Sugar is like medicine. It swirls on the tongue and settles the gut and inspires happier thoughts to the mind. I’ve started taking it regularly.
I’ve gained back the weight I lost under Allemas’s care. I sneak bites of every confection I make, for I only make cheery ones, and my own magic sustains me from the unsettled stirrings of my soul.
I bake. The hotel has a menu, but I use it as a guideline. I can’t create the same dishes day after day after day. I need difference. Monotony makes my mind wander.
Several times I debate telling Arrice about Fyel, even with Allemas as my constant sentinel. I almost say something while stenciling cookies. While frosting cakes. While kneading dough. Almost, but I never do.
Arrice knows I have secrets. My skin and eyes alone scream that truth, but what would she think if I told her everything? The problem is that I have so little to tell, so little that I actually know. I may be a strange being that exists between ourselves and gods, or, at least, I’m in love with one. What would she think of me? I could not bear to lose Arrice’s trust.
I never deliver to the tables. My appearance tends to startle people, even the stranger-looking ones, and I’m still not graceful with my bad leg. But Arrice receives many compliments on our behalf, as well as an occasional tip. Everything we make goes into a safe box that Franc keeps away from Allemas’s eyes. Despite his apparent docility, Franc doesn’t trust the strange man who lingers wherever I go. None of us do, but Allemas’s sudden change in behavior has helped to alleviate the hatred that fed off the deepest parts of me. It helps me pity him, to see him as something besides cruel and senseless. Was this what Fyel wanted? Is this the part of Allemas I’m supposed to understand?
The crystal in my boot prods my skin, but I dare not remove it. He is always watching.
Allemas could use his magic to take us back to Carmine, but when I ask, he doesn’t respond. Neither does he recover, and I thank the gods, known and unknown, for that fact every night. Almost, almost, I feel like I’ve moved back in time. As though I’ve returned to the me I was before Allemas, before the marauders. Almost.
More days and nights pass, each filled with Arrice and Franc, each absent of Fyel. Time does little to lighten the weight he’s left within me, for I dream of him often—dream of things my normal imagination couldn’t fathom, things that make the darkness inside my mind recede little by little.
After two and a half months, we have just enough to make the trip to Carmine, presuming there is enough of Carmine left to sustain us when we arrive. Franc alerts the hotel owner of our decision to leave, which, needless to say, displeases him. He offers to triple our pay to stay, and while the offer is tempting, all of us ache for home.
The gods agree, for while I debate the merits of staying in Cerise, they send a piece of home to us.
Arrice carries out two plates to guests in the dining room; it’s the end of the lunch hour, and I’ve begun to sweep excess flour back into its bin. Allemas stands against the back door, his forehead pressed to the glass, his breath making two circles of fog to either side of his nose. He’s been staring outside since breakfast, unmoving. Franc has gone around the building several times already to avoid using that door.
I brush flour from my hands, and Arrice shrieks from the dining room, causing my entire self to lurch. Still smeared with flour and wearing my stained apron, I rush through the kitchen and throw open the door. My movements are a little more nimble than they were when I first came here. My leg has had time to heal, even if it’s healed crookedly. My heart dances in my chest.
I have become accustomed to stares, but the diners are all focused on Arrice, who has made a spectacle of herself off to the side of the room, near the entrance to the hotel. Her arms are wrapped around the neck of a dark-haired man a full head taller than she is. Pulse tickling my skin, I limp toward them and hear the man say, “—about exquisite baked goods from the next town over, and I had to see if it was—”
He looks up, and I freeze, my body numb save for the astonished smile splitting my face.
“Cleric Tuck,” I whisper.
The clergyman releases Arrice, bounds over to me, and in one great swoop of motion throws his arms around me and lifts me from the floor. I cling to him as he spins me once, his clothes smelling of travel and fire smoke. A voice buried deep within me thinks, These are the wrong scents, but I ignore it.
“Maire,” he says, pulling back, and there are tears in his eyes. “Thank Strellis, I’ve found you. You escaped.”
