“Oleander,” I supplied. I looked at the line and back at my sibling. We were too busy for me to take a break, but they shot me with a look I knew better than to argue. I sighed and nodded. “Yes, of course.” I looked at the boy from my memory, a man now. “Come with me.”
He followed immediately.
We stepped through the canvas flaps of the stall and to the back. I sat on a wooden crate and motioned for him to do the same. I studied the slender young man, searching for something to say. “What brings you to market?”
He picked at the hem of his lapis-colored tunic before drawing his eyes back to mine. His cheeks pinked again. “I’m—uhm—I am looking to get married.”
I knew that was the primary draw of the midsummer market, though I could not fathom it myself. I watched as everyone moved around in their best clothing, flirting with their eyes and bargaining for their futures as they browsed the wares vendors like me had brought. It seemed a strange way to start a marriage, but it seemed to work for so many. “Have you met anyone yet?”
“It’s only the first day,” he told me before resting on a nearby crate. He looked down at his feet and then back at me. “I haven’t been brave enough to talk to anyone.”
“How long are you staying?” I knew that some people came only for a few days, and others stayed longer. Some even stayed for the entire fortnight of the market. It made sense for thevendors, but I could not imagine it for those in attendance. The amount of coin one spent in that long would be exorbitant.
“A week. I have been saving every coin I can manage.”
“Why?” I questioned. Were there no eligible suitors where he came from? I had a hard time believing that. He was a beautiful elf, and I could imagine him drawing the eyes of everyone around him. He raised an eyebrow at me, and I felt the need to clarify. “Why would you seek marriage here?”
“Because it’s the marriage market. Marriages here are blessed.” It sounded like superstition. How would the location of a marriage bless it any differently than a marriage elsewhere? He read the confusion on my face correctly. “This is where we began, as a culture. It is the heart of our people, and I want a marriage that involves the heart.”
At least his logic was sound, though it still sounded strange to my ears. I could find other holes in that logic, other reasons why a marriage formed here would have no more heart than a marriage formed elsewhere, though it was not my place to poke holes in his thinking. “Why haven’t you spoken to anyone? If you’re wishing to find a marriage with heart within a week, don’t you need to speak with potential partners?”
His foot traced patterns in the dirt in front of him. “I do not know what to say,” he admitted. “Everyone seems to have people with them, people to help initiate the conversations or introduce them to eligible elves. I do not know where to start.”
An idea formed in my head. It was a bad idea, but if he wished to get married at the market and the only thing holding him back was fear, then I could provide a salve for that. Of course, there were probably better salves offered at the apothecary booths. It was said that the apothecaries of Emberleigh could solve any ailment, after all. “I could go with you,” I suggested tentatively.
“Go with me?”
“To walk the market and meet potential suitors. The first day of market is always our busiest, and after that, Acantha is more than capable of minding the stall for a few hours.” We had done this the year before. We’d taken time in shifts, though most of my off time was spent either in the village, sitting behind the stall, or talking to an elf I knew who also created devices specializing in pleasure. I doubted that he would need my aid for longer than a day or two.
“Do you mean it?” he asked. His eyes lit up, or perhaps the sun parted through the clouds at just the right angle to give the impression that they did.
“Yes,” I told him simply. “I do not often say what I do not mean.” Acantha teased me for my blunt manner of speech often.
“Where are you camping?”
I had rented Acantha and I small cabins in a village to the north, so different than the campgrounds of my youth. I had never liked sleeping under the stars with nothing more than a thin layer of canvas to protect me from the elements, and it wasn’t often that I allowed myself something extravagant. I relayed the information to him, and his face fell. He was staying at the campgrounds to the south, where we’d shared a kiss as boys. The two places could not be any further apart.
“We could meet here,” I suggested. “I will need to be here at first light, anyway, to help Acantha open everything up.”
We agreed, and I searched for other topics. I was not good at speaking to people without something direct to say. I never had been, and I doubted it was a skill I’d gain with age. Some elves were just not meant for the company of others, and I was one of them.
Acantha calling my name from the stall interrupted my thoughts. I reiterated the plans to meet in the morning and watched as he walked away, ready to go back to the crowds and coin of my shop.
Hours later, Acantha and I closed the stall. We secured our wares and began our trek back to our cabins.
“So, Oleander?” they asked as we stepped onto the dusky trail.
“What about him?”
“I’ve heard that name before.”
My cheeks warmed and I was grateful for the shadow of twilight. I’d told Acantha about the boy from market when Papa and I had gotten back to Gearwick. We’d been laying in our beds, and the view of the stars from the window reminded me of him. I could see a constellation he’d told me about: great lovers from an old legend according to Dun Steorra or great inventors if you asked the people of Gearwick. He had said that he thought they were the same people, and as I replayed the kiss in my mind, I wondered if those stars were a portent of our future.
Acantha had noticed the change in my expression, even with the starlight illuminating my face, and they’d asked. I’d told them everything, down to the way my heart fluttered in my chest at the first feel of his lips against mine. It had been the first time I’d kissed anyone, the first time I’dwantedto kiss anyone. Of course they would remember the name now. I was not the only sibling in my family to be blessed with intelligence. Acantha’s was just better balanced with heart and dreams instead of simply ambition and a desire to create.
In the present day, Acantha’s head cocked to the side. “Was he the elf you kissed by the river?”
“Yes,” I confirmed.
