Chapter 35
Her whole life, she’d longed for home, and she finally found it in all the in-betweens.
We bolted through town and up to the gate, where a large wagon lay in wait.
“Well, would you look at that, princess?” Hesper said with a sly smile.
Ludwig’s wagon awaited us. The wagon that saved us on Irk Road. And the wagon that made us, so to speak. A wizened old man hopped up and down, arguing vehemently with a crow and a hedgehog.
“Looks like he got intercepted.” I laughed.
“I told Edge not to let anyone in without me.” Hesper shrugged. “Warty must have followed suit.” She finally cracked a smile as she saw Warty pluck one of his own quills and ready to throw it like a javelin at Ludwig’s machinations.
“Warty,” I called out. He immediately dropped his self-made weapon and scurried to me. I plucked his little bumbling butt off the ground and held him close. “Ow,” I said. He forgot to chill out his quills in all the excitement.
“Sorry,” he chirped.
“It’s all right,” I replied.
My eyes went wide, Hesper’s mouth fell open, even Ludwig stopped pestering poor Edge behind the gate.
“Did you just—” I started.
“Speak?” he finished. “Yes,” he nuzzled into me again, absolutely ignoring that he had lied to me his entire life.
“I thought you didn’t speak!” I held him out in front of me, making sure it was still the same Warty I knew all along.
“I didn’t lie, Mrs. Gardener Girl! I didn’t!”
Mrs. Gardener Girl? Is that his name for me? That is so adorable I might actually perish.
“Then how are you speaking now, Warty Thorne?” I quirked an eyebrow, mustering any amount of accusation I could.
“When you ended the nasty Prince, I got my powers back! All the animals that came from Starfall probably did, come to think of it.”
“You’re from Starfall? You have powers?” My voice rose higher with each question I asked my now-talking hedgehog.
It really shouldn’t have surprised me that much considering a bird was debating with a town-fanatic-turned-town-hero, but still.
My mind couldn’t comprehend what took place in front of me.
“Yes!” he chirped. “I can fly and talk! Like Edge!” And at that, Warty started floating away, back toward his best friend. Now, they could be in the air together as equals. Just a magical crow and his sidekick rodent soaring around the world.
Huge bangs came from Ludwig’s wagon, like a battering ram trying to burst through the wood.
Ludwig frantically undid the latch, still arguing with Edge, and then someone tumbled out onto the dirt road, rolling all the way to the edge of the gate.
I ran toward the gate, flinging it open with my magic without even thinking, and careened into that hulking figure on the ground.
“You’re alive!” Rosie screamed happily, immediately hopping up onto her feet and hoisting me like a baby into her arms. She held me close, crushing me only a little with her hugs.
“You’re here!” I said. I took her head in my hands and kissed her rosy cheeks.
“Well, ole Ludwig here told me you might want a friend and that I could hitch a ride with him, so here I am!” She gave me another painful squeeze. “I knew you’d miss me!”
“Of course I did!”
“Oh, and I brought a surprise,” Rosie said, a mischievous glint in her eyes. “Patti found out I was headed to you, and she thought it might be nice to expand her business—she’s trying to franchise, you know. So she sent this.” Rosie opened the wagon door and pointed to the inside.
The wagon was now an entire ecosystem all of its own. Like Patti’s shoppe had sprouted legs and traveled all the way here. Where there were once slats of plain wood, there were now beds of moss, creeping ivy, and flowers from all over the realm. Dwindle would love this.
Rosie noticed my look of astonishment.
“I know,” she said. “Patti got this idea into her head and wouldn’t stop working until it was finished. She scarcely ate or drank. I kept putting plates of food outside of her oak tree to remind her that sustenance was necessary.”
“I understand that, my friend,” Hesper said, now inspecting the wagon of wonders.
Rosie looked at Hesper, then back at me. I gave her a knowing smile, and Rosie’s jaw dropped.
“Is that so?” Rosie couldn’t hide her excitement and began bouncing up and down. “Are you two…”
I nodded.
“I love her, Rosie,” I said proudly.
“YOU WHAT?” Rosie dropped me. But my protector was there just in time, catching me swiftly before I hit the ground. As she had since the very beginning.
What was I supposed to do with all of these feelings?
I could vanquish a force of evil, but I still couldn’t hack how to be happy without worrying what might be around the next corner.
But with a wagon full of flowers, my best friend, and the person who very well may have been my soul mate next to me, I thought that maybe all the “next corners” were finally over.
