Chapter Thirteen #2
Out of the corner of her eye, Calisa saw movement out the window.
She turned quickly, hoping to catch the statue in motion, but instead she saw Melidor, scurrying in between the rosebushes.
In her wake, flowers bloomed. “Jack, could you cut me another slice of cake, please? I want to offer it to Melidor.”
After Jack cut another slice, Calisa carried it outside, cradled in a napkin.
She smiled, trying to look as friendly as possible, then worried she was smiling too hard and toned it down.
By the time she was off the porch, she was certain she looked like a doll with a painted grimace.
But she kept walking forward and holding out the cake. “Melidor?”
Melidor jumped up from between a patch of irises and a clump of out-of-control grass. “Fire? Where?”
Calisa halted. “No fire. Just cake.”
Sighing, Melidor squatted back down between the irises until only the top of her very green hair was visible. She murmured wordlessly in a singsong voice.
“I brought you a slice of cake, if you’d like it,” Calisa said, crossing to her, cake outstretched. “It doesn’t look gorgeous, but it tastes good. Vanilla and raspberry.”
“I like raspberry.” Melidor snatched the plate and fork out of Calisa’s hands.
Calisa considered how to tell her that she’d broken into her room without permission, crossed through the portal, and talked with her mother…
. Yeah, that’s not going to go over well.
Maybe she could ease into it. “I wanted to apologize for…before. You know, hurting the plants.” She was fairly certain that Melidor had forgiven her already, but it never hurt to apologize extra.
It might work as a good conversation opener. Establish trust and all that.
Melidor waved the fork. “You had to hurt in order to save. It’s like that sometimes.”
“What’s like that sometimes?”
“Life.”
“Ah, yes. I guess it is.” How can I tell her? If she did, chances were good that Melidor would complain to Auntie Zee, and if the innkeeper found out that Calisa had opened those doors and, worse, gone through one…I can’t risk it. Not yet. Not until I understand more of what’s going on.
Melidor crumbled bits of the cake and dropped them onto the dirt between the plants.
“Do you not like it?” Calisa asked. “I can make a different flavor next time.” Assuming Auntie Zee let her stay to make another one.
“I’m sharing.”
“With the plants?”
“With the worms,” Melidor said. She knelt and pressed her cheek against the soil. When she lifted her head, she had dirt clinging to her cheek and dusting her eyelashes. “They’re grateful.”
Normally, Calisa would have walked away slowly after that kind of display, but now she wondered if Melidor actually could talk to worms. “I’ve never talked to a worm. Do they have a lot to say?” She hoped she sounded sincere. It was true; it was just that the words felt ridiculous on her lips.
Melidor looked at her as if she were the absurd one. “They’re worms.”
Fair enough.
Regardless, it wasn’t really what Calisa wanted to know.
What she wanted to know was…Everything. I want to know everything: what she is, why she’s here, why she hears plants scream and how she talks to worms and where she went and what she did when she ran into the woods.
She had no idea how to begin to ask any of that. “Can you talk to everything?”
“Sure,” Melidor said. “Trick is: Does it talk back?”
“Well, um, does it?”
She shrugged. “If it has something to say.”
Crouching down, Melidor pressed her cheek to the dirt.
She hummed to herself and closed her eyes.
Calisa waited to see if she said anything else, but she seemed done.
Don’t push, she told herself. She’d delivered her peace offering; it was time to back away.
Later, she could ask more questions and figure out how to deliver her mother’s message.
“There’s fresh tea inside, if you’d like. ”
Melidor stayed on the ground, her lips moving silently. She’d gotten icing all over her fingers and smeared on one cheek, mixing with the dirt.
Calisa retreated to the inn.
Inside, Jack was on his second slice, and Kendra was still sipping her tea. She had a pile of pink icing on her plate. “Melidor is feeding the cake to the worms,” Calisa reported. “Can she actually talk to them?”
Jack mumbled around the cake.
“Manners!” Kendra snapped.
“Sorry,” Calisa said. “I’ll, um, take a piece up to Mulligan.”
Shoveling another bite into his mouth, Jack put down his plate and cut a slice for Mulligan.
It flopped over onto the plate. She noticed that he had a dot of icing on his cheek, just where a dimple would be, and suddenly wished she could make him smile.
But nothing witty popped into her head. He handed her the plate, and she just said, “Thanks.”
Climbing the stairs, Calisa puzzled over how she could learn more. Even outside of Auntie Zee’s rules, it wasn’t socially acceptable to just walk up to someone and ask their life story, but she wanted to know everything about everyone here.
Especially Auntie Zee.
And Jack.
And why Mom-Elise thought it would be good for Calisa to be here, aside from the fact that hello, nexus of realms, very cool. Or was that precisely the key fact?
She knocked on Mulligan’s door. She didn’t hear any movement. Pressing her ear against the door, Calisa listened. She knocked again. “Mulligan?”
He didn’t answer.
She wasn’t certain he was in there, though she hadn’t seen him in any of the common rooms or heard him on the stairs.
“There’s cake, if you’d like some,” Calisa called through the door. “I’m going to leave the piece here. Try not to step on it, okay?” She set the plate down beside his door and turned toward the stairs.
Opening the door, Mulligan stuck his head out. He smiled broadly when he saw her. “Did I hear you mention cake?” His eyes lit up as he spotted it, and he bent to pick it up. “Delectable! Sugar is a balm for the wounded soul.”
Calisa smiled and tried to figure out a polite way to ask if he had a magical portal in his closet. “It’s vanilla cake with raspberry jam filling.”
