Chapter 2 #2
She withdrew a wooden bookend, much battered.
“They are.”
“The seagull bookends,” murmured Viv.
“Or maybe rabbits.” They shared a glance and chuckled.
There was a pause during which Viv handed over the bookends, and Fern wedged a few novels between them on the countertop.
“I’ll be damned,” Viv breathed behind her.
“What?” Fern looked back sharply.
The orc reached into the freshly opened crate and withdrew a red volume. “Ten Links in the Chain,” she said, flashing a big, tusky grin. “This is the same book you tricked me into reading.”
“Tricked? That was honest saleswomanship, I’ll have you know.”
“I’m pretty sure you guilted me into it.”
“You did break my boardwalk,” Fern pointed out. “And then I gave it to you on credit, so I’m not sure what you’re complaining about.”
“And now here you are,” said Viv.
The stove ticked and the shadows of moths flittered their way across the walls. “And now here I am,” she whispered. A surge of some desperate emotion halfway between despair and hope squeezed the breath out of her.
“You got me here,” said Viv solemnly.
That crushing sensation receded, mostly.
“It was you, more than anybody. You saved my life in a way I can’t properly put into words. I found . . .” Viv stared away and through the walls. Fern knew that if all the stones were peeled away, she’d find Tandri at the end of that gaze. “I found things I didn’t think were even possible.”
They looked at each other with the red book held like a remembrance between them.
“Well,” said Fern, with a comic shrug, “now I guess you have a chance to return the favor.”
“If you need saving, then that’s what we’re going to do,” said Viv. She shelved Ten Links in the Chain decisively.
She hadn’t meant to, but after discovering Viv’s change of fate, Fern had buried a call for help in that first letter she’d sent, and not particularly deep.
The lines still burned in her memory.
I’d love to say that my life has been perfect, that I’ve seized every moment, that after you left there were no struggles or doubts, but that wouldn’t be true. It has been satisfactory, though. There have been many good days.
Doing her best to chase any bitterness out of her laughter, Fern said, “You already did that once. Twice in a lifetime is asking too much.”
“I don’t see any reason to keep a tally if you don’t.” Viv regarded Fern with a gaze much more perceptive than it had been a few decades prior. Then she sniffed and scrubbed a forearm across her eyes. “Hells. Lot of dust in these crates. Let’s shelve some fucking books.”
“Let’s shelve some fucking books,” replied Fern, relieved.
Hours later, with the shelves stocked, and the crates hauled to the alley, they leaned side by side against the gleaming counter that Cal had built.
Fern felt . . . fine. Maybe even good.
Viv looked down at her from a familiar great height. “So, whatever happened to Satchel?”
Fern smiled wistfully at the thought of the surpassingly polite homunculus made of bone and blue fire.
“Gods, I wish I knew. But I like to think he saw all the things he wanted to.”
In the end, Fern named the shop Thistleburr Booksellers in honor of the place her father had built and raised her in, what seemed a thousand leagues to the west and as many years ago. Besides, she couldn’t think of a better name that fit, and it was . . . comfortable.
As Viv pointed out, there wasn’t likely to be any confusion.
Cal had chiseled the letters deep in a broad oak plank and carved the edges into fancy scallops. Fern had painted the name white with a small brush and a careful hand. Viv had barely stretched to peg it above the freshly scrubbed entryway.
It was the last thing slotted into place before opening day arrived.
Fern stood just inside the door with a single paw resting on the handle. She closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and held it.
The shelves were stocked. The appointments sparkled. The spice of ink and paper enticed.
A veritable tower of Thimble’s baked treats steamed and gleamed atop a round table in the center of the shop, beside carafes of coffee and tea and clusters of mugs.
Tandri’s chalk artwork proclaimed Opening Day Sale, 5 bits off! from a sandwich board. Fern was reminded of a similar effort by Satchel many years past, rendered in his precise, mathematical hand.
The echoes of that event swelled inside her, painting the inside of her lids until she half believed she’d open them to find herself twenty summers younger and staring into the homunculus’s blazing blue eyes.
Then a warm hand fell on Fern’s shoulder, heavy and strong, to deliver a gentle squeeze. “It’s going to be fine,” said Viv. “Better than.”
Breathing out, Fern glanced up with a smile. “I’ve owned a bookstore for twenty-five years. I should be used to a feeling of impending disaster by now, right?”
“Twenty-five years, and no disaster yet. Doesn’t seem like a real reliable feeling, does it?” Viv returned the smile.
Fern blinked. “That’s an annoyingly logical observation.”
They both started at a sudden rap on the door, and after an embarrassing series of fumbles with the latch, Fern pushed it open a few inches.
Tandri’s face greeted them as she waited in the dawn light, wearing a soft sweater and stamping her booted feet against the early morning chill. “All set?” Then she glanced to her left.
Fern swung the door wider, revealing four townsfolk waiting on the step beside Viv’s wife.
A coil of tension released inside the rattkin.
“Gods, get in here out of the cold! I’m so sorry I kept you waiting.”
And from then on, scarcely a pause could be found.
Fern remembered the day as a series of little landmarks, like treetops rising from a misty valley.
Viv, waving Ten Links in the Chain at a bewildered dwarf, covering one eye with a hand and loudly describing a dismemberment. The dwarf bought the book, but he had a hunted look in his eyes when he did. Viv winked at Fern over the top of his head.
Thimble, squeaking in dismay at platters empty of all but crumbs and rushing to refresh them with steaming cinnamon rolls, the scent of which caused an audible ripple amongst shoppers.
The startling appearance of a shaggy gray cat the size of a timber wolf that nobody remarked upon. Its tail crested the tops of the shelves like the fin of a shark roving shallow waters as it prowled the shop with an air of menacing indifference.
The arrival of a venerable woman in a red cloak, accompanied by a stone-fey in a very impressive hat, whose combined presence had an effect that Fern honestly thought the cat should have produced.
The lady bought a stack of books two feet high, but not before sharply inspecting Fern with a flinty eye.
Her escort carried her purchases for her when she left.
Tandri nudging Fern aside to take over the counter so she could eat a hasty sandwich, which Potroast ogled mercilessly until he received his half.
Cal ambling in the door and stepping to the side to lean against the wall, hands in his pockets. He nodded when he caught her eye, smiling his stubbled smile.
The steady accumulation of copper bits and silvers in the cash-box, and the impression of some great, impending wave curling back into the tide before ever breaking on the shore.
And with the closing of the door, the weary, bewildered, dazed, exhausted, triumphant, satisfied silence that followed, as Viv, Tandri, Cal, and Thimble clustered around the countertop, noting the many fresh gaps amongst the bookshelves.
The opening of Thistleburr Booksellers in Thune was an unmitigated success. A new chapter freshly opened in Fern’s life—the page turned, the title printed, and ready to be filled with words of renewal, purpose, and peace.