Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  It’s just like my dream—the smell of him, earthy and right. And warm, so warm. His lips move against mine, and they’re like honey, and I remember this.

  Then they rip away.

  He rips away.

  A shadow slams into him.

  The door is open.

  Allemas.

  They fall as if caught in water, every movement sluggish. And Fyel—he dissipates before they land, gone all at once. The floorboards roll as Allemas crashes into them.

  “What are you doing?!” I cry, rushing forward, sweeping my arms through the air as though he could still be there somewhere. Fyel. Oh gods, I can’t lose him now. “What are you—”

  Allemas moves with a feline speed and grabs me, forcing his cold hand over my mouth. Shoving my voice back into my stomach where I can’t command him, not like before. He’s huffing and growling and cursing and dragging me down the stairs. I writhe and squirm in his grip, smashing my wooden boot into his shin. I bite down on his ring finger until I break skin, but he doesn’t move his hand.

  There is no blood. No blood. How is there no blood?

  I topple down the steps, hitting each one on the way down. The cellar door closes overhead.

  “Let me out!” I cry as he locks it, digging my nails into the stairs as I climb back up. I pound my fists on the wood, willing it to break. “Let me out, Allemas! Stop this! Let me out!”

  This time it doesn’t work. Either he’s gone or the thunder has swallowed my voice, for I stay in that cellar all night.

  All day.

  All night.

  And Fyel doesn’t return.

  I hate her.

  CHAPTER 18

  I’ve lost everything.

  My bakeshop. My freedom. Arrice and Franc. My own identity. I don’t know who—or what—I’m supposed to be. What I’m supposed to remember. When I’ll stop changing, or if I even want to.

  Fyel. Oh gods, Fyel. Where are you?

  The darkness gives me no answers.

  I lie on the stone floor as I’ve done so many times before, staring at a ceiling I can’t actually see. Listening for creaks in the house, for breaths that aren’t mine. Anything.

  I hear them later, sometime in the afternoon, judging by the hue in the light seeping through the door’s cracks. I scramble to my feet, but Allemas drops a canteen and a bundle of radishes down the stairs and shuts the door before I can climb up and force my way out. I call after him, demanding, willing him, but he doesn’t hear me. Has he plugged his ears? Does he recognize the power I have over him?

  Once I accept my defeat, I guzzle down the water and munch radishes until my mouth burns. Then I sit halfway up the stairs and watch the cellar’s shadows.

  Raising my hand the way Fyel had at the cave, I will the stones to move, but they don’t obey. I try it again, switching hands, even. I push my thoughts outward as if I were baking and tell the stones, Move.

  They stay where they are.

  If I were a crafter, wouldn’t I be able to do this? If I were a crafter, wouldn’t I be able to fly? Where are my wings? Why am I not white, like Fyel? Or do crafters come in other colors, like humans?

  If I’m a crafter, why am I here? Why am I human? Why don’t I remember?

  I chuck the canteen hard enough for it to ricochet off the cellar’s back wall.

  I had told Allemas we would return to Cerise to finish the job. Will he be forced to bring me there? Or am I imagining that I have control over him? Was I imagining Fyel, Arrice, and Franc, too? Dropping my head into my hands, I think, Maybe I’ve gone mad.

  But if madness is the explanation, why doesn’t Fyel appear to me whenever I wish to see him? I’m not sure what the rules of madness are.

  Allemas comes again that evening. I’m waiting for him and try to push my way out of the cellar, but he shoves me back, leaves the food, and locks the door. Just as I guessed, he has something blue shoved into either ear. I didn’t imagine the influence, if he’s guarding against it.

  I wait for Fyel, but he doesn’t come.

  “What do you think?”

  He leans down and inspects the flowers. “Very pretty, but why red?”

  “So the people will find it,” I explain. “It will help them when they’re hurting.”

  Fyel smiles. “I wonder what they will call it.”

  I touch a blossom with the tip of my finger. “I call it ‘regladia.’”

  Day.

  Night.

  Day.

  I’m going mad.

  These dark walls don’t talk to me.

  Fyel doesn’t talk to me.

