Chapter 12 #2
Here we were more equal. As the morning light hit the hills and valleys of a face creased with living, I recognized more of myself than I was comfortable with. Those etchings of worry were only a few years away for me. The way she clutched the cup shadowed how we both held a knife. The correct way.
I could have accepted her apology and moved on without further comment, but what Declan said about his mom touched a very raw nerve for me. More than needing a mentor, I couldn’t paper over the pain I felt from her. I know she would have walked down that mountain too.
“I understand what it’s like to fear you’re too much.” It struck her so deeply she gasped. I didn’t know if I was allowed to take her hand, so I clenched my own. “Everyone wants you to follow your passions until you’re too passionate. You care too much. Then you’re selfish and obsessive.”
She looked away, lost in memory. “Or you don’t know how to take care of your children.”
I nodded in understanding. The bakery had been the same.
It was what I was supposed to do in our small village.
A simple life to temper my grand ambitions.
I was worried it would be the same here.
Tradition used as a shield. There must have been something about the Old Magic that was a bit more feral.
“Standing in the kitchen, perfecting sauce for the fifth night in a row isn’t romantic when it’s your hundredth sauce.
Perfection doesn’t leave room for much else,” I said.
I learned it the hard way, as all other relationships besides my friends’ melted away in the face of my desire to be better, work harder.
“Including a life full of love. I was too headstrong, too powerful and I paid the price. Declan is not his father, but mates can only take so much.”
That wasn’t true because Declan had never asked me, not once, to leave the kitchen. “I can’t speak for your mate but that sounds like a him problem. You can fix those.” My foot mimed the good nut kick.
She smothered a laugh. “Love is the only thing I want for you, my daughter.”
Guilt came with that label, but I forced out, “I want that too.”
It was true. I just didn’t admit it often.
Love was too much to hope for someone as broken as I was.
I would settle for control. I couldn’t explain to her that I was here to get my life back.
One that probably didn’t include love or her son in the way she hoped.
I doubted ‘friends’ was what she was aiming for out of all this.
I would never be a mate. No part of me wanted the right things for that.
Children, forever, reliance weren’t in the cards for me.
Or were they? The visit to the temple was hells bells confusing when us hanging out as friends became something so strange and delicious that I was still reeling. That wasn’t ‘mates’, right?
She smiled at me with a hope that only produced more guilt. “Let’s start with some simple magic. You have the cooking part down.”
I held my tongue. Apparently, there was something simpler than letting cucumbers sit in a jar of vinegar. Some part of me, no matter how much evidence there was to the contrary, didn’t believe that blowing up my bedroom with ten jars of pickles wasn’t my fault.
We moved to the kitchen. Anise plunked a loaf of bread onto the worktable.
“Mold the bread, bring it back, dry it, reduce it to its parts.”
My gaze snapped to hers. She could do that? “Uh?”
The lesson was off to a good start when I couldn’t form words.
“Like this.” A look of concentration crossed her face and I worked to keep my amazement behind my shut jaw.
Anise taking apart the bread into neat piles of wheat, yeast and water opened my mind to a million possibilities.
I had thought my magic was just about making things delicious, but I never considered how it worked on the parts. This was, well, magic.
I fought not to clap my hands and embarrass myself. Only to give up and have it crackle through the room. “Show me!”
Anise laughed and I realized how deep her knowledge of food must run. If she understood how to influence all the parts with magic, then she understood what those parts did and how. Humbled, I gazed at her with new appreciation.
“Please.”
She showed me again, slower, voicing what to focus on.
Then let me do it. I wanted a notebook as she presented how it interacted with flame, and how my magic acted the same.
She took a break to find one and I scribbled furiously.
The family filtered in, all chattering with one another, picking our experimental food off of the platters in the middle of the table.
“Where’s Declan?” Briggs asked and Cosomo punched her on the shoulder. “Shouldn’t he be glued to your side?”
That was what Declan said. We shouldn’t be too far from one another if we were for real mated.
Mate person. It’s time to wake up before you blow our cover.
“He’s just getting ready,” I said to Briggs out loud.
“Well, tell him to hurry or he’s going to be left with an empty plate. Eilie has half of it in her face already.”
