The Dream-Maker's Magic (8 page)

I stood there another moment, struck dumb.

Kindness is a form of magic.

Then magic had sprinkled itself across me many times, when I had not even noticed its fey sparkle. I had been used to thinking of my life as bleak and full of darkness, but for the first time it occurred to me how often a stranger had stepped forward to offer me comfort and assistance, no matter how briefly. Ian Shelby. Sarah Parmer. Ayler the Safe-Keeper. The man who had stopped Carlon from beating me in the streets. Chase Beerin. They had been kind to me; most had, in different ways, been kind to Gryffin as well. Looked at that way, my life was a weave of brightness laid over a trembling black, a scrap of midnight velvet spangled with many jewels.

I had another thought as I stood there, trying desperately to understand a completely altered view of my existence. Someday
I
might be the one to offer kindness to someone else in grim and dire circumstances. Someday
I
might be the one with wealth or knowledge or strength or power that could be used to alleviate another person's distress. Such a thought had literally never crossed my mind before. More than once I had been saved. Someday I might save someone else in return.

I considered these ideas as I walked very slowly back to my mother's house, my head down against the searching wind. I thought them over as I lay in front of the stove, soaking up whatever warmth was offered by its dying heat. I wanted to discuss them with Chase Beerin the next morning but, true to his warning, he did not rise for breakfast. He was still sleeping when I left to collect Gryffin on the way to school. When I got home that afternoon, he had already left town.

I never saw Chase Beerin in Thrush Hollow again.

W
intermoon came, just as cold as the year before but far less snowy. This time as we stood behind the tavern, torching our own private wreath, Gryffin and I smeared some of the oak branches with a scented cream that I had bought from a recent overnight guest who peddled all sorts of interesting items. It had a fine consistency that pleased Gryffin and turned even my work-roughened hands soft. We had made a point of following Chase's regimen of a weekly massage, and Gryffin was delighted to notice some improvement in his balance, his mobility, and his level of pain. He had missed no school days this entire season because of his legs.

“I think Chase was wrong,” Gryffin said. “I think I'll walk without my canes someday after all.” To further the attainment of this desire, he had carved miniature versions of them from sticks of wood, and tied them to the wreath to burn.

I had added my own special items to this year's wreath—a scrap of white lace, a length of red ribbon, a tiny braid of my own hair. I had been vague when Gryffin asked me what they were supposed to signify, though in my own mind I was very clear. They were feminine items. Things that might appeal to a young woman.

I wanted a chance to be seen as a girl. I wanted to wear clothes that were more flattering, cut my hair in a fashionable style. Sometimes when my mother was gone from the house, I tried on one of her dresses, though she was both shorter and heavier than I was and her clothes did not come close to fitting. But I wanted to know what they felt like. I watched the mirror as I spun around, and laughed to feel the swish of fabric around my legs. Once I sorted through her cosmetics and applied color to my cheeks and mouth. I looked strange and imperfect, but different.

I wanted to be different.

I did not express this to Gryffin.

We lit the little wreath and let it burn on the dry ground, then I ran around stamping on all the scraps of dead leaves that had started to smoke. The fear of accidentally burning down the tavern made us wait outside another thirty minutes, shivering in the dark, to make sure no fugitive sparks survived my fervor.

“I think it's safe to go in now,” I said through chattering teeth. “It's too cold for fire to even burn on a night like this, anyway.”

Gryffin laughed. “Good night, then.”

“Warm Wintermoon wish to you,” I said, and turned to go.

But he called after me. “Wait!” When I obediently turned back, he maneuvered a few steps closer, till his canes were resting on the ground on either side of me. I realized to my surprise that Gryffin was actually taller than I was, and by a considerable margin. He had to bend down to kiss me on the cheek, something he had never done before. His mouth was almost as cold as my own skin.

“Warm Wintermoon to you, too, Kellen,” he said, and smiled.

I smiled back. “Things will be different next year at Wintermoon,” I whispered. “I can feel it.”

“Different how?”

“Wait and see.”

The new year started off promisingly enough. I was doing unexpectedly well in school, passing all my exams and keeping clear of all my tormentors. Gryffin's health did not continue to improve so rapidly, but he didn't lose any ground, either, so both of us were happy. The mayor got word that Thrush Hollow would become an official stop for a new stagecoach line, and the Parmers won the bidding to open a posting house. They set about constructing a couple of large buildings just across the road from their rambling house. There was a restaurant, with a few sleeping rooms above it for travelers not interested in seeking out a true inn. In back were greatly expanded stables to hold the many changes of horses that would be required to accommodate the thrice-daily run of the stage. The speculation among townspeople was that a stagecoach line would mean the roads to Thrush Hollow would be improved, which meant that private traffic would increase through the town as well. Which meant bounty for everyone who ran a service of any kind.

As soon as I learned that the Parmers were opening an eating establishment, I sought out Sarah Parmer and asked for a job.

She was no longer in school; she was working full-time for her parents, but everyone expected her to marry within a year or two. The man who loved her was Bo, the genial red-bearded driver who had first taken Gryffin and me to the Parmer house. He had been promoted from driver and was now tasked with overseeing the stables. Sarah and her mother would be in charge of the restaurant and the tiny inn; her father and brothers would continue running the freighting enterprise.

But there was a great deal of additional work to be done.

Sarah and her mother were painting the interior of the restaurant when I showed up. Everything looked new and smelled fresh. Tables and chairs were crowded into the middle of the room to make room for the workers; cheery red-and-white-checked curtains had been laid across a table, ready for hanging when the paint dried.

