Page 42 of Homegrown Magic

Margot’s body is curved around Yael’s as she wakes. She places a gentle kiss on their bare shoulder. They’re still sleeping, curled up in the folds of Margot’s skirt that they spread underneath the cherry tree last night. Thank the gods she left the Clauneck letter at home, wanting one night’s distance from it. Even that had seemed careless in the moment, but if she’d brought it along, who knows where it would’ve ended up?

Settling Yael’s jacket over their shoulders, Margot sits up. Yael murmurs softly, and Margot brushes a piece of their hair off their forehead. They’re so striking, even in their sleep. Perhaps that’s what Margot’s feeling most deeply this morning: just how much she likes waking up next to Yael Clauneck. Such a huge change from four months ago, when Yael first rode into town and Margot took them back to the cottage as a drunken, one-night fling.

Of course, if she’d known Yael was so good at…all the things they’d done together last night, she might have kissed them sooner. Well. There will certainly be time for that, but first, Margot needs tea.

She stands, stretches, pulls on a chemise, and pads on bare feet through the cherry orchard, moving along the winding path in the waterfall room with its hanging arrays of tropical plants to her private mood garden, where she grows whatever flowers catch her fancy. At the far end of the room is her locked workshop. She places a hand on the yellow door, whispering a word to unlock it.

She lets out a contented sigh as she steps inside, leaving the door open behind her for the first time since Yael started working in the greenhouse and letting the cinnamon-laced smell of the workshop wrap around her. It was here where she spent hours at Granny Fern’s side, learning how to feed plants and encourage them to grow. She also learned to draw plants—one of her sketches of a fern that she gave Granny Fern for a long-ago Solstice present still hangs on the wall—and to prepare potions with exacting requirements.

It’s where she keeps the tea as well. Using a spelled kettle like the one she has at home, she gets two cups steeping and settles down at the table. Soon, she’s lost in the notes she was taking a few days ago on the Natural Caster Potion. Her neat handwriting fills many pages, and she turns to where she left off:

Problems: Not really sure how to make this or even what I’m looking for. (Ha. Fabulous.) Have made most of the potions in the book, many of which might replicate a single effect but not the sum needed for a potion of this magnitude.

Maybe the Natural Caster Potion is a combination of all of them?

Margot bites her lip as she re-reads that last note. The thought had come to her a few days ago, as she’d been cleaning out the Greenwillow Manor’s fountain for Rastanaya’s show. Despite the neglect, there had been several varieties of flowers growing in the cracks in the fountain that had never been planted there. They had found their way to the fountain, creating something beautiful from many other previous plantings. Something about that had struck her, and now she lets her mind consider the possibility.

Hmmm. She hasn’t ever tried making all the potions in Granny Fern’s book and combining them. That seems foolish, because who knows what effect it might have? But then again, it could be the answer to all her problems. Yes, it would take months—perhaps more time than she has, given the Claunecks’ deadline at the end of summer—but it’s worth a try.

She looks over her shoulder through the empty doorway and back into the greenhouse. There’s no sign of Yael, so she might as well get started.

Flipping to the front of the book, she sets to work on making the first remedy Granny Fern ever became famous for—a simple potion meant to grant the drinker a bit of courage. It was wildly popular with adventurers and nervous students, though Margot’s version of it only lasts about three minutes rather than the three hours Granny Fern’s promised. (Which is why Margot had never offered it to Sage; her best friend was brave enough as it was, and imagine if she drank Margot’s courage potion, pushed beyond her usually outrageous limits, and got eaten. Margot refused to think of it.)

Humming to herself, Margot fills up a small glass bowl with rainwater from one of the bottles on her shelf. The bowl, she sets in a beam of sunlight. Then she chops up three tiny red cap mushrooms—only just deadly enough to encourage bravery—that she grows in the greenhouse. These go into a mortar, and on top of them she adds ten fresh lilac blossoms, which will ease some of the effects of the mushrooms but not make the drinker too complacent. Next, she adds a dried orange peel (for brightness), ten peppercorns (for gusto), and exactly fourteen drops of morning dew that she’s harvested (for clarity of mind).

Of course, her dew supplies are running low, as she was too preoccupied to set the bottle out last night, and she ends up with only eight drops, but that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

A handful of other ingredients—bees’ wings, an acorn cap, ten bitterroot shavings, and several other things from Granny Fern’s notes—also go into the mortar. Then Margot picks up a pestle and begins to grind everything together. As she does so, she thinks of Yael, of the way they looked in their suit, of the way they kissed her, of—

A soft knock sounds on the door. Margot turns to see Yael standing in the doorway, wearing one of Margot’s oversized cardigans she leaves around the shop, which hangs to their knees, and their own garden boots, which they keep at the greenhouse. They look sleepy and adorable. Margot immediately longs to kiss them.

“Good morning,” she says, putting down the mortar and closing Granny Fern’s spellbook.

“Morning, lovely. I smelled tea. Need any help?” Yael stands in the doorway, waiting.

“I don’t.” Margot dumps the mostly crushed ingredients into the water. They’ll need to soak for ten days, but then the potion should work. If she’s ground them finely enough. And if the missing dewdrops don’t matter, as she’s guessed. And if she remembered to add everything in the correct order…(No wonder her potions never work as well as Granny Fern’s did. Well. A problem for another time.) She turns her full attention to Yael. “Come in. Please.”

Yael smiles at the invitation. This is the first time Margot’s invited anyone into her workshop since her parents barged in and drank the potion on that awful day, but somehow, it feels like exactly the right thing to do. She wants Yael to join her this morning. Maybe every morning.

Yael steps across the workshop threshold, their dark eyes on Margot. “I’m honored, Daisy.”

She lifts her teacup, blowing off the steam. “I feel like you’ve earned it after all the hard work you did last night.”

Yael chuckles, sending heat through Margot’s lower belly as they step closer, pinning her against the workbench when she spins around to face them. She has no choice but to put her teacup down and kiss them.

It’s a sweet, slow kiss, gentler than Margot has ever had and somehow perfect after the…energetic night they shared. Margot lingers in that kiss, threading her hands through Yael’s already mussed hair.

“What do you work on in here?” Yael asks against Margot’s lips before they pull away at last.

They take the tea Margot offers, and she draws herself up. Yael knows so many of her secrets now; what harm is there in telling them another? Even if she doesn’t tell them the full secret of how she’s trying to save Bloomfield.

“Remedies mostly,” she says, sipping her own tea. “This is Granny Fern’s book.” She touches one finger to the green leather journal, which is nearly the size of Harvey the cat, who has wandered into the workshop and now curls around Margot’s legs.

Cautiously, Yael touches the spine of the book. “So this is where it all began? The entire Greenwillow empire?”

Margot nods. “I’ve made every potion in that book—well, most of them—with varying degrees of success, along with a few of my own.”

“Do you like making them?”