Chapter 12
Honey
The well was a disaster.
Honey crouched beside the stone rim, her knees damp from the morning dew, and her audit ledger open across her lap. The sun had barely cleared the hills, but she'd already been at it for hours, sifting through a fresh batch of wishes that made her want to throw her clipboard straight into the well.
She used a coin picker to retrieve the coins—basically a long pole with a wire basket on the end. She extended it into the well, maneuvering it blindly until she felt the slight weight of coins dropping into the basket.
She dumped them onto the grass beside her, soaking the ground with brackish water until the earth turned to mush. Picking a coin from the pile, she dried it on her pants, and inserted it into her computer’s coin reader. The screen flickered.
I wish the baby Gala trees would bear fruit a year early.
Already approved. Honey read off the screen incredulously.
That wish had no business being approved. She noted it in her ledger and put the coin in the growing pile of erroneously approved wishes.
None of these should have gone through. Wishes were supposed to go through a strict review by an auditor prior to being granted: ethical impact, magical sustainability, emotional necessity.
And that’s just the first few categories.
These should have been denied by nearly every category. And yet, the system had become so clogged that it had granted them without review.
A faint bleat interrupted her brooding.
Honey looked up to find a familiar baby goat standing at the edge of the clearing.
Much to her surprise, she recognized him immediately as the same one from her unfortunate introduction to the family.
Pickles, if she recalled correctly. The one with a crooked ear and a splash of black across its nose, like someone had haphazardly dabbed him with a paintbrush.
“No,” she said crisply, pointing at him, but he only blinked at her. “Out of here. Shoo.”
The goat remained perfectly still, chewing something invisible.
“I mean it,” she huffed, flapping her hand. “Go do…goat things. Elsewhere.”
It did not.
She tried to ignore him, but he approached and pushed his head against her back repeatedly as if asking her to play.
With a resigned sigh, Honey got up and scooped the goat into her arms. Its hooves batted gently against her thighs as she tromped through the orchard toward the barn, muttering all the while.
“This is neither appropriate nor efficient,” she informed it. “I have a job to do. I cannot frolic around or whatever you do.”
Up ahead, two men passed by on a rumbling tractor.
A couple rows away, a short, stocky fellow stood high on a ladder, reaching into the branches of a tree.
All three looked strikingly alike—tall, broad-shouldered, sun-browned.
Possibly the Fitches, she thought, remembering Emma mentioning the family who helped work the orchard.
Honey and the goat passed row after row of apple trees, their branches heavy with fruit. Golden light spilled through the leaves, thick with morning dew. A breeze stirred the branches, bringing with it the sweet scent of cider and grass and something earthier beneath—mulch, perhaps.
Honey breathed in the scent and strangely found herself enjoying it.
When the barn came into sight, the goat bleated, high and plaintive, a sound not unlike a toddler being told it could not have candy for breakfast. “Enough of that. You belong in a barn, not out by the well. You are a ruminant, not an assistant auditor. Your qualifications are dubious, at best.”
The goat blew out a sigh through its nose and, much to her dismay, a smile crept onto her face. She resisted it at first, then allowed herself the smallest upturn of the lips.
“Clearly,” she muttered, “I’ve been here too long already. I mean, really, talking to a goat and laughing at its responses like a chittering subway rat. The fresh air is depriving my brain of sense.”
The barn appeared ahead, leaning slightly to one side.
Her phone rang. She hustled the rest of the way to the barn and set Pickles down inside the pen.
After pulling the phone from her pocket, Honey glanced at the screen and immediately straightened. Mr. Aldridge.
“Stay,” she ordered the baby goat. “Go to your mother. Perhaps eat some hay.”
The goat blinked. She turned on her heel and smoothed her hair out of reflex before answering. “Hello, sir.”
“Ms. Baxter,” came the clipped voice of her supervisor. “I trust you’ve settled into Brim’s Hollow without incident.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “No problems other than a very persistent little goat.”
“A trait I admire,” he said without inflection. “I wanted to check on your progress. The board is watching this audit closely, and I know this is very different from your usual process.”
