Page 35 of Homegrown Magic

Be sensitive, Yael commands themself, stepping on their own foot with the other, grinding the boot heel down on their toes. Be serious, for once. Do something right.

It’s unnerving how that last part might’ve been someone else’s words echoing in Yael’s head. But no, the words are their own.

“This isn’t all your family’s fault,” Margot says again. “A lot of it was, obviously. But my parents made their choices. And your parents didn’t put mine in comas in the care home. That…that was all me.”

“What do you mean?”

Margot turns halfway toward Yael so her profile is outlined in the window as she exhales. It’s an ancient sound—somehow decades older than her twenty-two years—and carries more grief than Yael has felt in their entire life.

“It happened a few months after we moved into Granny Fern’s cottage,” Margot says, staring intently at a patch of wall, “after we were kicked out of the manor house. My parents were a mess—arguing constantly about whose fault it was that they’d lost the fortune, spinning from one scheme to the next, dashing off letters and sendings to old ‘friends’ who wouldn’t write or speak to them. I remember my mother sobbing as they had to sell the last of the jewels and furs they’d smuggled out of the estate.” Margot turns to Yael at last, meeting their eyes. “I couldn’t stand to be around them, so I fled to the greenhouses as much as I could, sleeping there sometimes. I was trying to help. I thought I could…find something in myself that Granny Fern always swore she saw in me. I started messing around, hoping to discover some new remedy that would recapture the world’s attention. It was a silly dream, but it was something to do.

“Meanwhile, I didn’t know my parents were begging for time by talking me up to the Clauneck Company, claiming I was as powerful a plant witch as Granny Fern, and that I was this close to cracking a brand-new remedy they thought would be of particular interest to your family. They swore I was capable of finishing this potion that even Granny Fern hadn’t been able to crack.”

“What sort of potion?”

Margot hesitates, biting her cheek. “I don’t, um, I don’t really like to talk about my work in progress until it’s ready. Though I don’t think it ever will be.” She laughs, quick and brutal. “My parents were lying, obviously. I never had Granny Fern’s talents. And without investors or the assets my parents had lost, I didn’t have her resources. But I was desperate, so I tried to complete her work anyhow. I shouldn’t have done that.” Margot turns to stare out the window again, fiddling nervously with her braid.

Yael takes a few steps closer. “It sounds like an awful time to live through,” they say softly, “but hardly your—”

“One day,” Margot cuts in, “I got up before dawn and left the cottage. My parents were sleeping off their night at the tavern—they were always there in those days, and Clementine had to cut them off more than once. That morning, I had a particularly volatile potion brewing, something I thought might crack it at last. I buried myself in my notes and lost track of time; then it was midday and my parents were strolling into the workshop. My mother asked how it was going, and without paying them much mind, I explained my latest theory. When I looked up, she and my father had goblets in their hands.”

“Margot…”

“I told her not to drink it! That it wasn’t ready. I hadn’t tested it properly. But my mother…gods, she trusted in me, if you can believe that. She thought it was exactly what she and my father needed to get back on track and revive their business. She—she said if it came from me, it was as good as a Granny Fern recipe, and the Claunecks would be thrilled.”

“What happened?” Yael hardly dares to ask.

A long silence fills the tower as Margot swipes angrily at the tears gathering on her cheeks. “My parents drank. They went wild over it at first—the way they felt invigorated, the confidence they’d regained all at once. And then they promptly collapsed, and have been asleep for the past three years.”

Yael considers this. “That’s…that’s a lot to deal with,” they say inadequately.

“It is.” Her voice is flat, lifeless. “Their ambitions and my failure were a deadly combination. Or nearly deadly.”

“But Margot—and I don’t mean to make light of how hard this has been on you—did you demolish the empire your grandmother built, or squander the fortune she didn’t seem to want, anyway?”

“No, but—”

“And were you truly trying to help your parents with your experiments?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t change—”

“And listen, Margot, because this is an important one: Are you, in fact, Iris Greenwillow or Welton Sameshoe in disguise?”

She sniffs, letting out one strangled burst of laughter in the same breath. “No, Yael. Where is this going?”

“Here, where I tell you that you aren’t your parents.” They repeat her own words back to her, carefully and deliberately. “And you aren’t responsible for their actions. You’re just doing the best you can.”

Margot gives a little sob, slumping forward to rest her forehead on Yael’s shoulder, and Yael plants their boots on the floor to support them both. But they want to do more.

They can’t give her back what the Claunecks took, but they can give her some part of themself, at least. Margot’s perfectly positioned for Yael to whisper in her ear, “Now that you’ve told me a secret, it seems only fair that I tell you one. My patron’s name, it’s…”

Perking up, Margot peers at them through tear-clumped lashes but with curiosity in her cool gray eyes. “Yes?”

“It’s…Clauneck,” they confess with a full-body shudder.

Margot’s brow furrows. “It’s what?”

They clear their throat. “It’s Clauneck. My family patron is, well, my family. Or my ancestor, anyway. Seems there’s some demonic blood way back in the line—way, way back, too far to cast with magic of our own—and that’s who we beseech. The more prosperous our family, the more our empire grows, the more we spread his name across the kingdoms, quite literally. He gets the worship, even if our clients and admirers aren’t entirely aware of the nature of the relationship, and we get his patronage and the ability to do spellwork.”