Chapter 2 #2
“No, I-I don’t,” I fumbled the words, sweat gathering on my forehead, followed by the terribly familiar feeling of my chest closing in, the world swimming in and out of focus.
“Hey, it’s okay.” Rosie’s voice broke through the gathering haze, her large hand encasing my small one. Immediately, the suffocating feelings vanished. I could breathe again; the world was back on its axis. My chest loosened, and I leaned into Rosie’s touch.
More flowers grew, vining their way up Sylvie’s leg.
“Well, well, well. That changes things a bit. I wanted to offer for you to stay with me. But if you’ve got that magic, there is a place you could live on your own if you’d like to—”
“On my own,” I said quickly.
“All right, Miss Curmudgeonly.” She winked. Sylvie’s eyes were a warm golden brown, her hair and skin matching in suit. Honey magic really just makes everything extra sweet, Rosie had said. It must make people look sweet, too. Even if she had given me a less-than-satisfactory nickname.
Then Sylvie told me of a cottage on the outskirts of town.
The Town Gardener was leaving in a few weeks’ time, and the position needed to be filled.
I’d never heard of a Town Gardener before, but I could learn.
Garden magic, she had said, was the only requirement, and I possessed ample amounts of it apparently.
I don’t have magic I desperately wanted to say.
Whatever they had just witnessed, the flowers around us, it wasn’t me.
I’d tried ever since I could remember for a drop of magic—all I could ever manage was a few petals, nothing more.
But this place, these people, they must have given me magic.
For in my chest, a warmth spread—like the humming of bees right where my heart beat.
I’d never experienced anything like it before, not until I stepped foot into Moss.
But what happened if they realized I didn’t have magic? What if I didn’t become Town Gardener? Perhaps Sylvie would let me stay with her for a bit, but she’d get sick of me just as quickly as my parents did. If they didn’t love me, there’s no reason for these people who had never met me to love me.
And maybe it wasn’t just Moss’s magic, maybe Moss awoke my magic. The magic my parents had been told I would possess. The magic I’d failed to ever discover.
I wouldn’t find out until much later just how wrong I had been.
I was quite young to take up the position of Town Gardener, but Sylvie said she believed in me.
Someone believed in me.
I gained a friend and belief all in one day.
“That is, if you choose to stay,” Sylvie said, finally. Choices… I never had those, either.
“Forever,” I said before I knew it. “I’d like to stay forever.”
Home, my heart screamed that day. Home.
But if I didn’t leave this bed to find the tulip, there might not be a home after tomorrow.
“Sylvie, I lost it. It’s gone.” My voice cracked pitifully on the last word.
“What? The Crown Flower, or whatever it’s called? Oh, dearest, it’ll find its way back to you, I’m sure.” She lifted the bedcovers by my feet and applied her famous healing salve to the cuts. I winced, but the pain began to ebb.
“What if it doesn’t find its way back to me? What then? You know how important it is.”
“Dearest, if it is so important, then I’m sure the Goddess herself will have a spare!
” She covered my feet with the blanket again.
Nothing in Sylvie’s life was anything to fret over; nothing upturned her ever-present belief that everything would always come out in the wash.
But this was different, this loss was insurmountable.
And she had to know it, even if she tried her best to comfort me.
I finally cracked open my eyes to look at the room around me, a wave of nausea rolling over me. Everything was too bright. I took a calming breath, and the world slowly started coming into focus.
Wood beams sloped down from a vaulted ceiling, from which a single lantern also hung, casting warm light on the yellow-sprigged muslin bedcover.
A few vials lined a bookshelf, and bandages were arranged neatly on the bright purple table beside me.
Sylvie’s already-hunched frame stooped low over a poultice she was mixing.
Her long, gray hair tied up into a honey pot–shaped bun plopped happily on top of her head. We weren’t in the Healer’s Ward.
When boisterous lute music came through the worn, wooden floor below me, I knew my whereabouts—the Rumsey Inn. The closest inn to where I’d been thwarted by a ridiculous stranger trying to save the day. I suppose I should be thankful Sylvie intervened when she did.
I gathered the courage to sit up, which was an absolute blunder. A fresh wave of nausea hit me head-on, and I almost tumbled off the bed. A dark-cloaked figure in the corner bolted upright, rushing toward me at an unnatural speed. They looked like shadows embodied.
I stifled a vomit and a scream at once.
“Who is that?” I shouted, throwing the cover over my head in a feeble attempt to defend myself.
“I told you to rest, Miss Curmudgeonly!” Sylvie screamed back.
“Resting is not the issue at hand, Sylvie! The person hiding in the shadows is the issue!” My voice sounded muffled through the covers, and I knew I looked preposterous to my oncoming attacker.
“And hiding like a scared child is going to save either of us from the issue?” Sylvie asked, her voice breaking into a husky laugh.
“‘Issue’ isn’t the worst thing I’ve been called, but I do have a name,” a low voice grumbled. Why did I know that voice? Memories flickered up but withered away before I could grasp hold.
I slowly peeked out from under the covers.
My vision blurred again from the sudden movement, but I could see now that the person standing by my bed wasn’t a shadow after all.
They looked very much human—a very broad, very tall human, that is.
So tall, in fact, that their head grazed the wooden ceiling beams high above us.
A cloak concealed most of their body, but the black leather wrapped around their forearms stretched thin due to the bulging muscles underneath. Goddess, if the rest of them was that muscled…
“Enjoying the view?” the cloaked stranger asked.
