Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  Burlap sack, covered ears, and the world spins around us.

  Alger guides me, one hand on my shoulder, over brush and stone for a long distance before he takes off the burlap sack. I suck in clean air and rub itches from my face and neck. I scowl at him, but he only looks forward.

  I follow his gaze. We approach a small village, one that reminds me enough of Carmine that a sore lump swells at the base of my throat. I swallow against it again and again, willing it small, grateful that, for now, I’m not required to talk. The soil here doesn’t have the rusty hues of Carmine, so I know we’re nowhere near the Platts. Are we even on Dī? I eye the people we pass, searching for any who might resemble me, searching for a blessing in disguise, for any useful information I can glean. There’s a mix of people here, many of whom look like Arrice and Franc and Cleric Tuck, others who have fair or yellow-toned skin. Most have dark eyes. None like myself. I don’t see many mountains, so I wonder if we’re in a coastal town, but we’re too integrated into the city for me to see ocean.

  I eye Alger as we walk. I swallow again and manage to say, “Where are we?”

  “Questions, questions, questions. But what about mine?” he replied.

  “What are your questions?”

  He doesn’t respond, only walks, leaving uneven footprints in the dirt on the road.

  I marvel at the houses. They’re narrower than the ones in Carmine, but the biggest difference is that the roofs stretch all the way to the ground. A childish part of me wants to climb up them and leap from house to house, but of course there’s Alger, and there’s my broken ankle, suddenly heavy.

  It’s strange to see so many people with yellow-toned skin milling around, free to do as they please. The majority of their kind I’ve met in recent memory were slaves. But here they walk about casually, eyeing Alger and me with suspicion, working and conversing and being happy. I feel like I’m at the beginning again, back in my bakeshop with that armored cart outside my window, only this time I’m the slave, waiting for someone to offer me a piece of charity.

  At least I’m not in chains.

  As if reading my thoughts, a woman with pollen-colored hair frowns at me as she passes us. Her shoulder collides with Alger’s, jostling him.

  Alger sticks his tongue out at her and pushes me down a small lane, this one paved with worn cobblestones. A crow perched atop a roof watches us as we pass, her dark feathers frayed and her head bobbing. She’s old, and she’s hungry. There are songs about crows being the bearers of disease and misfortune, and I remember how a huge flock of them blotted out the sky moments before the marauders charged Carmine. Moments before my life was turned on its head.

  I shiver, and in that moment I am grateful to have company, even if it’s Alger.

  Alger stops at a blue house with peeling paint and raps his hand on the glass window in the door. It’s high and tinted amber, so I can’t see inside, only hear the soft footfalls of the person within.

  The slender woman who opens the door is a bit older than Arrice, with tawny, gray-streaked hair swept up into a bun. Her long apron bears years-old stains, and her hands are pocked with the calluses of labor.

  She recognizes Alger immediately. “Oh, please come in. I worried you wouldn’t come . . .” She notices me, and a warm smile crinkles the skin around her eyes. It’s a smile that makes me forget myself for a moment, that makes me feel bathed in the sun as I walk home from the bakeshop, leftover treats in a bag over my shoulder, humming one of the songs Franc picks on his mandolin after dinner. I smile back, and it’s like I’m releasing a breath I’ve held so long it had become nearly solid.

  “Come in, please,” she repeats. Her voice is soft, and she steps aside to gesture into the hallway. I enter first.

  My splint taps against the hardwood floor as I walk. This woman’s house is everything Alger’s is not: it has character and life, filled with homey things that bear the imprint of its owner. Bouquets of dried flowers hang on the wall of the hallway beside a mirror that boasts a tiny, smudged handprint. Dust speckles between its fingers, as if the print was left a long time ago and never wiped off. There’s a small sitting room to the left, and in it is a hutch that displays a porcelain tea set and a handmade rag doll, a flute, and other assorted trinkets. Everything smells like rosemary and violet, and the air feels warm—the encompassing, sweet warmth of an oven and a kettle, not the oppressive heat of the beating sun.

  “My name is Daneen,” the woman says as she guides me into the kitchen. It’s small and quaint, with tiled walls painted with looping blue designs. There’s an oven similar to Arrice’s and more dried flowers on the walls. “What is yours?”