  Not even Allemas talks to me.

  Night.

  Day—but is it morning or evening? I can’t tell.

  The cellar door opens.

  The light hurts my eyes—it always does—but this time the door stays open. No food drops down. Allemas doesn’t appear on the stairs.

  Shaky, I climb up the stairs on my hands and knees and emerge into the kitchen, squinting against the late-morning sunlight filtering through the dirty window. I don’t think, I’m free, thank the gods, only of how much I need a bath.

  Allemas—yes, there he is. Standing to my left, barricading the doorway to the front room with his body. He wears a new coat. He’s all purple and yellow today. Even wears a yellow cravat.

  “You are very bad,” he murmurs. There is fire in his eyes. I wonder what that gaze would have looked like a week ago if it’s still burning now.

  I watch him. I consider nodding—it might be best to just agree with him—but I can’t bring myself to do it. I hate him. I’m fighting so hard against hating him, because the anger and the bitterness and the abandonment laced with the sensation is suffocating me, poisoning me, changing me for the worse in every way. I’ve never hated anything before. I don’t want to hate Allemas. I’m trying so. Very. Hard.

  “We have to go finish the job. They’re waiting,” Allemas says. Monotone. Matter-of-factly.

  That’s when I see it—the plugs are gone from his ears. He’s exposed himself. He thinks he broke me, that I won’t try to run, that I won’t act against him.

  Fyel told me to stay, but I can’t, not anymore. I can’t learn anything from this man.

  “Let me go,” I say. My voice is hoarse, but I force strength into it.

  Allemas staggers back as if I’ve slapped him, and his lip curls into a snarl. He grabs either side of the doorjamb.

  “Let me go,” I repeat, inching closer to him. “You’re going to let me go, let me run away, and you’re never going to look for me.”

  He tips his head down and shakes it back and forth.

  “You’re going to give me my freedom.”

  “No . . . ,” he mutters, strained.

  “You’re going to forget all about me. Let me go. Let me go. Let me go!”

  “No!” His hands encircle my neck, squeezing, squeezing. My face swells. My lungs burn. I can’t breathe. Oh gods, he’s killing me!

  I rake my nails over his hands, cutting them. I don’t see if they bleed. My vision is gray—

  And then I’m on the floor beside the cellar door, coughing and spitting and sucking in air. It burns my throat and lungs. My head seesaws back and forth. The air turns sweet.

  Ears ringing, I lift my head and see Allemas curled into a ball at the base of the doorjamb, rocking back and forth, weeping into his bloodless hands. I don’t pity him.

  It doesn’t work, then. Not anymore. Not like it should.

  Rubbing my throat, I consider leaving. Maybe he’s broken enough to let me go, even if I can only limp away. Maybe I can hide. But I don’t know where I am, and Allemas is my key to seeing Arrice and Franc again.

  So I wait. I wait while he cries, trying to stifle the sourness in my gut. I scrub myself and my clothes under the pump. I limp upstairs, pausing midway as dizziness strikes, and enter his scant room, hardly more furnished than my own. I find a shirt and slacks that will fit about as well as my old ones and change into them.
/>   When I come down, Allemas is standing, statuesque, in the front room. I wait for him to speak. He doesn’t. He barely even looks at me.

  “Let’s go,” I say.

  No nod. No words. He merely waits for me to take his arm, and then we shift, somehow, back to Cerise.

  The people all cost money. I look at them again and again and don’t want any of them.

  CHAPTER 19

  Allemas is broken.

  I notice it by the end of the first day back in Cerise, after crying into Arrice’s neck. He’s not just in one of his moods; he’s not just biding his time. He is broken. Something about my words, something about the bruises on my neck . . . something about his strange nature has fractured him.

  He hasn’t spoken since that moment in the kitchen. He doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes, especially not mine. He’s like a puppy that’s been left out to starve, that’s been mangled by big bad wolves. He lingers, following me wherever I go. Not possessively, just . . . just . . .

  If Arrice asks him to move, he’ll stay put. If Franc offers him a piece of bread, he stares at the floor. He only acts when I direct him, which isn’t often.

