Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  Some of the trees rustle without breeze. I follow their sounds, searching the narrow spaces between them by the light of the half-moon. Flying on wings I once looked at with mortal eyes and thought strange. Fyel follows behind me, silent, and when I glance back at him he is whole and opaque.

  The trees still, and I hear him. Allemas, whimpering below.

  I see his shadow. It’s tattered and stumbling, carried with an uneven and unsure gait.

  “Stay here,” I say to Fyel. “You’ll scare him.”

  Fyel nods.

  I wait until there is an opening in the trees, a grove, and I float down near a stream filled with white rock that reflects the moon’s light.

  “Allemas.”

  He freezes, his left shoulder to me. He turns his head until he sees me, his chartreuse eyes wide. His mouth falls open in mourning. He sees my wings. He knows.

  “No,” he says. “No no no no—”

  “Allemas.” My voice is soft, but it cuts through his words. He turns toward me, facing me directly. The fingers on his right hand twitch.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No!” he shouts at me, stalking forward. I hover back, just a little, keeping a wide space between us. He sees this and stops short, his features sagging.

  “This is my fault,” I continue, speaking just louder than the crickets, though most of them have quieted. “I’m so sorry I’ve hurt you.”

  Allemas bares his teeth. Both hands form fists.

  “You’re smart.” I hover a few inches closer, keeping my feet a safe distance from the earth. “You found me.”

  “He found you,” he growls, and he looks about the grove, no doubt searching for Fyel. Neither of us spots him.

  “I don’t belong here,” I say, and my throat starts to close. I open it with a deep breath and add, “You don’t belong here.”

  Allemas goes lax. Every part of him—his face, his arms, his hands, his torso. His glare softens like butter in the morning sun. He knows he’s lost. He knows I can’t be chained or kept in a cage of thorny weeds, not anymore, and when he speaks his voice is overwrought and weak.

  “Fix me,” he pleads, and those words slice through me, sharp as an arrow.

  I do have more tears, for a few glaze my vision and soften Allemas’s edges, merging them with the shadows of the forest. I try to speak, and no voice comes out. I swallow and try again.

  “I can’t.”

  Allemas drops to one knee.

  “I can’t fix you.” I force the words out, though they’re choked and high pitched, barely understandable even to my own ears. “If I had known how to make you, you wouldn’t need to be fixed.”

  “No.”

  I push forward, feeling empty, ghostlike. “It’s not fair. I’m sorry.”

  He shakes his head back and forth. His body seizes, and he falls to his hands and knees, shivering as his soul mutates with him, as it pokes and prods and tries to find a way out.

  I fly a little closer and extend both my hands. “You are still mine,” I tell it. If I focus, I can see the strings of my once-beautiful tapestry beneath Allemas’s skin. They’re knotted and unwinding, and so many have turned into sludge, unable to reach the ether of which they’re made. “You will hold together a little longer. You will stay encased in him. You will not hurt him.”

  I concentrate until my head hurts. Were I still human, sweat would bead along my hairline and the dip of my spine.

  The soul abates for now. Allemas gasps for air.

  “You won’t hurt anymore,” I whisper, kneeling, though I do it in the air. Almost close enough for Allemas to reach out and grab me, though I don’t think he will. Not this time. “I can’t fix you, but I can repurpose you.”

  Staring at the forest floor, Allemas says, “You’re going to leave me.”

  “No.”

  He looks up.

  “I’m going to stay with you,” I promise. “I’m going to make it stop hurting. You’ll be everywhere, Allemas. You’ll be in the ether, where I am. You’ll be all around me, and when I come here to see this world or to make another, I’ll carry you with me.”

  I touch my heart. That is a promise.

  Allemas starts to cry. The sound of his tears makes my wings heavy. Makes it hard to stay above ground.

  Across the grove I see Fyel, enveloped in moonlight. My strength. My compass.

  This has to be. There is no easy resolution for my sin. My own soul splits as I raise my hands.

  Allemas winces, weeps.

