Chapter 28 - Willow
Willow
Now that my little writing side quest was over, I could focus on what truly mattered to me.
The apothecary shop was busier than ever, giving me the perfect excuse to dive into work and not think about anything else.
Herbs needed grinding, plants needed watering, and orders needed packing. It all felt so wonderfully familiar.
Or it would have if there weren’t so many strange things in the shop that hadn’t been there when I left.
Notebooks full of unfamiliar handwriting, a garbage bin labeled “failures”, and shelves of elixirs marked for training next to the old flash cards I’d used when I was studying as a teen.
I leaned closer, staring at the handwriting in the notebook.
“Is this all Thorne’s?” I asked Gran after she finished up with a customer. “Were you training him?”
“Of course. Did you think I’d keep a terrible apprentice like him around otherwise?
” Gran harrumphed but smiled fondly at the section of the shop that seemed to be Thorne’s now.
“He messed up every single task I gave him for the first few days, making nothing fit for consumption and setting fire to more than one project. But he was determined to help, and I didn’t have the heart to say no.
” She moved closer, resting her hand on my shoulder. “I assume he did it for you...”
I trailed my fingertips over the label on a bottle of energizing tonic, pausing at the little note that said For Willow.
Tears pricked my eyes. He’d spent so much time helping Gran when I was too busy pretending to be a writer. I should have been the one here, not him. I gripped the bottle tight, forcing myself to empty it in the failure bin.
Gran gasped. “What did you do that for? That one was practically usable!”
“He won’t be coming by anymore.” And yet, I couldn’t seem to bring myself to dump out the rest of the bottles. My eyes were so blurry that I could barely make out his little corner of the shop. “Sorry we wasted your time, Gran.”
A pained look was her only response and that bothered me even more.
I shouldn’t be worrying her like this. I wiped my eyes and grabbed my mortar and pestle to grind up some fresh ginger root.
I pounded the plant over and over, crushing it to loosen it up.
The harsh sound of the pestle slamming against the mortar was oddly satisfying.
Gran had promised that if I hated writing she wouldn’t bother me about it anymore.
So at least I wouldn’t have to feel like this ever again.
“I’m done writing, Gran.” Ginger juice splashed against my hand, but I kept slamming the pestle down over and over. “And I’m done with Thorne too.”
“Oh Willow.” Gran grabbed my hands, forcing me to stop and look at her. “He was a good man. I’m sorry.”
She pulled me into a hug that made it all so much worse.
I thought I could just leave the book and forget about Thorne, but remnants of him were everywhere, even in how she talked about him.
Tears ran down my cheeks, soaking into her cardigan.
Gran patted my back as my shoulders shook and I finally let it all out.
“I don’t even know what happened,” I said, half sobbing still.
“One minute we were great together and the next we were arguing about the book. Then I was back in the library, and it all fell apart.” I took a deep breath and pulled away from her, wiping my eyes.
“He hated my version of the story, and he didn’t even bother following me when the library finally pulled me out.
That’s all I really need to know I guess. ”
“Is it really? I feel like there’s probably more to the story.” Gran stared at me with that intense look of hers that always made me squirm, like I was a kid and she was trying to get me to admit I’d broken a jar. “Let’s close early today.”
“But we never close early.”
“Well today we do.” She made her way to the front door and flipped the open sign to closed, turning back to me with her hands on her hips.
“The Demon Lord was here almost every day, remember? That man went from lost and kind of sad to confident and glowing with happiness. I know that was because of you, so if you felt even a little bit of what he did, I can’t imagine you’d just give up on the book you two were working on that easily. ”
My mouth dropped open. “You think I’m the reason he was glowing with happiness?”
“Of course, he’s in love with you.” Gran put a kettle of water over the fire while I stood there, dumbfounded.
“You’re always so focused on work that you miss what’s right in front of your face.
I’ve watched every man who falls for you go from excited to downright gloomy once they realize you’ll never pay them the kind of attention you pay your work.
