Eadie added, “And we’ll take you up on that bread and jam.” “Actually,” Bryn said, “I also brought cheese and salami—in case we wanted to have a proper picnic.” From the pockets of her pinafore dress, she produced wrapped packets, and Ulina clapped her four hands happily.
A short while later, Kiela and Caz and the three women were seated on a blanket spread out on the grass in front of the cottage. After asking Kiela if she could use her stove and kettle, Bryn had made fresh tea, while Kiela had sliced the bread and Eadie cut up the sausage and cheese. Caz had enlisted Ulina into helping carry out the baskets of ingredients. Due to her second set of arms, she could carry quite a bit at one time.
As they nibbled on the sandwiches, Kiela picked up a pine cone. “It’s fairly simple. You use the sap to stick the ingredients onto the pine cone—there’s an acorn cap, elderberry leaves, huckleberry leaves, shell of a chicken egg . . . Any eggshell would work, but I’ve only tried it with chicken shell.”
“Specifically huckleberry and elderberry leaves?” Bryn asked.
“I don’t recommend experimenting with the ingredients. It can have unexpected side effects.” She wondered if the apple tree in the orchard had ever stopped singing. “Your neighbors might not like it.”
Eadie snorted. “My neighbor doesn’t like anything. He’ll seize any opportunity to complain.” She launched into an anecdote about her neighbor fussing over the fact that his flowers bent toward her house—which meant she could see the blossoms and not him, as if she had anything to do with the position of the sun. “He once yelled at a bird for daring to chirp by his window. Apparently it should respect the fence around his property?”
Halfway through her third story, Kiela realized which neighbor she meant: Fenerer. She swallowed her bite of sandwich—the sausage was peppery and the cheese was sharp, absolute perfection—and said, “He came by my shop the first day it opened. Told me he doesn’t like jam.”
Bryn shook her head. “But you have a jam shop—why come to a jam shop if you don’t like jam? It’s like visiting a fish market if you hate seafood or a baker if you don’t like bread and then complaining that they don’t offer steak and corn, which is a fine meal but—”
“He likes to complain,” Ulina said. “Some people are like that. They derive joy from sapping other people’s joy. The trick is not to let them. Just keep playing your own song.”
“I recommend being aggressively happy in their face,” Eadie said. “Makes Fenerer’s scales turn bright red.” She imitated him: “ ‘Terrible weather we’re having.’” And then as herself: “Yes, the rain will be great for the flowers.”
“Brilliant,” Bryn said, laughing.
Finishing her first sticky pine cone, Kiela showed the others what it was supposed to look like. The others compared theirs. “Caz, what’s the wind today?” Kiela asked.
Caz held one of his tendrils up in the air. “It’s easterly,” he reported.
“Excellent.” Kiela held up her completed pine cone. “It requires a breath of easterly wind. Only wind will work. Definitely don’t try just blowing on it.”
“You’re making me very curious,” Eadie said, lifting her pine cone into the air. “What happens if you deviate from the spell?”
“Remedy!” both Kiela and Caz said. Calming herself, Kiela said, “Think of it like a recipe. Like for jam. If you mix in salt instead of sugar, it won’t taste the same, right?”
Bryn grinned at her. “You tried it, didn’t you. Go on, tell us. What happened?”
“It didn’t work,” Kiela said.
“One of the trees turned into a bird,” Caz said.
Kiela shot him a look.
“What? They should know if they don’t want extra birds.”
“Easterly wind,” Kiela said firmly. “And then . . .” She hesitated. Here was the part that felt the most like a sorcerer’s spell, because itwasa sorcerer’s spell. “You say a few nonsense syllables.”
Bryn raised her eyebrows.
Ulina and Eadie exchanged glances.
Kiela tried not to wince. Why had she thought this was a good idea? It was not. Definitely not. But . . .Knowledge is meant to be shared.That was the entire point of a library. Otherwise it would be a sealed vault. “You know, the syllables are just for fun. Someone in Caz’s family must have thought it would make it all look more impressive, if it sounded like they were really doing magic.”
“It was my grandpa,” Caz lied. “He was trying to woo my grandma. But tradition says you have to say the words or . . .” He shrugged with his tendrils.
“Or you’ll dishonor his grandpa,” Kiela said.
Caz nodded all of his leaves.
“So you’ll teach us these nonsense words?” Eadie asked.
“Yes, but I recommend not saying them around anyone who might misunderstand,” Kiela said. “Like Fenerer. He’d probably see it in the worst possible light.”