  “Andel.”

  He looks up.

  “The one thing I can give you,” I whisper. “A name. Andel.”

  “Andel,” he murmurs. “Andel,” and his lips quirk into a smile.

  I call him to me, not by his new name or old, but with my soul, beckoning the complex patterns of ether that make his skin, his muscles, his heart, his soul. They shimmer white as they pull apart, deconstructing the only child I’ve ever had—the only one I ever will have. I guide them skyward, like thousands of fireflies, toward the space in between. Back to the ether, where they will rest and, someday, be remade.

  The weeping stops. The crickets restart their song. A cloud passes over the half-moon, shading the dark grove. A pile of his clothes lies before me. It is all that is left.

  A tear trails down my cheek and falls off my chin. It hits the earth and becomes a small, clear pebble, translated by the laws of this world.

  There are only a few feet between me and the ground that nourished me for four and a half years. Were I to touch it, I would become human again. I would lose my flight, my ability to craft, but my body—my nature—would change. I would be able to bear children.

  Fyel takes my hands.

  The possibility crumbles to ash. No. I will not lose my memories again. I will not sacrifice the life Fyel and I have created together. Even if we touched the world at the same time, neither of us would remember what we were, or what we may have wanted. The risk is too great.

  I swallow against a hard lump in my throat. “Not yet,” I whisper. Flapping my wings, I fly up toward the sky, then over the trees, sailing for Arrice and Franc’s home. Fyel follows me.

  I stop just beside it, floating next to the chimney.

  “I’ve already broken our greatest law,” I whisper, holding my palms out over the earth. “This can’t hurt me more than that.”

  I beckon the grass and the weeds and the wild things I have created to listen to me. They remember me and come to my call to grow, drawing energy from the soil, from me. They rise up and braid together, blooming where nature would never have them bloom—the flowers are the deep red of carmine with centers of gamre, though the latter color is not native to this place.

  Up they rise, together, entangled, almost treelike. When they reach close to my feet, I bid them to cease. Fyel wraps one arm around my torso, holding up my fatigued body.

  Beneath me is a green plait, thick as the chimney and nearly as high, with spiraling leaves and broad, five-petaled flowers.

  They will find it, and they will know. At least, I hope they will. While I can make no amends with Cleric Tuck, it is my dearest wish that Franc and Arrice will know not to look for me, that I am happy—or will be—and that I so dearly, dearly love them.

  I nod, and Fyel lifts us up, a gentle ascent toward the heavens.

  “They won’t unravel you,” he murmurs. “We will plead this as penance. An earthly prison of five years.”

  “It wasn’t a prison.”

  “Still.” His voice is distant but heavy. I clasp his hand in mine.

  “I will face it. Them. All of them, if I must.” I’m surprised at the strength of my own voice, at the oldness of it. “I will take their charges and their punishments. In turn, maybe they will help me understand.”

  “We will face them together.”

  “No. This . . . this I must do alone.”

  “You will never be alone, Maire.”

  I smile at him and squeeze his hand.

&nb
sp; The sky opens into a portal of white, rumbling light.

  I am Maire of Carmine.

  I am the baker of charms.

  I am the crafter of broken souls.

  I am magic bitter, and magic sweet.

  I am here.

  EPILOGUE

  It’s the smell of baked butter that makes them smell so good. Baked butter, and the promise of something sweet. It’s embedded itself into the wood of the walls and the weave of the carpet, but as I pull the sheet of nut-studded cookies out of the oven, it flavors the air and warms my skin, making me forget, for a moment, the stiffness in my knuckles and the nagging pain of my knee.

  Footsteps patter like rain down the hallway. I slam the oven door shut and raise the cookies over my head, though the heat of the metal pan is beginning to seep through the cloth with which I hold it.

  “Calm down!” I cry as three children, two boys and one girl, dance at my heels, their small fingers reaching up for the confections. “You’ll burn your fingers off!”

