Chapter Fourteen
Kiela was reading another spellbook when their next customer arrived. She was so engrossed in the theories of the effects of enchantment on the taste of garlic, written by a scholar who was both a sorcerer and a cook at one of Alyssium’s top restaurants, that she didn’t hear the footsteps of the customer shuffling into the shop or his irritated “Is anyone here? What kind of shop doesn’t have a shopkeeper?” But she did hear him shriek, “What is that?” and the thump of soil hitting the wood floor. She burst out of the bedroom to see Caz racing out the back door to the safety of the garden.
She pivoted to chase after her friend. “Caz, are you—”
“Oughta have a warning on your shop, if you’re going to allow unnatural creatures in it,” their customer said. She turned back to see a man who looked familiar—where had she seen him before? Ah yes, she remembered, the unfriendly man by the bakery. He’d been playing a game with stones with Tobin. Standing, he was much larger than she’d thought he was the first time she’d seen him. The top of his bald head nearly brushed the rafters of the cottage shop, which made her feel as if he were looming over her. He had scales instead of skin and was wearing the beige work clothes of a dockworker.
“I’m sorry you were startled,” Kiela said, with a worried glance at the garden door, “though it seems you both startled each other.”
“Looked like a plant,” he said, still scowling. She wondered if that was his permanent expression.
“He is a plant, a spider plant— Chlorophytum, an evergreen perennial flowering plant related to the asparagus,” Kiela said in her best don’t-let-the-patron-see-your-clenched-teeth librarian tone. Hoping to forestall any unfortunate misunderstandings, she added, “He’s inedible.”
The man snorted.
“His name is Caz, and I’m Kiela. Welcome to our jam shop!”
“Fenerer,” he said.
She’d heard that name before. Where and when? He hadn’t introduced himself when she’d first visited the bakery. “Nice to meet you. As you can see, our initial offering is raspberry jam.” She picked an apron off the back of one of the chairs and wrapped it around her waist, hoping it made her look more like an official shopkeeper.
Fenerer shifted his scowl to the shelves. “Just raspberry?”
“We’ll have more choices in the future.”
He grunted.
“Do you have a preferred flavor?” she tried. “We can take that into account when we produce the next batch. Blueberry? Cherry?” She suddenly remembered where she’d heard his name: Bryn and Eadie. They’d said they spat cherry pits onto his yard when he wasn’t looking.
“Lemon. But you won’t ever have that. Citrus doesn’t grow on Caltrey unless you have one of those fancy glass greenhouses, and nobody here can afford one of those. Especially just selling jam. You ever think about selling more than jam? Can’t imagine this shop will last.”
She gritted her teeth and reminded herself that she’d handled grumpy sorcerers, rude scholars, and condescending students before. Granted, she hadn’t handled them well. The one month she’d been assigned to work at the circulation desk, she’d accidentally reduced a particularly rude researcher to tears when she’d mentioned that his dissertation topic had been disproven fifteen years prior, and she’d been reported three times for delivering the wrong tome to unpleasant sorcerers who’d interrupted her reading without even an apology. But the difference was that back then she’d been hoping to be transferred back into the stacks, and now she wanted the shop to work. “Thanks for your concern. Would you like any jam?”
“No,” he said.
Then why did you come to a jam shop? she wanted to ask. “Well, then, I’m sorry I can’t be of assistance.” She wasn’t going to mention the remedies to this man—she’d decided that already. If he thought Caz was unnatural . . . well, to be fair, Caz was unnatural, but that didn’t mean he needed to come with a warning.
Fenerer grunted again. He was a man of many noises, she was discovering. This one was a grunt that sounded halfway between disapproval and disbelief. And with that last utterance, he left.
Kiela waited, watching as he walked into the greenery without a glance backward, before she scurried into the back garden. She scanned the plants: the flourishing tomato, the sickly stalks of who-knows-what, the chaotic overabundance of raspberry bushes—and she spotted Caz in the back corner, crooning to a spot near the fence.
