Chapter 2
“That’s the last load,” said Viv, grunting as she lowered a stack of lumber to the floor. She shrugged her arm a few times and rubbed life back into her shoulder. “I’ve got to head over to the shop. You going to be all right for now?”
Fern glanced up from a set of shelves, a paintbrush heavy with wood stain in one paw.
She fanned her cheek with the other. With the window glass in place, the interior of the shop was choked with midday heat.
She blew out a breath and waved the brush.
“Sure. With Cal here, there’s no possible way I can damage anything load-bearing. ”
Viv searched her face.
She was smiling, but Fern thought she was also trying to figure out whether there was any lingering panic in the joke. The prognosis must have been good, because her smile deepened. “See you after I close up, then. But come on over if you need anything.”
In their letters, Viv had been clear that she would handle all the organizational work in advance of Fern’s arrival.
She’d been true to her word, and if there was any consideration she hadn’t covered, Cal clearly knew what he was about.
After a few days to give her bruised tail a chance to recover from the long carriage ride, Fern threw herself into transforming the shell of a building into a shop worth the upending of her entire life.
Watching her purse flatten also turned out to be a powerful motivator. Fern knew Viv would’ve been happy to assist there, too, but her old friend had already sunk plenty of sovereigns into the place. She couldn’t countenance letting her add any more.
“Front counter?” prompted Cal. The hob stared down at a few planks he’d arranged to mark the perimeter of the structure in question. Potroast snored between the boards in a makeshift bed consisting entirely of Fern’s cloak and his shed feathers.
Stretching—and wincing—Fern balanced the brush on the pot of wood stain and joined him.
She regarded the rest of the shop’s interior, now crowded with shelves just like the ones she’d been finishing.
“Hmm. A few feet this way, I think. It’ll have to be if we’re going to line up the bookshelves in three rows.
” She closed an eye and framed the space with both paws.
Cal squatted to scratch Potroast behind one triangular ear.
The gryphet snorted through his beak, rocking to the side to make his belly available.
The hob obliged him, squinting up at Fern as he did.
At least she was pretty sure he squinted.
His eyes were mostly hidden by his bushy brows and the shadow of his cap.
“So. You feelin’ more plumb these days?” He angled his other hand so it ran straight up and down.
Fern’s tail quirked in exasperation. “Honestly, everyone seems worried I might collapse in a heap at any moment.” She hiked a thumb in the direction Viv had gone. “The building isn’t going to fall down, and neither am I. We’re both just a little crooked.”
“Don’t doubt you’ll be fine a little crooked. But we’re already in here straightenin’ things out.” He stood and slapped the wall. “Just figured you deserved at least as much attention as this old wreck.”
She sighed. “Thanks. And I do mean that. But. This old wreck is just fine.”
“Hm.”
They contemplated one another for a long moment.
Fern thought it was strange that she could in any way feel related to someone she’d barely said two words to, but the hob might as well have been an uncle, as far as that went.
The kind you liked having by to visit, because they fixed all the squeaky doors, and they didn’t embarrass everybody at the dinner table.
“Fair enough,” Cal allowed. Then he pointed a gnarled finger at the shelf Fern had been laboring over.
“S’pose since you’re just fine and all, it’d be worth pointin’ out that you’ve been fillin’ that brush so heavy, you’ve got a little lake formin’ on the bottom plank.
Want me to show you how to do it proper? ”
He had the good grace to cough to cover his chuckle when Fern turned the air blue.
As, of course, the best kind of uncle would.
Fern decided that the unending work of the following weeks had a therapeutic quality.
She was too exhausted to fret about anything—funds, future, or friendship.
Her new bookshop slowly took shape as the shelves found their places, fresh boards replaced rotted ones, wax gleamed on floorboards, paint refreshed the walls, and ancient stains vanished under lye and water.
Viv pitched in throughout any given day in dribs and drabs, especially when heavy objects needed shifting or someone more than four feet tall was required, but the balance of Fern’s hours was spent mostly in the company of Cal.
She discovered she didn’t mind that in the slightest.
The hob carpenter was soothing to be around, imperturbable and taciturn in ways that communicated more than they had any right to. More than once, one of them would appear unbidden next to the other to brace a piece of timber, offer a handful of nails, or top up a paint pot.
It wasn’t that they never spoke. They simply didn’t bother if they didn’t have to.
As someone whose life had mostly been spent in the service of sharing words, Fern was enjoying keeping them to herself for a while.
