Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet (2 page)

The uneasiness—the strange eagerness—inside my chest is slow to dissipate, and I rub a spot between my breasts, trying to calm it.

“Maire.” A warm hand takes my arm and turns me about, and I find myself face to face with Cleric Tuck. He’s a handsome man, pale of skin and dark of everything else. Even the navy cloth that sweeps over his shoulders is dark, marking him as a religious devotee. His face is clean shaven—I’ve never seen it otherwise—and comes to a point at his chin, above which rest pale and full lips. He’s only a fraction older than myself, or how old I
think
I am, six years short of thirty.

A warm sort of shiver courses up my arm at his touch, at the subtle sensation of skin on skin.

He says, “You look surprised.”

I glance over his shoulder to the small shrine ahead, where Cleric Tuck both lives and works. Had I reached it already? I daresay he’s learned my schedule and knows when to wait outside for my passing.

I hand him the bulk of my leftovers with little thought. “I thought I saw a spirit,” I say, turning and pointing across the wide fields. “Over there.”

Cleric Tuck cranes up and peers in that direction, a small smile touching his lips. “I see no spirits. They would not harm you even if they existed. Are you on your way home?”

I nod, hiding a frown at his use of
existed
. Cleric Tuck has a habit of being dismissive, but he’s pretty enough company that I usually don’t mind. He starts down the road, offering his elbow. I take it and follow.

“Much excitement at the shop?” he asks.

“No, rather the opposite. I’ve no good stories for you today.” My fingers crinkle his sleeve. This is a familiar place for them to be, and the contact alleviates the tight feeling in my chest. I don’t dwell on it. Seeing a spirit, imaginary or not, is enough to put anyone into a strange humor.

“Perhaps just out of sorts?”

I glance at him, lifting one eyebrow. “I very well could have seen a spirit.”

“I don’t think so, Maire.”

“Arrice thinks they’re real.”

He smiles again, though this time the expression feels fatherly, and I want to bat the thing right off his face. He pauses beside the narrow path leading to the stone shrine. “Why don’t you come in for a moment, clear your head? I have tea that isn’t too cool.”

My hold on his arm slackens as I peer toward the shrine. It’s not the only one in Carmine. They’re everywhere, though many don’t have their own home or their own cleric. There are many gods, or at least that’s what I’ve been told, and knowing which one to worship at which time has always been a puzzle to me. From where I stand, the inside of Cleric Tuck’s shrine looks shadowy and dark, and it summons an uneasiness in me similar to how I felt after seeing the spirit, only sour. Like there’s a bubble surrounding the squat building and blowing outward, physically pushing me away.

In the past four and a half years, since my current memory pieced itself together, I’ve never stepped foot in a shrine. Not in Cleric Tuck’s, and not in anyone else’s. I’ve never had the desire, despite Cleric Tuck’s frequent attempts to spark one within me.

“I’ll pass today.”

Cleric Tuck frowns, but he shouldn’t be surprised. He starts walking again, and I push against his arm, urging his steps a little quicker. He says, “Strellis watches over us, Maire.”

“I know.” He always tells me that Strellis is a god devoted to justice, to turning away bandits, to taking from the rich and giving to the poor. I’ve heard him speak of the god many times, with much repetition, and I don’t care to hear it again. Cleric Tuck’s is the only full shrine in Carmine, though the governor worships Gandant, a god devoted to family and longevity or something of the sort. I have a hard time keeping track of the hundreds of deities that roam our heavens.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to sense this in my voice, for he starts telling me how the rain earlier in the season was a gift from Strellis, though Franc would outright disagree with him. I mute the words and look out over the fields, ignoring the impulse to take a final glance over my shoulder.

“And what does he look like?” I interrupt, picturing the white spirit.

“Well,
I
think,” he begins, and launches into an abstract description that doesn’t fit the personage I thought I saw. Perhaps Cleric Tuck is right, and I imagined the man in white. I let out a long breath.

When we reach the house, Cleric Tuck drops his elbow, letting his hand slide down my forearm until his fingers clasp mine. He holds them for a brief moment before releasing me, and my hand feels a little colder when he does.

“Thank you for the escort,” I say, wondering if he’ll kiss me, but his eyes glance up at the house behind me, lingering on its well-lit windows, and I know, with some disgruntlement, that he won’t.

“Lock your doors, Maire,” he says, leveling his dark stare at me. His irises are perfectly circular and almost the same color as his clothes. I can barely tell where his pupils mark them.

I let a smirk turn my lip. “Oh? Do I need to worry about certain men breaking in?” But the look he gives me is all serious, and my words lose their fervor, my lip its quirk.

He takes a deep breath. “Only rumors. You know there’s been activity about the Platts.”

“Not in Carmine.”

“Pray to Strellis it stays that way.” He nods his head. “Until tomorrow.”

His navy clothes sweep around him when he turns, and he walks back toward the shrine with long, determined strides.

“Was that Cleric Tuck again?” Arrice asks as I help her clear away dinner dishes. Franc settles into his ramshackle chair by the fireplace, pulls his mandolin from its leather case, and tunes the strings with calloused hands.

I’m surprised she’s asking me now, instead of when I came inside, when Cleric Tuck was still visible on the road. It takes me a moment to realize she waited for Franc’s benefit.

I roll my eyes. “Why yes, Arrice, that was Cleric Tuck. And it was Cleric Tuck yesterday as well.”

“Awfully nice of him to walk you home so often.” Arrice looks at her husband as she says this, not at me, though Franc’s eyes are settled on the mandolin.

