As soon as they had all the ingredients, they returned to the cottage. She mixed them in a bowl, mashing them with a pestle she’d found in the utensil drawer. With Caz working the pump, she added water, and she used a knife to nick the tip of her index finger. She squeezed in a drop of blood. Following the instructions, she mixed it all into a paste.
“Do you really think you can do this?” Caz asked.
Today, after the merbaby, she felt as if she could do anything. “Yes. I don’t see why not. It’s ingredients and a recipe,” she repeated Bryn’s words. “Anyone could do it.” She wasn’t trying to create a canal or craft a palace, after all. “It’s just about being the one to choose to do it.”
“You’re a librarian, not a sorcerer.”
“Is there a difference?”
“They’ve trained.”
“And I’ve read,” Kiela said.
“If it’s so simple, why all the laws to keep spells out of the hands of people?”
She’d never questioned the laws before, or really thought about them much. She’d had a job, to maintain the spellbooks in her area’s collection, and she’d never considered how they were used or weren’t used by the library’s patrons. “Because knowledge is power, and the powerful want—wanted—to keep it all to themselves.” Their greed had brought about their downfall.
“Not because it’s dangerous?”
“Of course knowledge is dangerous.” Kiela felt herself grinning. She’d never done anything the least bit dangerous before. It felt like a deep breath of sea air.Maybe the taste of the breeze is going to my head.“But ignorance is even more dangerous. In this case, ignorance means failure, and failure means no food, no way to stay here, and nowhere else to go.”
Caz accepted that and followed her out to the garden, where they’d planted the seeds. She sat next to them cross-legged and laid the spellbook open on one of her father’s old (but now clean) shirts to protect it from the dirt.
Using a spoon, she scooped a teaspoon of the paste onto each of the mounds where she’d planted a seed. She then read from the book:
Rywy cryf chi dor
Rywy cajon rhoi i
Rywy gobai tremadon se hia . . .
She pronounced the words precisely and carefully, drawing on her knowledge from her studies. There was scholarly debate over the inflection on certain words, and she had followed all the discourse. She knew which syllables to stress and which to swallow, and she knew how long to stretch the vowels and which required a guttural sound. This was a magic made from the music of words, and she spoke the syllables to the seeds with every bit of conviction that this was right and that this would work.
When she finished, she closed the spellbook and waited.
“Did it work?” Caz asked.
Side by side, they stared at the earth, willing the little seeds to sprout and grow. “It’ll work,” Kiela said. “I know it will.” She’d seen the merbaby in the cove. If that wasn’t a sign that she was supposed to be here and thrive here, then . . .
Itwasa sign,she thought.And they will grow.
From within the house, she heard Larran call, “Anyone home?”
Chapter Seven
“I came to apologize,” Larran said.
Oh! That was nice! But wait, no, he couldn’t be here right now. Kiela had left the spellbooks piled on the bed, and who knew what was happening with the in-progress spell in the garden . . . He really had to go away. “You didn’t need to do that.”
Standing on the front step, he hadn’t crossed over the threshold, but he also wasn’t showing any signs of wanting to leave. Glancing behind her, out the back door to the garden, she saw Caz hide the spellbook beneath her father’s shirt.I can’t let him come in.
“I did. I mean, I do,” he said. “I . . . pushed too hard. With the chimney. With the eggs. I didn’t ask what you wanted.” He was blushing. “I’m not really good with people.”
You and me both,she thought. “I’m sorry I snapped at you.” She wanted to add:Now, leave.But she couldn’t figure out how to phrase it politely.
“I’m sorry I caused you to,” he said. “And I promise I won’t show up uninvited again.”
He looked so earnest and so obliviously unaware of the fact that he was already in violation of that promise that she couldn’t help but laugh.
