Tandri’s face greeted them as she waited in the dawn light, wearing a soft sweater and stamping her booted feet against the early morning chill. “All set?” Then she glanced to her left.
Fern swung the door wider, revealing four townsfolk waiting on the step beside Viv’s wife.
A coil of tension released inside the rattkin.
“Gods, get in here out of the cold! I’msosorry I kept you waiting.”
And from then on, scarcely a pause could be found.
Fern remembered the day as a series of little landmarks, like treetops rising from a misty valley.
Viv, wavingTen Links in the Chainat a bewildered dwarf, covering one eye with a hand and loudly describing a dismemberment. The dwarf bought the book, but he had a hunted look in his eyes when he did. Viv winked at Fern over the top of his head.
Thimble, squeaking in dismay at platters empty of all but crumbs and rushing to refresh them with steaming cinnamon rolls, the scent of which caused an audible ripple amongst shoppers.
The startling appearance of a shaggy gray cat the size of a timber wolf thatnobody remarked upon. Its tail crested the tops of the shelves like the fin of a shark roving shallow waters as it prowled the shop with an air of menacing indifference.
The arrival of a venerable woman in a red cloak, accompanied by a stone-fey in a very impressive hat, whose combined presence had an effect that Fern honestly thought the catshouldhave produced. The lady bought a stack of books two feet high, but not before sharply inspecting Fern with a flinty eye. Her escort carried her purchases for her when she left.
Tandri nudging Fern aside to take over the counter so she could eat a hasty sandwich, which Potroast ogled mercilessly until he received his half.
Cal ambling in the door and stepping to the side to lean against the wall, hands in his pockets. He nodded when he caught her eye, smiling his stubbled smile.
The steady accumulation of copper bits and silvers in the cash-box, and the impression of some great, impending wave curling back into the tide before ever breaking on the shore.
And with the closing of the door, the weary, bewildered, dazed, exhausted, triumphant, satisfied silence that followed, as Viv, Tandri, Cal, and Thimble clustered around the countertop, noting the many fresh gaps amongst the bookshelves.
The opening of Thistleburr Booksellers in Thune was an unmitigated success. A new chapter freshly opened in Fern’s life—the page turned, the title printed, and ready to be filled with words of renewal, purpose, and peace.
3
“I fucking hate it!” sobbed Fern, her face in her hands.
Potroast glanced up with a hoot and a slow, concerned blink of his owlish grapefruit eyes. One of Thimble’s hard cookies lay half masticated between his forepaws.
She let out a watery breath and scratched him behind the ruff of his feathers. “What am I going to do now, little man?” she whispered.
Fern gazed around the alley behind the shop, where she sat on the back step with her red cape rumpled around her. Evening painted the tumble of boxes, barrels, and bales there in shades of deepest blue. A scatter of puddles reflected the pale rind of the moon, and the nighttime murmur of Thune echoed from streets that felt very far away. The frosty air bit her toes.
A week had passed since the grand opening of Thistleburr Booksellers, and things had gone better than they had any right to. Viv’s intuition had proven correct, and some kind of synergistic energy had built between the coffee shop next door and her own. A cozy magnetism. It was obvious to all and sundry that the bookshopbelongedthere.
And that was wonderful, Fern supposed.
Except that it didn’t matter.
The hollowed-out feeling of dissatisfaction that had steadily eroded her center for the past few years was still there. In fact, it seemed to havegrown.
Oh, she’d been distracted from it for a day or so, in the same way that sprinting until you’re breathless makes it hard to focus on the growling of an empty belly. But now that things had settled into an easy—and profitable—rhythm, it yawned within her, sucking up all the light in reach.
“There you are,” came a voice from the mouth of the alley, rousing Fern from her morose reflections.
As the shadow approached, it resolved into the craggy features and flat cap of Cal.
“Shit. Don’t look at me. I’m a mess,” protested Fern. She gestured at the detritus around her. “I came here to be with my people. This is a garbage-only meeting.”
He ambled over and dropped to the step on the side opposite Potroast, who tucked both paws tighter over his cookie and gnawed it with wary determination.
Cal folded his hands between his knees and didn’t say a thing. The smell of fresh sawdust tickled Fern’s nose.
