“Clearly,” said Charlotte, then she burst into laughter again.
Her laughter was infectious. Keir tried to keep his face stern but failed quickly, dissolving into chuckles as he took a seat at the table.
“I’ll put the kettle on while I clean. Tell me about Fossholm,” said Charlotte, grabbing a pile of dirty dishes as she listened to her brother tell her about his day.
After all the washing up was done, Charlotte heated pot after pot of water to fill the bath.
It was a luxury she didn’t really need—she could have just as easily bathed in the frigid waters of the stream outside. The adaptations she’d gained with the korrigans hadn’t left her, although that might have had something to do with her weekly return to their camp in the woods outside Fossholm.
“The changes are lasting,” Nolwynn had assured her. “They wear off in some of the adults after a few years away, but you grew up here. You won’t change back.”
Charlotte believed her, but it was more than her adaptation to living in cold water that she feared losing.
Charlotte had been born into the wrong body. It wasn’t unheard of among the peoples of the world, but there just wasn’t much to be done for it when it happened. The best that most people like her could hope for was dressing to match the person inside or changing their name to fit them better.
But Charlotte had been given an extraordinary gift. She had gone to live among the korrigans young, and as she grew, she found her body becoming a woman’s body instead of a man’s.
It wasn’t painful, no more so than was ordinary when growing according to Nolwynn. And it wasn’t scary, either—it felt like becoming who she had always been. The person she saw in her reflection in the lake where she’d nearly drowned slowly became the person she had always been.
The only fear she felt was that someday, she would lose it. It would be taken away from her, and she’d wake up in a body she didn’t recognize, answering to a name she’d never wanted.
Still, one hot bath wouldn’t hurt. It wasn’t like she would find the korrigans in the stream outside Keir’s house; they seldom made it up this far. And she would visit them as usual at the weekend.
And oh, the bath was so nice. It felt so good to clean all of the flour from her skin and to soak in the hot water, the fire roaring in the nearby fireplace. Keir had left to stay with Alison for the night (as he usually did), and so she had the place all to herself.
Or nearly. Dinah was there, of course, although the cream-colored cat had no interest in the bathtub. She had probably managed to find a few drops of spilled milk in the kitchen and was enjoying the treat.
Charlotte sank back into the tub, letting the warm water relax her muscles as she planned her next foray at baking—hopefully with a bit less burning, literally and figuratively.
In the morning, Charlotte arose early to head to the bakery. Mrs. Knox liked to open with the dawn, which was thankfully later at this time of year, but it meant getting there early enough to get the first breads and pastries ready before the sun rose.
Mrs. Knox was already there by the time she arrived, rolling out the first loaves. She was a human woman in her fifties, Charlotte guessed. She must have been younger than Charlotte when she’d opened the bakery, although young Charlotte had thought she was ancient on account of the white streaks of flour that never left her chestnut brown hair. That hair was more white than brown now, and Mrs. Knox was a bit rounder around the middle than Charlotte had remembered, but she was still the same kind woman that had made Charlotte feel welcome all those years ago.
On one of her first days at work, Charlotte asked her about her husband. “Oh, no husband, never has been. I just never had need of it. The name is for the business. ‘Mrs.’ sounds more homely, don't you think? But you can call me Moira, dear.”
Charlotte never did call her “Moira,” despite the permission to do so. Even as she learned more and more of the recipes and handled more and more of the business over the weeks, she still felt like a child in the shop more often than not, and it felt rude to be so informal with her elder.
“Hello, dear. I’m just getting a head start on these loaves. The Solstice rush and all. Did you want to get going with the scones?”
Scones were a quick bread, meaning they didn’t need time to prove. Mrs. Knox made them on days after they were closed instead of croissants, which needed to rise in the proving cabinet overnight.
“It means we get to sleep in a little,” Mrs. Knox had said with a clumsy wink when she’d explained it. Charlotte didn’t mention how she regularly fell asleep at dawn during her time with the korrigans, or that waking up before it was difficult for her.She was too grateful to have something to do—something that earned her a little coin, so she didn’t feel so guilty taking so much from her brother, even though he insisted he needed no payment from her.
By the time Charlotte had finished with the scones, Mrs. Knox was already on to her signature biscuits, having also started the cakes while Charlotte worked.
“You’ll get faster with time,” said Mrs. Knox. She never seemed to mind how long it took Charlotte. Charlotte supposed she had managed without help for all those years. Even if she was slow, she had to enable Mrs. Knox to do a bit more, at least.
“Mrs. Knox?” she asked as she emptied a jar of strawberry jam into a bowl to serve with the scones. “Why did you decide to hire someone after all that time alone?”
She’d never thought to ask before.
Mrs. Knox paused her rolling pin to answer. “I always said I was going to. I’d hire someone so I could take a trip to Gallia to try the sweets they sell in those pretty patisseries you read about in the papers, or so I could go to one of the fairy restaurants in the city, or maybe just to the beach in Sudport for a weekend. But I never did.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. The timing was never right. Too busy, not busy enough. No one looking for work, too many people looking for work that I would have felt bad for turning them away. But I’m getting older now. I’m not ready to hang up the towel yet, but I’ll have to someday. And when I do, I don’t want it to be forgotten, all the things I make here. They’re family recipes, almost all of them, or things I read about and spent months or years perfecting. I don’t want them to go just because I have. So that’s why you’re here.”
Charlotte didn’t know what to say. She’d suspected Mrs. Knox had just been lonely, or that maybe that her hands were getting tired with age.