  “Harol, get back here!” my daughter bellows from the next room. “Perri, Layla, you, too! Leave your grandmother alone!”

  Harol whines, dropping his arms to his sides as I rest the cookies on the counter to cool. He drags his feet back down the hallway, his younger brother following behind him.

  Layla, however, clasps her hands behind her back and leans back on her heels, watching me expectantly with wide green eyes and a curved smile. The top of her head barely reaches my hip.

  “I’ll help,” she offers. It’s a ploy, of course, but I play along.

  “Very well,” I say, and hand her a spatula. “But if I see a single broken cookie on the plate or a single crumb on your mouth, I’m going to whap your backside.”

  Layla grins as she stands on her toes and peeks over the counter at the cookies. Working carefully, she slides the spatula under the nearest one, smooth and quick like I showed her. Like I showed her mother, too, and the other children. Her grandfather still can’t shovel a cookie whole to save his life. The tremor in his hands has only worsened his cooking graces.

  Together, Layla and I scoop the cookies onto the plate. I hand her one behind my back as I carry the plate into the front room, and she scarfs it down as quietly as she can manage before her siblings can catch her.

  Harol and Perri leap from their chairs near the fire as I arrive, despite the hard words of their mother, my daughter, who orders them to plant their rumps. I set the cookies on a small table and say, “One at a time, or you’ll choke.”

  “Here, Mom,” Perri says, handing a still-hot cookie to Arrice. I still don’t know where I got that name from, but I’ve always liked it. After three boys, I was relieved to have a girl so I could actually use it.

  My husband sits in a high-backed chair near the fire, whittling a piece of wood, letting the shavings fall onto the floor. It’s too early to tell what he’s carving, and he never tells me when I ask. Patience, Mary, he says. I pick up a cookie and offer it to him. He looks up, his eyes the same green as Layla’s, his hair prematurely white. It started paling before he was thirty, never bothering with gray. He takes the cookie with his calloused fingers and takes a bite before resting it on the arm of his chair so he can refocus on his whittling.

  “Is it a top?” I ask. Harol lost the last one Fye made.

  “Patience, Mary,” he says, and I scoff, turning my back on him.

  “Perri, how many cookies have you had?” Arrice asks. Perri merely smiles and rushes to the other side of the room with half a cookie crumbling in his hands. The plate is nearly empty. Layla has rejoined us and is on her second. Possibly third.

  Arrice sighs and takes a bite of her own. After swallowing, she says, “I don’t know how you do it, Mom. No matter how many times I make this recipe, it never tastes like yours. I’m doing something wrong.”

  “It’s all in the attitude,” I quip, and Arrice rolls her eyes. I’ve always had a special knack for baking, though I’ve only discussed it with Fye. Others know, of course. You can’t hide baking like mine, and I’ve never desired to. Many times I’ve thought of opening a shop, but there aren’t a lot of people in these parts. By the time I sold the last slice of a cake, the frosting would be stale.

  Arrice peers out the window. “Ade will be home soon. I should probably get dinner started.”

  Fye says, “You’re welcome to eat here.”

  “I know,” Arrice answers, rising from her chair, “but we eat here so often. My children will devour your walls soon enough.”

  Something about the comment tickles a memory in the back of my mind. I try to follow its path, but my mind isn’t as sharp as it used to be. Still, I chuckle at the idea of edible walls.

  “Send Ade my regards,” I say, and Arrice nods. She takes Layla’s hand as Harol and Perri dart ahead of her—snatching one more cookie each—and bolt out the door. Arrice calls after them to slow down, and they all vanish down the road. I pick up the last cookie and take a bite. Peace cookies, I call them. A serene calmness washes over me almost instantly, and I smile.

  Fye sets his whittling down and stands from his chair, his back cracking as he does so. He makes a twisted face and stretches. A breeze beckons my head into the hallway. The kids have left the door open again.

  “You sit down,” I say to Fye.

