Page 3 of Homegrown Magic

Having floated through the academy on charm and the currency of their family name, Yael will now begin their meaningless job at their grand and meaningless desk in the Copper Court. Soon enough, there will be a meaningless political marriage with a partner approved by (or more likely, picked by) the Claunecks. Someone like gods-be-damned Denby. They will be expected to acquire children one way or another, and the children will be raised as Yael was: in a never-ending cycle of family duties and company parties, where they’ll perform for guests as Yael once did, then be tossed off into the shadows until they’re old enough for obligations of their own.

Suddenly, the air in the stable is too thick to breathe.

Yael tugs at the collar of their shirt, their vest, their dress coat, untucking and unbuttoning until they can gulp down the smell of sweating beasts and hay and blood. Which, in company with the wine and champagne, begins to feel like a mistake. Behind them is the manor and its ballroom, so they stumble toward the far end of the stable, bracing themself against support beams and stall doors as they go.

Until they grab for a door that swings open, sending them tumbling into the stall.

When they prop themself up, they’re eye to pupil-less eye with a gleaming mechanical steed. The horse stands statue-still, as you might expect from a creature made of hardwood and iron, polished like starlight for the occasion. Its brass kneecap is cool when Yael grabs its leg to hoist themself off the stable floor. The levers arranged in a mane-like crest down its metal spine have been switched off; with no need for food or water, the steed was powered down upon stabling. Probably it belongs to Oreborn, who keeps a small herd of them on his estate. He taught Yael how to ride years ago—or rather, taught them to canter around the paddock by themself while Oreborn discussed potential investments with Yael’s parents. Mechanical steeds are remarkable inventions. Yael could ride this one all night and day without stopping if they wanted to.

They won’t, of course.

They’ll brush the hay from their coat and leave the stable. They’ll pass the next few hours avoiding their parents when possible, laughing at jokes with cruel punch lines when they must. Tomorrow, they’ll crawl out of bed to share a silent breakfast with their parents. After a compulsory stop to pray at their patron’s altar—an act that more closely resembles checking in with one’s coldly unpleasant boss for a performance evaluation than any kind of religious devotion—they’ll head to the office with their father. They will become who they were born to be.

Then Yael will just…continue to float through.

This is the plan. This has always been the plan.

So Yael is shocked to find themself astride the mechanical steed, having climbed up its body without meaning to. They remain surprised even as they thumb the correct levers upward, remembering their lessons. First lever raises the head. Fourth lever starts its heart, driven by some combination of magic and machinery. Sixth opens the valves for the heart to pump fluid through its armored limbs. And so on. Running their fingers over the steed’s iron neck, they brush across the engraved nameplate and bend forward to read it.

“Want to take a ride, Sweet Wind?” Yael hears themself slur as if from afar.

They walk the beast out of its stall, steering clumsily at first so that it weaves toward the stable doors. In their immaculately tailored pants and dress coat, they ride out onto the garden path, where they must admit that, planned or not, this is actually happening.

“We should go back,” Yael tells Sweet Wind.

They flip the lever up from Walk to Trot.

When, moments later, they reach the private lane connecting the Clauneck estate to the Queens’ Road, Yael promises them both, “Just a quick ride, then we’ll turn around.”

If they head north toward the city’s center, they’ll pass a dozen grand estates with sprawling grounds (though none so much as the Claunecks’) in an otherwise tightly packed capital, where land comes at a higher price than almost anyone can pay. Next, the ring of fine mansions without land to claim, then the plazas containing the Ivory Court, the Copper Court, and the Golden Court: the triumvirate at the heart of not just Ashaway but Harrow itself, surrounded by fancy shops and luxurious taverns and gilded offices, according to each plaza’s specialty. Northward still are the factories and workshops bordering the Willowthorn River. On its far shore is what people call the Rookery—the mass of crowded neighborhoods that make up the top third of Ashaway, with small, sometimes tumbledown housing and taverns with leaking thatch roofs. That’s where the service folk of the city live when they aren’t laboring, the basalt city walls rising at their backs.

Yael could stop anywhere in between; the whole city is at their fingertips, the Clauneck name a key that opens every lock.

Instead, they turn south and switch the steed to Canter.

Alviss Oreborn would be happy to have the Claunecks in his debt, though Yael’s family can easily compensate him for the beast. But that won’t be necessary. Even as they race along the Queens’ Road toward the outskirts of the capital, where the estates give way to flat fields just inside the city’s black walls; even as they approach the southern gate; even as they toss a few silver denaris from the belt purse they wore at the party to the watchmen, who are bewildered to see a lone young noble galloping into the sunset and the wild-smelling countryside, but have no orders to stop them; even then, they tell themself this is just a quick ride. One last chance to feel young again.

One last chance to feel as they did when they believed that growing up would mean a great adventure, and not the end of it.

2

Margot

You’d think a plant witch with a degree from the Olde Post Community Magical School wouldn’t have a weevil problem. Yes, Margot Greenwillow can mostly manage affordable, prepared-while-you-wait love potions out of dried lavender and a secret. And, yes, she’s known in her small village of Bloomfield for coaxing night-blooming orchids to open up during the day. But weevils are another beast entirely.

“I’m begging you,” Margot says, glaring down at the annoying little charcoal-colored bugs gnawing at the roots of her strawberry plants. There are just so damn many of them and only one of her. “Please save me a few strawberries.”

Whether she’s beseeching the weevils or whichever goddess of plant or animal magic is listening through the planes at the moment, Margot isn’t sure. She just wants a reprieve from the nasty little bugs, especially since spring is right around the corner. The busiest season at the Greenwillow Greenhouses, it’s when regulars from the village and folk from the surrounding areas visit the herb garden, the indoor perpetually blooming cherry trees that are in a constant cycle of flowers and fruit, the succulent grotto, the wild fern alcove, and the mushroom ring. It’s nothing like busy seasons past, when Margot’s grandmother’s name had tourists flocking to the greenhouses from all over the realm, but Margot’s strawberry jam is popular. Rumor in Bloomfield has it that a scoop can cure a broken heart, and Margot can barely keep it in stock.

Thanks to the weevils, it’s looking like this year she’ll barely have enough strawberries to make a few dozen jars. Well, people can fight over those at the Spring Fair, just two months away, and maybe Margot can charge enough to finally get out of the greenhouses for a while. Or find her parents medical care to the standard they’d approve of. Or restore the lost fortunes of their once powerful family…

Or not.

A few jars of strawberry jam aren’t going to do all that. Not by a long shot.

How Margot has grown weary of strawberries. And weevils. And trying to single-handedly keep up the entire sprawling greenhouse complex, which was built decades ago by her grandmother Fern Greenwillow and mercifully not taken in the settlement that stripped Margot’s family of their assets. (Of course, Margot knows it’s not mercy but rather a keen interest in her alleged potential that’s kept the greenhouses in her possession.)

Sighing, Margot takes off her cardigan, exposing some of her many tattoos—a teapot, a snail, some blossoms, two birds, and a few strawberries—and she whispers a small enchantment to charm the weevils into believing they’d rather be outside in the fields than feasting on her strawberry roots. They shouldn’t even be here—growing strawberries indoors should keep most pests at bay—but Margot has been so overwhelmed with work, she didn’t catch the invasion soon enough. There’s a flash of shiny purple light as Margot’s magic coats the stalks of the plants like maple syrup sticking to a fork. The weevils scatter for a moment, some of them hurrying away while others dig more deeply into the soil, determined.