It meant that when they did speak, it actually mattered.
Mostly, that happened during their lunch break.
“Thanks, Thimble,” she said, as the little baker offered a platterful of sandwiches wrapped in brown paper, wedged next to two sugar-dusted scones.
He blushed to the ends of his whiskers, and then rummaged in a shoulder bag for a pair of flasks.
“Coffee,” he whispered, offering one to Cal.
The hob took it with a nod and a tug of his cap.
“Tea.” Thimble didn’t meet Fern’s eyes as she accepted it from his outstretched paw.
An awkward silence swelled as he fidgeted as though he wanted to say something, and Fern waited patiently.
And waited.
“Um. It looks delicious,” she tried, hefting the plate.
“Thanks,” he squeaked and fled out the open door.
Fern watched him go, then shifted her gaze to Cal, who was already inspecting the sandwiches with great interest. “I think there’s a conversation going on around here that involves me, but that I’m not part of. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“Hm?” replied Cal.
“Oh, come on. Every time that kid is in the room, I can feel the . . . the matchmaking eyes.” She studied the hob’s bushy brows. “All right, fine, I can’t really tell with you, but Viv? Tandri?”
Cal took a bite of sourdough and cheese and ruminated as he chewed. At last, he replied, “I figure folk who lucked into findin’ each other maybe hope it happens to somebody else, too. ’Specially somebody they’re fond of.”
“Oh, hells.” Fern dropped onto an upturned bucket with a sigh. “Those two aren’t talking me up to him, are they? Nudging him my way? Please, tell me they aren’t.”
He shrugged. “Doubt they’re that ham-fisted. Prob’ly just watchin’ you both like old ladies watchin’ young folk at a summer picnic.”
“He’s practically a baby! I’m forty-seven years old!”
“Never could tell the age of a rattkin, m’self.”
“My muzzle is silver.”
“Hm. Distinguished. ’Sides, he’s all gray.”
“I can’t tell if you’re fucking with me.”
Cal cocked half a smile and took another bite.
Fern laughed helplessly. “I hated the coffee, and now I’m going to disappoint them in a whole new way.” She selected a scone and took a morose bite. “Fuck, he is a good baker, though. Maybe I’m being too hasty.”
She felt the weight of the hob’s regard and met his gaze. Or where it would have been if his eyebrows didn’t obscure it.
“Hm. Yeah, the coffee thing was a real disaster.”
It turned out she did know when he was fucking with her.
“This is profoundly weird,” said Viv, hefting a volume in one hand and flipping it open with the other. She brought it halfway to her nose for a sniff. “Gods, I got a little shiver up my back. I expect to look outside and see a boardwalk and dunes.”
Fern looked up from the open crate before her, paws trailing over the cloth covers of the books stacked precisely inside. The ranks of shelves and freshly polished floors glowed mellowly under lantern light. The windowpanes fogged against an evening chill.
“My vision was a little sharper back then, but I can still picture you prying those crates open with your bare hands.”
Viv snorted. She’d wisely used a pry bar for the task this time around. “And I can still see Pitts towing them up on that cart of his. Whatever happened to him?”
“Still trooping around Murk, hauling and fixing what needs hauling and fixing.” Fern lifted three books from the crate, passing them over for Viv to shelve. A small smile. “And ambushing folks with a line or two of poetry when they least expect it.”
They stocked shelves in companionable silence while the little woodstove in the corner pushed the temperature toward the sleepy side of cozy.
Once they reached the bottom of the first crate, Viv snugged the pry bar under the lid of the next. “I remember Gallina making some sort of terrible excuse to get out of helping with this.”
“Said she was too short, as if that was a convincing argument.” Fern swept a paw to indicate her own height. “Whatever happened with you two?”
“We ran together for years, off and on. Then back in a group for a good stretch until . . . well, until I was done.”
Fern eyed her. “I’m sure she took it well,” she said, in a deliberately neutral way.
“Better than you’d think. She evened out in her old age, just like the rest of us.”
“Speak for yourself. I’m still salty as hells,” said Fern tartly. She blinked, and a slow smile crept across her lips. “And on the subject of relics, that reminds me . . .”
She scurried to her room and returned carrying a misshapen bundle wrapped in brown paper. Hoisting it triumphantly, she said, “Open it.”
Nonplussed, Viv took it and peeled back several layers of paper. “Are these what I think they are?”