And just like that, whatever Runa had hoped might happen in the attic, didn’t.

  Severine’s outrage lasted all that evening, through dinner at the tavern—without Junilla, still, but with enough other locals that her outrage could spread—and all the way into the next day.

  And by then, she had help.

  “I need to get the dough on!” Runa objected as another pile of lumber thudded down on the bakery doorstep.

  “Don’t let us stop you.” The builder was one of Fennewic’s sons—Norric, Runa thought, though she would have preferred not to know if it meant he wasn’t trying to saw pieces off her house.

  “It’ll be half sawdust!”

  “Ooh, just like back in Billswater,” Tam said distractedly. “Where do you want these?”

  Runa ground her teeth. “I don’t want them.”

  “You want to keep sleeping on a table?” He looked appalled. “I knew there was something you weren’t telling us. I thought you were hiding skeletons in your closet, not bunking down without a proper bed.”

  The skeleton was in the cellar, not the closet. “I wasn’t sleeping on the bench. That’s where the food goes!”

  “All right, the…” Tam looked around, his eyebrows drawing together.

  Gods all damn it, Runa thought, I shouldn’t have said anything.

  “The floor.” Tam gasped, having realized that none of the other furniture in the room would have fit her frame to lie on. “You’ve been sleeping on the floor.”

  “You don’t know that. I could have been sleeping in one of the chairs.”

  “Were you?”

  Runa worked her jaw. “No.”

  “YOU WERE SLEEPING ON THE FLOOR?”

  “She’s been sleeping on the floor!” Severine echoed as she barged in.

  Runa threw up her hands. “No! I was sleeping in that window seat, okay?”

  Severine looked appalled. “What, folded in three?”

  “Where did you think I was sleeping?”

  “I don’t know! Another room! What’s through there?” Severine pointed at the door to the woodstore, and Runa told her. “I didn’t want to pry!”

  “So you shared my business with half the village, instead?”

  “Yes? Of course? You need a bed.” Severine pursed her lips. “One you can reach without getting stuck in a hole in the ceiling.”

  “I’m fine where I am.”

  “Sleeping folded in three in a window seat, grinding the ends of your horns flat against the solid stone wall?”

  Runa’s hands went to her horns, too quickly. “They aren’t!”

  “Yet.” Severine breathed in heavily through her nose.

  “That’s worse than the floor,” Tam decided. “At least on the floor you can stretch out!”

  They both stared at her. She shook her head. “It’s flat, it doesn’t have any weird lumps, and it doesn’t move. I’m fine.”

  They stared at her a moment longer, then turned to each other.

  “Do we open up the trapdoor in the ceiling, or convert the pantry?” Tam asked.

  “The bed up there is human-sized. She won’t fit.”

  Runa’s mouth hung open. She tried to interject a few more times, but it was no use.

  Then Tam said something about the whole bakehouse being too small to live in, really, and he’d always thought a separate cottage would be better, like he and Errant had, and she went outside.

  Widow Tremblewood was leaning on a fence on the other side of the road. When she saw Runa, she ambled over.

  “You look like you opened your cupboard and got slapped in the face by a live fish,” she announced. “Don’t worry. Give it an hour or two, and that Tam will remember he’s no skill at carpentry.”

  “So I’ll be left with a half-finished mess of logs in the kitchen? That’s not reassuring.”

  “Well, that Norric looks like he’s keen to have at it with a hammer. And if it all goes wrong Wyd’ll fix it for you, when they’re back from the woods.”

  Runa had heard a lot about the village’s woodsperson, but hadn’t managed to cross paths with them yet. “How long might that be?”

  “Depends how charming the trees are this time of year. Though they’ll see the ice has gone. That might bring them back up.”

  “Again with the reassuring.” Runa sighed and folded her arms, leaning back against the fence. “I’m still waiting on my pay from the Guild to be sent—”

  “They prefer honey loaves.” Widow Tremblewood sniffed. “Bracklethorn could never be bothered with them. Something about the honey making too much of a mess.”

  “But most of the recipes in his book have honey in them?”

  “Ah. Could be he was just a prick.”

  Runa grunted acknowledgement. Across the road, Severine and Tam stacked up wood, and stared at it nonplussed as the stack slid slowly to pieces. Norric stifled a snort of laughter.

  “I’m not used to this. To places that work like this. People just showing up and helping,” Runa said quietly. Widow Tremblewood flicked a glance at her, but didn’t say anything. Hell. Maybe she should have picked someone else to say this to. Someone who wouldn’t have sat there letting the silence open up for her to say more.

  Not that Runa usually had a problem letting silences be silent. But she found herself talking, anyway.