“He enjoys the exercise,” I say, retrieving my satchel. I pull out a caramel and offer it to Franc.

Franc winces. “Not another one.”

“What? You haven’t had one today.”

“You’ll make my tongue sore. Put it away.”

I smile and take a bite of the caramel, only just soft enough not to hurt my teeth. By tomorrow it will be too hard, I’m sure. The sweetness makes me grin, and I stifle a laugh with my knuckles. Ah, yes. I was feeling silly when I made these.

I tuck away the other half of the caramel. It will do me no good to be silly for Arrice’s interrogation.

“He’s a fine young man,” Arrice says.

“Yes,” I agree, “and he’s quite upright and undoubtedly fertile.” Curse you, caramel.

“Maire!”

I straighten, lick my lips, and say, “Well, that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

Arrice shakes her head as she pulls her apron off her hips. I’ve never taken to aprons. The stains of egg and imported cocoa on my shirt say as much. “No need to be so blunt. But yes, that’s what I’m thinking. I know you like him.”

“I do like him,” I say, and a silly sort of warmth blooms behind my navel and branches outward, seeking some escape. I
do
like him. I like the way his arm feels under my hand and the way his mouth moved against my neck when he walked me home especially late last week, though we’ve not taken the opportunity to repeat that intimacy since. I feel my cheeks heat and turn away to hide their color.

“
Once was a maid who lost her shoe
,” Franc sang from the hearth, his fingers plucking expertly at the mandolin strings, “
and didn’t know quite what to do
.”

“Let’s have him over for dinner, then,” Arrice says.

I hesitate to answer. For some reason the idea of Cleric Tuck sitting across the dining table from me, integrating even more into my life, makes my stomach tighten. I rub a knuckle into it and sort my thoughts, but I can’t think of why it would hurt, so I nod and slink into one of the kitchen chairs to listen to Franc’s song. I like to imagine what it would have been like to be a child in their home, growing up with their boys, who could have been my brothers. Arrice and Franc have two sons—three, once—but both have since moved away from home. One took to seafaring and is never in the same place twice. I’ve never met him, only read his letters. The other married and moved to a mining town in the Shadow Peaks, but he usually visits home once a year for Winter Festival. The one who visits looks a lot like Franc and therefore isn’t nearly as kind on the eyes as Cleric Tuck. I assume the seafarer’s appearance is quite the same.

“
She had a prince atop the stair
,” Franc continues, his voice old but well tuned, just like the mandolin. Arrice and I stop talking so we can enjoy Franc’s quiet singing. “
When she ran, he wondered where. Followed a trail of pumpkin seeds and found her kneeling in the reeds. ‘I have no dowry, kindest sir,’ she said with cry and shudder. Only but the second shoe, pinned with silk dyed ocean blue
.”

I wonder if I used to sit about a house like this one with my own family, listening to my father sing, or maybe my mother. Perhaps none of us were musical and we read instead, fairy tales or poetry or stories of our making. Then again, maybe it was only me, with one parent or the other, and instead of gathering around a fire we sat out in the night, listening to the song of crickets and owls, accompanied by the percussion of mice feet.

The frosted edges of that empty space push against the back of my eyes, sending waves of gooseflesh down my arms.

“
The prince was so overcome, he’d not share her with anyone
,” Franc continues to sing. “‘
I’ll take your shoe, and then your hand. Together we shall rule the land.
’”

Franc plucks a few chords, but the music never stops, only changes keys as he launches into another song. I creep close to the fire, letting its heat eat away at the cold clinging to my skin, and watch it leap and spin atop its quartered logs.

Arrice’s knees are behaving themselves, so she decides to walk with me to the bakeshop in the morning. After I snip mint and basil from the herb garden—I often use mint for mental clarity and basil for confidence—we trek the three roads to Wagon Way.

“I’m seeing Luce about that print today,” she says, reassembling yesterday’s eggs and vegetables in a more visually appealing manner as I stoke the fire in my small oven.

“I’m not wearing it, Arrice,” I call out, coughing a little as old soot flies from yesterday’s embers.

“You’ll look good in a skirt, Maire,” she insists. “I’m making it, and you’ll wear it, and Cleric Tuck will think you look good in it, too.”

I laugh and shut the oven door, brushing my hands off on my slacks before noticing and frowning at the blank fingerprints over my pockets. “Perhaps I should use an apron, after all.”

Arrice clicks her tongue. “Take care. I’ll see you tonight.”

I wave as she leaves and then pull out my ingredients. Thinking of the slave and his quiet smile, I start a lavender batter to add to yesterday’s batch. I crack eggshells and measure sugar, thinking about round bellies filled with life, the first spark of a fire, my fingers on Cleric Tuck’s arm. I may not know entirely what I hope for from him, but there is hope nonetheless, and I direct the fancies through my arms and into spoon and bowl, sneaking a taste with my knuckle before plopping it into the oven.

Next I fill a bowl with oil, flour, a pinch of salt. I take two iron knives and cut the pastry dough, back and forth, back and forth. My mind flutters from one idea to the next. Maybe I should make my tart of strength, infusing it with vigor by focusing on the pull in my biceps as I cut and cut and cut the dough. Or maybe I should do something lighter, such as cheer, or something new, like nostalgia. Then again, part of me wishes to be daring, to think of passionate things, of warm caresses in the night and newlyweds and Cleric Tuck’s lips on my neck.

I turn the bowl and begin cutting the dough anew, but a movement at the corner of my vision brings me to a halt. Turning, I look down to see a rather large cockroach scuttling away from my feet.