“Caz? He’s gone. Sorry he was unpleasant. I think he was just being nosy. And judgmental. He didn’t even buy any jam.”
“Kiela, you have to come see this.” Caz beckoned with several of his leaves. He didn’t sound upset. In fact, he sounded more excited.
Kiela crossed the garden, carefully stepping between the plants. Once the shop was closed for the day, she thought she’d bring the naturalist’s plant book outside and try to identify any plants that Caz couldn’t. She thought one might be an onion . . . and a nearby vine was either a squash, a pumpkin, or a watermelon.
She reached Caz—
And a round green shape darted out around him and dashed to the other side of the garden. Kiela spun as it ran on . . . feet? Or was it needles? Roots? “Is that—”
“Our new cactus,” Caz said. “Apparently, it’s ambulatory.”
“That’s . . .” She wasn’t sure if it was good or bad or what. “. . . interesting?”
“I’m trying to make friends with it.” He flared his leaves out like a peacock would spread its feathers. She supposed it was meant to be a welcoming display? Or something?
She decided not to ask. “Great. Um, do you need my help?”
He waved a leaf at her and began to stalk the cactus across the garden. “All good. You can go back in. Just . . . you know, watch where you step.”
Keeping an eye out for the running cactus, Kiela returned inside and removed the apron. She left it on a hook by the kitchen counter in case another customer came, and then she sliced up a tomato and ate it while she thought about whether or not the grumpy man was right—was it foolish to think she could make this shop work? Shaking off the doubt, she returned to the bedroom for her book. This time, she brought it out to the kitchen table, but she kept a dish towel nearby to toss over it in case of another visitor.
She’d just sunk into the next chapter, which analyzed three different approaches to soil rejuvenation in kitchen gardens, when she heard footsteps outside. She tossed the towel over the book, grabbed her apron, and hurried around the shelf-wall.
It wasn’t, thankfully, the grumpy man again, but it was another stranger, which shouldn’t have been a surprise since she only knew a handful of islanders so far. Everyone here was, by definition, a stranger, except for Bryn, Eadie, Larran, and Tobin. Her newest customer was an older woman. Like Kiela, she had blue skin, but hers was mottled with patches of green. She walked with a cane that was carved into a spiral like a unicorn’s horn.
“Welcome,” Kiela said as she entered.
Her name, Kiela learned, was Halio, and she spoke in a near whisper. She liked the shop, she liked the shelves of jam, and she liked Kiela’s blue hair. She splurged on three jars of raspberry jam, offering a carton of eggs and a wedge of sharp cheese in exchange.
She was in every way the opposite of Fenerer. Taking a risk, Kiela said, “If you’re interested, we also offer home remedies. We have one prepared now that strengthens trees.”
“Don’t have any sick trees,” Halio whispered. “But . . .”
Kiela leaned closer.
“No reason to think you would . . . Never mind.”
“It doesn’t hurt to ask,” Kiela said. “Questions are the heart of a functioning society.” She wondered if she’d read that somewhere or had just invented it. She rather liked it. The empire had squelched questions about magic—restricting access to answers to the elite—and look what had happened. Imagine how glorious the empire could have been if everyone with a question had been welcomed into the stacks of the Great Library of Alyssium.
“I have a spring . . . Had a spring . . . It used to flow so beautifully, the freshest water, but it doesn’t run anymore . . . But you said you help sick trees, not failed springs. Forgive me.”
“Have you checked upstream?” Kiela asked.
Halio shook her head. “There’s no upstream. My mother’s mother conjured our spring from the bare rock, back when she settled on Caltrey.”
“Your grandmother was a sorcerer?”
“Oh, no,” Halio said. “But back then . . . Well, things were different. All this was before your time. It used to be we weren’t so dependent on those imperial sorcerers. We took care of our own. Minor magics, yes. Nothing as flashy as sorcerer spells, but they did the job. Kept everything healthy and balanced.”
