The Unraveling, Volume One of The Luminated Threads: A Steampunk Fantasy Romance (20 page)

“True. It could have been someone younger. Mary Clare.”

At that, Rivley’s face contorted. He bit his lip and shook his head. Then he abruptly offered her a hand to rise. “Mary Clare wouldn’t have cared. And there’s an idea. Have this conversation with her. This is female talk.” He gestured her toward the farmhouse.

Perhaps he did mind having her cry on his shoulder, though he’d seemed quite the old hand at comforting. She cast down her gaze, taking advantage of the rough ground and the need to make careful steps in her short heels. “I’m not usually such a geyser. I’m sorry.”

“Hey, don’t worry. The Basin takes some adjusting to. I’m sure Mrs. Betsy will know just the tea to brew to fix you up. In the meantime, I’ll have a little talk with the beast.”

“Oh, don’t. That’s—”
Too embarrassing
.

Rivley waved her off. “Nothing else to do. He’ll never get the point on his own.” He unlatched the door of the screened vestibule outside the kitchen door.

He’d do it regardless of what she said. These boys didn’t keep secrets from each other. She didn’t know what was worse, that they thought her a complete innocent, or a prude. She cleared her throat. “So, thank you for…uh”—she gestured the direction they had come—“rescuing me. I appreciate it.”

“You are very welcome. You don’t want me to talk to Dae, but it’s for the best. It’ll make sure he gives you a mite more space, girl.”

He turned to go, but she laid a hand on his forearm. “Rivley, my name is Annmar. You must know that. Why do you keep calling me girl?”

He looked surprised. “Because you are.”

“But so are…” Oh. The other girls here on the farm might not be
girls
. “So, a girl to you, is a, uh…” He looked as confused as she felt. “Jac and Maraquin. They aren’t girls?”

He shook his head. “Female wolves are bitches.”

Oh…my. She’d never even
thought
that term, yet alone used it. Nor had Mother. Proper ladies would never…but she had gotten her answer. “The males are dogs, I suppose. Daeryn—”

“Is a buck. Polecats are members of the weasel family.” Rivley grinned. “Though I like to tease the beast with any number of names, so pay no attention to me. Go talk to Mary Clare.” He ushered her up a step into the screened storage area and left.

Polecat? She’d never heard of a polecat. But obviously they had a lifestyle completely different than hers. One she’d never know. Absolutely not.

Chapter twenty-two

In the kitchen,
Annmar paused, unsure what to do. Mrs. Betsy was occupied, cracking eggs two at a time into a sizzling frypan, and Mary Clare wasn’t—

“Good morning,” the redhead called from the dining room door. “You’re up in good time today.” She plopped a tray of dirty dishes on the counter and reached out in welcome. However, instead of a hug, she held Annmar at arm’s length, a concerned look creasing her brow.

Now Annmar knew she was right. This girl was reading her feelings. “I’ll be fine.” She attempted a smile and got half of it.

Mary Clare pulled her into a hug. “Yes, you will. Mrs. Betsy, Annmar needs to take her breakfast with us again in the kitchen.”

The older woman glanced over from stirring the eggs. “Whatever you think best, duck. Collect a plate for her when you take these out.” She handed Mary Clare a platter of bread.

Mary Clare pointed to the familiar rocker beside the woodstove. “Sit. I’ll be back in a minute.” And she was, bearing a plate piled with scrambled eggs, bacon, applesauce and bread and butter—a meal the size of which Annmar would never eat, even for dinner. Mary Clare cheerily offered to bring her seconds.

Annmar ate every last delicious crumb. None of it gave her visions, but afterward the day looked more promising. She wanted a second cup of tea, so she rose and slipped into the quiet dining room while Mary Clare was busy with the dishes.

A single worker remained at the table. Wild reddish-brown hair blended with a beard mopping the collar of the black duster he’d kept on at the table. The young man tilted his brown face her direction, revealing mismatched eyes. A lively look came over his rough features. He scanned her figure, lingering on her bosom, then waist, then bosom again, until finally he met her gaze with pursed lips and a cocked brow.

The friendly smile she’d been about to bestow on the fellow worker froze, and her gut twisted uncomfortably. She pivoted to the sideboard and lifted the teapot. Just like in Derby, she’d ignore his leer and move along.

A chair scraped behind her.

She wouldn’t look. She could handle this. Fill her cup and leave.

“Care to have a seat and keep me company?” rasped the young man from close behind.

“No, thank you.” All she had to do was cover the teapot again. But someone else’s hand snatched up the cozy.

Mary Clare plopped the knit cover over the pot and grabbed her teacup. “Come on. You’ve got work to do,” she said, and the smaller girl walked her firmly by the elbow into the kitchen and closed the door.