My cheeks flushed.
“Not at all,” I replied haughtily.
“Whatever you say,” they quipped, that voice tugging at my mind again. Then the day came racing back all at once. This was the stranger that sent me flying into dung and lost me the Crown Jewel Tulip. This was the stranger that cost me everything.
“You.” I seethed.
The stranger gave Sylvie a quick nod, and she made to exit the room.
“Sylvie, where do you think you are going?” I snapped.
“Not my crumpet, not my tea.” She shrugged. “Now you”—she looked to the cloaked stranger—“be kind to my girl. And you”—she pointed to me—“don’t rile yourself up after that kerfuffle.”
I lost my words as the stranger bowed their head and led Sylvie out of the room by the hand. Sylvie let out a girlish giggle and looked to be… blushing?
The door clicked shut. I snapped my eyes up to the stranger with a glare, opening my mouth to let loose an unruly amount of curses.
“Before you bite off Sylvie’s head for leaving you, she knows I brought you here. Before you bite off my head, I just want to say that I did save your life.” They stayed by the door, creating ample space between them and me. At least they had a spot of decorum.
“Did you now?” I let out a derisive laugh. “We are remembering things differently.”
“Are we?” They sounded amused, sauntering over to the chair in the corner and pulling it up beside the bed.
Shadows seemed to wrap around them, obscuring any part of their face from view.
What kind of magic was that? I recoiled to the farthest side of the mattress.
“Because I remember a squirrel and a girl who needed saving.”
“I needed saving? You were the one who knocked me into a pile of shite!”
“I heard screaming, I went to see what the issue was.” They leaned back in their chair, the wood groaning.
“The issue was that you sent me flying into a pile of shite.”
“Look, I didn’t intend for you to run into the door, and I certainly didn’t mean for you to land in poo. But you were screaming, covered in blood—”
“Jam.”
“Yes, of course, you were covered in jam. You looked to be crazed, yelling up toward the Havens. Someone had to step in.”
“I was not crazed! There was a”—don’t say squirrel—“quarry that needed chasing. And then I—I—” lost the Crown Jewel Tulip. The words caught in my throat.
Pathetic. Worthless. Not enough.
The words were easy to conjure. I heard them so many times growing up that they’d etched themselves into my bones, never to be smoothed out with time. No magic for my parents, no Crown Jewel for the Goddess.
A few hours ago, I was enjoying morning tea while fighting with my untitled manuscript, and now “the world’s biggest failure” could be my title. And this stranger caused it all—well, mostly all. If they hadn’t intervened, I might not be here. I might not have let everyone down.
“You have ruined everything.” My voice sounded small.
They shifted in the chair, leaning closer to the bed. I caught a hint of lemon and spices in the air—like summer and autumn wrapped up into one.
“Will you tell me exactly how I ‘ruined’ everything?” they asked.
“I am in charge of tending the flower for Eldrene’s Celebration Crown. Do you even know who that is?” I asked condescendingly.
“Yes,” they said with a chuckle, “I have heard of the most powerful Goddess in the land.”
“Well, then, you should also know that the Crown Jewel Tulip is the center of Eldrene’s Crown. Very precious, very rare, and now it’s very gone.” I crumpled at hearing the words aloud, and the place in my chest where my magic lived began crumpling, too. Like water through a sieve.
The squirrel had to be miles away by now, deep inside the wood, tossing the tulip into a pile of other objects it had nabbed from Moss. It would be an impossible feat to try and find it at this point. Let alone to try and find the tulip itself.
It was lost forever. I would be, too.
A tear found its way down my cheek, and I sank further into despair, burying my head in my hands. All of Moss would gather tomorrow to honor our Goddess, and it would now be a funeral.
“What would you do to get it back?” they whispered.
“Anything.”
“That’s a dangerous bargain to strike,” the voice murmured softly right by my ear. Their hot breath caused goose pimples to sprout up along my skin like seedlings in the spring.
“I don’t care what I have to do,” I spat out the words, peering into the darkness next to me.
The stranger tutted. “Only a skilled hunter could track a Shadow Woods squirrel down. You won’t find one of those easily, not anywhere near here.”
“Then I’ll do it myself,” I said, drumming up what dignity I could with shredded feet and a throbbing headache.
“It should be easy and not impossible at all. A squirrel well-versed in the woods versus a concussed woman? Easy win,” I said ruefully.
Sarcasm always helped cushion the blow of complete and irrevocable failure. Right?
“I’m sure you could manage.” I think I heard a smile in their voice. But maybe it was just a trick of the light (i.e. emotional upheaval).
“Please leave,” I mumbled. “Please.” Hopelessness surrounded me. It was over. There was no way I could go into those woods and retrieve the bulb in enough time. Tears streamed down my face in rivulets, and I stifled a sob.
“Don’t cry, princess,” they said softly.
I didn’t reply. I didn’t stop crying. I didn’t gut them for calling me princess.
I didn’t say a word as the stranger got up and bid goodbye to Sylvie, who had been dutifully standing outside the door—at least she hadn’t abandoned me.
She might consider it after learning that I’d ruined the entire Celebration and the realm was now… well, in mortal peril.
The door clicked shut and the room went quiet, the chair beside me now empty.
But then a flash of color caught my eye, and what I saw there made my heart sing, made me forget the pain, made me want to kiss that perfectly awful stranger right on the mouth.
Right where they’d been sitting rested everything I needed to keep living my happily ever after.
The Crown Jewel Tulip.