  Allemas is broken.

  But he doesn’t leave. No—he’ll never leave.

  The second day after our return to Cerise, Arrice says, “The owner asked after you.”

  I look up from the potatoes I’m cutting: ordinary potatoes for one of Arrice’s dishes. “He’s noticed me already?”

  She nodded. “Asked how much I was paying you, and what country you hailed from.”

  I snort. What country, indeed. He must not have seen my eyes.

  I glance at Allemas, who sits on a barrel near the door. Just slouching there, staring at his fingernails. His legs extend before him, ready to trip Franc when he returns with firewood.

  My gaze shifts to the window, searching. The yard behind the hotel is not so busy. Would Fyel appear there, as he had in the wooded space before my bakeshop?

  “What did you tell him?” I ask, keeping my voice low.

  “Andorra,” she says.

  I swallow and find my throat smaller than it should be. “Arrice,” I begin, turning potato slices over with my hands, “what if I’m not from Andorra, or Cerise, or Amaranth at all? What if I’m from . . . somewhere else entirely?”

  Arrice looks at me with alarm. “Well, wherever it is, it doesn’t matter, does it?”

  “I think it does.”

  “Well, I saw an almanac on the owner’s desk. Perhaps we could—”

  “Arrice,” I interrupt with a whisper. Glancing over my shoulder at Allemas, I say, “What if . . . I’m not of this world at all?”

  Arrice looks at my eyes for a moment too long before pinching her lips together and taking the potatoes and knife from me, busying herself with my task. “That’s nonsense,” she replies, chopping quickly.

  I frown, but her reaction isn’t surprising.

  “I don’t know what that awful man has been telling you these past months,” she continues, “but don’t heed anything he says. Or thinks. You’re just as much Carmine as the rest of us.”

  I stiffen as a thought blooms in my mind. Grabbing her hand to still her knife, I whisper, “What if we went back?” A smile dares to touch my face.

  “Back?” she asks, her brown eyes searching mine.

  “To Carmine.” The words are barely louder than breath on my lips.

  She looks down to the potatoes, pauses, and looks back at me. “There’s nothing left in Carmine—”

  “There are survivors,” I say, a little louder. I grip the edge of her apron, smearing potato starch on it. “Survivors like you. Like Cleric Tuck. Where else would they go? The buildings are still there, are they not? There’s your home. There’s land for crops. Franc burns part of his fields every year. It isn’t unsalvageable.”

  She perks up for a moment but stoops again with a frown. “The reason we’re stuck here is because of a lack of funds, Maire.” She peers over my shoulder toward Allemas.

  I wave my hand before her gaze. “You could speak to the owner, ask him to hire me. We’ll feed him first.” I gesture to the potatoes. “Biscuits and bread and cake. I’ll soften him up, ask for generosity.”

  Arrice doesn’t respond, but she’s listening, thinking.

  “Ask him for a trial run!” I say. “If his business is better by the end of the week, he can hire me for half your pay. I’ll sleep on the floor, and everything I make will go toward the trip. Toward rebuilding. It will take a while, but we could go home, Arrice.”

  Her eyes water, and again she looks away. A long moment passes before she says, “It will be different.”

  I move my hand to hers and squeeze.

  She nods. “I’ll ask. But Allemas—”

  “Let me worry about Allemas. Go, ask now. I can finish this.”

  Smiling, she takes my face into her hands and kisses my forehead. “I still don’t understand any of this”—she looks me up and down—“but I’m so glad you’re back. We’ll take care of you.”

  Franc comes in the door and, yes, trips over Allemas’s legs. Allemas doesn’t move them, leaving Franc to grumble as he enters the kitchen.

  Arrice claps her hands and gives him a wide grin before dashing out of the room.

  Setting down the wood by the stove, Franc asks, “What’s gotten into her?”

  “Home,” I answer.

  “It sounds strange,” he says.

  “I like the way they talk.”

  “But it is so clipped. So . . . lazy.”

  “Lazy? Really, Fyel. I think it’s smart. It’s, can’t, don’t, won’t—”

  “Go to sleep, Maire.”

