Free Magic Under Stone by Jaclyn Dolamore Page A

up my spine within moments and I returned to my business. I knew I shouldn’t be jealous, and I lay awake at night trying to reason myself out of it but never quite managed.
    Autumn broke out in earnest, and it was no wonder Erris wanted to be outdoors, as the woods erupted in shades of furious red and cheerful gold, dotted with the permanent green-black fringe of fir and spruce.
    Early one morning, Celestina and I laced each other into our corsets and donned our best dresses and hats and gloves so we could go to town for supplies.
    Violet raged that she could not go. I stayed out of her way, but I heard her throwing things, and Celestina emerged flushed from the effort of calming her down.
    “Usually she likes staying with Lean Joe,” she said. “He’s happy to take the day off and play games with her. I guess it’s just been too much excitement.”
    “Maybe we should take her,” Erris said.
    Celestina’s mouth opened. “But she’s sick! And even with the enchantment as protection, we can’t risk the townspeople seeing her.”
    Erris shrugged, apparently thinking it not worth arguing about. He fussed with his ponytail. “Do you think I should cut my hair? None of the men in town wear it long like this. I worry they’ll recognize me as a fairy.”
    “I saw men with hair longer than yours in New Sweeling,” I said.
    “This is hardly New Sweeling,” Celestina said.
    But in the end, we decided it was better not to take the time to fuss with Erris’s hair. Celestina loaned him a bowler of Ordorio’s to make him look more respectable. Lean Joe readied the horses, and we rode to town piled into a rattling cart. Celestina became quite businesslike at the reins, her gloved hands capable, her back straight as a tree, with a fine little hat atop her head, but I knew going to town made her as nervous as it made me.
    In fact, Erris seemed the most relaxed when he should have been the biggest oddity of all, a clockwork fairy with the hair of a city aesthete. He made most of the conversation on the trip, effusively complimenting Ordorio’s fine brown pacers, although I was sure they must have been nothing compared to the royal fairy horses, which were known throughout the world. But then, I suppose he hadn’t seen those horses in an awfully long time.
    Cernan was a larger town than I had realized from the train station alone. To be sure, it was no city, but it was, as my old dancing troupe manager used to say, “worth a dime, not a penny.” Two streets ran parallel with a plaza in the middle, where merchants set up booths of wares like fruit and even birds in tiny cages. I had often passed a similar plaza in New Sweeling, only it had a statue in the center instead of the gloomy obelisk Celestina told us was to commemorate the casualties of some shipwreck.
    Celestina marched into a shop without any word for the craggy old men milling about in front, smoking pipes and muttering to one another in some unfamiliar language. Erris and I hurried after her.
    Inside, the shop was lit by spacious windows but no gaslight. Two younger men lounged at the counter, almost identical in their worn hats and vests. When they stared at us, Erris adjusted his bowler to a jaunty angle. No one else in town seemed to be wearing bowlers. I nudged him to move along.
    “Celestina,” one of them said, leering, while the other one snickered. “Haven’t seen you in a while. Still rattling around that old dungeon?”
    She ignored them in a practiced way, consulting her list and picking up an empty basket from the counter to fill.
    Naturally, their attention turned to us next. “Who’s your company?”
    The shopkeeper, a plump man with an impressive black mustache, ignored all of us to help another young woman select cloth.
    “It’s those people who came on the train a little while ago,” the snickering one said. “What’s your name, ponytail?”
    Erris looked at them, not quite nervous, but gauging the situation.
    “I don’t give my