Page 51 of The Pumpkin Bride

He swallowed the lump in his throat. “Sorry—what was that?”

“Can I shrink the apples at least? They’ll be easier to carry.”

“Yes, of course.” He folded the ladder in half. “And this, too?”

After taking the apples from her, he led them a different route home to draw out their ramble.

“What happened here?” she asked as they passed the blackened and shattered rootstock tree. Wider and thicker than most of the orchard’s trees, he’d used the heartwood for many a cottage project.

“Lightning,” he said. “Last fall. Struck and split it in twain.”

As soon as the words exited his mouth he wished he could suck them back in. How could he forget she was petrified of lightning?

“Do . . .” Her voice faded. “Do bad storms happen often?”

He caught her hand. “They’re rare, and never sudden.”

She traced the lines of the charred remains. “Do you swear it?”

“Yes,” he lied as he squeezed her hand.

Another of his constant stream of untruths. But she would be gone before long. There was no need to worry her while she remained.

“Good,” she said, then withdrew her hand. “That’s . . . good.”

Saints, he’d overstepped. What had he thought, that the unavoidable touches while they lived in close confines gave him leave to hold her hand? His face, neck, and ears were molten, like he’d dipped them into a steaming laundry pot.

In silence, they restarted the journey back to the cottage.

As they approached the verge where the orchard met the open meadow, the clouds of midges enjoying the fallen fruit thinned. The deepening gold of the afternoon caught the occasional dragonfly wing as it arrowed across the meadow.

“Tell me about making cider?” Marigold prompted.

“There isn’t much to it,” he said. “The bloom—the faint dusty coating on the apples drives the fermentation. After we chop and press the fruit, nature does the rest of the work. All that’s required of us is patience as the cider ages.”

“So, fermentation changes the apple, but its essence persists in a new form.”

His chest tightened. She couldn’t know how personal her description felt to him. The lump in his throat made it difficult for him to respond, so he offered an affirming grunt.

“I feel like that sometimes,” she said. “That everything that’s happened in the past five years—Bram, magic, the not-wedding, being here with you—it’s all changed me, my form, but I’m still me. The apple doesn’t choose the bloom but bears up under its influence. Ooh, those sunflowers are so pretty this time of day. They’re my favorite flower.”

He knew.

When he first arrived, the farm held little charm or whimsy. Marigold’s voice played in his head, suggesting a different paint color here, flowers there. To pay her tribute, the obvious choice would’ve been marigolds. But she disliked them immensely, considered their primary purpose to keep pests away. Their pungent scent filled Thornwick’s hedgerow maze. No, this happy sunflower patch waving in the breeze suited his true love better.

“We all go through periods of change,” he said. “But it’s true we’re largely the same at our core.”

“In alchemy, the transformation reveals, rather than destroys, an object’s essential nature.” She tapped the head of a sunflower as they passed. “The experiments are designed to burn away the dross and bring out the truest form of a thing.”

Beyond the neat pumpkin patches lay the cottage, its cozy presence a beacon through the stormy haze of his emotions. Was that true for him? Had the curse worked like alchemy and turned him into his truest form?

He chose his words carefully. “So, in your experiments, you believe the element on the other side is what it was meant to be all along?”

“Theoretically,” she said. “But either I am a terrible alchemist or the science is a sham. I never once turned lead into gold. I believe matter can be transformed—the apples to cider, for example. But the cider is still the apple’s essence.”

The cider is still the apple’s essence. Perfectly stated, and if he wouldn’t have to explain why, he’d pick her up and twirl her in circles. Cider was a metaphor for what the curse had done to him—changed him into something new, but his essence was the same.

Bram was the apple; Jask was the cider.