Free Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet by Charlie N. Holmberg Page A

want me to answer that.”
    “Oh, but you must. Make me a cake. Make me the way I’m supposed to be. How am I supposed to be?”
    I eye him now. He’s leaning forward, his eyes wide and expectant like a child’s. His question sincere.
    “I don’t know what you’re supposed to be,” I answer, mimicking Arrice. “I can only tell you what you’re not.”
    This deflates him, but he’s insistent. “Make me what I’m supposed to be. But no tricks. I can taste your tricks.”
    I rummage through the groceries and find sprigs of mint there, so I decide to lead with them. I pause before mincing it, wondering what on Raea I can make this man that won’t be considered a “trick.” What can I make him that won’t anger him? That he won’t use as an excuse to hurt me?
    He stares at me, then the floor, then outside. Twiddling his thumbs. I can’t decide, but that very thought gives me an idea.
    Decisiveness. If nothing else, it will help him with whatever business he has on the side. And if he makes more money, we’ll have more food, and I won’t go hungry so often.
    I make the cake, thinking back on every sure decision I can remember making. Staying with Arrice and Franc. Staying out in a windstorm to help a cow birth her calf, despite knowing it wouldn’t survive. Opening the bakeshop. Giving the slave that petit four.
    I pop the cake into the oven and scrape the excess batter from the bowl with a spoon. Allemas doesn’t stop me from savoring each sugary mouthful.
    The cake is half-baked when Allemas suddenly leaps to the back door and presses his face and hands against the window there. His breathing grows loud and strong. He squints, searching, before his eyes begin to dart back and forth.
    I limp to the window on the other end of the kitchen and peer out myself, searching. Searching for a flicker of white. Has Fyel returned? But I see nothing, and I wonder if he’s forgotten me, the way I’ve almost forgotten him. My shoulders grow heavy, and I cast my eyes away from the window, picking at the line of mortar where the counter meets the wall.
    Allemas puffs over the window, fogging it with his breath.
    “What is it?” I ask, testing. Maybe it was Fyel, and I just missed him.
    Allemas shakes his head and balls his hands into fists. He says nothing until I feed him a slice of cake, after which he declares, “Yes, we will take the job. We will go into the forest. It will be a good trip for us, Maire.”
    He says my name like there’s weight to it and watches me as though I’m supposed to react.
    Ignoring him, I scrape the last bit of batter from the bowl.

    I’m locked in my room—which, though a prison, I still greatly prefer over the cellar—while Allemas leaves the house, again not taking his wagon. He comes back in the middle of the night. I know this because he wakes me.
    “Up up up, it’s time to go!” he declares. “Gather your things!”
    I rub sleep from my eyes and crack my back; it’s sore from switching from the hard cellar floor to the ratty mattress. “I have no things,” I mumble, but instead of responding he clips something around my neck. I feel it in the darkness—it’s some kind of collar. I grapple for my cane. He then leashes me like a dog and tugs me out to the wagon, where he ties me to the tailboard.
    My leg aches so much from the sudden walk that the pain radiates nearly to my hip. I hoist myself onto the wagon to relieve the pressure and examine the knot. I might be able to untie it before . . . and then I recall that I’ve been crippled, that I can barely stand, and I’ll never outpace Allemas on elbows and knees. Though this is not the first time I’ve come to this realization, it still strikes me like a cup of ice water over sun-warmed skin.
    I finger my collar as Allemas goes back inside, but I can’t figure out how he clasped it. I am an animal, and my yearning to stretch myself out and find someone , even a stranger, to comfort me ripples through the iciness in