My mind’s eye looks back to the kitchen door, toward Allemas, but I don’t correct Cleric Tuck, not now. “You escaped!” I cry. “How?”
“What sort of question is that?” Cleric Tuck asks, keeping his voice low to keep our conversation as private as possible. “You threw me a key! Most of us made it out . . .”
His voice hushes even more, and though his eyes are still set on me, they lose focus. He swallows. “Most of us.”
I clasp his hands in mine, but I feel Arrice’s touch on my back, ushering us toward the kitchen, away from prying eyes and ears. Cleric Tuck continues, “I was with the smithy, but there was a storm and we got separated. I found some work on a trade ship. We had just delivered to Ecru when I saw you at the shrine.”
Ecru, I think. It’s the first time I’ve heard the name, but it must be the town where Daneen lives.
The door pushes open, and Cleric Tuck continues, “I searched the entire village for you, Maire.” His voice is hushed despite the new privacy, his syllables strained. “You just . . . vanished. And I’ve been looking ever—”
Cleric Tuck freezes, his dark eyes locked on to the figure at the back of the kitchen. He reaches under his smock and pulls free a knife the length of my forearm.
“You,” he hisses at Allemas’s back side, but Allemas doesn’t even turn around.
The kitchen door opens to Franc. “I heard,” he begins with excitement, but the sight of the blade and my hands rushing to Cleric Tuck’s wrist stop the sentence short.
“Tuck,” I say, standing in front of him. “Stop. Listen.”
“You’re a slave still!” he growls.
“I am not. I’m here with Arrice and Franc. We’re all safe.” I press down on his arm, but his muscles tense, the blade quivering in his hand. He doesn’t look at me, only at Allemas, and the violence in his eyes scares me. I grip his hand with both of mine and squeeze as hard as I can. “He’s a broken man, Tuck,” I whisper. “He’s less than a child inside his head now. He’s harmless.”
Tuck grits his teeth. Have the marauders hardened him this much? He never carried a knife in Carmine.
I move one hand to the side of his head and tap my index finger against his temple. “Cleric Tuck,” I insist, and his gaze drops to me. His arm finally relaxes.
“What happened to you?” he asks, looking me over. His forehead wrinkles as he studies my eyes, seeming to notice them for the first time. When Franc reaches out to pry the knife from his hand, Cleric Tuck doesn’t react, save for asking, “What’s wrong with your eyes?”
I do the best I can with his questions. “I changed,” I say, soft, keeping myself between him and Allemas, who has finally cocked his head around enough to eye us. “I am . . . becoming who I was.”
Cleric Tuck’s forehead wrinkles further, but after a long moment he nods. He, like many in Carmine, knows I cannot recall my heritage. That unknown gap excuses a great deal on my part, I suppose. Still, I can’t help but notice the discomfort in his gaze as he looks at me. His forehead never smooths.
Arrice takes Cleric Tuck by the elbows and sits him on a crate, out of sight of Allemas. “Have you been to Carmine?” she asks, hopeful.
Cleric Tuck shakes his head. “No. Not yet.”
“We’re going,” I say.
He perks. “Back to Carmine?”
I nod.
“It’s still . . . ?” He doesn’t complete the thought, but we all feel it.
Franc answers, “Don’t know, lad. B
ut we’re going to see. Plan is to leave tomorrow.” He eyes me, knowing I was considering the benefits of staying, but I nod. In this moment, I want to go home more than ever.
Out of habit, I turn around and peer out the window—the one Allemas isn’t blocking. There is no sign of an apparition beyond its glass. The edges of the crystal, still tucked in my boot, feel especially hard against my calf. Perhaps I’ll find the second one on the way home and Fyel will finally return to me.
My eyes sting at the thought, and I blink, refocusing on Cleric Tuck, who has taken my hands in his again.
“Whatever’s happened to you can be fixed,” he says, looking me up and down. “I swore to Strellis I would find you.” He smiles. “I’m so glad I did.”
