Phony Potions

Chapter 21

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

"You know, you caused me a lot of worry." I scolded her.

"So much worry you didn't check up me on for days. Sure, whatever Dad." Mallow huffed. We walked on in silence. Eventually we came to the top of an overlook. An uneven stairway ran down the face of a small hill, leading down to a tiny residential district full of cottages with sooty thatched roofs and cramped yards full of vegetables, chickens, and flowers. I rested on the ledge there while Mallow stretched beside me, letting her white fingertips reach up to the sky.

"Hey... though..." She lowered her hand onto my shoulder. "I'm sorry you got beaten up."

"Nah, it's all right ." I waved. "...your admirer fixed me up, and anyway, before you came into my life, I was like that half the time." On the winding trail below, a man pulled along three young goats by a thick rope. They trotted, wobbly kneed, behind him. "You should have seen me during my phase when I thought I could be a pickpocket. My hands spent more time broken than not." I cracked my perfectly functioning fingers. "I'd convinced the Avalons that I'd repented and would never pick a pocket again, but I needed my hands to do a trade, so they healed me."

Mallow laughed. "Stupid Avalons."

"Yeah, stupid Avalons, but stupider me. The racket we got now is much better."

She grimaced uncomfortably. Her gaze was fixed in the distance on a gnarled tree that sprung up from one of the square centers. I didn't ask what was wrong. I didn't have to. From her litany of changing expressions, I knew at any moment she would share, when she had pinpointed herself exactly what it was that was causing her pain.

About five minutes later, she said, "Hey, Dad..."

"Yes?" I said. The view from here was soothing. I understood why sorcerers always built their homes high above the rest.

"Dad, why... why did you take so long to come find me?"

"You heard what it was like when I finally did get inside the doors. Imagine what the guards were like outside. They told me I couldn't see you no less than five times!" It was all true, even if one of those times was because I was late and the other four were twenty minutes ago. She let her heavy head drop with a puff of air.

"The Boeren... Wallet... he said a lot of awful things. While we were in there."

"He's pretty awful, yeah." I agreed.

"I made the mistake of talking about you and me. And he said..." She knotted up her hair in her hands, face crinkling with anxiety. "He said... he said you were taking so long to come and get me, because..."

"Because?" I asked, when her voice faded off without resolution.

"Because I'm a pet. A pet to you." Her bellowing voice was laced with doubt. "He said, 'Your human probably thinks it's great the city is stabling his pet for him. Now he doesn't have to worry about it. He's busy forgetting you.' It's all I had to think about for three days, Dad."

"That's absurd! You're my partner in business! The operation doesn't work without you."

"Neither does a farm without cows, but that doesn't mean they matter to the farmer."

"Cows definitely matter." It wasn't the right response—tears formed in Mallow's eyes—but it was the one I had to give, because they did. If the cows went, a whole family could starve. I knew from experience. "Uh." I tried to get back to the point. She was upset. "But no, you heard Winsor in there. You're a beautiful—"