Chapter 8
Honey spends the night in the shop. She refuses to share the box bed with me, though it’s large enough for two, and instead has a mattress and pillows brought from the inn and bunks down on the floor beside the bed.
Once we’re settled in for the evening, she spends a few hours running through some basic magic for homeowners—the kind of magic I’ve never been taught, having never needed to run a home.
She also double-checks my toadstone to ensure its magic is still good, and reminds me never to take it off.
Finally, she has me kneel before the dark little fireplace inside the little apartment.
“You’re going to teach me to light a fire?” I suggest, and I can hear the hope in my voice.
“The first magic,” she says. “I am.”
“When two people lit a fire together,” I reply.
This is it: the greatest act of magic; the original act of magic; the magic from which everything in our world has evolved.
Scholars have devoted their entire lives to trying to understand the first magic, and why it changed the course of history.
The Wizard of Light and the Wizard of Darkness, the two most powerful wizards in the Widdenmar—in the entire Shining Realm—are the two people who understand the first magic the best. It’s said by some they guard the embers of that first magic themselves, deep within their castles…
Of course, it’s also said they’re twenty feet tall and a thousand years old and speak only in riddles.
I’ve met the Wizard of Light twice; he wasn’t much older than I and sounded like anybody else when he spoke, so who knows how much of the rest of it is true.
“The first magic was an act of love,” Honey says, her voice soft. I know this; every child knows this. The act of magic was an act of love, when two people who could not start a fire alone spoke the words together, and brought magic into the world.
There are spells for lighting candles and even lamps, but to start a fire in a hearth, one must know how to invoke the spirit of the first magic.
Children are not taught the first magic until their parents or caretakers believe they need it and judge them old enough to practice it responsibly.
I know it’s often a rite of passage for young people moving into their own first home to have their friends or parents or partners speak the words together for the first time, kneeling before an empty hearth, much as Honey and I are at this moment.
Because I’ve never needed it, I’ve never been taught it.
I’m not sure my parents even know it. We hardly know any magic at all; there’s always someone around to do it for us.
A funny feeling curls in the pit of my stomach at the realization that no one ever expected me to kneel before my own hearth and speak the words to bring a fire to life.
“Do you have your flint, steel, and tinder?” Honey asks.
I nod and bring them out. “Is it part of the spell?”
She smiles, a little wanly. “There’s no spell, not really. You have to ask the first magic to honor you by making a home for your fire, and assure it that you will honor it by keeping the fire fed. Then light your kindling.”
“That’s…all?” Surely that’s not all.
“It’s harder than it sounds.”
I sigh, a little disappointed. So the first magic is just a little bit of pageantry, after all that. At least I’m well trained in pageantry.
“Please honor us today by making a home for yourself here,” I say, into the empty fireplace. My voice echoes faintly. “And I will honor you by keeping you lit and well-fed.”
“Also check that the flue is open,” Honey adds.
“What’s a flue?”
She leans forward and lifts my hand up, into the dark chimney itself. I feel no resistance. “Feel against the side of the chimney nearest us,” she says, releasing my hand. I feel around, not sure what I’m searching for.
“There’s something like a handle,” I say, as my hand wraps around a metal grip.
“Pull it forward.”
I do, and feel something like a kind of lid fall heavily into place, blocking the chimney stack.
“Now push it back,” she says, and I do. The lid, I can feel, lifts on hinges to leave the chimney stack open.
“You can close it when you’re not using the fireplace,” she says. “And it can keep the wind from howling too wildly when it’s windy out. But don’t close it if you have a fire going, or you’ll smoke yourself out.”
It makes perfect sense that there’d be some way to open and close a fireplace when not in use. I can’t believe I’ve never even thought about it before.
“Right,” Honey says. “Pick up your flint and steel and give it a go.”
I lean forward and strike the flint against the steel. A few little sparks burst from my hands, and I squeak and drop both. None of the sparks catch in the tinder, naturally.
“Try again,” Honey says.
Annoyed with myself, I pick up the flint and steel and strike for a second time. I manage to hang on to both when the sparks fly out, though again, nothing happens.
“Hold it closer to the tinder,” Honey says. “And when you see a spark in the tinder, lean forward and blow, very gently. Fire needs air to live.”
At my third strike, a tiny spark of red flares in the little nest of tinder, and I waste time shouting, “Look, there it is!” rather than breathing on it, so it goes out.
I get another spark going on my sixth attempt, and this time both Honey and I lean forward and blow gently on it. The spark flares, and a curl of smoke twists up and away from it.
“Keep blowing,” Honey murmurs, and I do. The tinder glows red and then, as if from nowhere, a twist of yellow flame appears and catches.
I shriek with joy, and Honey pats me on the shoulder. She shows me how to lay thicker twigs over the smaller ones we’ve already built over the little nest of tinder, and then larger sticks again, and a medium-sized log over the whole thing.
“You want to make sure there’s plenty of air flowing around the wood,” she explains, using a fire iron to shift the sticks and logs a little.
“And try not to let the fire go out entirely; it’s hard to light on your own.