That was, until Eldrene arrived.
Heart magic had opened up pathways to Eldrene once more. So, in my tiny cottage in Dwindle, a Goddess and her twelve companions, plus Ludwig, Rosie, and Angus, all piled in.
Despite having vanquished Eldrene’s greatest enemy only hours ago, the meeting had a somber note to it all.
Hesper fidgeted with her leathers, undoing and redoing her armbands relentlessly.
I rubbed the edges of my apron to the point of fraying, then I took to individually plucking at those threads.
Too much silence filled the room, but I couldn’t find any words to fill the void.
The only thing I could manage to think of was Hesper, her bargain, and what happened next.
Eldrene surveyed us all, managing to look the picture of regality even as she sank deeply into a well-cushioned chair near the hearth.
Agnus and Angus sat right next to each other—Angus twiddling his thumbs, Agnus looking straight ahead.
Their names were a letter apart; their demeanors could not have been more dissimilar.
“On the Goddess Celebration night,” Eldrene began, her eyes resting on me. My apron was done for. “I touched you, Clara. Briefly, more of a graze than anything else. It was in that moment I knew you had heart magic.”
“Your magic,” I cut in, my mouth moving far before my brain. “I’m so sorry,” I said to her and Agnus. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“It’s quite all right,” Eldrene replied gracefully.
“Yes, my magic. But your heart was shut off—I could not tell how powerful you were. You might have had a hint of the magic; you might have had more than anyone could dream. When Hesper alerted me that you two were being followed, though, my suspicions were raised. However, until you showed signs of that magic, we had to lie in wait.”
“Yes, it took me a while,” I said, trying to smile. “I’m still not sure how to use it completely. Other than the obvious.”
The Forest Train looked on in question.
“You know, with the Prince and all.”
They still seemed confused.
“The part where I vanquished him? Am I not making sense?”
“You’re making perfect sense, Clara; they just do that to unnerve people. And you need not worry. In time, you will learn your magic anew. Until then, there is much to be done,” she said, a ghost of a smile haunting her face.
“Warty told me everyone and everything from Starfall regained their powers. Does that mean your power is restored?” I asked.
Was the bargain completed? That’s the question I desperately wanted to ask.
“No,” she said, her violet eyes fading to a duller purple.
“How? Thanadyn is vanquished,” Hesper cut in.
“The only way to fully restore my power is by vanquishing withering magic entirely. That magic is still alive, and so long as it lives, my magic will never return to me. That is the sacrifice I made. Until wholeness has been restored, I will stay in my limited form. And the Witherings will, too. Your magic, Clara, will open some paths for me. But you cannot save me, let alone a whole realm. But it is the small things—the gardens, the moments shared with good company, if you will—that chip away at the magic that has so long depleted Starfall. It will take a long time, many hands, hopes, and dreams to restore a version of what once was. For it will never be the same. After such tragedy and death, nothing can be restored to that which it was before. Besides, it would be disrespectful to those who died fighting for it to pretend that there was never a fight in the first place.”
Her words settled into the room, hitting each of us in its own way.
The Goddess spoke only truth. To hope that full restoration could happen was out of the question—there was too much history, too much pain for that to be the case.
But together and in good time, perhaps light would find its way through the cracks.
“Now, to celebratory matters.” Eldrene’s eyes brightened once more, and she looked at me expectantly. “Your quest is complete. Do you wish to return home?”
Home. Eldrene meant Moss, of course. The reason I’d put one foot in front of the other this entire journey.
But home had changed, over time. Just as withering magic would slowly wear away over time.
I remembered Ludwig’s words from so long ago, rasped in my ear at Remi’s before he was knocked out cold: “The end awaits you at Dwindle.”
Home, my heart whispered, as I looked at the cottage.
Home, it repeated, as I smiled at Rosie.
As I thought of Dwindle.
As I settled my gaze on Hesper.
My home was everywhere all at once. In the attic bedroom covered in knitting projects, in the lupines covering Moss’s field. In Rosie’s laugh. In Hesper’s smiles. I could be content in any of those places, but there was one thing I could not be without.
“I think I already am home,” I said to Eldrene. “With her.” I looked to Hesper.
Eldrene gave a bow of her head, seemingly unsurprised.
“And you?” She turned her attention toward Hesper. My body tensed.
“I, too, am home,” Hesper said. She was perfectly still, but her eyes betrayed the warring in her soul.