“Shhht.” Edie cut her off. “Let me have this, nerd. And her daughter Persephone hooked up with Hades, the god of the underworld, and he took her away, so Demeter made the lands barren, big problem, and that made him give her back, and Demeter returned fertility, but he also tricked Persephone into eating pomegranate seeds, which meant she still had to live with him part of the year, and this is how we get the seasons. You know, harvest versus growing.”
“I will allow it,” Cosima said. “But this Latin isn’t referring to the myth.”
“Goddammit.” Edie slumped. “Ugh.”
“Hermione!” Morag had been leaning over to read the Latin in Cosima’s notebook. Now, she clunked her mug down on the table. “This is about Shakespeare’sA Winter’s Tale!”
“Very good!” Cosima said.
“Wait, I didn’t get a ‘very good,’ and I told you about the Latin story.”
“Greek myth,” Cosima corrected. “Translated, this passage says, ‘Demeter lays the world to waste without her daughter Persephone as Hermione turns to stone until Perdita returns.’”
“Mm-hmm.” Morag nodded.
“Don’t mm-hmm.” Edie glared at Morag. “You didn’t know. Don’t act like the star pupil.” Then, her brain lit up in a white-hot flash before going dark, like it was a lightbulb that snapped its filament after the switch was hit. She stood up. “Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.”
“For what?” Cosima asked.
“For my mind to change the lightbulb and illuminate the thought I had.”
Cosima sighed. “How long will this take?”
“Better question,” Morag said, “how many innkeepers does it take to change Edie’s lightbulb?” She wheezed out a laugh.
“Don’t quit your day job,” Edie said. “The map. Walking.”
“What about them?” Cosima rubbed her temples. “Honestly, Edie, I have six whole pages in this notepad about interpretations of this speech inA Winter’s Talethat could point us in the right direction. I think we should get started on that.”
“When you ghosted me after our one and only walk, Ialsowas thinking about how to make another walk happen, but I was somewhat deterred by my inability to navigate a mile-wide village in rural England without a working phone in my hand. So I studied the map. Like, I cut out a little person and walked it about the map to try to lay it down in my head. One of the places my little person walked to was Hermione’s Stile.”
Morag toasted Edie with her mug. “There you go.”
“There I go!” Edie held her hands in the air. “Wait! Therewego! Get my fancy jacket, woman! We’re going on a walk to see a stile! What’s a stile?”
Cosima closed her notebook and smoothed out the page in the guest book. “It’s a set of stairs in a fence, usually a stone fence, so that people can go over it but animals can’t.”
“Animals can’t use stairs? That can’t be right.”
“Of course some animals can use stairs. Cats. Probably dogs.” Cosima looked like she wasn’t sure about that one. “Definitely monkeys.”
“The English keep monkeys in their fields?” Edie could feel helpless laughter beginning to gather. “I have not seen one monkey, Cosima.”
“Ugh! What I obviously mean is that cows and sheep can’t use stairs! Regular field animals!” Cosima’s cheeks were pink again, but in a way that looked nearly like she was having at least a little fun.
“I feel like they could,” Edie said. “Maybe it’s more that English farmers don’t teach them how to use stairs, which seems cruel. I’m glad I’m vegan.”
“For heaven’s sake.” Cosima gusted out an exasperated breath and stood up. “Come up to my room and get your jacket, and let’s go find Hermione’s Stile.”
“Yes. But take some pictures of the cipher, too, so you can show your Duncan.”
Cosima met Edie’s eyes for a long moment, and they moved over Edie’s face like they were reading her. Like Edie was a code.
She wasn’t. She’d just learned from when she was small how to give other people what they needed without making them feel they owed her anything in return.
“I could do that,” Cosima said. “Thank you.”
“You bet.”
