Page 34 of A Spell for Midwinter’s Heart

The Sixth Day of Yule

A dark cloud settled over Liliana after the confrontation with Dennis, and it followed her into the next day. Rowan woke up to find the usually bustling kitchen still, her mother at the window, face wan in the cool morning light.

Liliana Midwinter had spent her life casting spells for the benefit of others, and it had always seemed like the rule of three brought that back to her.

She was never sick, and she’d always looked ten years younger, with most people assuming Drew was older.

But in the stark light, she looked exhausted—whittled thin by her endless endeavors.

She needed help, and she had never been taught how to ask for it.

Slipping into her coat, Rowan went outside to gather up ingredients for breakfast.

First stop was the chicken coop, where noisy hens huddled inside heavy batting. She didn’t expect to recognize anyone, but from the back came a loud “Cluuuck.”

A greeting? A dismissal? It was impossible to say with Our Lady Ambrosia. The massive, speckled old hen strutted toward the front of the coop, the spurs of her legs grown long and thick. She eyed Rowan and squawked with further judgments.

“Well, I don’t need Kel to translate that for me,” murmured Rowan.

Her next stop was the herb garden, where she peeked under the frost blanket to trim some sage. Then into the greenhouse, where she snipped chives. When she returned to the kitchen, her mother still sat at the window, fingers worrying a frayed curtain edge.

“Does this thing still have buttons?” asked Rowan as she dropped pans onto the stove.

Her mother turned in time to see Rowan wave a hand, flames erupting beneath the steel grates.

The sight of her daughter doing hearth magic brought a smile through Liliana’s gloom.

She tried to get up and enter the kitchen, but Rowan shooed her off.

She looked startled but settled on a stool at the counter’s edge as Rowan set about chopping the sage, trying to channel Gavin’s patience.

“Can I get you some tea?” asked Rowan, filling the kettle and settling it opposite the pan.

“Hmm. How about lavender mint?”

Rowan turned to stare at the expansive stretch of unlabeled jars overhead. “You’re going to have to tell me which one that is.”

Her mother pointed to one in the topmost corner, well beyond Rowan’s reach. There was no step stool, and so Rowan reached out for magic to float it down. It hopped from the shelf with a little shimmy and spun through the air as if in a downdraft, landing with a satisfying clatter on the counter.

Liliana’s eyes shone. “I guess you’ve been doing more than just our circle magic?”

“I’ve been…dabbling,” Rowan said, shifting her attention to cracking eggs and sprinkling sage.

“You know,” ventured her mother, “I haven’t had a chance to say thank you.”

“Oh, it’s okay, you don’t have to…”

“No, I do.” Liliana reached across to place a hand on her arm. “I know how hard it was…So, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Thanks for helping with the festival too. We appreciate it.”

“I am happy to do it,” insisted Rowan, surprised at how defensive her voice came out.

It was the we of the sentence. It felt calculated to remind Rowan she wasn’t a part of their number.

She cleared her throat. “You know I’m not great at sitting still.

What else am I going to do—sit around and watch Hallmark movies and eat everything in sight? ”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” murmured her mother, once again looking tired.

In the quiet that followed, Stephan’s warning repeated in Rowan’s mind, and she made a decision.

“Mom?” She scooted eggs around in the pan to avoid meeting Liliana’s gaze.

“Yes?”

“I want to show you something…” Rowan dropped the spatula and whipped out her phone to reveal her social media feed. Liliana looked puzzled from across the counter. “A few of us put something together…”

She slid her phone over, noting the exact moment her mother realized what she was looking at when the woman’s face shut down.

“Please, just keep an open mind. I promise if you do, you’ll see the purpose of this is to show off the festival as it is—not to distort it, or to trick people.” Liliana’s face was still a solid mask of refusal. “What you’ve built is great, but we need more people to know that.”

The mask finally cracked, and with a sigh of resignation, Liliana picked up the phone and flicked through images and videos. Her expression softened, first toward acceptance and then, finally, to quiet appreciation.

One in particular got her attention—a montage of children preparing to march in the Solstice parade, goofing around and giggling. It transitioned into the vibrant solemnity of the parade, all set to a stirring track. By the end, her eyes were wet with tears.

“I guess Kel must’ve been on kid wrangling duty,” said Rowan. “And got all this footage. They’re an amazing video editor. Kids these days, huh?”

Liliana grunted. “Don’t start acting like you’re an old lady, because if you are, that makes me ancient.” She continued to study the feed before finally lowering her hand to the counter. “This is a…love letter to what we do.”

“And people are responding. I know you have no context, but those are good numbers.”

Her mother was quiet. Finally, she said, “Well, I guess you proved me wrong.”

Rowan stiffened. “It wasn’t about that. I wanted to help the festival…”

Liliana held up a hand. “I know. You’re doing it in your own way…

and I don’t mean that as a bad thing.” The statement was hard to swallow, given how often her mother had levied that exact phrase as an attack, but Rowan tried to relax her defenses as Liliana continued, “I should have listened to people telling me to do this exact sort of thing years ago, and now…it’s probably too late. ”

She once again lapsed into a depressive state, and Rowan charged in on the defense.

“It’s not. You don’t have to give up. Gavin and I…we’ve got a pitch. It needs to be fleshed out, but it’s good, I think.”

She let her mother in on the plan, finishing by saying, “We could really use you to tell us where to go from here. You’re the only person here who’s done this before.

How do we make this real? I realize you are incredibly busy, so we are going to do as much as we can, but your input would be… everything.”

For a long moment, her mother didn’t speak. Was history set to repeat itself?

Finally, Liliana reached across the counter and squeezed her hand.

