Chapter 24
Canonically, the easiest way to get over the person you slept with is to move into a dream cottage with them for at least three to four business weeks.
Grow a garden.
Just try, Clara.
Make it fun. Make it joyful.
Those were the words I would choose to dwell on.
Maybe tomorrow would be harder, but today, they rang true.
Besides, nothing set up a better relationship with a group of people than having a moment in the midst of their town’s square.
The old Clara would be absolutely mortified by that show of emotion.
But the Clara that traveled all the way from Moss, almost exited this mortal coil via a demon dog monster, and had inadvisable relations in a wagon wasn’t too undone.
“Angus.” I strolled down the pathway, all business. “I need some tools.”
“Yes, of course, of course! I’ll go get Murt and a few others, really anyone who can help us. Oh! And I do wonder if Charles the Blacksmith might have any insight on sharpening my dull scissors. Can scissors be useful in gardening? Cut off dead leaves and things?”
Angus didn’t await my reply; instead, he kept talking as he walked away.
“Yes, to Charles I’ll go, pop in on the shoppe, yes that’s the best course of action…
” He was chattering on, but he was paces away now, and Hesper and I both strained to hear him.
Eventually, we gave up as his voice faded out. Hesper and I were left in silence.
She looked at me, pride still in her eyes but apprehensiveness now lurking there, too.
I wanted to reach out to her, to apologize, to try to explain that it wasn’t that I didn’t want her, I just had to keep myself safe. Because at the end of this, she would return to her life before this, before me. There was no use in risking either of our hearts.
But I didn’t say any of that. Instead, I just stood in front of her, picking at the threads of my new cloak, not even looking her in the face.
“You all right, princess?” she asked, crossing her arms and leaning against the garden gate. Could she just stay there, leaning, all her life? I thought I might like that.
This is going to be a very long month.
“Never been better.” My smile met hers, and I tried to ignore the fire in my heart reaching out for her. “And don’t call me a princess,” I said with all the ire I could muster. Admittedly less than before.
“Don’t look like one then.” And with a cocky saunter, she strode right past me and into the gardens.
The smell of lemons washed over me; I closed my eyes, inhaling the air around her.
I let myself unlace just for a moment—relishing the pure joy of her nearness, her scent.
But then, it was back to business. Unlacing would not get us any closer to filling up the market stands with as much as I could manage.
“I’m going to search the cottage, all right?” she called out, opening the creaking yellow door.
“Yes, all right,” I said stiffly, aching for her.
Build a wall. Any wall. I grappled for the fortresses I’d so keenly built around my heart, but all I could find was rubble. Thorns would have to do then.
As I watched her turn back to give me a playful smile before heading into the cottage we would share for the next month, I knew in my very bones that growing a garden in Dwindle might be the least of my worries.
Not pouncing Hesper in the middle of the night, though?
Impossible.
“And wouldn’t you know, turns out Charles does not take kindly to someone popping into his shoppe unannounced!
” A voice came up the lane, almost as if he’d never stopped talking the entire way into town.
I was crouched over garden beds, pulling up what weeds I could with my bare hands.
The bright gray day had turned into a murkier gray—later afternoon then?
Without the sun, time passed oddly here.
“And I told him, I said, ‘Charles, I only knocked a few of the tools over, I really think you ought to calm down.’”
“Absolutely,” another voice implored, the sound of metal on metal tinkling jovially through the air.
The sweetest sound in the realm, my heart sighed happily. I might have been the only person in the world who enjoyed the sharp, biting grate of different tools clanking against one another.
“And he said in that great, booming voice of his, ‘You almost knocked my anvil over onto yourself, you foolish man.’”
“He didn’t!”
“He did! And the anvil did topple over. Crushed the living daylights out of Charles’s big—oh, Clara! We have returned! Bearing gifts and garden tools and a jar of buttons!”
Angus had a giant grin plastered across his face; Murt’s arms were so stacked with garden tools, I could barely see his hat peeping out at the very top.
But based on the way he hopped from one foot to the other, he was grinning, too.
I spotted one gardening shovel among several hammers, paintbrushes, buckets, a few brooms, and other odds and ends.
“We won’t bother you anymore for the day—want you to settle in and all,” Angus said as they both plopped the tools right at the entrance of the garden gate.
