And then there was silence.
A bird chirped.
Kiela gawked at the bushes. She had no idea how far into the woods they’d penetrated, but they’d swallowed the back fence. Now, with the berries ripened, they seemed to be done with their unnatural growth, but she still couldn’t bring herself to move closer.
“I think . . .” She swallowed. Her throat felt very dry. “. . . less magic next time?”
“Next time?” Caz repeated.
“Well, it worked.”
She gathered up her courage and approached the berries. At least the brambles hadn’t grown toward the house. They could have devoured the entire garden. Yeah, she really couldn’t sell this spell in their shop. It was absolutely not subtle magic. On the plus side, though . . .This will make a lot of jam,she thought.
She picked a raspberry, stared at it a moment, and then popped it into her mouth. For an instant, it felt smooth and tasteless, and then she squashed it. Sharp sweetness exploded gloriously over her tongue. It was so overwhelminglyraspberrythat it felt as if it invaded her skull and displaced every thought—there was only flavor. Powerful, intoxicating flavor. She’d forgotten what a freshly picked berry tasted like.
On Alyssium, the fruit was imported. There wasn’t space on the city island for gardens or orchards or berry patches. The emperor had had his greenhouses, filled with delicacies, but a librarian . . . She hadn’t tasted a just-ripened raspberry since her childhood.
It tasted like a bite of sunshine.
Caz poked her ankle. “Are you poisoned?”
“I’m in ecstasy,” she corrected.
“Huh,” Caz said. “You really think this will work?”
Kiela opened her eyes and again surveyed the wealth of berries before her, a glorious chaos of ruby-red riches, enough to create many jars of jam. “I think it’s perfect.”
Following her parents’ recipe, Kiela chopped up a bowlful of raspberries and sprinkled a half cup of sugar over them. Her fingers were stained wine red by the end, and she washed them while the sugar soaked into the berries. Her mother had writtentwo hours,and her father had scrawledOvernight,but Kiela wasn’t patient enough for that. Two hours would be fine.
She used the time to assess the extent of the damage the spelled bushes had caused. Tromping around the fence, she squeezed between trees, ducked under vines, and waded through underbrush until she reached the back of her garden.
The raspberry bushes had invaded the forest by about fifteen feet, which she supposed could have been worse. At least brambles hadn’t overwhelmed any trees—they’d simply filled all the space in between the trunks. Everywhere, the bushes were thick and about as high as her shoulder, and they were covered in beautiful red berries. Finding a couple buckets in the house, Kiela returned and picked as many as she could reach. Every dozen berries, she’d pop one in her mouth instead of the bucket, but she still had three full buckets, as well as arms covered in tiny scratches, by the time the berry-sugar concoction had finished macerating.
With Caz reading the recipe, she lit the stove and set the berries to boiling. She’d have to stir continuously until they thickened. She found a wooden spoon in her parents’ drawers.My drawers now. My home.She wasn’t sure it felt like hers, though.
As she stirred, she imagined her parents in this very kitchen. She could picture them: dancing around the table, her mother laughing, her father singing off-key. They’d been happy together. Kiela felt an ache just behind her sternum as she thought of them. Her father had once told her he hoped she found someone who made her smile. Just that. No fireworks like in tales and ballads. He didn’t wish her the shiver of romance or the endless ache of desire. “You should marry your best friend,” he told her. All those grand emotions, he said . . . they’re fun, but eventually they fade. They always fade. What was better, he’d said, was companionship. He’d wanted her to find someone who would be there for her, who’d laugh with her through the years. Every time she’d visit for dinner in the city, her parents would ask her if she’d met anyone, if she was making friends, if she was lonely, and she’d always said,Of course I’m not lonely.
She had her classmates. She had the other librarians. She had her parents. And she had her books. If everyone living failed her, whenever they did, she had all the immortal voices caught in pages. Her father had clucked his tongue and said, “But can a book be kind to you?”
Yes,she answered him now as she lifted the spoon out of the boiling jam.
Her parents’ book had gifted her with this, a way forward.
“To see if it’s done,” Caz said, “you’re supposed to spoon a bit onto a plate and drag your finger through it to see if it’s runny or not.” Perched on the counter, he peered into the pot. “And you’re supposed to skim off that froth.”
She dutifully skimmed off the whitish, cloudy foam and dumped it in the sink. Testing the jam, she dropped a spoonful onto the counter. Caz pulled a leaf through it, and it ran across the surface. “Almost,” he said.
She got a jar ready.
The jam began to bubble. Quickly, she returned to stirring it, and the mixture settled down. It felt thicker than before, which had to be correct, didn’t it? The wooden spoon was stained a deep berry red. She doubted it would ever recover its original shade.Oh well. It’s now my jam spoon.
“You’re supposed to seal it with wax,” Caz said, reading. “I don’t think we have any wax. But you melt the wax in a double-boiler pan, whatever that is, and after the jam is in the jar, you pour in the liquid wax. It hardens and seals in the jam. It’ll last months that way.”
“I’ll buy some extra candles when I buy more sugar,” Kiela said.
“With what money?” Caz asked.
Not having an answer to that, she tried the jam again. This time, it smeared as she dragged it with her finger. Popping her finger into her mouth, she tasted it—sweet raspberry so intense that she could almost hear her father’s voice as he spread jam on toast. Andow,hot! But richly sweet.
