Chapter Eight #2
He called everyone that, he reasoned. It was just instinct. He called Hattie and Monica and Ruby and even Malcolm sometimes ‘cariad.’
“Slip of the tongue,” he said. “I’ve never been lost in my life, gwrach.”
She swallowed, her lips twitching a little at the word, which meant ‘hag’ or ‘witch.’ “Better,” she said. “It’s just over here.”
Wedged between a textile shop for seamstresses and a clock repair shop was a crooked, little blue awning with a rusty bell above it. Seph pushed in, holding the door for Rhys to follow, and called out as soon as the thing had swung shut behind them.
The shopkeeper, who appeared to be a boy of about fifteen, toddled out, serious as you please. “Gordon,” she said. “Good morning.”
The boy had a shaggy mop of blond hair that was sticking up every which way, and the mark of goggles quickly removed around his eyes and wayward eyebrows. “Miss Boswell,” he breathed, with the reverence of a man who has just seen God.
“Iesu,” Rhys muttered.
“I’ve your boxes ready,” the lad said, gesturing to two open-topped crates by the door. “The singles and the tandems. The blue ones are new. There are two there for you to try out gratis. I think you’ll find them good sellers.”
Seph blinked, turning toward the crates and bending down to withdraw a little painted cube in a rich, sky blue, turning it in her hands and pressing gently on the tabs and widgets on its outside. “Why blue?” she asked.
“It’s sea themed,” the lad answered. “There’s a shell inside.”
“Oh, excellent,” she said. “You might as well get me half a dozen more. I’ll pay now.”
It made the boy grin widely and turn to scamper off back to his workshop.
“I thought you couldn’t sell those tandem puzzles,” Rhys said, once he was gone, frowning down at the crate. “You said you couldn’t, when you gave one to Hattie at her wedding.”
“Actually,” she corrected, flashing him half a smile, “you said that. I just echoed it because I thought it was funny.”
“Well, it’s not,” he muttered, and then he snatched the blue cube from her to inspect it himself, dancing away when she attempted to get it back. “I’ll buy this one,” he said, grinning. “Let me have it.”
“Fine,” she snapped, crossing her arms and falling back. “But you’re paying double.”
“Am I?” he returned, grinning and bouncing on his heels.
Once they’d paid and the child who ran this shop had arranged for the crates to be carried to their coach, they set out again, this time in search of midday fare.
The Twittens had an abundance of little pubs and soup shops, and they found one right across the street that was brewing up something that smelled sufficiently appealing.
The bread, especially, was very good dipped in the stew.
And while chewing, Rhys had time to think. He’d been thinking in the coach, after conversation had gone abruptly dry. Thinking quite hard, in fact.
He was trying to remember the day she’d vanished a little too effectively during the Changeling. Trying to play it back, to determine where he’d gone wrong, what it was he might have done to offend her so deeply.
But that was the thing about public humiliation and memories thereof: they overtook all the mundane parts of the day around it and sanded them down into dust. As far as Rhys’s memory was concerned, the day had begun and ended on that pavilion stage and time hadn’t picked up again until two days later, when he’d finally tracked her down to confront her.
So all he could remember was shock, embarrassment, and screaming.
Not especially helpful.
And the more he tried to rummage around in his memory, the farther away he got from anything relevant. He found himself lost in memories of his first time stumbling onto the caravan during a summer performance. They’d had a woman who could swallow swords and a man who’d spat and juggled fire.
Neither had been tricks. Both of those people had really been doing those things. Which precluded Rhys’s interest in such feats.
But then there had been the girl, the little golden girl dressed like a medieval maiden, who’d made things appear and vanish, who’d guessed impossible truths plucked from people’s minds, and who’d seemed to defy the very laws of nature itself.
Rhys had dragged Willa back to that caravan three times, insisting that this was what he wanted to be. This was what he wanted to do.
And Willa had said, “Rhys, my boy, I can find you tutors in many things. Most things. But for that, you might have to ask the girl yourself.”
So he had.
So he had…
“Lingonberry,” Seph said to herself, startling him out of his reverie. “What’s that, you reckon? Like a cloudberry?”
“What?” he said, turning to look at the little chalkboard behind the till. “Cloudberry sounds like something you made up.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” she agreed with a giggle. “My mam loves them. I’m going to ask.”
He watched her stand and move over to the till, waving over the matron who ran the establishment and engaging her in the question. She came back not with berries, but with a little gelatinous mound on a plate and a bit more of this place’s excellent bread.
“She said we ought to try it,” Seph said, sitting back down. “Though she says back in Sweden, they eat it with meat. Meat!”
“Berries and meat,” Rhys mused, tearing off a corner of the bread and dragging it through the jelly. “I’d try it.”
“I would too,” she said, and they both sampled the foreign berry.
It was, they decided, very good, but not too different from standard preserves.
“Berries don’t vary,” Rhys said. “I could write a poem.”
“But you won’t,” she answered. “If you know what’s good for you.”
He laughed. And decided to leave the memories where they were for today in favor of the new ones being made.