The first magic was an act of love between two people, and re-creating it is easiest with two. ”
She explains how to bank a fire, to keep embers warm even when I don’t want an open flame going, and how to use the embers to relight the fire when I do.
“It’ll get colder soon,” she says, looking at the fire rather than me as she speaks. “There’s a woodpile out back. I’d knock the logs off outside before you use them, just to make sure there aren’t any spiders or slugs living in them.”
“No roasted spiders,” I agree.
“I’d suggest that you keep the wood under a tarp,” she continues. “It’ll be hard to burn if it gets wet.”
“And smoky,” I add, recalling several tragic romances I read where a poet and his shepherdess ladylove have to take refuge in a broken-down crofter’s cottage and have only wet logs for the fire while they weep about their perilous situation.
“Well, yes,” Honey says, giving me a funny look. “Wet wood does smoke.”
We empty out the one trunk I’ve asked for, and move Mrs. Gooch’s personal effects into it, what few there are, before stowing it in a corner.
I promise myself I’ll go through her things more carefully if we’re not able to find any next of kin.
We move my clothing into the empty drawers, and I lay a few more little lavender sachets over them.
It takes hardly any time at all to unpack and lay my things away. I suddenly have so little, when I’ve been traveling around the country with enough clothing to change twice a day at a minimum. I find I don’t mind.
I sleep soundly—my first night sleeping under the imprimatur of a massive curse—with the faint blue light of the bluecap nest to keep me company. The box bed is dark and comfortable and cozy and, despite everything—perhaps even because of everything—my sleep is dreamless.
The next morning Honey does one final check of the bookshop, makes me practice all the charms she’s carefully written out for me: anti-robbery charms, anti-malevolence charms, my candle-lighting magic (less fraught than lighting a fire in a hearth), and my minor prestidigitation for spelling away grime (since it doesn’t seem there’s anywhere to bathe properly, just a basin and pitcher for washing off), then gives me a ferocious hug.
My eyes well up as I hug her back. I haven’t gone more than a week or two without Honeyrose at my side since I turned thirteen; now it’s impossible to say when I’ll see her again. Or under what circumstances.
“I’m going to run the bookstore,” I say, sniffing away tears. “I’m going to be handling money. Just so you know.”
“Of course you are,” she says, scowling. I know she’s scowling so she doesn’t cry. “Promise me you’ll be careful, and don’t take any risks.”
I can tell she’s still blaming herself for my foolish act in taking hold of that key less than a day ago.
“I promise I’ll be careful, Honey,” I say. “Cross my heart.”
“Don’t cross your heart; that’ll cause any vole within ten feet to suffer an immediate heart attack.”
I snort and nod, not trusting myself to speak without bursting into tears.
“You’ll write to me, won’t you?” I finally say.
“Of course, as soon as there’s any news.
Don’t forget…” She taps the side of her nose, an old signal we developed years before.
When Honey came into my life at age thirteen, it was also the age I became, essentially, public.
That is, I could no longer maintain the expectation of privacy in anything other than my own thoughts.
My letters and diaries are all considered public property and removed to the archives after six months, as are any speeches I deliver.
It was a hard lesson to learn, as I had been rather prone to speaking my mind freely as a child.
Honey’s nose-tap is her gentle reminder that I am not a private citizen, even now, and my letters to her will be read and dissected by my parents, my sister, and likely any senior minister in the Chamber.
Remember, she’s reminding me. Remember: Nothing you write to me is truly private.
I tap my nose in reply. I remember.
“Good luck,” I say as she steps through the door and out onto the brightly lit street. It’s going to be another beautiful autumn day in Little Pepperidge.
“You, too,” she says, looking back at me. “And try not to get into any more trouble.”
I shake my head. “No trouble. Wait, Honey?”
She turns and looks at me. “When you’re trying to find a sorcerer or a wizard or whoever to break the curse…not Gasteyer.” The creepy wizard who lives on the floating island somewhere in the great north sea. No one has ever said anything good of him, despite his apparent facility with magic.
Honeyrose looks at me for a long moment. “No, never. Not Gasteyer.”
She straightens her shoulders and strides off toward the waiting carriage.
I can see my trunks—all but the smallest one—piled up in the back.
If I weren’t standing right here, if I weren’t myself, I’d think I was watching a royal carriage pull away, with a normal royal personage and her normal royal secretary seated inside, about to embark on a long, boring journey to another small town to open up another new market hall.
Instead, I’m watching my best and only friend leave with most of my worldly possessions, to return to my parents and to tell them that she failed them, and me.
That I’m the victim of a strange and confusing curse, and cannot leave a small bookstore in a small town in the very middle of our country until I’ve unlocked my heart’s desire.
Or until they find a sorcerer powerful enough to break the curse.
Or…no.
They wouldn’t.
Or maybe they would.
What’s the one surefire way to break a curse, any curse, according to every story, every legend, every fable ever recorded?
True love’s kiss.
And what does true love look like, if you’re a princess? Even a very minor one?
It looks like a prince.
Honey and I never even discussed it last night, but the more I think about it, the lower my heart sinks.
Honey will try to find a sorcerer to break the curse. I have no doubt that she’ll succeed. Eventually.
But my parents?
They’re going to try to find a prince.