The Spellshop

Chapter Eleven

Kiela stirred the vat of boiling sugar and raspberries while Larran hammered together the frame for the bookshelf. It would run half the length of the room, from floor to rafters, partitioning the tiny shop in front from the kitchen and living area. She’d already scooted her daybed into the back room, cramming it between her parents’ bed and the crates of forbidden books. She’d neaten that room up later, when no one but Caz was here. At least she’d already cleaned, dusted, and hung lavender from the rafters. She’d also washed and rehung the lace curtains over the windows. So it would just be a matter of what to do with the daybed. The practical thing would be to claim her parents’ bed as hers. The big bed had lots of extra room for her and—her eyes slid to Larran . . . Don’t be ridiculous, she scolded herself. Lots of extra room for her and whatever stack of books she wanted to read late into the night.

As he worked, he was singing softly, a sea lullaby that she vaguely remembered from when she was little. He had a pleasant voice, soft and kind of furry.

She hadn’t meant for Larran to build the shelves for her. In fact, after the chimney incident, she’d been determined to do it herself, and if he’d insisted, she would’ve . . . Well, he hadn’t insisted. He’d simply mentioned that raspberry jam was his favorite, and Caz had negotiated for his labor. She’d been outmaneuvered by a plant.

Oddly, she didn’t mind as much as she thought she would.

He didn’t seem to feel the need to fill the silence with chatter, which was nice. Caz was acting as his assistant, passing him nails as he needed them and checking to ensure the angles were ninety degrees and the boards were straight. The spider plant had found a marble lost between the floorboards and was using it to ensure all the boards were level.

“What’s that song?” she asked when Larran reached the final note.

“An old herder lullaby. We sing it to the mares to calm them when they’re about to foal. Usually works better if you can keep a tune. Sorry—didn’t realize I was singing loudly.”

“It was pretty.” She’d heard it before—but where and when? She hummed the melody, trying to remember the words. The sea was a cradle and . . . something, something . . . the stars will watch over you . . . “I think I knew it once.”

“You did. I remember you singing it.”

Kiela snorted. “You’re remembering wrong. Couldn’t have been me. I never sing where anyone can hear me, due to the fact that I sound like a chicken attempting to warble.”

Caz stifled a laugh, which came out like a snort. He’d heard her sing before, once and only once, at an official ceremony for new library inductees, and she knew he could verify she lacked any semblance of pitch. Singing hadn’t been optional, but the cream-puff-and-chocolate desserts had been worth it.

“You didn’t know I was there,” Larran said.

Pausing as she stirred the jam, Kiela twisted around to look at Larran. He’d framed the top and sides of the shelf-wall and was marking off where each shelf would be. It would blend in pleasantly with the rest of the cottage. “You spied on me when we were kids?”

He blushed. “Not exactly and not intentionally. You were in your family’s cove with my foal . . .”

Wait, wait, wait—she remembered a baby merhorse in the cove. It had been there for a few months one summer, and she’d helped take care of it. She remembered bottle-feeding it. “Why was a foal in our cove?” She wasn’t sure she’d ever questioned it, but in retrospect, it was odd. It should’ve been with its mother or its herd, or at least its herder. “You said it was yours?”

“I’ve wanted to be a herder for as long as I can remember. Used to hang out near the Caltreyan herd all the time. Another nail, Caz?” The spider plant extended a tendril holding a nail, and Larran hammered it into place before continuing. “There was a mare that died giving birth, and the foal wasn’t expected to live. So I took responsibility for it. My parents, though . . . They owned the only grocery store in town, do you remember it? Near the fountain?”

Checking the jam again, Kiela said, “Yes.” No one had liked the grocer’s. She remembered her parents used to grumble about the overpriced spices and the way the man behind the counter would lean his thumb on the scale to overcharge for a cut of meat. Her mother had once bought a bag of flour that had turned out to be infested with ants. But there had been no other option on the tiny island.

