Page 68 of Homegrown Magic

Another sob rises up to choke Margot, and she lets this one out as she stands to fetch a clean spoon from the cupboard and the last jar of heartbreak-healing jam. Perhaps a spoonful will make her feel better. Anything to take away this pain.

The jam is sweet on her tongue, coating her teeth with sugar and sliding in a lump down her throat.

It does nothing to ease the ache in Margot’s heart, though, which just makes her feel worse. How is she ever supposed to make the Natural Caster Potion when she can’t even get a simple thing like heartbreak-healing jam right?

Though perhaps there are aches worse than a simple jam can cure.

Letting the spoon drop to the table, she buries her head in her hands in the shadowy cottage where she and Yael might have had a life together and finally lets herself weep all the tears she’s held back since leaving Ashaway.

Much later, she wakes, her neck stiff and her back hurting even worse. She’d fallen asleep at the table after crying herself dry.

“Right,” she says, standing. “No more Greenwillow tears for the Claunecks.” She drops the everlasting daisy into a small vase on the table and walks away.

After changing out of her travel clothes and having a quick wash, Margot leaves the cottage, heading toward her greenhouses. It’s late afternoon and her stomach rumbles as she walks, but she wants to check in on things before grabbing something to eat at Clementine’s Tavern; she isn’t eager for company, but there’s no food left in the cottage.

Poppy sits behind the counter of the greenhouse shop, tinkering with a pile of gears spread out on the wood planks. She startles when Margot taps her lightly on the arm.

“Margot?” she asks, blinking like a surprised owl.

“Hi, Pop,” Margot says. She picks up Harvey, who’s curling himself around her ankles and purring happily.

“What in the world are you doing back so soon? We had bets going that you and Yael would be staying in Ashaway for at least a month…if not longer.” Here, Poppy peers at Margot and raises an eyebrow teasingly.

Margot flinches at Yael’s name. She’s going to have to stop doing that. Because of course everyone whom Yael won over in Bloomfield—which is everyone in Bloomfield—will ask about them. What is she supposed to say? That Yael has perhaps tried to do something noble but shattered her heart in the process? Or that the town is in more danger than they can possibly imagine and she has no real way to help them? Guilt claws through Margot, and she avoids Poppy’s gaze, burying her face in Harvey’s fur instead, which he allows for a moment before hopping out of her arms. “Yael had…business to attend to in Ashaway,” she says after a long moment.

“Will they be coming back?”

Tears rise in Margot’s eyes, and she turns from Poppy to brush them away. “I don’t think so.”

Poppy remains silent, clearly unsure what to say. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs at last.

“So am I. Now, why don’t we take a quick walk around the greenhouse, and you can catch me up on everything I missed?”

Hours later, after Poppy showed her the new, impressive watering systems she’d rigged up, and she walked alone among the plants—all of which are growing beautifully—Margot is feeling a bit better. Maybe it’s the two bracing cups of tea she drank, or maybe it’s just being back with her plants and with people who know her for who she really is.

She’s closing up for the night when the silver compact in her pocket chimes. She hasn’t heard from Sage since Rastanaya’s show, when her friend had been soon to depart for the Serpentine Sea with a new adventuring party. Expecting to find a hastily scrawled message, Margot flips open the compact…and nearly drops it as Sage’s face beams back at her from the mirror.

“Hi, Margot!” she calls, her voice muffled by a bracing wind that tousles her short blond hair. Behind her on a pale beach, the sea crashes and foams.

“Sage, how—”

“Neat, isn’t it? I did a favor for a wizard we met in a tavern in Ironspine, and he gave me a scroll to turn a sending spell into a seeing spell. Temporarily—it’ll only work this once—but I wanted to show you the Serpentine Sea at sunset.” Sage steps beyond the frame of the mirror and angles her own compact so that Margot has a full view of the sky striped pink and lavender and orange, and the sea painted golden bright.

Almost the color of Yael’s lips at the masquerade. Almost.

Margot swallows back a sob. “It’s lovely,” she says over the whistling wind.

Sage returns, grinning. “Thought you’d like it! Been a bit of hard travel these last few days, but worth it for a view like this.”

Eager to speak about anything other than her own problems, Margot asks, “How’s the expedition going? Making any friends?”

Sage opens her mouth to reply but is drowned out by a loud growling and the far-off sound of a horn. Her eyes dart to the side, and she grabs her knife from the sheath at her hip. The noises quiet after a moment, and Sage shrugs, returning the knife to its place.

“Things are going well enough.”

“What was that noise?”

Sage shrugs again. “Something that wants to eat us? Not sure. It’s been a rough one, honestly. Our party leader is…well, let’s just say I’m glad I never sign on with the same party twice. But I’ll survive. How are you? How’s your garden assistant and their cousin?”