Dishes clinked around them, but Mary Clare held her attention with a look. “Didn’t I say let me know if you wanted seconds?”

Annmar tried to shake the ill feeling, glad for Mary Clare’s hand keeping her steady. Everything was going wrong this morning. But at least Mary Clare had gotten her away from that man. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to dawdle and be late for work.”

“Dawdle?” Mary Clare snorted. “I made up that excuse, for him to hear. You shouldn’t have gone into the dining room with him there alone.” She steered Annmar to the rocking chair and handed her the teacup.

“Who is that?”

“Paet. He and his father, Maxillon, arrived yesterday to fill in for Daeryn, Maraquin and Terrent. We hear the team killed some vermin. Miz Gere has gone to learn how many. She’s pleased as punch, but they’re saying dozens more have ravaged the fields. Those hired men figure a week and they’ll have them all. Then they’re—” She motioned her extended thumb over her shoulder.

Annmar clutched her teacup and nodded.

Mary Clare nodded back. “You understand, then. One look and I knew that man was up to no good. I don’t even want to get close enough to tell.”

“So it wasn’t just me thinking he was creepy?” Annmar blew out the breath she’d been holding. “Are they from the Basin?”

“Yes, deeper into the Black Mountains, a different locale than our other ’cambires. Different temperament than any of them, too.” Mary Clare darted a glance to the closed dining room door. “Like you say, creepy.”

Mercy. If these Basin residents feared the strangers, then they must be dangerous. Annmar took a sip of tea. She wanted to ask—she
had
to ask—questions to learn more about these strange people. Two nights ago she wasn’t ready to confide in Mary Clare. But after yesterday’s strange events—and this morning’s—she had to devise a way to fit in. Despite Jac’s newest prediction, Annmar was not leaving before Market Day.

She looked up at Mary Clare. “So what are they?”

“Ropen, Riv says. A bat-like flying mammal.” Mary Clare shrugged. “Our ’cambires have all heard stories, but none of them agree on what it is exactly.”

Mrs. Betsy appeared between them. “Don’t matter. You girls steer clear of that man and his boy, you hear?” The wooden spoon in her hand pointed and jabbed to punctuate her strong tone. “Some things you don’t need to know to do that. Those ropens have Mistress Gere’s permission to be on Wellspring land to do a job. They will do it and be out of here soon enough.”

Mrs. Betsy returned to her mixing. Annmar met Mary Clare’s gaze, and the redhead answered with a soft sigh. She went to the sink and picked up her washrag.

When she’d finished eating, Annmar carried her dishes to the sink, intending to wash them, but Mary Clare waved her away. Annmar tossed her a smile and crossed to the breakfast nook where the small drafting table stood. She’d lose herself in drawing and try to forget she’d seen Daeryn and Maraquin together.

Pint jars lined the adjacent counter where Mrs. Betsy said they’d keep her samples. Annmar picked up each in turn, all coded with letters on their lids. Some were familiar: apple butter, French beans and onions, and stewed tomatoes. But squash relish? What kind of squash?

She caught Mrs. Betsy’s gaze. “I should like to go to the fields to check these specific varieties.”

“Of course, duck. I can spare Mary Clare a few minutes. She’ll show you…hmm. Boots?”

“About that. Would Mistress Gere allow me time to go to town to purchase a pair?”

“May I accompany her? Please?” Mary Clare took a hold of Mrs. Betsy’s arm. “May I?”

The cook looked between the two of them before settling on Annmar. “Can these trips wait until after the noon meal is served?”

“Yes. I know a few vegetables well enough to get started.”

Mrs. Betsy nodded. “Very well.” Mary Clare squealed, but when Mrs. Betsy frowned, she immediately returned to washing.

“We can eat a bite on the run”—Mary Clare shot a look over her shoulder to Annmar—“so we have more time before I have to be back for dinner preparations. If you don’t mind?”

Annmar lifted the jar of stewed tomatoes. “I doubt I’ll be hungry by noon,” she said with a laugh.

Opening the larger sketchbook Mistress Gere provided, Annmar began to sketch, filling the first pages with drawings of small, oblong tomatoes. These sweet-tasting fruits came in a different shape than she and Mother had grown, but the plant and leaves were familiar. After several sketches, Annmar designed a label with a cluster of three fruits hanging deep under shadowy leaves, with room for the name in the corner Mistress Gere had chosen.

Next, she opened the French beans. Their images came in a confusing mix. Annmar recognized the leaves made up of three leaflets, but long, spiky parts appeared among the foliage. Surely beans wouldn’t be that different in Blighted Basin. She tried to sort it out, but the image became more confused, with blue threads trailing from leaf to leaf.