  “No names, no names,” Alger whines. He presses his palms to his ears for a fleeting moment. “She will work. She will make them.”

  Daneen nods. “Of course. Can I get you something to eat?” she asks Alger.

  Alger begins to nod, but then winces, clutching himself as he did that morning in the woods. Muttering through his teeth, he turns back the way he came to suffer alone. I take a step in his direction but don’t follow. I have my orders from Alger, after all, though in truth it’s Daneen’s affection that keeps me.

  Daneen has already set out baking pans and a bowl, along with a few small packages of ingredients and a set of measuring spoons. She clasps her hands and smiles, looking at me.

  I take a deep breath and force my shoulders to relax. “My name is Maire,” I start.

  “That’s pretty. Not one I’ve heard before. Maire.”

  “Thank you.” That smile touches my lips again. I wish I could stay here and hide behind this stranger’s skirts, but Alger would take none too kindly to that. Looking Daneen in the eyes, I say, “I don’t know what he promised you, but I can’t make . . . anything living. He said something about children . . .”

  “Oh, I know,” she assures me, and my gut unwinds. “But . . . he said you had a gift.”

  I nod.

  “If . . . if they could just smile at me. I would be so happy to see that.” She looks away, toward the floor, thinking thoughts I can’t begin to fathom. Perhaps dwelling on losses I have yet to lose. “Yes. Little boys that could smile at me. Goodness, this is silly, isn’t it?”

  I shake my head. “Not silly at all.” I, too, have craved children of my own, although I’ve yet to find a suitable partner to sire them. I’ve had options that I’ve hesitated to explore, Cleric Tuck included. Why I’ve kept space between myself and these men, I’m not sure. Perhaps it dwindles down to the gap within my memory, of my unwillingness to hand over that enormous, unknown space to a person unable to fill it.

  But I do love children. They’re so innocent, so pure, so loving without needing a reason. The thought of growing old without becoming a mother—without experiencing the joy Arrice has found in her brood—saddens me. I think of Cleric Tuck for a moment more, but I struggle to picture him away from his shrine and free of his robes of worship. Though I’ve never struggled with the image before, at this moment I can’t picture him in my bed.

  I peer out the window, but there is no one waiting outside for me.

  “I might be able to do something.” With frosting, maybe. Can I coax frosting to move? I’ll make cookies—they’ll hold the shape best, and I’ll infuse them the way I do my love cake. Then, should Daneen decide to taste one, she can feel all the lovely things I feel from being in her home. It’s the least I can do.

  “Do you mind gingerbread?” she asks. “I love gingerbread.”

  Inwardly I cringe. The words Are you sure you don’t want something with lemon? Or chocolate? Maybe cinnamon—the smell of cinnamon would fit so well in your home rise up my throat, but I swallow them and answer, “Of course.”

  I get to work straightaway, measuring out what I need, requesting a few extra ingredients from Daneen, all of which she has ready. As I work, I imagine Arrice and Franc and the taste of chocolate. I think of Daneen and imagine myself a child in her home, raised by her in this haven of warmth and dri
ed flowers. Her calloused hands smoothing back my hair as she tucks me in at night. Picturing Arrice, I pour love into the dough, and as I roll it out, I imagine children playing in the street, a toddler’s laughter, and little girls clasping hands and swinging each other around until they’re too dizzy to stand.

  I try to imagine a child of my own.

  Franc helped me make cookie cutters for my bakeshop, but though I have plenty of stars and circles and squares, none are shaped like a human. I’ve never thought to shape cookies in such a way. I select a butter knife and carefully cut into the dough in small, smooth strokes. A circle for the head, soft slopes for the shoulders. I make little nubs for thumbs on the rounded hands, carve the dough upward for the arms, downward for the torso and hips. This one will be a boy. A little gingerbread boy, I think, smiling to myself.

  I carve out the feet next, making notches for the toes, and as I finish the first cookie, I think, Be real, even though I know it won’t be. For the icing, I’ll make—

  Pain pulses at the front of my forehead. Chills like cool rain wash down the sides of my neck and over my chest and arms, raising sharp gooseflesh. With it comes the distinct thought, Something about this is familiar.

