Page 30 of The Trick of It

He was trying to remember the day she’d vanished a little too effectively during the Changeling. Trying to play it back, to determine where he’d gone wrong, what it was he might have done to offend her so deeply.

But that was the thing about public humiliation and memories thereof: they overtook all the mundane parts of the day around it and sanded them down into dust. As far as Rhys’s memory was concerned, the day had begun and ended on that pavilion stage and time hadn’t picked up again until two days later, when he’d finally tracked her down to confront her.

So all he could remember was shock, embarrassment, and screaming.

Not especially helpful.

And the more he tried to rummage around in his memory, the farther away he got from anything relevant. He found himself lost in memories of his first time stumbling onto the caravan during a summer performance. They’d had a woman who could swallow swords and a man who’d spat and juggled fire.

Neither had been tricks. Both of those people had really been doing those things. Which precluded Rhys’s interest in such feats.

But then there had been the girl, the little golden girl dressed like a medieval maiden, who’d made things appear and vanish, who’d guessed impossible truths plucked from people’s minds, and who’d seemed to defy the very laws of nature itself.

Rhys had dragged Willa back to that caravan three times, insisting that this was what he wanted to be. This was what he wanted to do.

And Willa had said, “Rhys, my boy, I can find you tutors in many things. Most things. But for that, you might have to ask the girl yourself.”

So he had.

So he had…

“Lingonberry,” Seph said to herself, startling him out of his reverie. “What’s that, you reckon? Like a cloudberry?”

“What?” he said, turning to look at the little chalkboard behind the till. “Cloudberry sounds like something you made up.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” she agreed with a giggle. “My mam loves them. I’m going to ask.”

He watched her stand and move over to the till, waving over the matron who ran the establishment and engaging her in the question. She came back not with berries, but with a little gelatinous mound on a plate and a bit more of this place’s excellent bread.

“She said we ought to try it,” Seph said, sitting back down. “Though she says back in Sweden, they eat it with meat. Meat!”

“Berries and meat,” Rhys mused, tearing off a corner of the bread and dragging it through the jelly. “I’d try it.”

“I would too,” she said, and they both sampled the foreign berry.

It was, they decided, very good, but not too different from standard preserves.

“Berries don’t vary,” Rhys said. “I could write a poem.”

“But you won’t,” she answered. “If you know what’s good for you.”

He laughed. And decided to leave the memories where they were for today in favor of the new ones being made.

Chapter Nine

Rhys had settled their tab at the counter, lingering to compliment the fare and ask if they sold bread by the loaf, which they did not.

“You ought to,” he told the woman at the till, winking at her. “You’d make a killing.”

Seph only watched and sighed as the woman giggled and promised to consider it, batting her lashes and watching wistfully as Rhys spun and loped toward the exit.

He was always doing that.

Making people fall in love with him.

She wanted to slap him.

“My shop’s just across the street,” he told her, using his body to push the door open and holding it for her to pass through. “If you don’t mind shuffling our respective visits for the sake of geography.”