He put a hand to his heart. “You are an angel sent from above.”
She wanted to reply, And where are you from? But that kind of made it sound like she thought he was from hell, which would be rude. “Thanks. Um, did you enjoy your vial of hot chocolate?”
His smile drooped and his shoulders sagged within his black robes. “Alas, it was not enough to entice him to wake.”
Never mind the portal; she couldn’t leave a statement like that just hanging out there.
“Entice who to what?” She wondered if Mulligan was going to slam the door shut in her face or snap at her like Kendra for asking.
If he did, she wouldn’t blame him—well, she’d blame him a little because it wasn’t an unreasonable question.
He hesitated.
“It was great hot chocolate. Even magical.” Calisa added as much emphasis to the word as she could, stopping short of either wiggling her eyebrows or winking.
“Ah!” His smile broadened so wide that the skin of his cheeks was stretched taut over his bones. “You know! Excellent. I had thought, given your ancestry, that you must, but you gave no indication of it the other night, and I did not wish to presume.”
“A lot has changed.”
“Sadly, no change for me.” Mulligan opened his door wider so she could see inside.
His room was painted black, with a plush black rug on the floor, black blankets and pillows on the bed, and all shades drawn closed—the only light was from lit candles on the mantel and bedside table, as well as the glow of a fire in the fireplace.
In front of the fireplace was the gargoyle that Calisa had seen Jack lug into the house when she’d first arrived.
Mulligan heaved a mighty sigh. “It was an accident.”
She raised both her eyebrows.
“In my hubris, I attempted a feat beyond my skill. My beloved Zef paid the price.”
“You, um, turned him into stone?” she ventured.
She knew she should be horrified, but wow.
This revelation chased all other questions out of her head, at least temporarily.
“And you came here to…” She trailed off, hoping he’d fill in the blank.
She’d secretly half decided he was a vampire, based on his pale skin and only coming out at night, but now?
Could still be a vampire. Could be an evil wizard.
Could be an incompetent wizard. Or a chocolate-fueled incompetent evil vampire wizard…
She wished she knew more about magic, beyond: Surprise! It exists! A nice YouTube video titled “Everything You Knew About the World Was a Lie But It Will Be Okay” would have been very helpful. Bonus points if it had animation.
“I required peace and quiet for my studies,” Mulligan explained. “I have been devoting myself to seeking a remedy. To my despair, all attempts have failed.”
“Your attempts included hot chocolate?”
“My theory is emotion will break the spell. If Zef can understand and accept that I never meant to harm him, that I love him more than words, then he should be able to free himself. And so, I have been striving to create a potion that will convey that. Hot chocolate, I hoped, was the perfect solution—it’s rich and decadent, yet with a taste of sweet innocence—but to my overwhelming sadness, it had no effect. ” Another mighty sigh.
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Doubtful, but it’s kind of you to offer.
Perhaps Zef and I are doomed to be the subject of ballads, to live on immortal in the tales of those who sing of sorrow and loss.
” He sank into the velvet chair beside the fireplace and laid one pale hand on Zef’s stone wings.
The other held the slice of cake, the fork neatly between his long fingers.
“You are welcome to keep me company, if you wish, while I ease my sorrow with this confection.”
Calisa pulled the desk chair closer to the fireplace and sat. She stared at Zef, wondering if he was aware he was stone, if he could hear or see. She hoped not. She hoped it was like being asleep and that someday he’d wake.
Mulligan tasted the cake and sighed happily. “Delightful.”
“Thank you. I…” She trailed off. In the fireplace, the flames danced across the logs. Out of the corner of her eye, it looked like a bird—flames for feathers, darker flames for legs, a wisp of a beak…
Frowning, she gazed directly at the fire, and all she saw was a chaotic mix of flames, splitting and joining and twisting and blazing. Calisa looked at Zef again, and again out of the corner of her eye, the firebird danced from log to log, its wings wide.
“So,” Calisa said, “there’s a bird in the fire, isn’t there.”
“Yes, they like to visit.”
She thought of the times she’d seen a random fire in one of the inn’s fireplaces. She hadn’t noticed it looking like a bird before, but then again, she hadn’t been expecting impossibilities everywhere she looked before.
“I am told that the firebird is a permanent resident,” Mulligan said, after swallowing another bite. “They were seeking a new home, after the loss of theirs, and Auntie Zee offered the inn, in exchange for helping to heat the rooms in winter. An equitable exchange.”
“Firebird? You mean a phoenix?” Mentally, she patted herself on the back for keeping her voice so level and quiet. She thought she was doing a really good job of staying calm in the face of all of this: conversations with worms, floating teapots, and living fires.
“Not precisely, as I understand it,” Mulligan said. “A phoenix is a bird that regenerates after spontaneously igniting and turning to ash. Our friend here is a bird made of fire.”
“Ahh.” That answer implied that phoenixes also existed, which was awesome. She wondered what else existed and what else she’d discover, if she were allowed to stay. And if the inn were able to stay open.
Mulligan, the sugar-loving possible vampire wizard, savored another bite of cake. “Spectacularly delicious, my dear. You have a gift. I wonder…have you mastered other kinds of cakes? Chocolate, perhaps?”
Calisa grinned. “I can look for a recipe.” She added hopefully, “If it’s not too much to ask…since you like the cake…could you maybe put in a good word for me with Auntie Zee?”
“I’d be delighted.”
The firebird danced on the logs, as if in agreement.