“What happened to all that knowledge?” Kiela asked. “Why didn’t your grandmother pass the spell down?” She thought of the recipe book she’d found in the cottage kitchen. What a shame that those homegrown spells hadn’t been recorded and preserved and treasured like her parents’ recipes. Someone should have done that work. If she’d been here . . . Would she have thought to gather it, like a scholar recording oral history? Or would she not have guessed it was necessary? How much knowledge had been lost because no one wrote it down?
“We didn’t think we’d need it,” Halio said. “The emperor’s sorcerers always came, with spells so much grander than our homespun ones. The older generation was happy to leave the spellcraft for the experts, and the experts were eager to insist their way was best. And then some fluffed-up bureaucrats in the capital with no knowledge of the outer islands or how the world’s interconnected codified that into law, and well, where does that leave us now?”
Kiela had to lean in close to catch all the words, and she didn’t realize that Halio had asked a question, not just a rhetorical one, until the older woman was staring at her expectantly. “It leaves us with finding our own way again, and taking care of one another.”
Halio smiled. “And it leaves us with jam.”
Bidding her farewell, Halio hobbled out of the cottage and away through the greenery. Kiela watched for a moment and then scurried into the back room to search for books about fixing formerly magical springs.
At sundown, Caz finally came in from the garden and flopped down on the hole in the kitchen floor. He sank his roots into the soil and sighed. “It’s still running amok.”
“Is it hurting anything?” Kiela asked.
“It tore a few leaves with its needles at first and impaled a tomato—that was funny, juice everywhere—but it’s gotten the hang of steering around now,” Caz said.
“Is it upset?”
“Not at all.”
“How can you tell?”
“It’s started shouting ‘Wheeee!’ as it rolls.”
Oh. Oh, wow. “Are you saying it talks? Is it like you?” Had she and Caz accidentally made a sentient being? If so . . . was that okay? What kind of responsibility did they have toward the cactus? Should they offer to educate it? What did it need, and what did it want?
“It just says ‘Wheeee.’ I’m exhausted. What did I miss here?”
Kiela told him about the two customers and how radically different they were, and she told him how she’d been researching the creation of wells and springs by magical means. “It’s really fascinating.” She fetched the book she’d been reading. “According to the sorcerer Lunia Wheelan, the water is either coaxed from beneath the bedrock or it’s collected from—”
A knock sounded at the door. “Kiela? Caz?”
Caz let out an “Eep! It’s Larran.”
Quickly, Kiela scooped all the books into the back bedroom, tossed a quilt over them, and shut the door. She hurried back to the front of the cottage, slightly out of breath, as he ducked through the doorway. “Larran! Hi. Um, welcome to our shop.”
“Did I catch you at a bad time?” he asked.
“Just . . . cleaning up.” She turned to the sink to gesture at the dishes—and it was empty. She’d already washed the dishes and glasses she’d used during the day. She felt herself begin to blush. “Would you like to buy some jam?”
“Uh . . . I didn’t . . . That is, I didn’t think to bring anything with me to buy jam. I just came by to check on how your first day went.”
“Good! I think.” Actually, she had no idea how many customers were considered good, but she had sold a few jars of jam, which was a nice start? “I had some customers. Oh, that reminds me—one of my customers suggested that I make a counter for the window, so I can sell from there and not make the larger islanders feel uncomfortable trying to fit inside the shop.”
“I can make you a counter,” Larran said happily. He gestured to the tool belt around his waist. “I brought my tools just in case any of the shelves needed a fix.”
“I didn’t . . . I wasn’t asking a favor. I mean, I was about to, but . . .” She collected herself. “Caz and I have created a remedy for healing trees. It’s an old plant tradition kind of thing. Anyway, I would be happy to give you one in exchange for your assistance with building a counter for the front window.” There, she said that without tripping over too many of the words. What was it about Larran that made everything come out so tangled?
“Healing trees?” Larran said, eyes wide.
Caz lifted a few of his roots out of his soil and waved them in the air. “It strengthens their roots. Old family recipe.”