“Don’t let Angus lie to you.” Murt giggled, giving Angus a playful pop on the knee. “He’ll talk yer ear off if you aren’t careful. He’s not leaving for you, he’s leaving for himself!”
“Yes, this is true.” Angus nodded sincerely. “I’m a wretched town gossip. Maybe once we have a tea shoppe up and running again, I won’t have to supply all the tea, so to speak.”
“We have a tea shoppe.”
“Yes, but it only serves coffee.”
“No, it serves tea, too.”
“Does it? Well, isn’t that nice?” Angus beamed.
Murt rolled his eyes and slapped his hand to his forehead. I chortled.
“We’re off!” Angus waved goodbye.
“Thank you!” I called after them.
They set back to tittering as they walked away.
“So you were saying, it fell on his big—”
“Yes, on his huge—”
But I never learned what part of Charles the Blacksmith was crushed that day. Angus and Murt ambled away too quickly, their voices drowned out by the quietness of the cottage.
“Clara—” Hesper’s voice broke the silence. “You’ll want to see this,” she said by the open cottage door.
“Is something wrong?” Based on the look of the gardens, any number of issues could lurk inside the cottage. I wouldn’t have been surprised if a whole gaggle of woodland creatures had taken up residence, making the inside entirely unusable.
Hesper didn’t answer. Instead, she stepped through the circular entrance and into what waited beyond. I followed, kicking the dirt off my boots before entering.
Walking through the cottage was like stepping into another world. I thought it would be dank, dark, and dirty. Instead, the inside of the cottage seemed to be untouched by the grayness of the outside.
The circular windows let in light from all directions, but the etchings in them fractured that small bit of sunlight peeking through the clouds into splattered shapes on the cottage’s wood floor: diamonds, stars, moons, and suns.
All of them were different colors, too. It was like we were standing in a kaleidoscope.
“Figured you might like the colors,” Hesper said excitedly, pointing to the splices of rainbows all around us.
“I know you paint, or like to paint? Or have painted in the past?” Before I could answer that I did love the colors and yes, I had painted (all over my bedroom walls), she moved into the kitchen, just right of the entrance area.
It was a to-the-point kitchen. A sink, a hearth, a few shelves for mugs and things. There was a sizable wooden table in the middle of the kitchen that could serve as both an eating and food-prep area.
“Look at this!” Ivy had grown through the kitchen window and now filled the huge, deep sink with resting leaves. I’d have to figure out a way to rehome those pesky fellows. “Thought you would think this was nice, too. Having a bit of the outside in.”
“Yes, I do like it,” I said, smiling. But not at the ivy.
“I know,” she said, her eyes soft. “Then this—”
She pointed to a small wooden pantry covered in remarkable carvings of fruit, vegetables, animals, plants, an entire meadow of creatures. “When I saw it, I thought that if someone were to design a kitchen hutch with the specification of ‘Clara’s essence’ it would be this.”
“No thorns?” I joked.
“Oh, it’ll give you plenty of splinters. Don’t worry.”
We both laughed until the smiles turned bashful.
She kept looking at the floor then back up at me; I suddenly became quite interested in the craftsmanship of a cabinet.
I ran my hand over the pantry, the soft, worn wood grain cold to the touch, eager to divert my senses away from Hesper.
I opened the doors—only empty glass jars on the inside, and a few small drawers at the very bottom for storage.
When I closed the cabinet, Hesper leaned against it, staring.
“What else?” I asked too forcefully.
“Right.” She cleared her throat, then led me into the main room just left of the kitchen.
It was a room full of those same circular windows but of all different sizes.
Tiny shelves were suspended in between, some empty and some full of small pots and dead plants.
A whimsical—albeit currently withered—indoor garden setup.
I touched a few of the leaves and hummed them a song of thanks for their time here on earth.
If I had any magic, maybe I could have brought them back. But a goodbye song would have to do.
To new blooms and fairer soil, my heart said as I wished the plants farewell.
A giant hearth covered the entirety of the back wall. The rough-hewn stone looked menacing in comparison to the rest of the quaint cottage. I’d have to deal with that later.
Hesper had absconded elsewhere, which was all well and good. I feared if she showed me anything else she thought I’d like, my heart would burst in my chest.
I followed a small hall that ended in a narrow staircase on one side, and an entrance into a cozy bedroom on the other.