One of the librarians in the south tower had been a fixture in the Great Library for so long that it was said he’d been born in the stacks and had pledged his skeleton would become a bookshelf ladder after his death. He’d lost his sight when he was in his eighties, but it hadn’t slowed him at all—he’d had a cadre of assistants who would read to him incessantly. “If that ever happened, I’d read to you. You won’t ever lose books. That’s not on the list of things to worry about.”
“You have a list?”
“Of course. First: What if the shop fails and we can’t support ourselves, and I starve? Second: What if the books are discovered and stolen or damaged? Third: What if we’re arrested for possession of library property and transformed into statues, skunks, or salad? Fourth: What if the shop fails, we can’t support ourselves, and we freeze over the winter due to lack of firewood? What if the roof caves in? What if a storm sweeps us out to sea? What if a sea monster attacks? What if I contract a terrible, incurable disease? What if you get bugs? What if our spells backfire and we accidentally create a violent tree monster who—”
“Okay, stop!” Caz cried. “Is there any chance of us creating a violent tree monster?”
“Not with acorns and honey,” Kiela said. “Those spells are much more advanced.”
Returning to the book, she skimmed the rest of the ingredients. Most of the items she knew they could find nearby: an acorn cap, a pine cone, a stick with two prongs, a shard of eggshell (it didn’t specify what kind of egg, but she hadn’t disposed of the chicken egg’s shell from the other day—that would have to do), a variety of leaves that Caz could help her identify. It also called for a blast of easterly wind. Happily, that tended to be the predominant wind direction on Caltrey—she wasn’t even sure why she knew that. Her parents? A fisherman? Someone must have told her, or else it was just a stray fact she remembered. She did remember facts better than most people.
While Kiela pulled on clothes, Caz began gathering ingredients. She joined him a few minutes later, and they scurried about the house and yard until they had the full list. Unlike the prior spell, this one called for the ingredients to be clumped around the pine cone, with honey (substituted for mola sap) as the congealing agent. “Is the wind today easterly?” Kiela asked.
Caz held up his leaves to test the direction. “There’s no wind.”
“What if I blow on it?” Kiela asked.
“Could work. Just position yourself correctly.”
She turned so that her breath would be coming from the east and hoped this counted as an easterly wind. Carefully she blew as hard as she could on the sticky pine cone mess.
“Now, we bury it between the roots of a tree,” Caz instructed.
She fetched a garden trowel, and they chose a gnarled tree that grew in the far corner of the garden, well out of sight from the front of the house. It had several bare branches. Her heart was beating faster as she dug. If this worked . . .It might not work on the first try,she cautioned herself. After all, they’d taken a few liberties with the ingredients, and the spell itself . . . Kiela wasn’t one hundred percent sure if the third syllable was a “fah” sound or a “tah.” And as for the last syllable . . . She pointed to it. “Ray-sa or ray-va?”
He peered at it. “Ray-va.”
“You’re certain?”
“It’s a minor spell from a minor sorcerer,” Caz said. “If it fails, the results shouldn’t be catastrophic. Most likely, if it fails, it simply won’t work.”
She agreed with that assessment.
From her reading last night, it was clear that the most common result from failed spells was absolutely nothing. At worst, they’d have just buried a weirdly sticky pine cone, and the worms in the soil would eventually digest it, enriching the soil but at a far less magical rate.
Kneeling next to the buried pine cone, Kiela ran through the words in her mind, silently practicing the way they rose and fell as if they were a line of music. It was far different to read a spell as a scholar than it was to try to enact one. She needed perfection. When she felt comfortable in the rhythm of the spell, she recited the words out loud, and then she sat back cross-legged. This spell was supposed to strengthen the roots. She wasn’t sure if the results would even be visible, which was one of the aspects that had appealed to her about it—the less her “remedies” looked like magic, the safer they’d all be. It would be nice if the results were measurable, though, so she could know that it—
The soil erupted upward like a fountain, and a knot of brown the size of a fist punched through the ground. Shrieking, Caz skittered across the garden. Kiela stared transfixed.
As suddenly as it had happened, it stopped, and the knob of brown sat there.
That . . . was not what was supposed to happen.
Kiela leaned forward for a better look, and the brown peeled off to reveal a tender green.
“What is it?” Caz called from behind a tomato plant.
“I don’t—Oh, it’s not done yet.” As she spoke, the ball sprouted dozens of needles. “I think it’s a cactus?” Slowly, she stuck a fingertip toward it. She touched the plant between its needles. Its flesh felt springy and cool, clearly a living plant and not one she’d ever seen before. She remembered the author of the spellbook, Ylindar—she’d had trouble with deciduous trees on her rainless island, but perhaps she had an abundance of cacti? “Do you think it was the honey, the breath, or the pronunciation?”
“I think it was a disaster.”
“It’s not a disaster,” Kiela pointed out. “It’s a succulent.”
“No one needs a succulent.”
“Hey, weren’t you the one lecturing me about how a plant’s value isn’t dependent on its usefulness?” It was kind of beautiful, in a bulbous, pointy way. She was irrationally a bit proud of it—they’d created something that didn’t exist before. She wondered if it was a specific type of cactus, or if they’d invented a new species.
“Back to the books,” Caz instructed.
