3. Up With Your Kettles And Down With Your Pans
UP WITH YOUR KETTLES AND DOWN WITH YOUR PANS
Each year, Sahar checked back at the tree.
He told himself it was mere curiosity, and that when she hadn’t appeared and he could not bring himself to leave, that it was out of concern for her safety.
By the seventh year, he’d stopped returning to his home at all.
When All Soul’s Day ended, he’d simply curled up in the hollow of their gifting tree and let the mists of the in-between lands close around him until they opened again.
He missed her with all his remaining soul. In more cynical moments he’d tell himself it was all his own ego—she had given him a way to understand the passage of time, tethered him to the mortal world, made him feel important because she knew so little and he knew so much.
When he allowed himself to reflect honestly, his feelings were very different.
He felt important because she was his friend.
He wanted to shield her from the cruelty of the world because she deserved better, and because no one else in her life would do it for her.
He enjoyed making her laugh or telling her something new and watching her face light up.
He enjoyed her foolish descriptions of books about rogue knights or pirate kings.
Without her, Sahar was once again a purposeless shell—capable of infinite magic and free to perform none unless it benefitted some greedy man.
There was no use telling himself otherwise. He wanted his friend back.
Sahar was roused from his self pity by the same smell that had first awoken him so many years ago, though now it seemed five times as lovely as it was back then.
He cracked open one eye to see—not his stubby nosed, freckle-faced, buck-toothed, wild haired young friend, but a woman he didn’t recognize.
He snapped into an upright position, even though she couldn’t see him. One of Bea’s older sisters, perhaps?
He realized his mouth was hanging open. The longer he looked, the more he recognized, and yet…
she was so different. She was taller, her hair longer, hanging around her face in gentle curls that still turned a bit wild at the ends.
Her freckles hadn’t gone away, even if they had faded slightly with time away from the sun.
And her curves…Was it possible for a Djinn to blush?
When had she acquired hips that stretched on a country mile? And a bosom of any kind, let alone one barely constrained by her overworked bodice? He knew he ought not to stare but he was frozen.
She deposited a letter and the cake he’d forgotten all about before gathering up her skirts and dashing back up the hill to the same house she’d always disappeared to before.
It was a long time before Sahar could move.
He stared where he’d last glimpsed a flicker of her skirts, willing her to come back so he could see her again and make sure he wasn’t having a strange dream.
At last, he turned his attention to her letter.
Dear Jack O’ the Tree,
It has been eight years since I last wrote to you, and I am now three-and-twenty. I hope in this time you have not gone away entirely.
I should have dismissed you as my own fanciful imagination but I have kept all your letters since that very first one where you tried in vain to scare me away.
You cannot know how I have treasured them these past few years.
If Sahar was at all soothed by such a sentiment, those feelings were yanked out from under him the moment he read on.
Very sadly, this might be the last I ever get to write to you. My aunt was, at long last, successful in her scheme to find me a match, mere minutes before I might be declared an old maid, and though I can scarcely believe it, it seems I am to be married.
There was more written beneath it—unless Sahar was experiencing double vision, which would not surprise him given the way he was feeling, but he couldn’t force himself to focus on the words.
Married? His little Bea? To some man?
Panic screamed and chomped its way into his chest, doing nothing to help him focus. He had to prevent this somehow, had to advise her against it, because should he lose her…
Should I lose her, he thought. I would lose my greatest source of amusement, that is all. I would lose the cakes I’ve grown so fond of.
He had never wanted or needed a friend. But his life stretched far too long with nothing but the occasional wish to grant and three days out of the year where he might touch the other side—even with her long absence, those three days belonged to her in his heart.
Was there still time? Tonight was Hallowe’en, would she remain home long enough for him to speak to her? He snatched up the letter and forced his bleary eyes to focus on her last words.
The wedding is November 2nd, All Soul’s Day.
I wanted to leave as much time as possible, should you care to write me before I leave for my new home.
If you do not, I will likely resent you forever but will be very brave and admirable about it so I will have my inflated sense of self worth to comfort me in your absence.
I remain yours very truly,
Beatrix Ashwood
Even as something in his ribs twisted painfully, Sahar laughed. She had not changed too much, which was some relief.
At least he still had something to fight for, even if he did not know why he was fighting.
Beatrix sat at the table with her family, all of them talking around and about her as she looked out the window toward the woods.
Two of her sisters had settled near enough with their husbands that they were able to visit for the wedding, and their husbands were entertaining one another with whatever it was men found to talk about while Mrs. Ashwood was recounting everything she had learned about her youngest daughter’s husband to be.
“To be sure, Mr. Claybourn is not as rich as either of yours,” she said conspiratorially to her elder daughters. “But he has funds and property enough that we won’t be ashamed. His uncle was a baron or a baronet or a—”
“Boar,” said Beatrix.
“Whatever it is they’re called in Scotland.” Mrs. Ashwood waved her hand as she kept on, trying to remember what her sister had told her about Mr. Claybourn’s estate and carriage and habits.
Bea’s eyes were locked on the letter tree.
Was he still there? Had he thought of her at all these eight years?
She was a fool to wonder. She would always be a child to him, someone he had been amused by and nothing more, while she had seen him as a window to the mysterious and magical, as her dearest and only true friend.
“Did I tell you what your aunt told me that Mr. Claybourn told her?” Mrs. Ashwood asked, and Bea fought to keep her lips shut as she had, in fact, told everyone four times.
“He said he did not mind a bit of extra ‘cushion’ on a lady since they’ll be wanting children anyway. Isn’t that generous of a gentleman?”
“Yes, entirely too generous,” Bea finally spoke up, tearing her eyes from the woods only for a moment. “To bestow such grace upon my sex that we might be allowed a few extra pounds while we grow another human creature—entirely without help, while they play cards and shoot birds.”
An itchy silence blanketed the room until her eldest sister’s husband muttered, “Not entirely without help.” He was promptly smacked on the arm by his wife while the other men chuckled.
“Mind your tongue. She will find out soon enough.”
Bea had no wish to find out. The men all danced around some subject they found very amusing but apparently dangerous.
The women were no better, whispering about how easily a woman could be spoiled, ruined, destroyed—-and in the same breath, equating it with marriage vows.
If marriage was so injurious to women, why was it insisted upon?
And if it was so important and such a joy, why then did she feel no excitement at the thought of her own wedding?
A flutter of movement caught her eye—surely some animal or another dying leaf spinning to the ground, but it was enough to give her hope.
Also an excuse to leave the conversation.
“I’d like another walk on my own,” she said, sweeping out of the room with an abruptness her family was used to ignoring.
The cool air and the scent of brushfire and mulling spices from the kitchens soothed Bea the moment she stepped outside.
This had always been her favorite time of year, and whether it was because of the festivals, bonfires, and the ghost stories, or that it was her time to write to Jack, she couldn’t say.
All year, she’d long for these three days.
Leaving again, this time as a wife, would change everything.
She saw it right away—a scrap of soot-stained white poking out of the hollow of their tree.
Breath catching, she snatched it up.
Her disappointment at seeing only one short line transformed into thrill the second she read it.
Come to me at tonight’s bonfire.