Once, that smile would have plucked a small thrill in me. Once, it would have made me work hard to be clever, to get Cleric Tuck alone so I could taste those lips, so I could see how daring a clergyman could be, with the right persuasion. Now I feel that smile tear me clear to my stomach, cutting a dull pain that aches like I haven’t eaten in two days. My time away from Carmine has washed me red, taking the old bits of me downstream and burying them among the silt.
I try to offer him a smile in return, but it feels ghostly on my mouth, and once more I glance out the window, praying for him. I wonder if Cleric Tuck notices, for he releases my hands.
Franc has acquired us a handcart, and in the dark after dinner service—our last service—we load it with what few belongings we have, along with the leftovers from the last two days’ services. My leg starts to throb by the end of the day, as it is wont to do. There is no regladia in Cerise, but Arrice has secured me a different medicine, and I’ve made small, sugared buns that I’ve infused with strength and endurance, which help as well. We rise early in the morning, before the sun, to start the journey southward toward Carmine, the memories of which help lighten my steps. We journey to the place where Fyel first found me, and I pray against that heavenly shield that he’ll be waiting for me there. The only pain I feel is the prodding of the crystal at the back of my boot, and the now-familiar companionship of my twisting heart, which spikes every time Cleric Tuck smiles at me.
Allemas follows behind, leaving the prints of his uneven gait in the red-tinted earth.
So many things hurt. This plant hurts. It’s secret and ouch and thorns. But I think it is a good plant. It grows fast. It’s my favorite.
CHAPTER 20
I watch them, the people on a world with swirling turquoise clouds, a hot molten core, and a dwarf sun. I watch the people and the strange customs they’ve developed. I listen to their strange languages. I marvel at how quickly they discover the secret uses of plants. This world has many.
I feel him approaching before I see him. He places a heavy hand on my shoulder.
“I’m all right,” I say, running my thumb over his knuckles.
He doesn’t speak. He knows he shouldn’t. There’s nothing he can say to make it better. He simply waits for me to come to him.
“It’s just . . . they have it. They all have it. This godly power.”
“An imitation of godly power,” he says.
I shrug, watching the children running through the street or crying at their mothers’ hems. They’re so like us, but so different.
I can’t help but wonder what it would be like.
There are people in Carmine.
Not many, and I only recognize one or two, but they are there, and they are carrying on.
Most of the carnage left by the marauders is gone. The dead have been buried. Homes and shops have been patched—the ones that haven’t been abandoned, at least. A few empty lots bear the foundations of structures that were burned down or torn apart for salvageable pieces. Carmine is not a wealthy place; we make do with what we have. We always have, as far as I can remember.
In my absence—in all of our absences—the mayor of Amaranth sent soldiers to build a wall on the western border of our village as an initiative to protect Carmine’s borders from marauders. We were not the only ones who were attacked. Survivors are helping them build this wall of mortar and stone. It is slow going, but it is there. Cleric Tuck, after squeezing my elbow in an almost-tender manner, jogs toward the builders, either to ask them for recent news or to aid them. I watch him go, my stomach feeling empty despite the bread and cheese I ate earlier.
Franc, Arrice, and I reach my bakeshop first, Allemas trailing behind. The door is unlocked, and my hand tingles as I push it open.
I thought I’d feel a sense of wonderment upon returning here, but I don’t. I feel as though I’ve woken up after a long sleep and am returning to face my forgotten responsibilities.
A few ants and roaches scuttle over the floor, searching for any remnants of food that haven’t already been picked over by birds and larger insects. A moth slumbers in the corner. The shelves that once held cakes and petit fours and cookies litter the floor, empty. The small box where I kept my profits is gone. Two of the three windows are broken.
I wander into the back. The marauders left spilled supplies on the floor and the cabinet doors open, but everything is still functional, save for a bent hinge that leaves a cupboard door crooked—the cupboard in which I tried to hide. I can save this. Most of the repairs will only take a day’s work, though the windows will take longer. Glass is neither cheap nor easy to come by, though perhaps I could spin sugar like I did with the gingerbread house in the wood.
When I turn back for the front door, Allemas startles me. He is standing in the middle of the storefront, peering around in his solemn, droopy manner.
