She shuffled in and out of the tiny shops that crowded along the road, realizing that whatever it had been when she was a small child, Cambric Creek was now a thriving metropolis of boutiques and restaurants. A stone fronted shop with cathedral-like stained glass windows caught her attention, and the creaking sign above the door turned her feet inward, eyebrows raised.
To her surprise,Viol, Violet, and Vineturned out to be a plant shop, hardly what she had expected. She’d never excelled at herbcraft or potion making, and her thumb was as black as her wardrobe. Still, she meandered up one of the aisles, breathing in the cool, green herbaceous smell of the shop.
“Is there something I can help you find today?” The speaker was a beetle-like woman with glossy, black hair and crimson-painted lips. Two sets of arms and a pronounced cinch at the waist of the black sheath dress she wore, but her legs, from what Harper could see, appeared mostly human-like. “Anything specific you’re hunting for?”
Peace and quiet. The ability to turn off my brain without having to think or feel anything. A shiny new life with two alive parents and a hundred percent less clinical depression, if you have it in stock?Instead of saying any of the things she was thinking, Harper forced her lips into a wan smile. “Just looking. I-I didn’t know what kind of shop this was when I came in.”
“Just looking is the best way to find exactly what you’re looking for,” the shop attendant tittered, smiling broadly. “With plants especially. The fastest way to go home with a full cart is to come in only intending to take a look around.”
“I’ve actually got a bit of a black thumb,” Harper confessed with an uncomfortable laugh. “I used to help my mother in the greenhouse when I was young . . .” She swallowed hard, remembering the small jam jars of spider plants and pothos cuttings she was responsible for, having serious conversations with tender new shoots, spritzing them with a small mister. Her sister had been a colicky infant, and she recognized now that it had likely been a good way for her mother to keep Harper occupied and not underfoot, as she dealt with a cranky baby. “That-that was a long time ago, though. I’m afraid I wouldn’t be a very good plant parent to any of these.”
“Oh, I’m not so sure about that. I’ll bet there’s a succulent here with your name on it.”
Harper was unable to hold back an outraged bark of laughter. “Succulents are the worst! Everyone claims you can’t kill them, but I have proven that wisdom wrong many, many times.” She gestured to the shelves of small stone dishes containing the green marauders. “These would be the first to go, I’m telling you.”
The beetle woman laughed, a delicate, tinkling sound that carried across the room, thanks to the cavernous cathedral ceiling. A door swung open on the opposite wall, and an identical beetle woman clicked out, placing what sounded like an order for shipping boxes on the Bluetooth hooked over her ear before disappearing again up another aisle. Sisters, obviously.Twins.
“Succulents are introverts,” the sister before her continued. “That’s the mistake so many folks make. They hear ‘succulents are easy’ and feel as if they have something to prove, because they don’t want to be the one who killed the unkillable plant. And then they overcompensate. Succulents want to be left alone to enjoy the sunshine and meditate on their existence, but too many would-be plant stewards over socialize them. Over watered, over moved, over fussed with. All they want is alone time. Not that difficult at all, as long as you respect their need for solitude.”
She had never felt kinship with any thing or any being as much as she did with the eye-level little dish of spiky, jade-green rosettes, but Harper knew herself too well. She was too numb, too neglectful, too unqualified for even the most basic responsibility. She would fail the little plant, and it would die. It would be one more failure to add to her collection, one more disappointment, and she would be crushed under the weight of them. Ilea’s voice, catty and smug, still rattled in her ears.Failing at things is second nature at this point. She didn’t need to waste her money on one more thing she’d spoil with her ineptitude.Fucking Ilea.
“I can’t be trusted, believe me. You don’t want any of your plants going home with me.”
The beetle woman fixed her with an appraising gaze before shrugging with a small smile.
“What was it that brought you through our doors, then? Not that you can’t look around,” she hastily added, “please, take your time. I’m just being nosy.”
The woman turned away to let Harper kill time in peace. She should have made her way back up the aisle and out the door, but the words were itching to come out and complete the line.
“Resignedly beneath the sky, the melancholy waters lie.”
The beetle woman turned back, eyebrow arched, with a crimson smile. “You’re no caretaker of plants, but youarea lover of literature.”
Harper shrugged, reddening. “I-I just want to find someplace quiet to read my book. The library was closed and the coffee shop was packed. I saw your sign and thought maybe you were a bookshop . . . I wouldn’t have guessed a plant store, but I probably should have.”
“Arboratory,” the still smiling woman corrected. “We’re far more than a store that sells plants. You should try Azathé, they’re just another door down. It’s. . . sort of a tea shop.”
“Sort of?”
The beetle woman laughed, shrugging gracefully. Her slender neck and collarbone were an iridescent green, and the set of arms not engaged in the conversation straightened the little stone dishes on the shelf. “It’s part curiosity shop, part divination, and they serve tea. It’s a bit odd, but rather quaint.” Her eyes gave Harper a fast, up-and-down appraisal. “I think you’ll actually like it quite a bit, it matches your aesthetic. And the coffee shop isalwaysthat crowded.”
“I prefer tea anyway,” she murmured, beginning to drift slowly to the door. “Thank you for the information, I appreciate it.”
“Of course! And remember — if you’re ever looking to add a fellow introvert to your life, we have a wide selection.”
The sound of the bell above the tea shop’s door could not be classified as a tinkle. For that matter, Harper wasn’t sure it could even be called a bell.
A twisted hunk of metal hung above the doorway in the place of where a tinkling bell would be in a different establishment, and the sound it made—a toneless clang into the void—seemed to cause the air in the small shop to palpably shiver and shake. Harper squinted as she looked up at it, able to make out the etching of what she assumed was the name of the manufacturer.Enchantment.Joke’s on them. This is a terrible bell.
Her eyes continued past the twisted hunk of junk to the wall behind it — too high for anyone but an orc or ogre to see at eye level, a ridiculous place to hang anything, let alone a photograph, but a photograph was what was there. A black and white photograph of a ship, a long steamer, and beside it, her collected crew.The SS Yeoman’s Enchantment.Her eyebrows drew together.What the actual fuck?This wasn’t a bell at all, she realized, but a part of the ship in the photograph.
Harper wondered what the significance was, but before she could pull out her phone to investigate, a tufty-eared cat appeared from the small hostess stand, determinedly rubbing its head against her shins. Black with silvery-white points, the cat wound around her black boots, vocalizing insistently until she was in danger of tripping.
“Hello! Calm down, okay? Hi there, pretty girl.” The cat preened as she stroked her palm down its sleek back, spine arching and legs stretching before it seemed to remember itself. Meowing again, it trotted forward a few paces, looking back at her expectantly.
The host stand was comprised of a small podium that held an automatic checkout kiosk, but no actual host in sight. Harper spotted the thick, tufted cushion where the cat had sprung from, shaking her head silently.That’s a great way to have your cat go darting out the door into traffic. What are they thinking?!She wished, not for the first time, that Ilea possessed an average cat’s desire to go scooting out of doors to explore the outside world.I’d never let them back in.
No employee had emerged, and she frowned, unsure of what she ought to do. The cat abruptly changed course, circling back to move behind her, headbutting at the back of her ankles, continuing to mewl.
