Thank you, dear.” Her mother took a deep drink and sighed contentedly. “Ah, this is good.”
She put the glass next to the stove, between the open jar of flour and the tiny metal spice rack Mira had bought her for her last birthday, so she’d have somewhere to put her herbs and the salt pot.
“I got it from the emporium.”
Mira blinked. “What?”