Chapter 8: Worse Than Advertised

Worse Than Advertised

Rennie had two of Nana’s candies in her backpack the day she got them, and nine by the time it mattered. It wasn’t stealing. Nana left the blue tin out on the counter on purpose, and candy was mostly for giving to other people.

She was still deciding who.

Then it was the afternoon before her first day at Cedarside, and she and Mom went to the grocery store, and she brought the candy along, in case.

Mom was in line at the register. Rennie stood by the doors where the carts came in, because the doors were where things happened and the line was where nothing did.

A boy came around the corner of the building with a hot bag over his shoulder. She knew him from outside Tanner’s, where she and Mom walked past most afternoons; Tanner’s was two blocks from Cedarside, which meant she’d be passing it every morning from now on.

“Hey!” She got both arms up over her head. “Hey — it’s you.”

He stopped, and looked at her, and took a second to place her.

“Did you eat the candy?” she said. “Is it good?”

“Mm.” He shifted the bag. “Where did you buy it.”

“We didn’t buy it. Nana makes it.” She stood up as tall as she could, which was not very tall. “She makes it for me, so you can’t buy it anywhere.”

“You have a shop.”

“Uh-huh. Nana and Mom’s. It’s called Second Helping, and everybody goes there.” She wasn’t done. “My mom’s really good, though. She’s the best one. You could come and learn with her for a while, and when I’m bigger I’ll learn with her too, because I’m going to be an alchemist.”

He looked at her a second longer than he’d been looking.

“You’re going to do alchemy,” he said.

“Uh-huh. When I get my hearth-fire.” She checked over her shoulder that Mom was still in line. “I don’t have one yet. Mom says she’ll figure something out for me, so she’ll figure out yours too. Don’t worry about it.”

He didn’t say anything. Something went across his face and then it was gone, and Rennie couldn’t have said what it was, only that she’d seen it.

“Do you know the land spirit.”

Rennie lit up. Nobody ever asked her anything that good.

You don’t tell people what your dad is, Mom had said. Not your friends, not the teachers, not the lady at the register, not anybody. If you’re not sure, ask me first.

So she didn’t answer him. She asked him something instead.

“Are you looking for him?”

“No.” He glanced past her, at the store. “Just wondering.”

“Oh.”

Her shoulders came down. Then she remembered the candy — dug in her backpack, came up with a fistful of it, and held it out to him.

“Here. You can have these.”

He didn’t put his hand out. He was looking over her head, at the doors, and Mom was coming through them with two bags and the receipt in her teeth.

“I have to go,” he said.

“No, wait.” She got hold of the strap of the hot bag. “That’s my mom.”

“Well,” said Mom. She set the bags down. “What a coincidence.”

Rennie could tell Mom already knew about him. Mom knew about everybody. And Mom was looking at him the way she looked at a plant that had come up in the wrong bed.

“I keep a list,” Mom said, “of the practitioners in this county. Every name worth teaching. I thought it was complete.”

She took a card out of her coat pocket — she had it out before she finished the sentence — and held it out to him.

“Come and see what the work is. Ask me anything you want while you’re there, and if it isn’t for you, you leave, and nobody minds.”

The card had her name on it, and a phone number, and a handle for the trade app. Rennie had seen the stack of them in the drawer by the front door.

The boy thought about it. She watched his face and couldn’t tell which way it was going to go, and then he took the card and put it in his pocket.

She had both hands in her backpack before he’d finished. She pushed all nine candies at him at once.

“Every one of them is for you to eat,” she said, too fast, and the last word came out “eats.”

He took the candy. He had to; both her hands were full of it.

Then he went around the corner, and Rennie watched him the whole way. Mom said her name twice, and they went to the car.

He made it two blocks before he looked at what was in his hand.

Nine candies, counted without deciding to. Wax paper gone soft at the corners. Four colors. Out of a kitchen he had never stood in.

He’d taken them because she’d filled both his hands with them and then just stood there, and there was no way to hand candy back to a face like that.

Second Helping. He kept the name. The card was in his other pocket, and he took it out on the next block: Vesper Linden.

The woman the worms had told him about. The strongest there is, the one everybody liked, the one to go and ask. She kept a shop with her own mother, and the shop was where the candy came from, and the card in his pocket was hers.

Which left a kitchen in this town with somebody good in it, working all day, making things that were meant to go into his mouth — and both the girl and the woman had told him to come in.

