Page 38

“That’s enough, now,” I said. “I’ve heard the full story. A sprite came at you on your blind side with my ribbon, and my cat got under your feet. You did what any beast does and, even better, you didn’t hurt the sprite or my cat. Your farmer’s forgiven you. Your victim’s forgiven you. The cat, who started it, has been docked a week of fish. You’re the only one left holding out, and frankly, Turnip, it’s getting to be too much drama for my taste.”

His yellow eye came off the wall.

He stared at me, his breath rolling out of him in clouds. Then he turned and brought his head down, setting his chin on my shoulder. The horn slid past my ear, pointed at nothing.

A ton of beast, holding still, waiting to find out if he’d be allowed.

I put my arms as far around his big face as they’d go, which wasn’t far, and scratched under his jaw. He sighed and took a plum from my palm.

“He likes you best now.”

Goran stood in the doorway, watching us with a look on his face that hadn’t been there before the cold snap. Or maybe I’d just never caught it in daylight.

“He does not,” I said. “He’s known you for years.”

“But you keep offering plums,” he said. “I’d turn on me too.”

Walking back to the house, our breaths fogged together.

The fair was a few days out.

It was a good cold snap.

I was in no hurry for the thaw.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

GORAN

The fair stalls went up over a few days, our booths in a single day. I built a good part of ours, the kissing booth included. Nobody made me. That’s the part I could never explain to Turnip, who watched from his tether nearby.

Asha had it in hand. Or so she thought. I disagreed. She’d put Bram Weatherby on the booth, which I’ll admit was a joke, with both his brothers under him. And she stood over the three of them with her arms folded on her chest.

She told me to hang decorative items. Her words. “You’re ornamental today, Goran Brack. My sister keeps a list, and you’re at the top of it.”

So I did ornamental until midmorning, when Struan set a corner out of plumb and Nastru tamped it home before anybody noticed.

A crooked booth would stand for thirty years. Every grandmother in this county could lean on that rail and it would hold, but it would be wrong, and I’d know.

Asha got called away to the pumpkin pavilion over a judging dispute.

I pulled the post.

Aris said I shouldn’t lift anything heavier than a teapot. But a thing set wrong stays wrong, and my hands were on it before I could hold myself back.

I reset the posts. I trued the counter and sank the queue-rail deep enough to take a century of grandmothers leaning on it. Bram held the string and said nothing, because he was nineteen and I was me. And his brothers fetched. By the time Asha came back, the frame was true, and the deed was done, and there was nothing left to argue about.

She looked at the frame. Then at me. Then she said a word her mother would have washed out of her, and went to tell Rain.

I stood back in the booth’s shade and studied the neatest little building on the green, decorations and all, PUCKER FOR THE HOLLOW drying in fresh red paint above the opening.

At noon tomorrow, my lips would belong to the public.

“It’s very sturdy,” Asha said, arriving back to stand at my elbow with her hands clasped in front of her.

“Hm.”

“You’ll want it sturdy. We’re expecting volume.” She let that settle for a moment. “The grandmothers have been limbering up.”