“This is where I worked before the bandits attacked,” I say. I’m not sure how many of the words penetrate his mind, but if anything, I want him to see who I am—who I was—before he deemed himself fit to possess me. “This is where I baked and sold, where I made money. Do you understand?”
He looks at the fallen shelves.
I take the cuff of his coat sleeve, eyeing its pocket as I do so, and pull him outside. I’ve tried to turn out his pockets twice before, during our trip, but he comes alive when I do that and flails like a gimped horse to protect his secrets. I physically turn him so he can peer up the road, toward the erecting wall. “The marauders came from this direction.”
I note a scar in the road, a place where the earth had once raised up to rescue me. Someone had dug it out and flattened the path again. I avert my eyes and swallow a lump in my throat.
“These were bad men,” I continue. “Strangers. They came on horseback and attacked us. They took me from my home and put me in that cage, where you found me. Do you think it was all right for them to do that?”
He doesn’t answer. He stares at the wall.
“It wasn’t,” I tell him. “It was very bad. And you perpetuated it, Allemas. When you bought me, you told those men that it was okay that they were bad.”
He doesn’t respond.
“Maire.”
I turn at Franc’s voice. They wait just a little farther up the road, toward the path that leads to the farm. Silently I join them, leaving Allemas to stare. We don’t get far before he turns around and walks after us, a shadow to my shadow.
Franc and Arrice’s house is in disrepair, but like my shop, most of it can be fixed. Only their barn, which is half-burned, will need to be entirely rebuilt. Three-quarters of the farm must be replanted. We’ll struggle with finances until we can build things back up, but perhaps the soldiers can help us. Perhaps the mayor has set up a program for the town’s recovery. Perhaps we can make money if we work on the wall in addition to our personal responsibilities. There is an abundance of maybes in our broken village, but one of them has to lead to a yes.
We start on the home first. Allemas works at a quarter of the speed of the rest of us, but at least he’s working. Cleric Tuck joins us, and we clean up what we can, right furniture, throw away what is too broken to repair. As I pick up my old room, I wonder what we should do about Allemas. Franc and Arrice want him gone, of course
. They don’t understand him. I don’t, either, but I know him. I know he won’t leave. I don’t know when he’ll come to his senses, if he will at all, but he will never own me, if he does.
As I step into the nook of my closet, I pull my crystal from the back of my boot. I could probably take the splint off, but I’m afraid of hurting myself, and it’s acted as a safe for this strange item of mine. I wipe it clean of dirt and sweat with my shirt and turn it over in my hands.
“Where are you, Fyel?” I whisper, pressing one of the crystal’s smooth surfaces to my lips, but his name still chokes as it passes through my throat. Three months. Three months since he left. I’ve begun to fear he’ll never return. But why? Have I remembered all I need to remember? But I haven’t. I know that. I’m still remembering.
Always, he had said.
“Then where are you?” I mouth the words; they’re little more than breath. I catch a tear with my knuckle. Gods, I am so tired of crying. So tired of feeling broken inside, of searching for the lost pieces in the receding but ever-dark hole in my memory.
I grip the crystal, imprinting its edges into my palm. If I manage to find the other one, will he come?
Footsteps on the stairs urge me to shove the crystal back into its hiding place. They’re Franc’s footsteps, not Allemas’s, but I must act with care until I learn why the crystal is important. Until I remember truly.
After seeing to the shrine and its followers, Cleric Tuck comes by to walk Franc into town so they can learn about the planned recovery. For the first time since working in the hotel in Cerise, Allemas sleeps in a separate room—the front room, guarding the stairs and the door. I sleep with Arrice. Franc, who comes home late, slumbers in my old bed.
Early the next morning, I ask Allemas to find supplies for us—whatever is left at his old house, plus more if he has any savings. I’m not sure he does. For all I know, he steals every bag of flour and basket of eggs he offers me. He goes without me, wordlessly, but he possesses enough of his wits to conceal himself before vanishing. Part of me wonders—even hopes—that he won’t return.
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