Page 15

“You watched him the whole time?”

Someone had to supervise. She stretched, kneading the glass countertop. We came to an understanding, he and I.

“What kind of understanding?”

Cat business. She flowed down off the counter onto the floor and came over to wind around my legs. Where’s my fish?

“You get dry pet biscuits. You know what you did.”

I put the stone in my pocket and ran my thumb over the white band. I kept slipping my hand into my pocket and rubbing it as I packed the last crates. Straw for humans. Stones for ogres. Two years of stowaways in a bowl, and this one hadn’t stowed away at all. This one had been set on a mended door at the height of my hand.

I was a witch, not a fool. The stones meant something. I just didn’t dare dream what they might mean yet.

His wagon came late afternoon. So did the audience.

Word of the move had gone around the Hollow, and Willow Lane developed a sudden need to sweep its stoops. Mrs. Piddock cleaned hers down to the bare grain. Old Tom didn’t even pretend. He carried out a chair and a mug, sat down, and watched.

Goran loaded my life into his wagon in eight trips. He kept taking crates out of my arms.

“I can carry a hatbox,” I said.

“Hm.” He took the hatbox.

His beast stood in the traces, huge and shaggy, his horn wrapped at the base with a leather guard for town visits. His yellow eye tracked everything on the lane. When Ginger walked past me to him, leaped up, and settled herself on his broad rump, the lane held its breath.

Giddy up, Turnip, Ginger said.

“Turnip?” I whispered. “Who names a beast like this Turnip?”

Goran does.

Turnip swung his head around. Fangs and horn and a ton of ferocious beast snout stopped a hand’s length from one orange cat.

Ginger yawned into his face.

Turnip blew out his nostrils, faced front, and that was that.

Mrs. Piddock dropped her broom.

Old Tom took another sip of his drink.

Asha arrived at a jog just as Goran was lashing down the load, carrying something wrapped in a cloth napkin.

“For the road.” She pressed it into my hands, hugged me hard, and whispered by my ear, “It starts singing when it cools. I may have baked a certain mood into it. Don’t open it near children.”

“Asha.”

“Or clergy.” She kissed my cheek, stepped back, and beamed up at Goran. “Feed her properly, farmer.”

“Planned to,” he said.

Asha turned her grin my way. I kept my gaze on the wagon. She made a sound like a kettle and walked backward all the way to the bakery so she could keep watching us.

Getting me onto the bench seat of his wagon was an engineering problem the lane got to enjoy. The step had been built for his long legs. I latched onto the top one and tried to climb on my knees, stretching out to reach the bench.

He scooped me up around the waist and plunked me on the wide wooden seat, all while looking off politely into the distance.

“Thank you,” I said.