“I came to see if you'd hire me,” I said, when Sarah set down her brush and stepped over to greet me. “You know I work hard. You know I can do almost anything.”

“And there's a lot to do here,” she agreed. “What were you thinking of?”

I shook my head. “I don't care. I'll cook in the kitchen. I'll work in the garden. I'll even help with the horses if someone shows me how.”

Betsy Parmer looked over at me from across the room. “Would you serve customers?” she asked. “You could cook when it was slow, and then serve when the stage arrived.”

“That would be fun,” I said with a little smile. “Get to meet all sorts of people that way.”

Sarah surveyed me a little doubtfully. “Yes, but—Kellen—if you're going to be waiting on people…I'd want you to be in clothes that were a little less…ragged. I don't mean to tell you what to wear, but—”

I looked up at her, trying to keep the desperate hope from my expression. “Would I have to wear a dress?” I asked.

She bit her lip. “Well, I'm not saying that, exactly—”

“Because if I tell my mother I have to wear a dress or I can't get the job, she'd let me wear the dress.”

Betsy Parmer put her own paintbrush aside and came to stand with us. She laid a hand on my shoulder and gave me the sweetest smile. I knew that I was about to benefit from another one of those rare, magical moments of kindness. “Sarah and I were saying just this morning,” she said quietly, “how we would like to maintain a certain style here in the dining room. We thought maybe red aprons on the girls serving food, and red vests on the young men. This would go well with the curtains, don't you think? And we'll have red flowers on each table. If you're to come work here—and I sincerely hope you do—you'll have to wear some nice little gown, maybe in gray or black, that looks well when paired with red. Otherwise, I'm afraid we can't hire you. And we very much want to hire you, Kellen.”

“Thank you,” I whispered. “I'll tell my mother.”

“How quickly can you start?” Betsy Parmer asked. “The first stage won't come through till next week, but if you could help out this week, we could put you to work doing all sorts of things.”

“I can start now,” I said.

Betsy nodded. “Then roll up your sleeves.”

At first I thought I had guessed wrong about my mother.

“A dress,” she said, when I told her the requirement for me to work at the new Parmer Arms. “But you can't wear a dress. That would look silly. That would be indecent. Boys wear trousers.”

I sat up straight enough so that my growing breasts made a definite shape against my tattered white shirt. “Girls wear skirts.”

She looked at me as if she hadn't noticed my changing figure before, and her eyes slowly filled with tears. “You're not,” she whispered. “You're not supposed to be.”

“I don't know what I'm supposed to be,” I said tiredly. “But this is what I am.”

As it turned out, she neither granted permission for me to take the job nor told me outright that I could not. She merely ignored my request, ignored anything that had to do with my new identity. She did not help me cut and sew the three gowns I made for myself, following an extremely simple pattern. She did not ask about the work or comment on the money that I handed over at the end of every week. She pretended, as she had pretended my entire life, that I was someone else.

But I rather liked the new Kellen, who was, in many subtle ways, different from the old one. This Kellen was not quite so fierce, so independent, so wary. She smiled much more often—though that might have been to hide her shyness. She was not used to being stripped of disguises, unfamiliar with the casual appraisal a man might turn on a woman of any age or degree of attractiveness. She always felt like she was on display, vulnerable, pulled out of hiding, a breath or two away from being starkly naked.

But she rather liked it.

I worked at the Parmer Arms four days a week—three evenings after school and one full day when school was not in session. At first, I walked through town, from my house to Sarah's, wearing my old boy's clothes and carrying my dress over my arm; I changed once I arrived. Sarah quickly decided it would make more sense for her to store all of my “restaurant clothes” at the Arms and made herself responsible for keeping them clean and mended. She also added two somewhat fancier garments to my small wardrobe, obviously having a seamstress tailor them after the template of the ones I had made myself. These dresses—one a dark navy and one a charcoal gray—were my favorite two things I owned.

Sarah also spent some time teaching me how to style my hair, though both of us tended to wear braids and buns to keep our hair out of the way while we were working. Still, she showed me how to soften my face with a few loose curls, and she trimmed my long, completely neglected locks so they fell with more grace around my cheeks. At times I didn't recognize myself when I looked in the mirror. And I was glad to see a stranger peering back at me from the glass that hung over the front desk at the Parmer Arms.

Most of the people who passed through the restaurant did not recognize me, either. True, the majority were strangers merely stopping briefly for food or a change of horses, but the restaurant had become a popular place for townspeople who wanted to treat themselves to a special night out. The first two months I worked there, I waited on at least a dozen people whom I had known all my life, and not one of them knew who I was.

But there was one person who was not fooled by my new looks or my modulated personality, and that was Gryffin. Or perhaps I put that wrong. He did not seem to notice what I was wearing or how I had arranged my hair, if I was dressed like the most disreputable street urchin or a quietly stylish young lady. Whether I saw him at school, whether I dropped by his uncle's house, or whether I unexpectedly encountered him on the street, he always greeted me with a smile and my name. I did not bewilder or surprise him. He did not think I was trying to be something I was not, as my mother did; he did not think I was trying to break a chrysalis and become something I was meant to be, as Betsy and Sarah surely believed. He just thought I was Kellen.

I found this the most comforting thing that had ever happened to me. At times, when I lay awake at night, confused myself about what role I should take and what direction I should try to follow, all that kept me from slipping into tears was knowing that I was not completely lost if Gryffin knew how to find me.