  “If you come across someone who needs help in the Cauldron, of course you help them. Next time it might be you. And there’s the guild, back in Sollus’ Gate.” But she’d never spent enough time there to be more than passing acquaintances with the people who ran the place, and even the other guides acted different there. Like suddenly Runa’s size was a bad thing. In the huge, dangerous open spaces of the Cauldron, being big was a good thing. In the city? “They gave me a job, and it’s a good job, but if they assigned me a bunk that wasn’t big enough, no one would be jumping to give me a bigger one. It’s take what you get, or hand it over to the next guy. This whole—people helping each other out…”

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  Widow Tremblewood nodded. “Tam wasn’t used to it either, when he first arrived. But he soon figured it out. Pothollow can only survive the way it has if we all stand together. We learned that when the magic pulled us up here. And the newcomers learn it too. For some of them, it’s why they stay.”

  “And others?” Runa’s eyes were on Severine. The light in her eyes. The way she yelped and laughed as the stacked wood came loose again. Her hair, slipping gracefully over her face like a living thing, and coiling away from her fingers as she tried to tie it back.

  Widow Tremblewood laughed. “I won’t say nobody here stayed just because of a pretty face.”

  “She’s not staying. She has her own life—her work…”

  “Hers isn’t the pretty face I was talking about.” Widow Tremblewood clicked her tongue. “And she’s doing a good job of nailing herself to the doorframe, for someone you say isn’t staying. Ooh, Tam’s picked up an axe. You’d better get in there before the whole building comes down.”

  ***

  The bakery was saved. Though not before Runa had to force herself not to pick up her ‘helpers’ and shake them.

  “If you’ve got energy to burn, help me haul sacks of flour into the cellar,” she told them. “Or sieve more flour out of the sweepings.”

  Tam managed to vanish himself pretty shortly after that. And without even using any magic.

  Runa shot a wary look at Severine. “How about you? All done trying to brain yourself with an axe?”

  Severine found a wall to lean against, arms crossed. “I just think you’d be more comfortable in a bed.”

  Runa sighed. “I’m comfortable enough where I am.”

  “Is enough the peak to which all your dreams aspire?” Severine’s leg was jiggling with anxious energy. Runa frowned at it.

  “It’s gonna have to be.” Widow Tremblewood’s words were still jabbing at her. “Besides. I can always drag the bed down to the ground floor once you’re done with it, and headed off wherever the world takes you next.”

  “You should have let us take an axe to the ceiling, then, because I’m pretty sure the bed was built up there. It’s not going to fit back through the trap door. And who said I was heading anywhere?”

  The next few days passed in a haze of sun and sifting and bread-making. Severine took to leaving for a few hours each day—from the way Tam shamelessly told on them both, she was not-so-secretly rustling up help turning the woodshed into a proper room for Runa to sleep in. Runa took advantage of her absences to take lessons from the volcano sprite, who still hadn’t revealed itself to Severine.

  The revelation that Runa had been sleeping curled into the window seat seemed to have thrown cold water on Severine’s attempts to get closer to her. Runa didn’t know whether to be glad or disappointed. Glad was the easier option, but…

  They still talked. Severine had endless stories about her travels, and could spin an evening’s conversation out of the smallest things. But there was a distance now. Maybe the spark between them had been something Severine could snuff at will, the whole time.

  Runa tried not to think about that too much, because when she did, Nobody in Particular tended to squawk about her punching the dough too hard.

  She was getting better at baking. She sank into life in Pothollow like it was the bed she did not have, and even if Severine wasn’t interested in being—anything else—she was a friend.

  And Runa liked having friends. Which was another surprise.

  “I guess I’ll be meeting this Junilla soon, if she exists,” Severine said one morning.

  “Hm?”

  Runa was distracted. Now that most of her loaves were turning out edible, she’d started increasing the number of batches she made. This turned each day into a dance of ensuring bread was at varying stages of ready, matched with the oven being at varying stages of hot, and there being enough bench space for things to cool down. She’d taken to leaving some to cool on the windowsill, and immediately discovered the locals considered that to mean shop open. More than once, she’d placed a batch of scones or couple of loaves to cool in the window, turned away briefly, and come back to find the bread gone and a handful of coins in their place.

  Tam had said the old baker interacted with his customers as little as possible. Maybe that was what they were used to. But—and again, to her surprise—Runa found she would like a bit more conversation with her commerce. Audella usually stayed for a chat, at least. Or possibly only to spy out the coinage accumulating on the bakery windowsill, and exchange some of them for eggs of completely ordinary colour.

  Runa glanced at the loaves she’d made for the tavern. Nobody had bought them out from under her nose this morning, at least.