“They wanted me to inherit the family business, but I had other dreams. Your parents were kind enough to allow me to raise the foal in secret in their cove. One morning my father . . . Well, suffice it to say, I was late to the cove. I remember being terrified that the foal wouldn’t make it. When they’re that young and fragile, they need regular care. But when I finally made it, you were already there, making sure the foal was fed and safe. You were singing to it.”

He’d said before that her parents had been kind to him and that she had been too— This is what he meant. She’d been kind to his foal. No wonder she didn’t remember. She’d had no idea it was his. “Anyone would have helped care for it.”

He hammered in another nail and said quietly, “Not my parents.”

She hadn’t known that the foal was there in secret. “But what did your parents expect—”

Larran stepped back from the shelves. “For the wall, the back of the shelves, do you care if the wood matches? I have enough scraps, I think, but it’ll be a patchwork of colors.”

“That’s fine.” If they arranged it in a pattern, it would look intentionally artistic. “What do you mean your parents wouldn’t have? You said they wanted you to stay in the family business, but surely they wouldn’t have let a foal die?”

Larran didn’t answer. “I’ll be back with more wood.”

He ducked out the door. She wanted to follow him and continue the conversation—he couldn’t have meant that his parents would rather let a foal die than see him choose his own future? Unless that’s exactly what he meant.

Her gaze followed him as he disappeared into the greenery, and then she looked down at the jam, unsure why her eyes felt suddenly hot and watery.

Thick, gooey bubbles roiled in the pot. It was time to pour the jam into the glass jars, which she, following her parents’ instructions, had heated so they wouldn’t shatter from the sudden heat. She retrieved the oven mitts. She’d found them in one of the drawers—they were a faded gingham but still sturdy. “Caz, can you hold the jars steady while I pour?”

Climbing along the rafters, he swung himself over to the kitchen counter and landed with a plop. “Do not—and I repeat, do not —pour hot jam on me.”

“I’ll be careful,” she promised. She wondered when Larran would come back inside. There were so many other questions she wanted to ask him and so many parts of his story that he’d jumped over. What had happened to his parents? What about their store? How had he become a herder despite them? “What do you think it was that he wasn’t saying?”

“I think he was saying everything very clearly,” Caz said. “His parents weren’t nice people. Yours were.”

“Oh.” Yes, they were.

Before returning to Caltrey, she hadn’t thought much about how lucky she’d been to have them, only how unlucky she’d been to lose them. Glancing out through the door again, Kiela wondered if that was why Larran tried so hard to be kind. Was all of this—the cinnamon buns, fixing the chimney, the ride on the merhorse, the warm clothes after she fell into the water, the help with the shelves—a thank-you for feeding a foal as a kid? If so, after he’d said thank you enough . . . would that be it?

A day ago, she would have wanted that to be it. Now?

Now, he’s making me shelves.

Lifting up the pot, she poured the jam into the waiting jars.

By the time she’d finished pouring her first batch of jam into jars, Larran had returned with a stack of wood slats over his shoulder. He dumped them just outside the door.

“If you’re done with the stove, I can fry us some fish,” he offered.

“You brought wood and fish?”

Coming inside, he produced a wrapped fillet from one of his pockets, and she tried not to think about what his pocket must now smell like. “It’s from Sian, an apology fish. She had a string of them laid out on the stone pier when I got back. She knows she behaved badly.”

An apology fish. She smiled. “I didn’t know merhorses were so intelligent.”

“They’re more like dolphins than, say, cod or tuna. Highly intelligent. How else did their ancestors know it’d be good for them and us if they worked with humans?”

“Symbiosis is often just instinct paired with evolution, like honeybees and flowers or crocodiles and plovers, not actual intelligence.” When he looked at her blankly, she added, “Plovers peck food out from between the crocodiles’ teeth. The bird gets fed, and the croc doesn’t suffer from toothaches. But it’s not as if the birds choose dentistry.” He was still looking at her blankly, and she realized she’d strayed from the normal communication pattern. “Fish for lunch would be lovely. Please thank Sian for me.”

He smiled and then retrieved the frying pan. Placing the raw fish on a plate, he began looking through the cabinets as if he lived here.

She felt her warm, fuzzy feelings dissipate like bubbles in the air.

