Chapter 13 #2
The truth was, she was loving seeing Calvin, Ash, and Bella spending time together. The three of them felt like a natural unit.
The four of us, she thought happily.
Humming contentedly, she boiled the kettle and got out some plates. The house, magically, was still retaining some of the coolness from yesterday – and, as the thought crossed her mind, she noticed a definite waft of pleasantly refreshing air coming in from the dining room.
Calvin’s on the clock, I see, she thought with a smile. Not that she wanted to take advantage of him for his abilities, but it was awfully convenient while her A/C was broken.
Carrying a tray laden with cakes and drinks – and a treat for Bella – she returned to the dining room.
Ash made an immediate grab for the madeleines, only to lift the one he picked up to his nose to give it a quick sniff.
“What’s this?”
“Uncle Kieran told me it was yuzu,” Diana said. “It’s like a lemon – but from Japan? Uncle Gale has grown some, and now Aunt Sylvie is using them for her cakes.”
“Oh,” Ash said. “It does kind of smell like lemon.”
Apparently that was good enough for Ash, and he took a huge bite, chewing mightily.
“Is it good? Can I tell Gale and Sylvie it gets your approval?” Diana smiled widely as Ash gave her an enthusiastic nod – not that she’d expected to get any other answer.
“Well, with that recommendation, how can I resist for even one moment longer?” Calvin laughed, picking up his own madeleine, chomping on it enthusiastically.
“And I’m certainly not going to sit here watching the two of you eat!”
With a grin, Diana picked up one of the two remaining madeleines. It really did smell crisp and citrusy, a perfect blend of sweet and tangy.
And the taste…
As with everything Sylvie made, the taste was somehow even better than the smell. The madeleine was so light and crumbly that it made Diana feel almost as if she was eating a yuzu-flavored cloud, if not for the buttery, toasty crust.
“Mmm. My goodness. I have to get Sylvie to give me some baking lessons sometime,” Diana said as she licked a final crumb from her lips, savoring the madeleine to the last. “But I wouldn’t want to spill all her secrets.”
“Your cooking is fine, Mom. I like everything you make,” Ash said loyally, and Diana felt a surge of love in her heart.
“I second that – well, I will, one of these days, once I’ve had a chance to taste your cooking,” Calvin said, shooting her a smile, before quickly glancing at Ash.
Clearly, he’d remembered too late that, even if they knew Calvin was planning on hanging around permanently, they still had to go slow for Ash’s sake and get him used to the idea.
“Well, what I mean is, I would love to come over for dinner one day. If it would be fine with you.”
“Um. Did you get the chance to show off your cryptic crosswords to your friends?” Diana interjected quickly, hoping the change of subject to Ash’s current special interest, sudden though it was, would distract him enough to keep him from asking any awkward questions.
“Not really,” Ash said – though the look he gave her was enough to let Diana know he hadn’t missed what Calvin had said, he was just benevolently letting her off the hook for the moment. “But we did a few riddles. That was pretty fun too.”
“Riddles?” Calvin’s head shot up – and Diana had to admit, her interest was piqued too.
Why didn’t I think of this earlier? she wondered, as Calvin started digging through his pockets for the piece of paper he’d scribbled his riddle from the sprite down on. I guess I only just found out about the sprite and the riddle and shifters and… and…
There seemed like too long of a list of things she’d just found out about to go into it all now.
There’d been such a whirlwind of events that the idea of bringing Ash into it – more than he already was – hadn’t really occurred to her.
But was it possible that Ash, with his seemingly natural talent for wordplay, could figure out the meaning of the riddle Calvin needed to break his curse?
“A – a friend of mine gave me this riddle to solve a few days ago,” Calvin explained, as he laid the scrap of paper out on the table in front of him. “But I haven’t been having much luck with it. Do you think you might be able to help me with it?”
“I can try,” Ash said, blinking. “But isn’t the point that you do it yourself?”
Always such a stickler for the rules, Diana thought, with mild exasperation. She half-hoped, half-dreaded, that Ash might become a little more rebellious when he got older.
“My friend didn’t say I couldn’t get any expert help, so I think it’ll be all right,” Calvin explained.
“The only thing I know about the answer is that it has something to do with nature.
But here goes: ‘I am mother and father, but never birth or nurse. I have a bark, but no bite. I'm rarely still, but I never wander. What am I?’”
Ash thought for a moment, clearly running the words back through his mind. “Nature,” he finally said. “Something that has bark but no bite. Wouldn’t that be a tree?”
