The Hearth Contract

Chapter 13: A Cure for Everything

Rennie came in at a run. The door banged against the wall behind her, the backpack came off her shoulder and hit the floor, and Mom called out before she was through the hall.

"Kitchen."

She was at the table with her phone in one hand and a cup of coffee she'd stopped drinking a while ago. Rennie left the backpack where it landed and put both hands flat on the table.

"All of them," she said. "He ate the whole bag, and he said thank you."

"Good." Mom's thumb was moving on the screen.

Rennie waited with her hands on the table. She was too short to see the phone, and she had learned that asking twice got her a certain kind of look.

"The warden on watch sent in her report," Mom said at last. "He sits. Two hours in the morning, one more after lunch, same as every other day. Then he walks his route. Then he comes down to the shop and buys his food." She read the last of it off the phone with her mouth pulled to one side. "'The dullest stranger I have ever had to watch.' Her boss is handing him over to us. Ives is fine with it. He's ours to handle."

Then she laid the phone down, face down.

Rennie thought about that for a second. "So he's not doing anything."

"Not where anyone can see it." Mom reached over, took her under the arms, and set her on her lap. Rennie went, because she wasn't too big for it yet. "You want to know if you helped."

"Yes."

"You helped." Mom put her chin on top of Rennie's head. "My girl."

Rennie squeezed her and then sat up straight, because she'd worked this part out on the walk home and it would not keep. "Then you have to take him. You have to ask him to be your apprentice before somebody else does."

"Okay," Mom said.

It came out too fast. Rennie leaned back and looked at her.

"Okay?"

"Okay." Mom set her down and stood, and took her coat off the hook. "And you. You can start looking."

Rennie's whole chest went bright. "For mine? A fire of my own?"

"For a fire of your own."

Rennie had to put both hands over her mouth, which didn't work, and then she ran one lap of the kitchen and came back, and Mom was already at the door.

"Where are you going?"

"Past the ridge road. Ives wants a word, and then one more stop."

"What stop?"

"A stop." Mom pulled the door open, then stopped with it half open. "Dinner's on the counter under the lid. Eat it while it's warm. Don't open the door for anyone, and don't open the windows."

"Okay."

"Wickie's staying with you."

Rennie hid her grin in the doorframe. Nobody in the world got to call him that but Mom, and he let her.

"You'll keep an eye on her, Wickie," Mom said, over her shoulder, and from the kitchen came the small crackle of a fire agreeing. Then the door shut, and the truck started on the second try and went off down the road, and the house got big and quiet all at once.

Rennie hoped the stop was a present. She knew she wasn't supposed to hope for things about Mom's stops, so she hoped it anyway.

* * *

The stew was still warm. She ate it standing at the counter, spoon and all, and then she went into the front room and sat on the rug and counted her breaths, up to two hundred.

She got to ninety-one and lost the count, started over, and was somewhere past fifty the second time when she decided that was probably two hundred by now.

"Done," she said.

Over the stove, Wick pulled himself up the wall into a low blue line, made a hand out of flame, and gave her a thumbs-up.

"One cartoon," Rennie said. "One."

One was three.

She lay on the rug with her feet on the couch and Wick stayed banked down over the stove, and by the middle of the second cartoon she had mostly stopped watching it.

Then something tapped the window.

Rennie sat up. "Uncle Wick. Did you hear that?"

The fire over the stove went flat.

He'd heard.

"Can I look?" she said. "Mom said the door. She didn't say the window."

She was ready for a no, or for the silence that meant no. Instead Wick said, "I'll come with you," and he said it flat, the way he did when he'd started off meaning to say more.

The step stool lived beside the fridge. Rennie dragged it to the sink, climbed up, and knelt on the countertop, which put her eyes just above the sill. She worked the latch, pushed the window up, and put her head out into the cold.

There was a plant in the yard.

It stood about three feet high on a knot of roots, with more leaves on it than it needed and a head of small, dark purple flowers. One long leaf was raised and bent at the middle, the shape a hand makes when it's about to knock.

Neither of them moved.

The plant leaned sideways and looked past her at the house.

"Is this the right house?" it said.

"This is the right house," Rennie said.

The leaf came down slowly. "You're her daughter."

"Yes."

"I've come for Vesper. One dose of growth tonic. My strength is short, and I'd rather not go into why." It said the last part the way Rennie said things she didn't want to say.

