Not pouncing Hesper in the middle of the night, though?
Impossible.
“And wouldn’t you know, turns out Charles doesnottake kindly to someone popping into his shoppe unannounced!” A voice came up the lane, almost as if he’d never stopped talking the entire way into town. I was crouched over garden beds, pulling up what weeds I could with my bare hands. The bright gray day had turned into a murkier gray—later afternoon then? Without the sun, time passed oddly here.
“And I told him, I said, ‘Charles, I only knocked a few of the tools over, I really think you ought to calm down.’”
“Absolutely,” another voice implored, the sound of metal on metal tinkling jovially through the air.
The sweetest sound in the realm, my heart sighed happily. I might have been the only person in the world who enjoyed the sharp, biting grate of different tools clanking against one another.
“Andhesaid in that great, booming voice of his, ‘You almost knocked my anvil over onto yourself, you foolish man.’”
“Hedidn’t!”
“Hedid! And the anvil did topple over. Crushed the living daylights out of Charles’s big—oh, Clara! We have returned! Bearing gifts and garden tools and a jar of buttons!”
Angus had a giant grin plastered across his face; Murt’s arms were so stacked with garden tools, I could barely see his hat peeping out at the very top. But based on the way he hopped from one foot to the other, he was grinning, too. I spotted one gardening shovel among several hammers, paintbrushes, buckets, a few brooms, and other odds and ends.
“We won’t bother you anymore for the day—want you to settle in and all,” Angus said as they both plopped the tools right at the entrance of the garden gate.
“Don’t let Angus lie to you.” Murt giggled, giving Angus a playful pop on the knee. “He’ll talk yer ear off if you aren’t careful. He’s not leaving for you, he’s leaving for himself!”
“Yes, this is true.” Angus nodded sincerely. “I’m a wretched town gossip. Maybe once we have a tea shoppe up and running again, I won’t have to supply all the tea, so to speak.”
“We have a tea shoppe.”
“Yes, but it only serves coffee.”
“No, it serves tea, too.”
“Does it? Well, isn’t that nice?” Angus beamed.
Murt rolled his eyes and slapped his hand to his forehead. I chortled.
“We’re off!” Angus waved goodbye.
“Thank you!” I called after them.
They set back to tittering as they walked away.
“So you were saying, it fell on his big—”
“Yes, on his huge—”
But I never learned what part of Charles the Blacksmith was crushed that day. Angus and Murt ambled away too quickly, their voices drowned out by the quietness of the cottage.
“Clara—” Hesper’s voice broke the silence. “You’ll want to see this,” she said by the open cottage door.
“Is something wrong?” Based on the look of the gardens, any number of issues could lurk inside the cottage. I wouldn’t have been surprised if a whole gaggle of woodland creatures had taken up residence, making the inside entirely unusable.
Hesper didn’t answer. Instead, she stepped through the circular entrance and into what waited beyond. I followed, kicking the dirt off my boots before entering.
Walking through the cottage was like stepping into another world. I thought it would be dank, dark, and dirty. Instead, the inside of the cottage seemed to be untouched by the grayness of the outside.
The circular windows let in light from all directions, but the etchings in them fractured that small bit of sunlight peeking through the clouds into splattered shapes on the cottage’s wood floor: diamonds, stars, moons, and suns. All of them were different colors, too. It was like we were standing in a kaleidoscope.
“Figured you might like the colors,” Hesper said excitedly, pointing to the splices of rainbows all around us. “I know you paint, or like to paint? Or have painted in the past?” Before I could answer that I did love the colors and yes, I had painted (all over my bedroom walls), she moved into the kitchen, just right of the entrance area.