It was suddenly all too familiar, too friendly, too . . . Too much. She’d just wanted to build shelves; she hadn’t wanted to share memories and confidences. It was nice she’d been kind to him as a kid, but she hadn’t chosen to—she’d helped a foal and hadn’t even known he’d been watching her. He’d embroiled her in his emotions without her consent.

She told herself not to let it bother her. She’d liked talking to him. And she’d said yes to his fish. Use of her kitchen went along with that yes. It wasn’t such a grievous invasion of personal space to open a kitchen cabinet. But what if he decided it was also okay to barge into her bedroom and start pawing through the crates of forbidden books?

In as pleasantly polite a tone as she could, she asked, “Can I help you find something?”

He froze. “Uh, sorry. Salt and pepper?”

Caz climbed onto one of the kitchen shelves and plucked the little bags of salt and pepper out from behind the sugar. He passed them silently, reproachfully to Larran.

“I’m used to living on my own,” Larran said, blushing. “I didn’t intend . . . I’m sorry. This is your kitchen, not mine. I overstepped. I don’t know why I keep . . . I won’t do it again.”

Kiela exhaled. That was a nice apology, and it wasn’t a problem that he’d looked for salt and pepper—it was just that with the books in the other room . . . “I’m used to my own space too.” It hadn’t been much, her nook in the library with her bed and her cookplate and her desk, but it had been all hers and no other librarian would dream of making themselves at home in it. “Use whatever you need. But could you please just ask first?”

“Always, from now on.”

He turned back to the fish.

And now it’s awkward again, she thought. Had she overreacted? No, he overstepped. They’d been doing well there for a while, though, and it had been nice. It was a pity they couldn’t return to that. She dumped raspberries into a bowl and added sugar. While they soaked in the sugar, she set a pot of water on the opposite side of the wood-burning stove from Larran and put a bowl with a chunk of wax on top of it—according to her parents’ recipe book, that was the best way to melt the wax, in a double boiler. She wondered if he was regretting the fish. Probably calculating how soon until he can leave. “Am I your foal?”

“What?”

“Never mind.” If he was only trying so hard to be nice because he felt he owed her . . . “It’s just . . . I can pay you for the wood and the nails and the work and the fish. Once the shop is open, I can pay you back. This can be a business transaction. It doesn’t have to be a favor you think you owe me because once upon a time I was nice to a baby horse-fish.”

The fish seasoned, he laid the fillets in the pan. They stood side by side at the stove, him watching the fish sizzle and her watching the wax melt. “That’s how I knew you’re a good person. That’s not why . . .” He trailed off, as if unsure how he wanted to finish the sentence.

Caz jumped onto the floor and landed with a plop. Loudly, he said, “Kiela, how about coming outside with me and sorting through the wood? We can make a pattern for the back of the shelves, like you said.”

“Uh, okay?” Kiela followed the plant outside.

Larran had brought a stack of wood, the boards all different widths and shades, and laid them on the grass between the roses and the herb border. She and Caz began to sort the wood by color. It was rather intriguing how many shades there were. If they alternated shades in a rainbowlike pattern, from reddish to pale tan to brown . . .

“You should consider that he might be being nice because he’s a nice person,” Caz said.

“He’s being nice because he thinks he owes me, because I took care of his foal, and because he sees me as his new foal, as someone who needs taking care of.” Yes, she needed help with the shelves, but that didn’t make her helpless. She’d figured out how to make jam. Really tasty jam, in fact, though it was a shame she didn’t have access to lemon juice. A little citrus would sharpen the flavor and add a—

“Or maybe he likes you.”

At that, all thought of lemon juice vanished. She peered in through the open kitchen door. Sunlight cast Larran in a pool of light. He was singing again as he cooked the fish. At least he didn’t seem overly annoyed at her being prickly. Or maybe he just had a short attention span. “Do you think I should let him barge in wherever he wants”—she lowered her voice—“and open any crate he wants to open?”

“Obviously not,” Caz said. “But he is one of the few people we know here. I just think he’s trying really hard to be friendly. You could try too.”

“I was trying and then—”

“He wanted salt?”

