“Looked like a plant,” he said, still scowling. She wondered if that was his permanent expression.
“Heisa plant, a spider plant—Chlorophytum,an evergreen perennial flowering plant related to the asparagus,” Kiela said in her best don’t-let-the-patron-see-your-clenched-teeth librarian tone. Hoping to forestall any unfortunate misunderstandings, she added, “He’s inedible.”
The man snorted.
“His name is Caz, and I’m Kiela. Welcome to our jam shop!”
“Fenerer,” he said.
She’d heard that name before.Where and when?He hadn’t introduced himself when she’d first visited the bakery. “Nice to meet you. As you can see, our initial offering is raspberry jam.” She picked an apron off the back of one of the chairs and wrapped it around her waist, hoping it made her look more like an official shopkeeper.
Fenerer shifted his scowl to the shelves. “Just raspberry?”
“We’ll have more choices in the future.”
He grunted.
“Do you have a preferred flavor?” she tried. “We can take that into account when we produce the next batch. Blueberry? Cherry?” She suddenly remembered where she’d heard his name: Bryn and Eadie. They’d said they spat cherry pits onto his yard when he wasn’t looking.
“Lemon. But you won’t ever have that. Citrus doesn’t grow on Caltrey unless you have one of those fancy glass greenhouses, and nobody here can afford one of those. Especially just selling jam. You ever think about selling more than jam? Can’t imagine this shop will last.”
She gritted her teeth and reminded herself that she’d handled grumpy sorcerers, rude scholars, and condescending students before. Granted, she hadn’t handled themwell.The one month she’d been assigned to work at the circulation desk, she’d accidentally reduced a particularly rude researcher to tears when she’d mentioned that his dissertation topic had been disproven fifteen years prior, and she’d been reported three times for delivering the wrong tome to unpleasant sorcerers who’d interrupted her reading without even an apology. But the difference was that back then she’d been hoping to be transferred back into the stacks, and now she wanted the shop to work. “Thanks for your concern. Would you like any jam?”
“No,” he said.
Then why did you come to a jam shop?she wanted to ask. “Well, then, I’m sorry I can’t be of assistance.” She wasn’t going to mention the remedies to this man—she’d decided that already. If he thought Caz was unnatural . . . well, to be fair, Cazwasunnatural, but that didn’t mean he needed to come with a warning.
Fenerer grunted again. He was a man of many noises, she was discovering. This one was a grunt that sounded halfway between disapproval and disbelief. And with that last utterance, he left.
Kiela waited, watching as he walked into the greenery without a glance backward, before she scurried into the back garden. She scanned the plants: the flourishing tomato, the sickly stalks of who-knows-what, the chaotic overabundance of raspberry bushes—and she spotted Caz in the back corner, crooning to a spot near the fence.
“Caz? He’s gone. Sorry he was unpleasant. I think he was just being nosy. And judgmental. He didn’t even buy any jam.”
“Kiela, you have to come see this.” Caz beckoned with several of his leaves. He didn’t sound upset. In fact, he sounded more excited.
Kiela crossed the garden, carefully stepping between the plants. Once the shop was closed for the day, she thought she’d bring the naturalist’s plant book outside and try to identify any plants that Caz couldn’t. She thought one might be an onion . . . and a nearby vine was either a squash, a pumpkin, or a watermelon.
She reached Caz—
And a round green shape darted out around him and dashed to the other side of the garden. Kiela spun as it ran on . . . feet? Or was it needles? Roots? “Is that—”
“Our new cactus,” Caz said. “Apparently, it’s ambulatory.”
“That’s . . .” She wasn’t sure if it was good or bad or what. “. . . interesting?”
“I’m trying to make friends with it.” He flared his leaves out like a peacock would spread its feathers. She supposed it was meant to be a welcoming display? Or something?
She decided not to ask. “Great. Um, do you need my help?”
He waved a leaf at her and began to stalk the cactus across the garden. “All good. You can go back in. Just . . . you know, watch where you step.”
Keeping an eye out for the running cactus, Kiela returned inside and removed the apron. She left it on a hook by the kitchen counter in case another customer came, and then she sliced up a tomato and ate it while she thought about whether or not the grumpy man was right—was it foolish to think she could make this shop work? Shaking off the doubt, she returned to the bedroom for her book. This time, she brought it out to the kitchen table, but she kept a dish towel nearby to toss over it in case of another visitor.
She’d just sunk into the next chapter, which analyzed three different approaches to soil rejuvenation in kitchen gardens, when she heard footsteps outside. She tossed the towel over the book, grabbed her apron, and hurried around the shelf-wall.
It wasn’t, thankfully, the grumpy man again, but it was another stranger, which shouldn’t have been a surprise since she only knew a handful of islanders so far. Everyone here was, by definition, a stranger, except for Bryn, Eadie, Larran, and Tobin. Her newest customer was an older woman. Like Kiela, she had blue skin, but hers was mottled with patches of green. She walked with a cane that was carved into a spiral like a unicorn’s horn.
“Welcome,” Kiela said as she entered.