“You have a family?” Larran asked the plant.
Oops. Had they told Larran how Caz was made? She didn’t remember telling him that story. Maybe Caz had told him?
But Larran backpedaled. “Sorry, that was rude. Of course you could have a family.”
“We’re estranged,” Caz said loftily. “Kiela is the only family I need now.”
We need to make sure our stories are straight if we’re going to stay here. Neither of them had much experience with lying. It didn’t come up much when you avoided talking to people. Maybe it would be simpler if we talked less.
Larran didn’t seem interested in talking less, though. In fact, the herder seemed to be in a chatty mood. While he began work on her new counter, he told her about the antics of his merhorse herd. One of the mares, Amarin, had spotted a harbor seal today and decided to make it her pet. The seal, though, hadn’t been interested in playing with a massive horse-fish. It tried to beach itself on a buoy, and Amarin kept bringing it little gifts in an attempt to either play with it or woo it: a bit of driftwood, a clam, a strip of kelp, a feather from a seagull. At last, she found a ball that had drifted out to sea.
While he talked, Kiela thought about which books to look through for the solution to rejuvenating the magical spring. She’d narrowed it down to three to research after Larran left. Kiela held the wood steady while he nailed it into position on the windowsill.
“What Amarin didn’t know was that the boy Tobin—Bryn’s nephew, have you met him?—left the ball for her to find,” Larran said. “He’s a good kid.”
Caz agreed. “He doesn’t eat plants. Not even vegetables.”
“He wants a ride on a merhorse,” Kiela said.
“Does he?” Larran considered that.
With Kiela’s help, he sawed support pieces, angled slices to attach to both the cottage and the shelf.
“Are there many magical springs on Caltrey?” she asked.
He blinked at the change in subject. “Sorry?”
“A customer was talking about hers. It’s not running anymore. I was curious if that was common.” She knew her water was from an ordinary well, dug long before her parents had been born, but she hadn’t thought about how the rest of the island got fresh water. She thought of the waterfall that powered the mill. Had that been magically created, or was that just plain gravity?
“There are a few. The fountain in the center of town, for example—it was created with magic, but it’s dry now. I suppose the spell simply ran down after time. I tried to fix it once, but there’s nothing mechanically wrong with it. Its water source just isn’t there anymore.”
“Huh,” Kiela said.
She wondered if the sorcerer had drawn from an existing source or had squeezed water out of rock. It couldn’t be as hard to restart an existing spell as to begin one from scratch. Maybe that was the angle she should come at this with . . .
Larran hammered the last nail into the counter and patted the shelf hard. “Nice and solid. Happy to help with anything else.”
“Oh, no, that’s fine. Let me get you that remedy.” She ducked inside and plucked a wrapped pine cone out of the basket. Thinking about an entirely different set of books she could read for restarting old spells, she brought the remedy out to him. “Thanks for stopping by.”
“Uh, okay. If you’d like . . .”
“You just need to bury it between the roots of the tree, that’s all.”
“Sunset should be pretty today, if you . . .”
“Oh, and you should do it soon,” Kiela said. “I don’t know how long the remedy will stay potent. We haven’t tested that, though I would think it would last. Better to just bury it now.” She wondered if there had ever been a study for how long a spell stayed potent before its effectiveness wore off. But that was a tangent. She wanted to focus first on techniques for restarting stalled spells, especially water spells—that had to be much easier than creating an enchantment from scratch. Plus there should be minimal risk of mistakes, which was a plus. She thought of the cactus running around in the garden.
Larran was staring at her, she noticed, and she realized he’d spoken again and she didn’t have any idea what he’d said. “Hope you have a good night,” Kiela said, and hoped that was a reasonable response to his words.
“Good night, Kiela,” Larran said.
She went back inside as he trudged toward the trail. The books she needed were in the third crate . . . As she passed Caz, he let out a dramatic sigh.
She paused. “What’s wrong?”
“You are hopeless,” he said.