"She's out," Rennie said. "She went to see Ives."

The plant stood there. One flower turned a little.

"You're about to fruit," Rennie said.

The whole plant jerked back like it had been poked. "How do you know that?"

"I guessed it. When the fig tree and the year-tree get ready to fruit, Mom gives them one first. Every time." She folded her arms on the sill. "So you're about to fruit."

Every leaf on the plant came down at once, and it stood there in the cold looking smaller. "There's precedent," it said. "There's precedent. Well."

Then it drew itself up.

"You've heard of me, I expect," it said. "There is a plant in this world that cures everything. I am—"

"Echinacea?"

The plant stopped. Every leaf on it stopped.

"Echinacea," it said.

"Mom sells it in the brown bottle. It's for colds."

"I am not echinacea," the plant said, and it got louder. "I am a cinnabar berry."

Rennie had never heard of a cinnabar berry. Wick's flame drew in thin and pale.

"What does that brew into?" he said.

The berry turned slightly, so it wasn't facing him. "That's mine."

"What does it brew into."

"Never mind that." The berry said it fast. "When I fruit, I'll pay. Two of the berries. That's what I'm offering."

Trades weren't hers to make. "You can wait for her," Rennie said, "or I can tell her you came."

The berry shifted its roots and came back half a step, and Rennie noticed for the first time how far it was from anything that looked like a road.

"Could I stay?" it said. "Only until she's back. I've come a long way, and I haven't got anywhere to put myself. A corner of the yard would do."

Rennie looked up at Wick, because that wasn't hers either.

Wick rose a foot off the stove and shaped a face in the flames.

"Fine," he said. "Find yourself an empty pot. Understand something first. You can't stay past the season without a permit, and I don't hand those out."

"Thank you," the berry said. "Thank you. Thank you very much."

It came up over the sill in a skid of roots and set itself down on the counter, and the kitchen felt smaller.

Rennie was still holding the window up, and she thought about what she'd said, and decided to say the rest of it, since it was true. "There's Leaf, and the year-tree, and Rosy in the pot, and Turnip in the cabinet. That's four. Leaf is the one who hits."

"Leaf," the berry said. "The year-tree, the pot, the—"

The pot on the windowsill had grown two small feet under itself. It pattered along the sill, hopped down onto the counter with a knock, and stood at Rennie's elbow.

"Rennie," it said. "Rennie! I think we should be introduced. Properly. Officially."

The berry made a sound like a hinge. "The pot's alive," it said. "The pot got up and walked—"

"I'm not a pot," the pot said. "My name is Rosy, and I'm a very distinguished earth sprite, thank you, and I am not a pot."

The berry had gone still. Then it leaned in toward Rosy without seeming to mean to.

"You're earth," it said.

"I am."

"You're—"

"Thank you," Rosy said. "Not interested." It put up one small muddy hand. "I'm taken. Before you say anything. Taken."

"What?"

"Taken. I'm Leaf's." One finger went up. "One plant. That's the whole thing. Leaf and me, that's the story, that's the end of the story, I'm not looking."

Rennie looked. There was nothing behind Rosy but the dish soap and the wall.

Then Rosy did a slow turn, the way a person does at the end of a speech, and a wide green leaf came up over the edge of the sill and came down flat on top of it.

Whap.

Rosy rolled twice and came up on its feet. "What was that for?"

"All day with the sweet talk," Leaf said. "Not one hour of practice."

Rennie turned to tell the berry that Leaf was usually nicer than that, and the berry wasn't looking at the sill anymore. It was looking at the floor.

Something was pushing the cabinet door open from underneath. It rolled out across the linoleum, knocked softly against the baseboard, and lay down with its chin on its paws.

The berry said, "That's a stone."

"That's Turnip," Rennie said.

For a long moment nobody said anything, and the open window let in the cold and the smell of the yard, and the berry stood in all of it, looking from the pot to the leaf to the lion and back.

"What else," it said, "do you keep in this house?"

Rennie thought about it, which took a while, because it was a long list.

"Lots," she said.

Rennie spends most of this chapter being exactly the kind of kid who reads the rules closely: the door is off-limits, so the window is fair game, and she says so out loud, to a fire, as if that settles it. I like that she's honest about it. Meanwhile her mother hands her the thing she never actually asked for — a fire of her own — right after Rennie decides she's the one doing the asking. Which of them do you think has been planning this longer?

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