“I’m on track. I plan to begin my documentation this afternoon,” Honey said, shutting the door to the pen. The larger goat across the enclosure gave her a side-eye but didn’t stir. “The conditions here are…different. But manageable.”
Mr. Aldridge cleared his throat. “You should also know Auditor Weisel has submitted for field review.”
Honey’s stomach sank. “Dean?”
“Yes,” Aldridge said, with what might have been the faintest sigh. “He’s been making himself very available to the board. His recent work on the midtown site garnered attention. You’re still the strongest candidate for Assistant to the Director, but you’ll need to make this count.”
The strongest candidate? Honey should be the only candidate. Dean, of all auditors, could barely file properly, let alone handle the duties required of the Assistant to the Director.
Honey's jaw tightened. “I understand. Thank you for the call, sir. I won’t let you down.”
“I know you won’t,” he said, and the line clicked dead.
Behind her, the soft clop of hooves followed.
“How did you—” Honey looked down and spotted the hole in the pen’s fence.
She glanced once toward the house, where she assumed Ethan was busy getting the girls off to school.
For a moment, she considered letting him know about the gap, but other than the brief encounter that morning, when he’d handed her a muffin and a cup of coffee with barely a word, they hadn’t spoken.
Truthfully, she was still a little mortified about how she’d acted after their pharmacy trip.
One honest moment, a little kindness on his part, and she’d gone spilling her life story like they were old friends catching up instead of two people who barely knew each other.
Mr. Aldridge would be appalled at her lack of composure.
Eventually, she’d have to talk to Ethan again, but right now, she had more pressing issues—like the fact that she was almost out of clean laundry, she needed to finish the audit, and Dean was vying for the position she’d been dreaming about for the last decade.
She wasn’t about to slow herself more by pointing out a fence hole.
“Never mind. But if you get into trouble, it is not on me.”
The goat bleated, utterly unconcerned, and followed her back toward the well, stepping daintily through the mud as though he, too, had serious business to do.
Settling back in beside the stone well, she reached for the next wish in the pile and stuck it into the computer.
I wish we would win the wholesale contract. Already granted.
“This can’t be,” Honey said and inserted another coin.
I wish every roadside stand within fifty miles had to buy our produce. Already granted.
The goat stuck his head over her shoulder and peered at the screen.
I wish families would feel guilty for not shopping local. Already granted.
“Heavens.”
The goat bleated as if he were just as offended.
The surface-level problems—the contracts, the roadside stands, the shopping local—those were just distractions. Underneath them, the real pattern was starting to emerge.
All the wishes were about changing people’s behavior, essentially using magic to force them to spend their money on the farm, but there should be no reason to force them.
Even Honey, who didn’t particularly care for nature beyond a brisk power walk through Central Park once a day, felt there was something special here.
The trees around her were massive and old, their trunks gnarled like arthritic fingers and their branches arching overhead to form a kind of natural cathedral.
Shafts of sunlight filtered through the leaves.
The air smelled of hay and soil, of sun-warmed wood and the faintest trace of sweetness.
She could even admit that while she personally found the quiet a little unnerving, she could see how people would like it.
They shouldn’t need magic to bring people here.
Something nudged her shin. She looked down just in time to see the little goat shift his weight and lean fully against her leg before plopping down with a dramatic little sigh, already halfway to sleep.
Honey froze, caught off guard. His small, warm body pressed against her, and for a moment, she didn’t move. Then, she reached down and gently rubbed his side. The goat gave a soft snore.
She looked toward the trees again, this time picturing the barn in the distance.
She envisioned a fresh coat of red paint, white trim around the windows, a string of warm fairy lights glowing at twilight.
Out front, a little farm stand with wooden crates piled with vegetables, handmade soap, maybe even jars of honey with gingham lids.
It could be something. They shouldn’t need magic. Not when the place had this kind of honest-to-goodness charm.
If she were going to get involved, and she was starting to feel dangerously close to it, then maybe it was time to shift the entire approach.
She looked down at the sleeping goat again, its tiny body nestled against her leg, and rubbed its side a little more.
If they could bottle this—the scent of sun-warmed grass, the softness of an animal’s fur, the quiet comfort of simply being—then maybe they wouldn’t need magic at all.