  I drop the knife. It clatters against the floor.

  “Here, let me,” Daneen says, bending over to pick it up, but her voice blurs inside my ears. I stare at that unbaked cutout and back away from it. My hands start to shake. Something is rising up within me, pressing against my chest, strangling my air. The ache in my head hammers harder and harder and harder and I’ve done this before and I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.

  Daneen says something to me. Her brown eyes widen. She reaches for me.

  He’s coming for me.

  “No!” I scream, and the pain splits the center of my head. Sweat trickles down my back. My hip hits the stove. Out of space. Nowhere to retreat. I’m trapped, I’m trapped, run run run run run run run!

  I run.

  Not the way I came. I don’t know where. I can’t see, I can’t breathe, I can’t think. Pain shoots up my leg as my weight slams onto its break, forcing me into a desperate limp. I stumble into a dining room, an alcove. See a door. Run run run. I burst through it and rush outside. Run run run run.

  Sweat stings my eyes. I cry it out, scrambling across grass and flowerbeds. Grip the post of a fence and propel myself forward. My ankle screams. My head is hammering. I’m cold, so cold. The edges of my vision warp and shadow. I push myself faster, faster, faster—

  My foot creaks, my knee buckles, and I fall, hitting something hard, barely catching myself with my hands. I cry and shiver and shudder and gasp for air, in and out, in and out. Press my forehead to cool stone. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

  Tears settle against the sides of my nose. Gradually, the breaths come easier. The pain recedes in my head and collects down in my ankle. A long moment passes, then another. My eyelids flutter. Stairs. I’m strewn across a small set of stone stairs. I’m all in one piece. I don’t remember how I got here.

  Pushing myself up, I look around. I can see the shingles of Daneen’s house behind me; I didn’t get far. Alger will soon find me and throw a fit.

  My arms shake as I push myself up. I favor my good leg. I’m in front of a shrine, a small one set in a garden between homes. Old, cold sticks of incense sit in a brass cup on the top step, and there are a few kneeling pillows nestled around the gazebo-like shrine.

  I shield the sun from my eyes and peer inside of it. A small altar holds a wrapped offering of some sort. Behind it is a statue of three deities, two goddesses on the outside and a god in between them. The goddesses look off to the side, an unfelt wind tousling their long hair. The god in the center looks forward, his hair carved into soft curls, his nose straight, lips firm, eyes steady.

  I lean against the rail to the stairs, studying the god who studies me. No, this is wrong.

  That’s not what that god looks like.

  But how would I know the face of a god?

  I don’t like the whips. They snap and jerk and break. My eyes cry all the time. She is not here.

  CHAPTER 12

  This is not what this god looks like.

  I don’t know what is wrong with the sculpture, only that it is wrong. The face is wrong. The body is wrong. Everything about it is wrong wrong wrong.

  There’s movement behind it. I push myself off the stairs when I realize I’m not alone, but my leg sears and drops me down again. A man with a long beard and crinkled face peers at me from beside one of the goddesses, and from behind the other figures, I see a dark-haired man wearing a brown farmer’s smock, his dark eyes bewildered, his brows drawn together.

  I gape at him, frozen, my heart rushing. My tongue feels too large for my mouth, but I manage to stutter, “C-Cleric Tuck?”

  His brows lower. There is no recognition in his eyes, and I don’t understand it.

  I push myself up, slower this time, leaning on my good leg. “Grace of the gods,” I whisper, “You escaped.”

  Then his eyes widen, his face pales, and his chest sucks in a breath. “Maire?”

  He is not the only one to call out my name.

  Alger’s footsteps fall heavy and uneven behind me. Panting, he snatches my wrist and turns me around. “No escaping! What did you—”

  We see it at the same time. My hand.

  My hand is red.

  Not bloody, but red. My skin has always had a ruddy tone reminiscent of the earth of Carmine, but either the tan has receded or the red has brightened, leaving my skin nearly the color of currants. My arm, too. Both arms. Both hands. All of me?

  Suddenly Cleric Tuck’s expression makes sense.

