Lottie pulls back and holds her hand up to her face, spreading her fingers apart over and over again, noticing the tacky pull against her skin. “I don’t know.” She puts her pointer finger in her mouth, tasting it slowly. “It’s honey,” she says, confused.
Marigold cants her head. “Were you in the apiary?”
“I guess so,” Lottie says while shaking her head. “I truly do not remember.”
Again, Marigold reaches for her hand, saying, “Let us return to the cottage. We both deserve rest.”
Lottie is staring at her so intently, flitting her gaze between Marigold’s eyes and her waiting hand. “I don’t know if I can sleep alone.” Her voice trembles.
Marigold’s spine goes taut. “Oh.”
“I’m sorry,” Lottie says quickly. “I’ll be fine.”
“No,” Marigold says, unable to withhold her honesty or her desire to stay close. “I won’t be able to sleep alone either. So, come with me. Stay with me,” she says, bringing her open hand closer. This time, Lottie relents. Her hand sits in Marigold’s palm for the first few steps toward the cottage until she pulls away again, shuddering like a fevered child.
“Never mind. I feel like I’m going to be sick,” she says sharply as if it is Marigold’s fault. Lottie dashes into the cottage by herself, leaving her standing alone in the frigid night air.
The wind blows out her candle, carrying nothing but the hums of innumerable bees.
Chapter Twenty
When Marigold retrieves the moon water from the edge of the oasis in the morning, she sees a dark mass stagnant in the center of the water. From a distance, it looks like a massive dead slug, but as she gets closer, she sees a horrifying truth; it is Yliza, the landvættir of the oasis. Her bright yellow skin has turned midnight blue. Her normally glossy and plump body now looks almost matte and deflated. At first, Marigold thinks she is dead.
Can spirit guardians simply die? It does not make sense. The guardians of Innisfree are immortal—they are not even truly of this world. They sit safely behind the veil, unable to be harmed.
But last night, the moon was full and the veil was thin. Maybe they could have somehow hurt Yliza when they went swimming. It could already be too late. Marigold places her palms in the water, making gentle ripples that grow into waves of movement. The water carries Yliza to her, and she gently rotates the body without pulling her out of the pool.
“Yliza?”
It is the strangest thing; Yliza is alive, her glassy eyes staring straight back at her with no death inside them—only anger. Her round mouth opens to reveal rows of razor-sharp teeth that were not there before. The koi thrashes violently in her arms, desperate to bite. It’s as if Yliza has gone through some sort of monstrous transformation. Could it all be from one night ofswimming? Something that Marigold has done so many times before? She fishes a vial of acacia honey out of her pocket, pops the cork off, and grabs Yliza again, careful to avoid the teeth. When she is able to force the honey into the koi’s mouth, there is an immediate change. Yliza returns to her normal state; her skin loses its inky black tint, the anger in her eyes fades to apathy, and her rows of teeth fall out like seeds.
Marigold makes haste to each of the landvættir guarding the isle. Odessa sits on the coast of the lake, her stark white feathers turned slick black and her long neck bent at an unnatural angle. It looks broken until she comes closer and sees Odessa’s glowing eyes, now bloodred, staring back at her.
“What happened to you?”
Odessa lets out a gargled scream. When the landvættir opens her beak to shriek, Marigold is quickly able to get a few drops of honey on her tongue right before she is bitten. The injury is worth it when she sees the black pigment lift from Odessa’s feathers, and her eyes fade back to pale lavender. She repeats this process with the remaining spirits—Talaya, the blue snake who had been turned white as bone, and Chesha, the cat who grew new fangs and venomous claws.
What could have happened to them? She has always cared for them, she’s never forgotten an offering, and she has never been unkind to the isle. Perhaps they are angry about having more people on the isle than they are used to? But even that does not make sense. There have been plenty of times when her grandmother allowed a customer in need to stay at the cottage for days at a time, and to her knowledge, this never happened to the landvættir.
The only place where she might find an answer is in the giant grimoire that details the history of honey magic. The problem is that the book is over six thousand pages, with very little guidance on what information can be found on what page. The spells at the beginning are indexed—everything else is a guessing game. It will take her years to read and understand the entirething cover to cover, but it is the only hope she has for understanding what is happening to the isle that she swore to protect.
After tending to the landvættir, she comes inside with her moon water ready. She can start her research after she’s finished August’s spell, if she can stay calm enough to focus. She fills the kitchen counter with all the necessary tools and ingredients to craft it: the fresh-made moon water, the lavender honey straight from the frame of honeycomb, the lemon seeds from the ripe fruit in front of the house, the spotted rose petals that feel as soft as sleep. A heavy mortar and pestle sit empty in their immovable spot. She ties her hair into her yellow ribbon and wipes the already beading sweat from her forehead as she checks over her spell instructions one last time. Her instinct continues to tempt her to flip past the spells to start reading the rest of the grimoire—to not stop until an answer is found regarding the landvættir’s illness.
But for this soulmate spell, everything must be perfect. Flawless. Impossible to deny. A perfect spell is the only way that Marigold can force Lottie to eat her words, withmythcraftbeing the first on the menu. Once everything is in place, she goes to the library, where Lottie and August are entertaining themselves with a bounty of books.
“Ready to find your soulmate?” she says, and August drops his book onto the floor and runs breathlessly into the kitchen. He’s so excited that he could be mistaken for a puppy, complete with panting sounds and a wagging tail. “Is it ready?”
“We haven’t even started yet.” Marigold laughs. “Take a seat and watch.” She rarely has such an attentive audience when crafting spells, but she pushes away her anxieties as she focuses on her work.
She first powders the petals, grinding them into the same texture that she would use as a pigment in a homemade beeswax lipstick. The powder is transferred to a larger mixing bowl before she grabs the heavy rectangular frame of honeycomb. She heats a large serrated knife over the open flame of the nearestcandle sitting in a votive, and she waits until the smallest twirls of steam dance around the blade’s sharp edge. The knife glides through the wax that keeps the honey trapped inside the honeycomb, and with one solid swipe, the honey pours like liquid gold. With two hands, she holds the rectangular wooden frame up to the light and lets the sun kiss the honey. She allows some of it to drip into the mixing bowl with the powdered petals, while the rest must be strained from the wax. Carefully, she removes the large pieces of honeycomb from the frame and wraps them in thin cheesecloth. The honey oozes through the thin fabric as she kneads and squeezes the honeycomb over a large bowl. This process takes an eternity until all the honey slowly oozes out and collects in a massive jar that is bigger than her head. The sweet scent warms the entire home, and she cannot help herself; she must taste it, and it is utterly divine—sweet, earthy, with that signature hint of a burn from the magic in the back of her throat. She savors it for a moment before wiping off her sticky fingers and getting back to work.
The honey and the powdered petals mix beautifully, turning into what looks like liquid pink glass. She adds the dried lemon seeds and then a splash of moon water. Once everything is seamlessly mixed, she gently pours the elixir into a vial that is small enough to wear as a charm at the end of a necklace. She corks the bottle, attaches a string, and searches her very soul for the purest intent.
This spell will lead August Owens to his soulmate.
This spell will prove to Lottie Burke that honey magic is real.
This spell will dazzle, amaze, confuse, astound.