What was that? She lifted her pencil and by habit rubbed her eyes before realizing the image was no longer before her. The muddled vision disappeared, taking the blue lines with it. Her rough sketch showed vague leafy shapes covered in cobwebs. She peered closer, willing the vision back. In a blink, it returned. Blue cobwebs.

Hadn’t she imagined blue lines in Daeryn’s drawing? She studied the webbing of tangled lines. In the sketch of Daeryn’s foot, the blue had followed her pencil lines, at first unnoticeable. These obstructed the sketch. Was she rushing her new Knack and making it work wrong? Would another bite of this preserve help…or worsen the vision?

She turned to the cut French beans and onions on her plate.

Oh. Beans
and
onions. She’d eaten both, so was seeing both.

Annmar studied them a moment. If she’d realized this pickled preserve wasn’t as straightforward as yesterday’s jams or the tomatoes had been, she might have waited. Too late now. She put the pencil down and turned to a new page before spearing only a little white bulb on her fork. She held it up for a good look.

Onions. They were the simpler plant, with their tubular leaves. “Just onions this time,” she whispered herself.

Her neck flushed warm beneath the high collar of her blouse. Annmar plucked the material and waved cooler air to her collarbone. They hadn’t built up the fire, had they? But as quickly as she thought she might get too warm, the feeling passed. The kitchen was quiet, with both Mary Clare and Mrs. Betsy each kneading dough and talking quietly.

Annmar concentrated again and ate the onion.

Ahh. As she’d hoped, only images of the single plant came to her: rows of tubular stems poking through the mounded soil, the onions harvested while marble-sized and sweet. Her pencil stroked the lines, then spiraled into the white bulbs below, with fine roots spreading from their ends and…the blue cobwebbing entwined with the roots and particles of soil.

Annmar froze, her focus blurring to analyze the image hanging in her mind. The webbing seemed to be the same fine roots she’d seen lacing through the ground when she arrived. But they couldn’t be roots, as she’d thought that afternoon. The cerulean blue color, the delicacy of the thread shape and their glow matched the filaments of light on the tea warmer. Just as they had tied the components of the machine together, the light threads connected the plants to the soil.

She followed their paths. The luminated threads spread from the onion row, weaving in and out among other plants until they knit across the field. Instead of straight paths, they traveled in spirals, loops and twists of lines connecting, separating, and then coming together again. The arrangement might not be uniform, but Annmar saw order in the patterns.

More so than in her first drawing, this vision showed strength. Energy. Vigor.

“Life,” she whispered. Incredible. All this connected to a simple onion. And she, Annmar, could see it. Tears sprang to her eyes.

“Are you all right?” asked Mary Clare at her side.

“I-I think so.” A tear slid down her cheek. Annmar wiped it away. “They’re happy tears. I’m understanding this.”

“Drawing…oh, your Knack.” Mary Clare hugged her around the shoulders. “I’m glad.”

* * *

Annmar finished the
onions, and then the beans, before flipping through the pages to select sketches to use for the label. Running her fingertips along the onion row, she stopped. Hold on a second. Had she really asked her Knack to focus on just the one plant?

She thought back, her hands folded before her mouth. She had.

Just like she’d directed her Knack to focus on healing Daeryn’s one foot. And the opposite was true as well: If she missed an injury—as in the case of Daeryn’s tendon—it didn’t heal. The two vegetables at once had confused her Knack until she told it which to focus on.

It wasn’t the food making her gift work. She was.

Wellspring’s foods enhanced her existing Knack, but as Daeryn pointed out, she’d already seen
sights
in Derby. Could she merely focus on a food, without eating it, and see the same visions?

Annmar slid off her stool and, after some study, selected a jar of blackberry jam. She was familiar with the plant’s canes and leaves, so this might not be a true test, but she didn’t know what else to try. Using a spoon, she plucked a berry from the jam and held it before her.

Focus
.

Her neck heated again, but this time she ignored it. She kept her gaze on the jam, her thoughts focused on the berry, the flower it came from, a spot where it must have grown—

A lush bush appeared in her mind’s eye, dotted with five-petaled white flowers. Nearby, a small, round woman stood beaming. White curls capped her head, touching the turned-up collar of a purple cloak from which one gloved hand poked to grasp a thorny walking stick. Grinning, Annmar set the spoon on her plate and snatched up her pencil.

* * *

The
clunk
of
heavy platters on the dining room sideboard signaled the start of the noon meal. Daeryn held a crutch under each arm, but paced a circle around the den-like sickroom with his weight on both feet. Should he go out now, before the majority of the growers arrived, or wait until most had left again? If he waited, he risked missing Annmar. But now, he hardly had a chance to catch her alone.

He wanted very badly to do just that. His foot, though not getting much of a test in this confining space, was healed. Completely, the best he could judge. After giving his fresh shirt another round of tucking and adjusting his braces, he made his way to the busy room, using the crutches.