A delicate tenderness bloomed in Rowan’s chest. “I think it’s a great idea…

You know, we talked about this—Sarah and I—but after she died, it was all I could do to keep the one festival going, especially once I took the shop over from Grandma.

Well, with all of that, the coven, you two—”

“Let me stop you there.” Rowan held up a hand.

“You have listed like three people’s worth of things, and I know you could keep going.

You have leaned way too far in, and no one here is questioning why you didn’t sign up to do the work of six more people.

So let us do it for you, because we’re in this together. ”

Her mother squeezed her hand one more time. “We are, aren’t we?” The stress that had been pinching her tight all but vanished. She still looked tired, but calm.

Before Rowan could celebrate the victory, Liliana was on her feet. “Well, we’d better eat good, ’cause we’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

“What do you mean?” asked Rowan.

Her mother leaned in, smiling with a mischievous look about her.

“You are going to shadow me today. You want to know how it’s done?” Liliana pulled her gray-streaked auburn hair up high and tied it tight. “Put on your boots, girlie, ’cause it’s time to do the work.”

As her mother promised, the day was a flurry of activity.

Helping to resolve disputes between vendors and customers, restocking the concessions, cleaning up the trail of poop left behind in casual lifts of sleigh horse tails—the walkie-talkie at Rowan’s belt continuously buzzed with new tasks to keep her busy.

As it was the first day of Kwanzaa, she spent most of her morning helping with the paper kinara children’s craft.

At midday, she took a break to watch Pastor Matthews speak about the Kwanzaa theme of the day—unity.

The pastor was brilliant in a red-and-green headdress and kaftan, and she spoke with the practice of the pulpit.

Her voice urged the crowd to remember how much stronger we are when we come together to work, share, and learn.

“But some,” she said in conclusion, “are consistently asked to work, share, and learn more than others. We’ll need to fix that for the unity to be true.”

Rowan was called away amid the applause that followed, tasked with dealing with yet another emergency. As she jogged off, Stephan fell into line, along with one of his oldest friends, Arnauld Matthews-Lieb, who’d been there to see his mom kick off the festivities.

“Hey there, Rowan,” said Arnauld with a charming grin. He was tall and slim but clearly muscled, with golden brown skin and black hair shaved short, wearing the deep blue uniform of a firefighter.

“Hey, Arn,” she replied. “Your mom was brilliant as usual. How are you?”

“Could be better.” He nudged her. “If I knew who I was having a dance with tonight.”

“Too late there, Arn,” said Stephan. “She’s only got eyes for the little lord McCreery.”

“No shit?” asked Arn with a nod. “Well, if he doesn’t treat you right…

” He winked, and Rowan blushed. For as long as they overlapped at Elk Ridge High, her brother’s best friend had always ensured she wasn’t a complete wallflower at school dances.

It had seemed like generosity on his part, but she wasn’t so sure anymore.

“Don’t give this one your sympathies,” said Stephan, putting an arm around Arn’s shoulders. “We’ll head over to the public house. There’s a reason he’s still in uniform.”

“The ladies love a firefighter,” Rowan said.

“You know it,” said Arn with another wink.

There was no respite from the festival’s needs.

Before she could even finish saying good-bye, the next call came in.

It seemed that the band heading into town to play for the next few nights—a Celtic trio made up of three witches—was stuck at the mountain pass, having attempted to summit in a Kia.

It fell on her to retrieve them, squeezing all three women and their baskets full of rustic instruments into her dad’s truck.

As soon as she was back, it was off to Merchant Alley.

It took all her willpower not to float by her nose like a dog in an old-timey cartoon toward Visiones de Navidad, from which the smell of bunuelos drifted—frying dough and musky anise.

Its front was decorated with clay ornaments in bright primary colors, and she promised herself she’d swing by as a treat when her shift was over.

“Something wrong with your booth, Roy?” she asked, stepping into the back of one of the other old wooden structures.

Roy Joseph, Birdie’s boyfriend and longtime Elk Ridge townie, sat inside.

He wore his long white hair in a braid, and his eyes were the color of piercing steel.

The booth’s shelves were filled with smoked meats—king and coho salmon, deer, elk, turkey—all caught and prepared by Roy and members of his extended family.

“Oh yah,” he said. “Same one’s been givin’ me trouble for years. I’d do it myself, but your young knees can take one for the team, eh?”

Rowan knelt and inspected where one floorboard had popped loose, before excavating nails and a hammer from inside her utility bag.

She wasn’t exactly handy, but her father had taught her the basics of hitting a nail with a hammer.

And since Roy was with Birdie, she didn’t hesitate to use magic to arrange all the nails and prevent them from slipping as she swung the hammer.

“Business better this week?” she asked.

The old man rocked in place, nodding. “Comes ’n’ goes, comes ’n’ goes. Least we can eat what we don’t sell, but I’ve got more’n ’nuff back in the chest freezer, and I’d sure rather sell it all.”

“Do you sell anywhere but here?”

“Ah, nah. Too much trouble, traveling ’round.”

“Would you sell here more if it were an option?”

He eyed her in playful suspicion. “Maybe so. What’re you cooking in that big brain of yours? Birdie said you were up to somethin’. I told her, thought our problems were too small for that one.”

Rowan winced at the accusation, unable to deny that it had been true all of a few days ago.

“I’m getting better at seeing how big problems are more like a bunch of small problems wrapped up in one.” She hit the final nail into place with a satisfying thunk. “There, good as…it was after the last repair.”

Her eyes caught on a basket full of assorted goods, many of which she recognized as having come from various other vendors at the market—Roy must have accepted it all in trade.

The prevalence of trade and gifting in the winter fest market had always been one of her favorite things about it, even though she had been woefully unprepared to take part.

Perhaps next year she’d up her crochet skills and see if she could make something worth trading.

Next year. She was making plans for the next year.