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The booth opened at noon and everyone on the green rushed toward it.

Zephyrine climbed onto the dunking stool at the same time. Two throws a copper, all proceeds to the roof she’d removed. The line for throws stretched past the pie cart before she’d received her first dunking. She sat on the elevated bench, taunting everyone between throws. I’d never seen a woman enjoy penance so much.

Asha’s singing buns had gone out into the crowd with the first rush, so dozens of little breads harmonized in hands, going flat as they cooled.

The Puddlefoots had hung a sign on Turnip’s rail that read NOT FOR JUDGING, HE IS A GUEST, after two strangers tried to enter him in a contest for livestock. He had a line of his own by then, all of it children carrying apples. He’d given up pretending to hate any of it.

And the sprites came. Every coin box in the place called to them. They worked in threes, one to distract, two to steal. They’d have bled the roof fund dry by supper if the fund hadn’t had its very own quartermaster.

Ginger ran her war from beside my booth. I heard the engagements without seeing most of them. A squeak cut short behind the pie cart. A blue streak across the green with an orange streak a foot behind.

She eventually crawled onto my counter with a prisoner carried by its little coat. She dropped it into the empty honey jar I keep under the counter and sat on the lid.

One, she said with satisfaction. The sprite shook its fist. It held a copper in its other hand, which meant it had gotten to one of the boxes. The roof fund was down one coin to enemy action. If that was the total loss, our war was going well.

I was busy, but I couldn’t stop watching the kissing booth.

Nastru Weatherby held the cashbox, wearing a frilly apron and a smug face, taking coppers as fast as they handed them to him. And, in his best shirt, his suspenders squared, and his hair damp-combed like a schoolboy, stood the largest, most reluctant charitable contributor in the county.

I could not watch, which meant I watched constantly.

I poured, though. That’s the thing about a counter. It would hold you up if you let it.

The chai went first, the way I’d known it would when I planned the stall a month ago down to the tin. The everleaf went to three grandmothers and a drover from the dales with a cough. The frog’s breath body enhancer went to a wheelwright’s cousin, who came back twenty minutes later for four more cups and wouldn’t meet my eyes.

And the mulled cider with the mood-warming note sold the best, cup after cup, into the hands of people standing in a queue in a field in October waiting their turn to kiss a farmer for charity.

Half of the green was warm because I’d made it so, and not one soul out there knew it. That was the craft. You didn’t get a painted sign and a queue. You got a field full of people being kinder to each other than they were an hour ago, and you got to stand behind a counter knowing why.

The grannies lined up first, led by Mrs. Piddock’s mother, ninety-one and dressed in a black gown decorated with her silver funeral brooch. Goran took her hand like it was made of paper, bent his frame down, and gently kissed her on the forehead.

Everyone roared, and the betting book paid out in three directions at once. After that, the crowd rushed him like a tide. Foreheads, cheeks, and one waltzing dip for Widow Merrow that stopped traffic. Every kiss was respectful. Every kiss was another copper sent Nastru’s way.

Goran was hurting, though I doubted anyone else could tell. I saw it because I’d treated his wound myself twice daily, and I knew what it cost him to bend.

Every time he came back up, he was a half-beat slower on the left.

“He’s good at this,” Aris said, appearing at my counter. “And nobody’s more surprised about it than him.” She held out a copper. “Chai, please. She’s dying, by the way.”

“Who’s dying?”

“You. Presently. Slowly. It’s all over your steam.” She nodded at my kettle, where the steam had curled into something with horns for the eleventh time that hour. Taking her chai, she drifted off to watch the goat parade, goats floating through the air like they had wings, their hooves dangling—all directed by magic.

The Puddlefoots’ billy goat slipped away from the parade and landed square on four hooves. He trotted over to the kissing booth and waited his turn in line. When he’d queued up, Goran looked down at the goat. The goat looked up at Goran, who bent, kissed the flat of his thumb, and pressed the thumb between the goat’s horns.

Nastru charged the Puddlefoots a copper, and those watching howled.

Bram and Odile came through arm in arm, and Goran kissed Odile’s knuckles like a knight in a story. He shook Bram’s hand.

Between endless grannies and goats, Goran’s eyes came up and crossed the open area to my booth. Checking. Finding me. Going back to work.

By late afternoon, the kissing cashbox had been emptied twice into the roof strongbox, and the queue had run the county dry of grandmothers. My urns were down to the dregs.

That’s when Asha appeared at my elbow, wearing her apron and a smile, Aris not far behind.

“You’re relieved,” Asha said. “Mrs. Honeycake will be watching the tea booth. Walk with me.”

“I’m not going over there.”