He walked. He thought about the girl’s face when he’d said it. Do you know the land spirit. It had come open all at once, and then she’d asked it back at him, careful, the way you say a word in a house where somebody’s sleeping.

Are you looking for him.

Her face had answered and her mouth hadn’t. Somebody had told her not to, which meant there was something worth being told not to say.

And she’d promised him a hearth-fire.

That was the part that sat wrong, down under his ribs, the way it did when somebody set a plate in front of him and waited to see him eat. She’d said it like it was a nice thing to give a person. A fire. Something that lived in a house and had a name and got fed.

He put the candy in his pocket with the card and finished the route.

The worms had told him about people. Nobody had mentioned the small ones.

The human young, he decided, were worse than advertised.

Rennie was up before it was light. She got dressed without making any noise, put her shoes on, and sat on the porch steps with her backpack between her feet.

Her dad had said he’d be back to walk her. The shoes were the part she could do.

Up on the railing, two of the plants were talking, the way they did early, when they thought nobody was around.

“Look at her,” said Ruby. “Shoes on and everything.”

“She’s nervous,” said Leaf.

“Preschool’s the easy one,” said Ruby. “It’s the sitting-still part that gets you later.”

Rennie knew the two of them had gone to Cedarside. They’d finished years before her and never gone on to the next thing. Nobody had said why. She had learned not to ask, and she didn’t ask now.

“Rennie!” Nana called from inside. “In here, before it gets cold.”

She ran in.

Nana was at the stove in her apron, which was wrong, because Nana was always at the shop by this hour. She’d stayed. On the table there was a plate of small biscuits, one bite each, and every one of them had something different inside, and nobody ever marked which was which.

Mystery Biscuits. Mom had named them.

Mom named nearly everything at the shop — the Mystery Biscuits, the Drop-Dead Cake, the King Delicious, the Boss-of-Bosses Bars, the Honey-Hair Cookies, which were cookies. The whole family said Mom was bad at names. Rennie didn’t see it. She thought they were the kind of names you remembered, and she said so, out loud, whenever it came up.

She climbed onto her chair and took one. Something with plum in it. She decided it was plum.

“You really don’t get tired of those,” Mom said.

“I don’t get tired of anything Nana makes.”

“Sweet mouth,” said Nana. She sat down with her coffee. “You talk better than your mother does.”

Mom didn’t say anything to that. Rennie put another biscuit in her mouth and looked at the window, and inside, where nobody could see it, she was extremely pleased with herself.

The little snowman on her backpack turned on its ring, half a turn, all by itself, and Rennie spun around.

Dad was coming in, with the cold still on him.

“Dad!” She was off the chair and across the kitchen before she’d decided to go anywhere. He caught her one-handed, and she got a kiss onto his cheek before he could get his head out of the way.

“You came back,” she said.

“I said I would.”

“Hollis,” said Nana. “Sit down. Yours is in the oven.”

He hung his coat on the hook by the door and sat where Nana pointed, and Nana put his plate in front of him — the same biscuits, and eggs, and bacon, because Nana kept track of what everybody liked.

“How did it go?” Mom said.

“I went at it the way you said.” He picked up his fork. “Nothing yet. Rime has the wardens out walking it.”

“It might not be on your side of the line.” Mom turned her cup around on the table. “I had an idea yesterday.”

That was all. Rennie waited for the rest of it, and Mom drank her coffee, and the rest didn’t come.

Rennie ate and listened. She caught about a third of it. Out of that third, all she got was that Dad’s work had a problem in it, and the problem was still there. She would be strong enough to help with things like that eventually. Not this year. She chewed and did the math anyway.

After breakfast they walked her to school — both of them, which was the whole point of the morning. Rennie held a hand on each side the entire way, even when she had to stretch.

Dad came as far as the corner where the hedge got tall, and stopped there. Rennie didn’t ask him to come further. She knew he didn’t get to be looked at, and she wasn’t supposed to explain why to anybody, so she squeezed his hand and let go.

At the gate, two of the teachers were standing with their heads together, and one of them had her phone in both hands and wasn’t looking at it. Then she looked up and saw Mom, and her whole face changed, and she came across the sidewalk fast.

“Master Linden,” she said. “Could we ask you for something?”

Rennie stood up a little straighter. Mom was the one people ran to. Dad was the one people almost never got to see, and Rennie thought that if the teachers ever did get a good look at him, they’d run to him too.