Page 17 of Homegrown Magic

Arnav’s brow wrinkles as he sets the garment gently on the counter, smoothing out the silk. “I’ll tell you up front, I couldn’t afford its fair price with a year’s worth of my shop’s profits. We deal in an odd mix of bartered goods, shared village funds, and coinage from folk traveling through.”

Yael can work with that. “If you’ve anything lying around the shop that’s a bit more appropriate for a greenhouse than a manor house, I’d be happy to trade.”

“Are you sure? There’s spellwork in these stitches like I’ve never seen, a boon to the charms of its wearer, and the sheer artistry—”

“I’m positive.”

“Well then, come into my workroom and pick out whatever you like. It’s worth that and more for me to be able to study Rastanaya’s work. And after that, I have a granddaughter, the light of my life, who’ll swoon when I send this to her. That’s her portrait on the wall over there. She’ll be twelve this summer.”

“May she wear it for years to come.”

“Mayhap not, but it’ll fit her until her birthday, at least. What a party outfit that’ll be!”

Yael wrestles a smile into place. “Children do grow so fast.”

They leave the tailor’s shop with a sack full of sensible clothing. Long-sleeved linen shirts and cuffed cotton trousers; sleeveless work tunics with slitted sides for ease of movement, tied with cloth at the throat; a pair of ankle-high leather boots; a waxed wool coat for rainy days. They choose one nicer outfit—a deep-violet shirt with matching dyed wooden buttons, and a fawn-colored vest and pants—just in case there’s somebody they need to impress in this village, or the next. Arnav gives them all of it gladly in exchange for the dress coat, though parting with it hardly bothers Yael at all.

Of course it doesn’t. Not when you have a vast wardrobe at the manor waiting to replace it, the not-quite-Baremon voice drones, like a wasp that’s made its home inside Yael’s head.

It seems Yael’s patron has not forgotten about them as they’d hoped—probably foolishly—that he would.

“It doesn’t matter,” they insist, standing on the unpaved street outside the tailor’s shop, “because I’m not going back to the manor. My parents can give every stitch of my clothing away to whichever twelve-year-olds they like for all I care.” Remembering themself and the minor irritation they are to their very powerful patron, they begrudgingly add, “Sir.”

The voice doesn’t answer.

Maybe that’s worse, as though Yael isn’t worth arguing with.

When they make it back to the tavern, the breakfast crowd is still in full swing. Yael takes this as a sign of their personal growth. Only two days in Bloomfield, and they’re already rising with the working folk. Of which they are now one!

On Yael’s first day in the village, Margot brought them back to the tavern to speak with Clementine—a figure they somewhat remembered from the night prior as a halo of pale-blond curls floating above mug after mug of ale. It was Margot who bartered with her for Yael’s room and board. Apparently, Clementine had been trying to refuse payment from Margot for years in honor of Granny Fern and Fern’s long friendship with Clementine’s own grandmother Shelby, the tavern’s original owner. A deal was quickly struck. Margot would give Clementine the first pick of her mushroom crops and would visit the vineyard where grapes for the tavern’s good wine were grown; a late-winter frost damaged a number of vines just as they were about to bud, and they required a plant witch’s touch. From Clementine’s knowing smile, Yael suspected she would’ve done as much anyway, but perhaps a bargain was easier for Margot Greenwillow to accept than a favor.

Now they wave to Clementine and with a deep bow accept the saucer-sized sweet bun she tosses to them from behind the counter. Her laughter rings in their ears as they climb the staircase to the corridor of rooms above, tearing off a mouthful of cinnamon and candied nuts with their teeth. The bun is already gone and they’re licking their fingertips by the time they reach their door. There isn’t much waiting for them inside. The bed is little more than a pallet with a mattress and a clean, soft quilt. There’s a chest, which their new clothes fit into easily once they’ve folded them all (or rather, dumped the sack directly into the trunk and smashed it all as flat as possible).

Highly pleased with themself, they cross to the basin and pitcher. A small pile of toiletries sits on the washstand, including a bar of rosemary mint soap from the apothecary that looks and smells like a petit four and would probably sell like a drug in Ashaway. Margot spent the rest of yesterday taking them around Bloomfield to acquire things, bartering and bargaining as they went.

Yael washes the last traces of breakfast from their hands, cleans their teeth, then scrubs their wet fingers through their hair in the little round, speckled mirror hung on the wall. Bracing their palms against the wall planks on either side of the mirror, they give their reflection a rallying pep talk. “If you can steal a mechanical steed and sell your last worldly possession, then you can learn to use gardening shears without stabbing yourself in the leg. You will be of use to another person today, Yael.”

They might be lying to themself.

Still, the line between believing one’s own lies and believing in oneself seems pretty thin, so Yael will take what they can get.

Before they parted ways, Margot gave them directions from the tavern to the greenhouse along the lines of, “Walk out of the tavern and into the town, not toward the trees. Stop before you walk off into the trees on the other side.”

It’s more than enough. Encircled by the forest that’s regrown inside the walls since the outpost was abandoned, the whole village is barely a dozen acres across. There’s one main road, which runs from the tavern past the shops and to Granny Fern’s greenhouses. Little dirt paths branch off from the road like the roots of a plant, leading to clusters of cottages, the community gardens, the small pastures farther off, and, in the distance, a lake that serves as a water supply and fishing grounds. Everything in Bloomfield seems to have been cobbled from materials available in the moment: native trees with their red-hued wood, bricks that were probably pried out of former military barracks, and stones ripped up from an old parade ground to make way for fields. Some shops are painted with murals to reflect their wares. On the apothecary’s façade, a mortar and pestle. On the wall of the weaver’s shop, a green field dotted with sheep and a pair of tusked mammoths. (Yael doubts that a shop in Bloomfield can actually claim mammoth wool, but they’re not going to be an ass about it.)

Seems strange that Granny Fern built her own greenhouses as far from the gardener’s cottage as possible, on opposite ends of the village. But maybe she wanted to walk the whole length of the village every day. Maybe she liked talking to the townsfolk, now greeting and gossiping with one another over mugs of steaming tea. They pause on the road, watching Yael pass.

Yael adjusts their tunic, pulling at the ties of their collar. Blend, they command themself. “Lovely morning!” they call out to the baker and the butcher—identifiable by the stains on their respective aprons—as if they belong here too.

It’s impossible to mistake the greenhouses when they reach them. Margot described them as “my whole life and a never-ending fuckload of work,” and Yael can see why. They’d imagined a neat set of cylindrical greenhouses, like the ones packed into Ashaway that nurture exotic plants for ornamental gardens, for potions, and for other industrial purposes. Of course, anybody wealthy enough for ornamental gardens has a groundskeeper to attend them, so Yael has never set foot inside.

Greenwillow Greenhouses, by contrast, are a block of glass-roof buildings of differing structures and shapes, some round or square or octagonal, all interconnected like a crystal beehive.

They find Margot in the entrance to the strange complex, which looks to be the shop proper. She stands at the counter peering into the pot of a large jade plant, its trunk as thick as Yael’s wrist.

“Abyssal gnats in the soil,” she grumbles as a greeting. “Every spring, it seems we get them overnight, and they’ve arrived ahead of schedule this year.”

“Why don’t you magic them away? Cast an expulsion spell on them or something?”