The answer, of course, was waiting for her on the sofa.
“Hello, Pansy,” said Mrs. Millwood, her tone so icy it was a wonder the cup of tea she’d raised to her lips hadn’t instantly frozen over. “Is there something you wish to tell us?”
Pansy blinked, her mind unable to process anything beyondthe shrill klaxon the councilor’s presence had set off in her ears. She barely even noticed Blossom, positioned on one of the adjoining armchairs, and not just because her friend seemed halfway to vanishing into the swell of its cushions. In that moment, there was naught but a single question, propelled to the forefront of her mind by the cold, slick slide of dread up her spine:why in good Harvest’s name would her parents inviteher?
“I don’t—” She glanced at her mother, then her father, hoping that her wide-eyed look of panic-slash-surprise would coax out something in the way of an answer. It did not.
While her father, ever-reluctant to draw attention in these sorts of situations, only looked away in response, his lips nearly lost beneath the impressive heft of his mustache, Pansy’s mother was not nearly so silent.
She shook her head, a look of what could only be described as complete and utter betrayal slicing across her expression. “You promised me,” she said. “Youpromisedme.”
Pansy’s heart leapt into her throat, narrowly dodging the lance that speared into her chest. Had her mother found out? But how? No one other than Blossom had come around the cottage and—
“No,” Pansy whispered, the word echoing in the breathless hollow of her chest. Blossom wouldn’t. She couldn’t have. But there she was, sitting on the other side of her room, her fingers twisting in the fabric draped across her lap,fidgeting.
“Gods!” her mother exclaimed, blinking rapidly against the shine that had crept into her stare. “You could’ve beenhurt, Pansy! What were you thinking?”
She knew. They all knew. Everyone in this room knew exactly who Pansy had been living with all this time. And yet, she couldn’t bring herself to admit it out loud. Every timeshe tried, the words caught in her throat, clogging it until she relented and swallowed them back down.
In the end, all she could do was play dumb, force a smile more brittle than glass and ask, “Why would I have gotten hurt?”
Her mother’s reply was instant: “Because you’ve been living with a goblin!”
The truth cracked through the air like the tail of a whip, unleashing a sudden, shocking stillness that stole even the breath from Pansy’s lungs. Her mind went blank, the fake smile tumbling from her lips. Any chance of denying her mother’s accusation had been dashed to pieces, splintered apart like her expression.
“So, you don’t deny it, then?” Mrs. Millwood said, unsettlingly sedate. Her teacup clinked against its saucer as she set both down on the low wooden table in front of her. It took everything in Pansy not to flinch.
Seeing her friend at the mercy of her least-favorite councilor seemed to set something off in Blossom. She straightened in her seat, hands no longer tangled in the weave of her own skirts but, rather, curled around the cushioned armrests at her sides. “Look at yourselves! The way you’re behaving over a plate ofcookies.”
“Cookies”– Mrs. Millwood’s eyes flashed – “made with an ingredient that only goblins are known to cultivate. Was this what you were planning on feeding the judges?” she asked, now whirling on Pansy, her voice having taken on a shrill edge. “You’d shame the entire village just to satisfy your own damnable curiosity!”
“That’s not – I wasn’tplanningon doing anything with those cookies,” Pansy protested, weaker than she would have liked. She didn’t know what it was about Mrs. Millwood or any of the other village elders, but every time she found herself face-to-facewith one of them, locked in yet another argument about all the ways she’d been found lacking, Pansy struggled to find her voice.
Perhaps it was the fear of reprisal that knotted her tongue, the fear of making things more difficult for her parents than they already were. It wasn’t their fault they’d gotten acuriousdaughter – though many would certainly point at her grandmother and say, with that lamentable shake of their head, “It’s true that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” To them, she was just another branch of the Underburrow family tree gone rotten.
Our family used to be on the village council, you know, her mother’s voice, pulled from some ancient, half-forgotten memory, whispered in her ear.It would be nice if we could go back to those days.
If only Pansy hadn’t rendered such a thing an impossibility.
“Whatever your plans might be,” Mrs. Millwood continued, giving a haphazard wave of her hand, as if sweeping trash into a dustbin, “your cookies nonetheless found their way here, to our village, where they waited, ready to be passed around like aninfection.”
Pansy jerked back, her cheeks coloring. “My cookies are delicious and perfectly sanitary, thank you. With all due respect, Mrs. Millwood, I think you’re blowing this very much out of proportion. All I did was share some cookies with Blossom—”
“Which she then shared with your parents,” Mrs. Millwood interjected.
“Because I thought they might enjoy them!” Blossom threw up her arms with a huff. “Was that really so wrong of me?”
Yes!Pansy wanted to shout at her.If not for you, none of this would be happening!
A gross oversimplification – and an entirely unfair one toboot. But Pansy could barely keep her head above the rising tide of her own fury, and so the thought registered as dimly as sunlight at the bottom of an ocean trench.
“We want nothing that comes at the cost of our daughter’s safety,” Pansy’s mother declared, her hands, clasped tightly at her front, flaring white around the knuckles.
“You know we love your regular cooking, Pans,” her father added after a beat – the first sign of his voice thus far. No doubt he thought he was softening the blow. In truth, his words did just the opposite.
Pansy exploded. “There’s nothing wrong with using sugarfern!” she snapped, her skin now the same shade of red as her curls. “And so what if a goblin is the one who gave it to me? I’m the one who asked them for help!”
Mrs. Millwood recoiled with a high-pitched gasp, one hand coming up to clutch at some invisible strand of pearls. “Youasked?” She spoke as if such a thing were unthinkable, the greatest of sins. Certainly not something anytruehalfling would even consider, let alone actually carry out. And Pansy had done both.