“Yes, but that’s not—”

“ And pepper?”

“He can’t like me,” Kiela said. “I’m unlikable.”

“This is a ridiculous conversation that I regret beginning,” Caz said. “You are not unlikable. I chose to be your assistant, out of all the librarians in the Great Library. I am a very picky plant with impeccable taste.”

She couldn’t help but grin.

“Accept that he’s trying, albeit in a sometimes clumsy way, to be friends.”

Her grin faded. “I’m not certain it’s safe to make friends, given the secret we’re hiding. We can have business partners, we can have neighbors, and we can have customers, but friends? I’m not sure that’s wise, even if they do seem nice.” She thought of Bryn and the boy Tobin.

Caz didn’t reply, and she knew he was picking his words carefully.

Frowning at the wood as if it were at fault for the bramble of emotions she was feeling, she laid out the boards and organized them until they made a pleasing pattern, and hoped this uncomfortable conversation was finished.

“You’re going to have to trust people if you want us to build a life here,” Caz said at last.

That . . . could be true. But she didn’t like it. She’d wanted to do this all alone . . . I already haven’t done it alone. She hadn’t even lasted twenty-four hours before she’d trooped down to the center of town for seeds and bread. She wasn’t the hardened survive-on-her-own type, perhaps due more to a lack of experience than temperament, but still . . . “I know. I’ll try.”

“Thank you,” Caz said. “You know, plants aren’t nearly as emotionally exhausting as humans. You should try to be more plant.”

She laughed. “Good advice. All I need is some chlorophyll.”

“Excellent. You’d look great in green.”

She laid the last board in place and then walked back into the cottage and breathed in the scent of freshly cooked fish. “Smells delicious,” she said—a peace offering.

“Hope it tastes the way it smells,” Larran said, with a tentative smile.

Kiela smiled back, and suddenly they were both smiling at each other. Just a whole lot of smiling all around—she wasn’t quite sure what to do or say next, or at what point she should stop smiling. She wondered if her smile looked nice or awkward. She’d meant to be nice. Since he was smiling back, that probably meant she’d done it right.

Sighing, Caz scooted past her, muttering under his breath, “You are both ridiculous.” But at least the atmosphere in the cottage had changed from uncomfortably awkward to companionably awkward.

While Larran finished with the fish, Kiela poured the melted wax onto the jam in each jar, a half inch thick. Caz held the jars steady for her. When the wax cooled, it would solidify, making an airtight seal that would preserve the jam for at least a year.

She took out plates from the cabinet, and Larran served the fish.

They ate in silence for a moment—it was just as wonderful as it smelled. Light, flaky, and buttery. He’d sprinkled some other herb on it. “Rosemary?” Kiela guessed.

“I’ve an herb border up a ways from my house. If you’d like any clippings, let me know. They transplant well. Don’t need much care either, though it looks like you have a green thumb.” He nodded toward the back door that led to the garden. “Your berries have done well.”

“A decade or so of neglect suited them.” She hoped he didn’t ask more questions than that. She wondered if he’d noticed how much they’d grown since he’d been on her roof. She changed the subject. “How did you learn how to cook fish and build shelves and all of that?”

“Mostly taught myself how to build and fix stuff,” he said with a shrug. “Hit my thumb a bunch of times while I was working on my own house.” He showed her his thumbnail. It was warped on one side. “It never fully recovered. As to cooking . . . that was thanks to the herder who took me on as an apprentice when I was thirteen. He could fillet a fish in thirty seconds flat and make it into a feast fit for an emperor. He never measured anything, just tossed in herbs and spices by instinct.”

Kiela heard a familiar note in his voice. “You miss him.”

“He was lost in a storm three years ago, one of the first of the real bad magic storms to hit Caltrey after the sorcerers stopped their regular circuits,” Larran said. “When it hit, we hadn’t had one like that in . . . I’d never seen one like that. No one had. He underestimated how bad it would be when he went out with the herd. Thought he’d be able to handle it . . .” He cleared his throat as if the memories had lodged there.