  “I’ve sat down all day,” he grumbles back, but there’s a smile on his mouth. Crossing the room, he takes my hand in his. He notices the open door and pulls me toward it. “The leaves are changing colors. Let’s take a walk before it gets too cold.”

  “Hmm,” I hum in agreement, and let him pull me out of our single-story home. The last flowers of the season are in bloom to either side of the doorstep, and their violet and red blossoms surround the entire house. I’ve always had a bit of a green thumb. I like to think that flowers make a house a home, and Fye is hardly one to complain. He planted half of them.

  We step out onto the dirt-and-gravel path, heading in the opposite direction of Arrice and her brood, toward the pine forest in the distance. I lean softly on Fye’s arm as we walk, relishing his familiar warmth.

  “They’re talking about paved roads in town,” he says, playing with my fingers, loosening the stiffness of their joints. “Better for wagon wheels.”

  “Will it come all the way out here?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Sounds noisy.”

  Fye chuckles. “Maybe. We’ll see.” He slows, and I follow suit.

  “What?” I ask.

  He shakes his head but releases my hand and walks off the road, moving over beds of weeds and clover and a few fallen leaves. “I see something,” he calls over his shoulder. Then he crouches, his knees popping with the effort.

  I follow him, though stop at the edge of the road. My hips are no longer suited for tromping through the woods. “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure,” he says, standing again. He turns around, and in his palm is a long crystal, too pale to be quartz, about the length of his hand. It shimmers in the fading sunlight, iridescent. None of it is symmetrical, and it looks as if it’s been cut by unskilled hands. It almost resembles a giant grain of sugar.

  “Odd,” I say, folding my arms. “Do you think it’s valuable?”

  Fye doesn’t answer, merely stares at the crystal.

  “Fye?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.” He offers a weak smile. “Sorry, for a moment I thought . . . I was remembering something.”

  He looks up at me, and for a moment his eyes flash, as if they’re changing color. But I blink and they’re green again. My mind must be going.

  I take a deep breath and say, “Well, let’s hold on to it. Maybe it will be good luck, hm?”

  Fye nods and returns to the road, taking up my hand again. He moves to pocket the crystal, but I say, “Wait. Can I see it?”

  He hands the prismatic stone to me. Its smooth planes and jagged edges touch my fingers, and somewhere in the back of my mind a familiar but younger
voice whispers, Fyel.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Acknowledge acknowledge acknowledge.

  I want to thank everyone who helped make this book possible. It sort of jumped out of my hands almost unexpectedly, but in the best possible way. I want to thank Caitlyn (McFarland) Hair first and foremost, who read this book chapter by chapter as I wrote it and made herself readily available for my endless assault of questions and pleas for help. (And for baking cake while I wrote about cake.)

  A big thank-you to James Palmer, my official medical consultant, for his assistance in polishing this story. His edits were incredibly handy, and without him the multiple wounds and injuries Maire accrues during the novel would be far less realistic!

  Thank you to Kim VanderHorst, who will drop everything to read chapters for me and help me brainstorm, and Rebecca Blevins, who read a last-minute draft and seriously boosted my confidence about the book as a whole. Also thank you to my sister Danny, who actually read this book, liked it, and gave me great advice for improving it. Thank you to Alex (also sister) and Laura Elliot (not sister). My appreciation goes to Kristy Stewart as well, who helped me with much fairy-tale trivia. I’d also like to tip my hat to Brandon Sanderson, who taught me about writing endings first, which I actually did for this book, and I think it turned out rather well.

  I, of course, must offer my utmost gratitude to my agent, Marlene Stringer, my editors Jason Kirk and Angela Polidoro, Britt Rogers, and the rest of the 47North team who helped get this book where it needs to be. Thank you also to my ridiculously attractive husband, Jordan, for all his support, and to my daughter, Shiloh, who still takes two naps each day, thus making writing a feasible activity.

  And, of course, I can’t forget my Heavenly Father. His name tends to end all of these acknowledgment things I write, and it always will.

  AN EXCERPT FROM CHARLIE N. HOLMBERG’S