Chapter 7
MARIS
Friday deliveries start before the morning rush.
I pull the order list from the hook beside the door and work through it methodically — two loaves for old Perdick on the mill road, a dozen rolls for the Hatch family, the usual seeded loaf for Sister Calla at the northern chapel, half a dozen honey cakes for the Wren household whose youngest just had a birthday.
I bag each order in brown paper and tie them with twine, stacking them in the flat-bottomed delivery basket by the door.
Elin watches from her stool with the alert attention of someone waiting for an opportunity.
"You can play on the stoop," I tell her, before she asks. "The scarf stays on."
She slides off the stool immediately. The scarf is already on, tied snug, the green wool sitting bright against her dark curls. She pushes through the front door and settles on the top step with her cloth doll, apparently satisfied with this arrangement.
I keep the window to my left while I work. Through the glass I can see the top of her head, the scarf, the doll she's currently introducing to a beetle on the step beside her. The morning is breezy but warm, the market square starting to fill with the usual Friday traffic.
I tie off the last delivery bag and start loading the basket. Perdick first, then cut back through the square toward the chapel. I'm calculating the route when the wind shifts.
It comes up fast and hard from the east, the kind of gust that sweeps through the valley in early season when the temperatures haven't settled. The shop door rattles on its latch. Papers lift from the counter.
Elin yelps.
I'm at the window in a heart beat. She's on the stoop with both hands pushing her skirt down, struggling against the gust, her face screwed up in indignant protest. The doll has blown off the step entirely.
And the scarf is already off her head. It lifts and tumbles, caught by the wind, skipping across the cobblestones in a bright rolling arc until it catches on the wheel of a cart parked at the square's edge.
Elin's ears are uncovered. Both of them, small and distinctly pointed, visible to anyone standing at street level.
I grab the door handle.
Mistress Porwick is standing on the stoop.
She's one of my oldest customers — sixties, stout, makes the walk from the south lane every Friday for her loaf of dark bread without fail. She's been coming to this bakery for years. She is standing three feet from Elin with her market basket on her arm and her mouth open, and she is not moving.
Elin looks up at her. The wind settles. The street goes briefly, ordinarily quiet.
Mistress Porwick presses her free hand flat to her chest. Her eyes are fixed on Elin's ears. She takes one step back, then another, her face shifting between an open mouth and thin firm line of her lips. Her basket handle creaks in her grip.
"Mistress Porwick—" I push through the door.
She turns and walks away. Not running, but close — the fast, stiff-legged walk of someone who wants to be somewhere else immediately. She doesn't look back. She rounds the corner toward the south lane and disappears without a word.
I stand on the stoop with my hand still on the doorframe.
Elin twists around to look at me. "She forgot her bread."
"She did." My voice comes out flat. I step down, scoop Elin up, and carry her inside before I go back for the scarf. It takes me a moment to cross the square and unhook it from the cart wheel. The wool is damp from the cobblestones.
Back inside, I tie it around Elin's head again. My hands are moving too fast and I make myself slow down.
"There," I say.
Elin studies my face. "Mama, you look funny."
"I'm fine." I set her on her stool and go back to the delivery basket. The orders are lined up and waiting. Perdick's bread. The Hatch rolls. The honey cakes.
I take the basket and set it down again. Through the window, Mistress Porwick's empty corner of the square looks back at me.
She knows half the town by name and the other half by reputation, and she visits with everyone between here and the south lane on her Friday walk. By the time she gets home, she'll have passed at least four households, and Mistress Porwick has never been one to keep an interesting thing to herself.
I stand at the window and watch the square for a moment. Just ordinary Friday morning traffic. Merchants setting up, children running errands, a dog nosing along the fountain base.
Then I grab the delivery basket and get to work, because there is nothing else to do.
The delivery basket can wait.
I set it down and go back outside, moving fast across the stoop. Elin looks up from the step where she's resettled herself, doll retrieved, already absorbed in whatever conversation she was having with the beetle before the wind interrupted.
"Inside." I take her hand and pull her up. "Now, please."
"But I just sat back down—"
"Inside, Ellie."
She comes without further argument, reading something in my voice that she knows not to push against. I bring her through the door and bolt it behind us. The afternoon light through the front window falls across the empty square in long stripes. No one lingers outside. No one seems to be watching.
I crouch to her level.
"I need you to go upstairs to your room for a little while."
Her brow pulls together. "Is it because the scarf came off?"
"It is." There's no point softening it. She's three, not oblivious. "Someone saw your ears, and I'm worried they'll get the wrong idea about who you are."
She turns this over carefully. "What wrong idea?"
"That you're something to be afraid of." The words come out steadier than I feel. "Which you're not. But some people get frightened by things that are different from what they know, and I'd rather keep you safe while I sort it out."
Her eyes stay on me for a moment, serious and considering. Then she picks up her doll and starts toward the stairs without being told again. She stops on the second step.
"Mama."
"Yes?"
"My ears are just ears."
"They are," I say. "I know."
She goes upstairs. I listen to her footsteps cross the floor above me and stop in her room, and then I return to the delivery basket.
I finish bagging the remaining orders in a quarter of the time it usually takes me. The knots are tighter than they need to be. I sling the basket over my arm and go out the back door, leaving Elin with the latch string within her reach and the instruction to not open the door for anyone but me.
The deliveries go quickly. Perdick answers his door before I've finished knocking and takes his bread with a nod and nothing more.
The Hatch household is noisier — three children and a dog — and they barely register my visit beyond the transaction.
Sister Calla at the chapel accepts her loaf with a gentle smile and a comment about the weather.
I do not stop to chat at any of them, which earns me one or two surprised looks from people accustomed to at least a brief exchange.
The Wren household is the furthest out, a ten-minute walk that takes me along the main road before cutting south. I drop their honey cakes at the gate and turn back toward the market square before anyone comes to the door.
The evening has started its slow slide when I reach the main lane. Families are out walking in the cooler air, children running ahead of their parents, a few older residents moving in pairs along the fountain path. Normal enough. I keep my head down and my pace steady.
"— pulled her scarf right off, I'm told, and there they were plain as anything—"
I don't slow down. I don't look toward the two women standing by the cloth merchant's shuttered stall.
"Porwick said she nearly lost her footing. The eyes, too, she said — silver, not natural at all—"
"Maris Alderwyn's girl?"
"Who else? That child has never looked quite right. I thought it was just the coloring, but—"
Their voices drop as I pass. I don't turn around. I keep walking, my free hand loose at my side, my face forward, counting the steps to the bakery door.
The square is still busy enough that hurrying would draw more attention than walking normally. I manage it. I reach the back lane, turn down it, and cover the last stretch to my own door at a pace that is just short of running.
I knock three times, our pattern. The latch string moves and the door opens.
Elin stands in the kitchen with her doll tucked under her arm, looking up at me with an expression that says her patience is running thing.
"You came back fast," she says.
"I said I would." I step inside and pull the door shut and latch it. The smell of fresh bread lingers in the kitchen, still faint in the warm air. I put the empty basket on the table and crouch down to her level.
She looks fine. She is fine. The scarf is back in place, and the kitchen is warm and nothing has come through the door.
"Are you hungry?" I ask.
She shrugs and plays with her doll’s string hair. "Yes."
"Good." I stand and move toward the hearth. "Let's make something for supper."