  Alger’s grip on my wrist tightens until I wince. “No!” he growls, yanking me forward. I cry out as I stumble over my gimp leg.

  “Stop!” Cleric Tuck cries, rushing around the shrine. “Unhand her!”

  I writhe against Alger’s grip, freeing one finger, then another. I reach out to Cleric Tuck. “Tuck!” I cry. “Tuck!”

  Our fingertips brush, just as they did in the slavers’ pen, and then the world around me swirls into wild blurs of color, and my stomach lurches into my mouth.

  I drop onto the floor of Daneen’s kitchen and wretch.

  “What’s going on?” Daneen cries as Alger grabs my wrist and hauls me to my feet.

  “I wasn’t escaping!” I cry out. Bolts of agony shoot up my leg. “I was . . . I don’t know! Please—”

  “No no no no no.” He drags me past the stove, past the place where Daneen is worrying her hands. She calls out to me, asks if I’m all right, but Alger shoves her out of the way and takes me to the sink. He pins me against the cupboards with one hand and uses another to plug the sink and pump water into it. He drops an entire bar of lye into the basin and grabs a bristle brush.

  “No. No. Off, off, off!” he shouts, scrubbing the brush over the back of my hand. Back and forth, harder and harder, faster and faster. I gasp and pull back, but his hold is relentless. His hold is steel. Tears fall from his eyes. He dunks my hand into the water and scrubs. Scrubs. Scrubs. The soap burns, and each bristle of the brush is like a tiny knife, piercing and grating.

  I cry out, “Alger! You’re hurting me!”

  He wails, “It’s only getting redder!” and sobs, scrubbing and scrubbing. Blood seeps into the bristles, red and redder and reddest.

  “Good gods, stop!” Daneen shrieks, and somehow she yanks Alger back from the sink. He drops the brush and my hand and collapses to the floor, covering his face with his arms and bawling like a punished child.

  Dozens of stinging hairline cuts crisscross my hand. Daneen studies it, clicks her tongue, and leads me back to the sink. I soak my hand while she retrieves a salve and bandages. Alger doesn’t stop us, only cries into his sleeves.

  The moment Daneen is done bandaging me, Alger leaps to his feet and loops an arm around my waist, half carrying, half dragging me out the door and into the village. He ignores my
protests and wrestles the bag over my head.

  My stomach flips, and for a moment I’m weightless with bile burning my throat. Then I’m back at his house, his cold, heartless house, stumbling down the stairs into the basement.

  The cellar door closes before I reach the floor.

  “Maire.”

  A dream fades in my mind’s eye. Something about cake. There’s cool stone beneath my face. My shoulder hurts.

  “Maire.”

  The cellar. I blink. A few skinny strips of light peek between the boards that make the cellar door. I sit up and rub my shoulder. My bad leg tingles, and my left hand stings.

  I realize then that I roused because I heard something. I look around. For a moment I think I’m alone, but on second glance I see him, Fyel, in the corner farthest from the stairs. Little glimmers of him. It’s too dark to see more.

  Despite myself, the skin of my neck and cheeks warm. I tense for a moment and pat down my shirt, letting out a long breath when I feel the crystal still hanging against my stomach.

  “I haven’t found it yet,” I whisper, glancing toward the cellar door. It’s quiet above me, but that doesn’t mean Alger isn’t nearby. I can’t depend on anything, with him.

  I remember Daneen, the shrine, and Cleric Tuck, and everything but my skin and bones turns to dust. So close. I was so close—

  But Cleric Tuck is alive. Alive and well. Thank the gods.

  “Keep searching,” Fyel says, matching my hushed pitch. He hovers a little closer, also eyeing that door.

  I notice more small pains as I become aware of myself—an aching in my head that might be from dehydration. The tightness of an empty stomach. The radiating soreness of my leg. The stiffness of my shoulder trails into my neck from how I slept. But I don’t think I’ve been down here for longer than half a day. Alger has to let me out eventually.

  “I don’t suppose you could open the door,” I ask.

  “No.”

  I take a deep breath and let it out all at once, then curl my knees to my chest. “Something’s wrong with me.”