She looked down at her fish. “I’m sorry.” He’d had loss in his life too. From the tone of his voice, she guessed the herder was like a father figure to him. She wondered what other thoughts and feelings lived behind Larran’s friendly smile.

“It’s his herd that I inherited. Amarin—she’s the one with teal scales—was the last foal he helped birth. Now that was a wild night.” He went on to spin a tale of a mare in the moonlight, the magic of a traveling sorcerer, and a breech birth that ended in a miracle: a healthy foal and mother.

She finished her fish and cleaned the dishes, while he brought in the wood she’d chosen for the back of the shelves. Together, they assembled her new jam-shelf wall—she held the wood steady, Caz supplied the nails, and Larran hammered.

“If it were possible to find some sort of homemade remedy that would help with merhorse births . . .” Kiela began. “A natural one, not spellcraft.”

Larran stopped hammering. “That would change everything. But there isn’t an herb or medicine that can help. Only magic works—they’re magical creatures, created by some forgotten spell. No one knows how or why they came to be, but they can’t reproduce with the ease of other creatures.”

She resolved to look for solutions anyway. There had to be some way to disguise it as not-magic. Maybe if she whispered the syllables? Except Larran would know it had to be magic . . . And when the other islanders heard about a new foal . . . It wasn’t the same as overenthusiastic raspberry brambles that could have grown naturally.

“What kinds of things did the sorcerers used to do?” Caz asked. “You know, back when they used to come to the outer islands?”

Larran continued with assembling the wall as he answered. “It varied. Sometimes they’d calm the seas. Or they’d strengthen the soil. Coax the rain to fall or not fall. One used to shift currents—we miss that one sorely. Another specialized in orchards—a lot of our island trees aren’t native to the area, and they require specially magicked soil to thrive. He knew spells that would heal storm-damaged trees, eliminate disease, and double production. Used to result in the most incredible golden apples . . .”

He waxed on about the miracles of the sorcerers, while Kiela made mental notes of all that the island had lost. Beside her, she knew Caz was doing the same.

After measuring the next board, Larran took it out to saw a chunk off the end. Kiela and Caz followed. Each of them held an end steady across two rocks while Larran sawed. He carried it back inside and fit it next to the prior board. “I haven’t shared this plan with anyone yet, but as soon as the next trade ship arrives, I intend to travel to Alyssium and make an appeal directly to the emperor at his court.”

Caz yelped, “You can’t!”

“Really, you can’t,” Kiela echoed. He didn’t know what he’d be walking into! She heard the screams echoing in her head, she smelled the smoke, and she pictured the flames encasing the library.

“I have to,” Larran said. “I can’t sit by and do nothing. Someone has to tell the emperor what’s happening in the outer islands and plead our case.”

Kiela shook her head vehemently. “It’s not a good time to visit Alyssium. There’s unrest.” That was a mild way to put it. She didn’t know if the city still stood or not. It could have all fallen to ashes by now. “It’s not safe.”

“It isn’t safe here,” Larran said grimly. “Any day another magic storm could hit and wipe us out. And if it doesn’t, then it will be the slow decay of the sea and land. I’ve heard that there’s a general audience where anyone can present an appeal to the magistrates—I’ll make my case there, and I’ll repeat it day after day until I’m heard, if I have to.”

“But right now . . .” She didn’t know how to warn him without risking revealing the secret of the spellbooks. In addition to that, she didn’t want to say the words that would make all of what happened real. She didn’t want to explain that she and Caz had fled—that they were fugitives. And thieves. The words stuck in her throat. They’d burned the North Reading Room. They’d thrown the emperor out a window, to his death. Countless others had died. “You don’t want to go there now.”

“I don’t want to watch my herd, my home, my island slowly die.”

Neither do I. Kiela laid her hand on top of Larran’s as he steadied the next nail. “Just don’t leave without talking to me first, okay? Will you promise me that much?” She’d find the words to explain by then. He looked at her hand, touching his.

She wondered if she’d stepped too far, but she didn’t remove her hand. He was staring at his hand as if he hadn’t heard her words. “Larran?”

“I’ll talk to you first,” he promised.

Good, she thought.

“But I am going.”

Not if I can stop you.