  Severine pointed out the window. “Look. There’s a catbird in the eaves across the street. Junilla was out looking for them, wasn’t she?”

  Runa ducked her head out the window to follow where she was pointing. Something rustled on the roof of the house across the way: the hint of a feathery wing, the glint of a curious eye.

  “Small, isn’t it?” Severine wondered out loud.

  Runa frowned. “Seems normal-sized to me.”

  “Really? That can’t be much bigger than a normal cat.” Severine joined her at the open window, and Runa tried not to notice how close she was, or how her hair shone in the sunlight. “Smaller, even.”

  “How big are the ones you’re used to?”

  “I mean, you could ride on them. Or get carried away. Isn’t that why people don’t like them? They might steal you away and take you somewhere else?”

  “That’s a new one.”

  “Maybe that’s just what they told children.” Severine’s eyes shadowed. “Watch out, or the catbirds will fly you off to where you deserve to be. Anyway! I haven’t seen any other catbirds around, miniature or normal-sized, so either this Junilla sent them and should be on her way back, or she’s still hunting them down and she’ll track them back here.”

  She put on a smile that didn’t quite chase away the shadows in her eyes. Or the ones beneath them.

  “Better make sure everything’s ready for her when she comes back, then.” Runa grabbed the baskets and began to load up the tavern’s order.

  “And that Audella knows she’s about to be booted off her temporary roost?” Severine frowned as she helped grab loaves. “Weren’t there more of these before?”

  “Before we ate some?”

  “No, after we ate some. You’ve done three batches of the regular loaves and two lots of scones, plus the honey loaves that didn’t work—”

  Runa hid a blush. She thought she’d got rid of that evidence before Severine noticed.

  “—and there’s fewer of all of them than there should be, even accounting for our breakfast and people grabbing them off the windowsill as they passed. And the honey ones, which you hid behind the door and I think some of Zinnie’s kids stole off with.” Her lips quirked as she met Runa’s surprised glance. “If there’s one thing you learn out on the road it’s to keep an eye on how much food you have left, right?”

  Runa checked the loaves. Severine was right: one was missing from each batch. But Runa hadn’t noted it, because she’d expected them to go missing. Sometime during the bread’s second rise, a webbed pawprint had appeared dab in the middle of one of the loaves. And that was the one that had disappeared from each batch.

  “Baker’s secret,” she said.

  Severine frowned. “Bread doesn’t just disappear. I mean, it does around me, but I’d know if I was to blame this time. Also, if I’d stolen it, I wouldn’t draw attention to the fact.”

  “Good to know.”

  Severine’s eyes went to her packroll, and a look of worried suspicion crept over her face.

  Runa frowned. Is she actually worried one of the swords nicked it? She’d encountered plenty of magical swords in her time, but none that went around stealing human food.

  “D’you mind dropping the bread around yourself this morning? I need to check them again. Just in case—” Severine bit her lip.

  There hadn’t been a repeat of her strange sleepwalking sword-polishing. But she was still anxious around them, in a way that wasn’t exactly the anxiety Runa expected from a trader guarding their wares.

  It reminded her more of the way she had constantly checked the guild beads, before they turned blue.

  “In case some mysterious magical sword thing?” she suggested.

  “Something like that?”

  Runa opened her mouth to explain that the missing bread was the volcano sprite’s doing, and closed it again. The little sprite was so private that everyone else in the village thought the bakery was haunted. Even Junilla hadn’t known about it. She’d known there was something in the bakery, sure, but not what.

  Still. It felt like asshole behavior, to leave her worrying.

  “I promise you, your swords did not steal the bread.”

  Severine didn’t look up. “You don’t know these swords,” she said glumly.

  Runa scoured the edges of the room for any sign of the volcano sprite, but it was obstinately invisible. She sighed, and left Severine to it.

  Outside, the morning sun seemed to lap over everything, as happy to fall directly onto Pothollow without having to go through the ice wall first as Pothollow was to feel it. The air smelled of green and growing things, not only from the Sweetmeadow, but the wildflowers cropping up in gardens and on the edges of the road. With the mountains’ retreat, the land had remembered it was summer, and Runa was happy for the reminder.

  She turned her face to the sun. Summer inland, and this far north, was nothing like the wet or hot seasons she knew from back home. Even the sun here burned less fiercely—possibly because nobody was trying to hunt him down and trap him in a hole.

  But a northern summer was better than nothing. The warmth. The light. And if people thought it strange that a troll was turning her head to the sun and enjoying its heat rather than complaining about the snow thawing? They could go on wondering.

  She was halfway to the tavern when something fell out of the sky and landed on her horns with a scrabble of claws.