  “Shouldn’t, haven’t, couldn’t, aren’t, isn’t . . .”

  The owner of the hotel agrees to a trial run. Allemas doesn’t think one way or the other about the news, if he’s even thinking at all.

  I wake early in the morning, even before Allemas stirs from his curled-up spot on the floor, before the first tendrils of sunlight seep into the day. I crack, whisk, stir, beat, knead. I get so much flour on my skin that it almost looks normal again.

  I pour love, joy, peace, and relief into the muffins, sweet rolls, wheat bread, and biscuits I make for breakfast. All the things I feel while in Arrice and Franc’s safekeeping. I work hard, endlessly. It keeps my thoughts off Fyel. That, and I prefer to think of pleasant things. Who doesn’t?

  Honey wheat bread, flatbread, and cookies for lunch. Into those I focus luck, strength, and intelligence. I think of clovers and shooting stars, deadlifting and old stone, businessmen and arithmetic.

  Buttered rolls and corn bread for dinner, with two kinds of cake for dessert: olive oil and cinnamon, since that’s what’s in the pantry. I think of self-improvement, vitality, sweet dreams, and love. No one can be too loved.

  Though the labor and Arrice’s conversation keep me occupied, I glance out the window often. Every passing shadow or glint of sunlight catches my attention. The slightest motion beyond the clear pane, even from the corner of my eye, begs my attention. Always I am searching for a man draped in white, a man with limpid wings. Between services, though my booted foot hurts from standing—as does my hip, for the boot makes it impossible to stand evenly—I walk around the hotel, searching, looking just above the heads of passersby. I slink into shadowed alleys and under trees, searching for crannies where the public doesn’t congregate. Sometimes I trod up the stairs, away from Allemas’s eyes, and wait in the bedroom, hoping he’ll come to me if I’m alone. He does not. Since his first appearance, Fyel has never gone this long without visiting me. Did Allemas hurt him?

  Did I?

  I touch my lips as I trudge across the now-empty dining room toward the kitchen. Fyel had touched down of his own free will, and for a moment it made him solid. Solid enough to kiss. Solid enough for Allemas to grab him.

  What did it mean for him?

  When I enter the kitchen, Franc is boiling water to do the dishes, and Arrice is wi
ping crumbs off the counter. Allemas hums quietly in the corner as I join them. He’s barely moved all day. He still hasn’t spoken. He still won’t look me in the eye.

  I busy myself with the broom so no one will see my tears.

  There is no start or end to us. My hands run down the length of his spine and rest against the small of his back. His teeth graze the side of my neck. I shudder, sigh, and hold him closer, closer, closer . . .

  By midweek, our customers have doubled. It makes me smile, despite the hollowness that has nested in my chest, a vacancy that grows each time I spy about, hoping . . . Each time I find a new place where I can be alone, and stay alone.

  I cling to the happy memories, both those of this life and the flickers of a life before, feeding on them like a bee on nectar. Today I want to coat everything in honey—sweet rolls, corn bread, flat cakes, biscuits. I long for chocolate. Perhaps I can convince the owner to take the expense, if the customers continue to be satisfied.

  Mint, parsley, thyme. Flour, butter, sugar, water. I think of songs by the fireplace and stargazing and summer rain and Fyel’s hand clasping mine in that brief, singular moment of perfection—

  The dining room grows louder every day, and Arrice and I work hard. Franc starts helping us by shucking corn, churning butter, and stoking the oven. He even takes plates out to waiting customers, half of whom don’t have rooms at the hotel. I coax Allemas out of his apathy and get him to wash vegetables, but he’s so slow that I take over the task as he watches, mute. I’m starting to forget he’s even there. So much work, and there’s Arrice and Franc to keep me company.

  Arrice gives me her second dress, and this time I don’t fret over wearing a skirt. Franc gets a pair of pliers and manages to tear the metal cuff off my ankle.

  By the end of the week, the owner agrees to hire me for two-thirds of Arrice’s pay, which I happily accept.

  By the end of the next week, we’ve convinced him to purchase cocoa.

  By the end of the week after that, I still haven’t seen Fyel.