“I can make more,” I mumbled, but that seemed to be beside the point as the smallest wolf at the table jumped up to yell at Briggs.
Your family is getting louder.
They do that, Declan sleepily responded.
Was it bad that the sound made me replay our time in the temple?
“She wouldn’t have to make more if you didn’t eat like you were Ned.”
The pup perked his head up at the sound of his name, pink tongue lolling.
“She doesn’t mind,” Eilie spoke for me because I wasn’t wading into those waters. I had no idea how to sibling. I barely knew how to human most days.
Anise tossed another plate of food onto the table. “You can ignore my offspring. They settle down once they have food.” Relief flooded through me and then panic surged right back up when she said, “So tell me how you and Declan met.”
Emergency! Get in here before the questions get even worse!
She smiled fondly at a memory. “Did he try the ‘ole I’ll woo you through the bond trick?”
I froze. We hadn’t really coordinated a story more than the truth: that our friends threw us together.
But my sudden panic wasn’t for that. It was the “through the bond” part.
Mates were supposed to have some sort of link.
Is that what happened in the temple? Did all this fake horsing around bond us somehow?
I couldn’t bond with anyone! I was a mess.
“Fate threw us together.” There, that sounded sufficiently magical.
“That’s how I felt too when I met Draven - like the Fates struck us both,” Anise said.
None of my panic must have been shining in my eyes because Anise was still talking while I nodded. She told me some story about her and her mate but my mind kept bleating like a stuck sheep.
Declan!
What happened in the temple… the accidental orgasm.
I had to call it that because what was the alternative?
Was that some sort of wolfie tactic on Declan’s part?
The man was the least tactical person I had ever met, but he could be single-minded in his goals.
We had that in common. But what goal? Surely he wasn’t so innocent as to think trading orgasms counted as a way to relax.
“And by the end of the night, I was laughing until I cried. They’re not all terrible memories of him.”
I nodded like the stupid girl I was as Declan bounced into the kitchen in his wolf form, knocking Briggs backwards out of her chair.
The tussle had her shifting to snap and snarl at him with more sound than fury.
Anise threw a dish towel at Declan. That piled everyone out of the house to either watch the fight or participate.
I wasn’t sure. Ned barked his fool head off, though.
“Shut your sauce-box, you’ll wake the neighbors.,” Anise shouted, adding to the ruckus.
Take all the time you need, Honey. I’ll deal with these hooligans. They can get Krystall Whitewolf’s friends talking to me. Maybe it will give us a new lead.
How was he so good at that? Just when everything was about to fall to pieces, Declan always knew how to make the situation better. I turned back to Anise.
She smiled at her children retreating out the door. “Back to work, as my son reminds me.”
Anise had me repeat basic recipes to her. Then flavor pairings. Her knowledge of how pairs influenced other pairs began to make sense. Time baked around us until I reached the limit of my memorization. The sun glowed behind the mountains again. Anise stopped before my brain grew truly fuzzy.
“Tomorrow I can write out a few more obscure pairings for you to think about. Not to pile onto a dish, but so you know when you make a simple one, what will shine.”
I ran my hand through the flour on the table, thinking. “What if you don’t know the parts of a dish? Can you still separate them, manipulate them?”
Anise formed dumplings out of the flour. Then she set out a bowl and it slowly filled with the broth she called. “It takes practice but, yes, you can. Eventually you’re not thinking about them, you’re changing the intent of the thing and your magic is following that intent.”
I stood there, shock rooting me to the floor.
I had never attempted to make something out of nothing.
Manipulating food took enough energy. A shiver of dread went through me.
Anise endeavored to show me slowly, in comprehensive steps, but the level of her magic was off the charts.
No pot, pan, or bowl contained her if she really wanted to use her magic.
She tapped my cramping hands, forcing them down. “It can be overwhelming. Take your time with it. You want it right and repeatable. Not fast.”
I attempted to come up with an intelligent question. “How far can you change something?”
She shrugged, cleaning up the workspace. “As far as your will allows.”
“Can you encourage herbs to grow?” I already knew how to make their flavor more robust so maybe that was just ultra growing.