We all swing about to look at him, but he sinks lower in his chair.
“Good gracious,” the sorcerer says, apparently awake again. “Are we still discussing this? I’d guess that he didn’tleaveit in exchange for the books; helostit and then took the books when he realized it was gone. So the books are, in a sense, a red herring. A cover-up, rather than an exchange.”
“But,” I say, and stop. One “loses one’s heart” in literature as a euphemism for falling in love. How does one lose one’s heart in real life, when magic is involved?
“Tandy,” Sasha hisses at me, “he’s, you know.” She wriggles her claws in a fashion that is absolutely intended to be significant, and then raises her eyebrows at me, clearly willing me to read her mind. I shake my head at her, still completely lost.
“He’s in love with you, obviously,” the sorcerer says, rolling her eyes. “He may not have even realized it when it happened, or fully understood. Falling in love while operating under the imprimatur of a curse about losing one’s heart…it’s a seriously understudied area of the lore. I really ought to be taking notes.”
“But,” I repeat, directing my question toward the sorcerer, “he stole the books the first day he met me.”
“Love at first sight,” the sorcerer says, sounding bored. “Lost his heart, then stole the books.”
“Love at first sight’s not a real thing!” I protest.
“Rare, but not unheard-of,” the sorcerer says.
“But if he was cursed to lose his heart, then it’s as though he was cursed to fall in love?” I try. “So he’s not in love with me. He’s missing his heart, is all.”
“No, he was cursed to find it harder to get his heart back the next time he was separated from it,” the sorcerer says, sounding bored. “By good fortune—or bad, depending on who you talk to—he was separated from it wholly accidentally this time, because he fell in love. I believe it’s quite lost to him now.”
Because he fell in love with me?The day hemetme? The idea ispreposterous. There must be some mistake. Something they don’t understand, or which I’m failing to see. I turn to Bash, suddenly outraged. “How could you not say anything? How could you spend all this time telling me you were cursed to be afraid of the sea when that was, was…” I throw up my hands in frustration. “That wasn’t theonlycurse!”
“I would be surprised if he knew what had happened at first,” Honey says, gently. She turns to him. “You felt your heart’s loss immediately, didn’t you?”
He nods, a little miserably.
“And took the books in a panic,” she suggests.
“They seemed useful,” he says, a little of his old bravado creeping into his voice.
“And?” I demand. “All the rest of it? All the cobwebs and seashells?”
“Cobwebs?” my father echoes.
“Oh, Tandy,” Amaritha says, shaking her head. “He wasflirtingwith you.”
“By stealing my cobwebs?” This strikes me as even more outrageous than the business with the scallop. “None of that stuff meant anything! Or had any value!”
“He didn’t have anything to give you, and you are aprincess, Tandy,” Sasha says. “It’s kind of intimidating. Imagine falling in love with you.”
“At first sight,” Amaritha adds.
“When you’re already afraid of water.”
“And living in a barn.”
“Enough!” my mother says, raising her voice. The girls subside, clearly trying not to laugh. “So,” she says, turning to me, “am I to understand that you allowed acursed pirateto steal your…cobwebs and seashells, and it never occurred to you—it never occurred to you—” She seems unable to finish her thought. “Roth, tell her,” she says, turning to my father.
My father looks between us with wide eyes. “It doesn’t make much sense to me, either,” he finally says. “I suppose your mother is trying to say…you may have put yourself in rather a vulnerable position with a near-stranger.”
“Apirate,” Mother reiterates.
“He’s my friend,” I say, suddenly feeling very tired.
“I’d never do anything—” Bash begins.
“This is so stupid,” Sasha breaks in. “They’re clearly in love with each other;everyonecan see it, and no one’s willing to justsayit. They’ve been absolutely ridiculous about each other for months. EvenIfigured it out.”