But that demon’s different.” She glanced back at me, her expression soft and kind.
“You made him happier the longer you were together. Was it the same for you?”
“Just how much time did you spend together?” I muttered, heat sweeping over the back of my neck. “We weren’t in love. We barely even dated. We were just stuck together and we let the excitement of the book get to us.”
“Don’t do that,” Gran chided. “Don’t belittle his feelings or yours.”
She was right. Even as I said the words, I knew they were a lie. I did have feelings for him, strong ones. Nobody had ever made me feel like that before, which was why it had stung so much when he rejected me. Well, rejected my ideas, but those felt like one in the same at this point.
“It doesn’t matter if I liked him or not.” I grabbed two mugs and sat down at the table. “I put everything I had into that book and he still didn’t like it. He actually just skipped to the climax and didn’t even bother reading the rest, which is so rude.”
“Well, that is rude, I agree.” Once the kettle started whistling, she carried it over to the table and added a few scoops of tea leaves to it. “What didn’t he like about it?”
“That I wrote him killing the King.” I crossed my arms on the table and rested my chin on them.
“I don’t get it though. We talked about him being a morally gray character and then he seemed so shocked when I wrote it that way.
He said it wasn’t him, but honestly, I don’t think he really knows who he is. ”
“You keep calling him a character, but he’s a real person Willow. With real feelings.”
“I know that.” I traced the whirls in the wooden table, wishing we were talking about anything else. Because I had feelings too and they hurt. “Can we just drop this and have some tea?”
She clasped my hands in hers so tight it almost hurt.
“No, we can’t just drop this. I’ve let you drop too many things for far too long and it has to stop.
You can’t keep running away when things get hard.
That’s not how writing or relationships work.
Nothing’s ever perfect, especially not on the first try, but if you really care about something, you need to be willing to fight through those hard times.
Because you’ll never have anything worthwhile if you don’t. ”
I sat up straighter. “What’s the point when it all ends bad anyway? Look at mom and dad or you and Grandpa. Nobody’s happy.”
“But we were happy.” She let go of me with a sigh and poured us both a cup of tea. “We were happy until the end and that’s better than most people can say. I think you were happy too, with Thorne.”
“You never even saw us together.”
She pushed a teacup at me. “No, but I heard the way he talked about you and the stories he told me. He said you spent time gardening together, helped him find a mattress that finally let him sleep well, and you even took breaks from your writing to eat meals with him.” She smirked at me.
“I’ve never seen you take a break like that for anyone, not even me when you’re really in the zone.
But he said you stopped what you were doing every single time he brought you food.
What’s that if not happiness?” She leaned closer.
“You enjoyed spending time with him and that blush on your face confirms it.”
“Gran!” I turned away, hiding my face behind my tea as I took a sip of burning hot liquid. She was right though. I enjoyed those meals far more than I’d ever told him. I’d wanted them to drag on longer and longer each day. “Okay, fine, I was happy. So what?”
“So you should go after him!” Gran jumped up so suddenly she spilled her tea. “Who cares if you finish the book or not? He’s the important part. Don’t you dare lose him because you’re afraid to let yourself care!”
“It’s not just that.” I leaned back, refusing to get swept up in her excitement. “He cares if I finish the book. It’s his life after all. And I just can’t do that if he doesn’t like my ideas.”
“So come up with more ideas.” Gran pinned me with a stare.
“Find something you both agree on and write that. Unless...” She sat down again slowly.
“Unless you really don’t want to write anymore.
I don’t want you to change your mind just because I pressured you or because you feel like you owe Thorne anything.
If you keep writing, it should be because you want to. ”
She was right. If I was going to try again, it had to be for me.
No more making excuses and pretending like I only did things because she nagged me about them.
I started writing after Grandpa passed away because I wanted to be closer to him.
I wanted to feel that connection we used to have and make it into something others could see too.
Talking about my ideas with him had been one of my favorite parts about storytelling, but I hadn’t let myself open up like that again, not really.
