“They only grow in very special places outside the Kvesari Wood,” Ima’riel told them. “We didn’t even have them in the Gloomweald. Unfortunately they fell dormant here about forty years ago according to Halfrida, but Geezer and I are determined to bring them back.”
“Do you mean the thorny bushes growing all over town?” Celeste took a sip of her tea.
Ima’riel nodded. “They’re elven and meant to bloom yearly, when the sun rises on the first day of true spring, though I fear this year’s date may be thrown off by that eclipse we had last fall. Last year we managed almost a dozen blooms on one bush, but then it fell dormant again.”
“Yeah, and Geezer said that last year you were so tired, you couldn’t stay awake to see them open with the sunrise.”
Ima’riel chuckled at Kori’s derision. “Well, it’s much more important that it happens than I get to see it. We’ve done about all we can do, now we just have to wait and see.”
Kori was glowering, but Reeve could feel more concern than anger radiating off her.
“You said the sweetbriars are elven magic?” Celeste asked carefully. “Is there any other unique arcana in Briarwyke?”
Ima’riel’s head tipped. “I’m not sure, but the village is cursed,” she announced with a smile.
Reeve tried to swallow a too-big piece of bread, and it caught in his throat. As he choked, the elf gave him a tap on the back, and suddenly he could take a full breath again.
“Perhaps I should not say cursed,” she chuckled. “I came here five years ago during the sickness. The villagers were in dire need of healing and unfortunately many had already passed. I lost a fair few more, but we managed to eradicate whatever it was plaguing them. But then the strangest thing happened—they all went on living their lives as if it were not quite the tragedy it was. It was as if they were, you know, used to this sort of thing. And then I discovered, indeed, they are.”
“It’s like they just accept their bad luck.” Kori snorted.
Celeste traded a glance with Reeve. “Halfrida said something similar.”
“I never could find the origin of the sickness that took so many.” Ima’riel looked pained then, strange on her normally serene face. “Nearly every family was broken. Most of the children were orphaned and live with parents who lost their own. Halfrida’s sister, Willow’s mother, I really thought I could save her at the least, but I lost her too.”
“It’s not your fault,” Kori stood and came to the table. “She isn’t fully recovered, even now, and look at all the work she does for the village still. I’ve only been in Briarwyke for a season, but I know Ima’riel’s essential to this town surviving.”
“Thank you, Kori.” The elf gazed up at her with another one of those earnest looks that said much more than her words.
Kori swiped a piece of bread and hurried back to her corner to watch them as if a fight might break out at any moment, and she had to be prepared.
Ima’riel sighed, but her smile didn’t falter. “Perhaps if we can get the sweetbriars to bloom again that will offer a little help—they are a source of great elven magic. If nothing else, there will be a festival, and that will most certainly bring the village a little joy. But I do feel as though Briarwyke’s unfortunate history is all somehow bound together. They have illnesses and floods and attacks as if…I don’t know. It is like misery is drawn to this place.”
Celeste dropped her gaze to the tree stump after that, staring into her half-empty cup. She didn’t finish her tea.
Evening was upon them when they left. Ima’riel had insisted they take a basket filled with vegetables and a jar of seeds. There were storms coming, she said, but after, the ground would be perfect for planting and they should have their own garden. Neither corrected her that any garden planted would not betheirs.
They returned for the temple as they were already north of the village. Earlylyte was given free range of the courtyard, and the two dragged themselves inside, more tired than either seemed to expect.
“We didn’t find the sieve,” said Celeste, voice weary.
“But we didn’t cause any disasters either.” Reeve sighed. “And we helped.”
“We helped,” she repeated quietly, looking up at the darkening sky through one of the broken windows on the temple’s ceiling.
When they parted ways for their respective bed chambers, Reeve watched Celeste go down the narrow hall off the study room. This temple was similar to his home one in Bendcrest, but it must have been different enough—a hall like that usually housed students, and the chambers along it would be tiny.
Up in the chamber she’d given him, Reeve stripped off his baldric, surcoat, and tunic and fell onto the bed. He imagined there must have been a great number of similar chambers if Celeste allowed him the comfort of this one.
He gazed languidly across the breadth of the room and frowned at the back of the skull on the mantle. He’d turned that around so he wouldn’t meet its eyeless stare, but maybe stuffing it under the bed would be better. Then again, the thought of that too-wide, smiling jaw lurking beneath where he slept made him shudder.
No longer stuffed under the bed, though, was the book he’d been left with, pages once again gathered and put in proper order. Reeve picked it up off the side table and turned to where he had last left off. The story had been getting good, and despite his heavy eyelids, he wanted to know what happened next.
CHAPTER 13
IN WHICH THE AUTHOR CIRCUMVENTS PROPHECY WHEN SHE REMEMBERS HOW FRUSTRATING IT IS
Celeste woke early, but Reeve was not sitting before the broken altar like she’d found him the day before.I win, she thought blithely, stretching and noting that her body, while still bruised, was feeling much better.