Diana blinked, crowding in around Calvin’s shoulder to look down at the riddle. “Oh – I see what you mean,” she said, as Ash leaned over Calvin’s other shoulder. Excitement fluttered in her chest. “But… what about these other parts? ‘Mother and father, but never birth or nurse?’”
As she said it, the answer suddenly seemed clear in front of her.
“Oh my God – of course! Trees – well, a lot of them – can have both pollen and seeds, so they have both male and female parts. But the wind blows the pollen to another tree, so it’s not like female trees have little tree babies that they need to, uh, raise, I guess,” she laughed. “Does that make sense?”
“Well, I’m sure it would if I knew as much about gardening as you do,” Calvin laughed. “But the way you explained it, sure, that takes care of that part!”
“There’s still the last bit, though,” Diana said, pointing at the final line of the riddle. “‘I’m rarely still, but I never wander.’ Does that still fit in with it being a tree?”
“Well, I guess trees’ branches do move around in the wind a lot – and sometimes even get blown right down by it,” Calvin said, giving Diana a quick half-smile, clearly remembering their near-miss that morning. “But I can’t say I’ve ever seen one uproot itself and wander around.”
Ash giggled a little – something that so rarely happened that for a moment Diana was surprised to hear it.
“That’d be pretty funny,” he said. “If you woke up in the morning, Mom, and your garden was totally different from the day before. Like the plants didn’t like where you put them.”
Diana laughed heartily, reaching over to ruffle Ash’s hair. “After all my hard work! Such a bunch of ingrates! But I think you’re right, Calvin – trees aren’t still very often with all the wind we get up here, but they certainly don’t wander around.”
There was a moment of silence as they looked around the table at each other.
“Is that it, then?” Calvin asked, sounding almost stunned. “Is that the answer? A tree?”
“I think so,” Ash said, nodding. “I guess you can ask your friend, and they can say whether you got it right.”
“I – I guess so,” Calvin agreed, though Diana knew the caution in his voice was only because it wasn’t as simple as just being told if he’d got the answer right – there was a lot more riding on it than that.
But at least Sieval hadn’t seemed to think Calvin would bring a double curse down on himself if he got it wrong.
No, she’ll probably just send him away again to continue with the curse he has, Diana thought, a little anxiously. Or give him another, even harder riddle.
But no, she told herself, giving herself a mental shake. She couldn’t let herself get pessimistic. She’d never known Ash to be wrong when it came to wordplays or puzzles – if he said the answer was a tree, then she was confident that the sprite would be happy.
“I’ll definitely go ask my friend about this just as soon as I can,” Calvin said with a broad smile. “I’m sure that’s the right answer. Thanks, Ash – I never would have figured that out without you.”
“It’s okay.” Ash gave him a shy smile. “It was fun to think about it. I really like that kind of thing.”
“Oh! But do you need to go get your things together to go to Janie’s?” Diana said, the remembrance of the sleepover suddenly popping back into her head.
Despite shifters and sprites and magical riddles, the work of a mom never stops!
“Do you know what you need to pack?” she asked Ash, as, obedient as ever, he hopped up from his chair to start getting ready.
“Pajamas, toothbrush, stuff for tomorrow,” Ash listed off on his fingers. “Um. Snacks and stuff?”
“You can grab some popcorn out of the cupboard,” Diana told him. “But you already had some cake and pancakes today. So remember that when you’re at Janie’s. Did she tell you to bring anything to help with dinner?”
“No,” Ash shook his head. “She said her grandma would be making dinner tonight.”
Diana half-laughed, half-groaned. “Well, if Eula’s cooking, there’ll be enough to feed an army!”
None of it probably very healthy, but Diana figured one day of Eula’s amazing – if cholesterol-packed – food wouldn’t do any harm, except to make her own cooking look even worse by comparison.
“All right then – you go pack your backpack, and I’ll check it before we go to make sure you haven’t forgotten anything, all right? What time do you need me to drop you there?”
“Janie’s mom said she’d pick me up, if I was allowed to go – you need to text her,” Ash informed them as he hurried out of the room, clearly more excited by the idea of the sleepover than he was letting on.
“Oh well, that makes life a little easier,” Diana sighed as she pulled out her phone, firing off a quick text to let Janie’s mom, Katie, know to come by whenever she was ready. The answer was almost immediate: Just at the grocery store – there in ten.