If I had, I’d have let Thorne see the messy middle instead of just hoping he’d love the ending.
I would have asked him what he thought about killing the King before ever putting pen to paper.
I was just too afraid to do it.
Afraid he’d hate my ideas, afraid we’d lose the competition, but most of all, afraid that I’d never be good enough to write something worthy of being added to a book series I loved so much.
I stared into my tea as steam curled around the cup, slowly growing colder as Gran waited patiently for me to respond.
Grandpa had hated plenty of my ideas over the years and I’d hated a lot of his too.
We’d never let that stop us from brainstorming new ones though.
It was the opposite actually. We usually came up with even better ideas later on.
Not every idea was right for every story, but that didn’t make those ideas bad.
It just meant there was something that would work better for that story.
So why had I given up so easily? Not just on Thorne’s book, but on my own before that.
One bad reaction from the story gods and I’d thrown my book away like it was garbage.
Garbage.
My gaze drifted over to the bin Gran had set up for Thorne’s failures.
It was full to the brim of different herbs, mixtures, and broken glass.
He must have spent so much time trying different things to see what would work and what wouldn’t.
I was the same way when I was learning. Sometimes you had to mess up a few potions to understand how things worked.
Just like Grandpa and I sometimes had to come up with the wrong ideas to discover the right ones.
I reached over to pick up the empty bottle with Thorne’s writing on it.
He’d written the label so carefully with his little note about how it was for me.
He’d tried to support me as much as possible, and then I just shut him out and ran away.
I hadn’t even really asked why he disliked killing the King so much or what else he might want to do instead.
“I think I should go back and talk to Thorne.” I slipped the bottle in my pocket and finished my cup of tea. “Are you okay running the shop for a bit longer on your own?”
Gran grinned. “Absolutely. Go get him, Willow. Dream big and don’t let anything hold you back.”
I stood up, giving her a hug on my way out. I didn’t know if Thorne would forgive me or if we could figure out a better way to end the story, but I knew one thing for sure. I was done running away from the things I cared about.
The bell above the door chimed softly as I opened it, ready to charge up the mountain and beg the library to send me back into Thorne’s book, but there he was standing right in front of me. Excitement rushed through me. It was like he knew I’d changed my mind and wanted to work things out, but how?
“What are you doing here?” I asked softly.
A faint blush swept over his cheeks. “I was just coming to find you...”
“He means we,” Leo added. “We came to find you.”
Dain nodded. “Our Lord thought you might want help with your story.”
“Don’t give up on your writing.” Thorne reached out, taking my hand in his. “I’m sorry I put such a burden on you, expecting you to figure out who I was. I should have been the one to do that. If you let me, I want to help with the book. We all do.”
Behind him, Leo and Dain were both smiling, but they weren’t the only ones.
Inkheart was darting around, scribbling about how I should kiss the demon already and Cinder was tucked into the hero’s shirt, poking her head out like she was just waking up from a nap.
Even Dawnbreaker was here, looking extra shiny on the hero’s hip.
They’d all come out of the book for me. I’d always thought writing was supposed to be a solo process, but maybe, just maybe, it was better with friends. Writing a perfect ending didn’t feel so scary knowing they’d all be by my side. Especially Thorne.
“I’d love to write with you.” I leaned in close, kissing him softly. “Thank you for coming here.”
“About time!” Gran shouted from behind me. “But don’t think you’re all going to fit in here. I’ve got a business to run, you know.”
I laughed, glancing over my shoulder at her. She was beaming with joy, happier than I’d seen her in years. She was the best Grandmother I could ever ask for and it was about time I started listening to her about love.
“Let’s go back to your book,” I said. “I’m sure we can find somewhere for us all to write together.”
Thorne’s eyes sparkled. “Oh, I think something can be arranged. Roan mentioned that hot springs are a good place to gather your thoughts, and I know the perfect inn to visit. It’ll be like a writing retreat for us.”
Hot springs, Thorne, and writing?
Nothing had ever sounded sweeter.