Page 3 of Growing Memories (Valley of Sylveren #2)

Chapter Three

“Absolutely not,” Eunny said, ignoring the wood samples Gransen Mast tried to show her.

“Just look at them. This is a real opportunity here!” Gransen said, his tone between wheedling and exasperated.

He’d first appeared at Song’s Scrap three years ago, freshly graduated from his Initiate levels and drawn in by a small tool repair demonstration being put on by a local woodworker.

He was a Graelynd expatriate like Eunny, but that was where their similarities ended.

He was short, stocky, with a mop of mouse-brown hair and a perpetual goofy smile.

After that first repair workshop, Gransen had kept coming back, often without anything in need of repair himself.

He’d just stayed. Considered himself her unofficial assistant.

Self-proclaimed manager of Song’s Scrap.

And he was taking the collapse of the café hard.

Most days, Eunny appreciated his enthusiasm, but the day after the self-destruction of her home and business?

No. She needed a break from his endless buzzing of ways to rebuild the shop.

She hadn’t even managed to get any useful information on Ollas’s condition despite Gransen being his roommate, aside from a blithe, “Who do you think booted me out of the room and refused my budding skills as a nursemaid? Olly’s fine. ”

A voice hailed her from the café’s door—what was left of it. She turned to see one of her best friends, Zhenya Lee. The studious inkmaker waded through the rubble, a heap of burlap sacks from the tearoom in her arms.

“Where should I start?” Zhenya asked.

“Cabinets by the stack cutter? You’ll know better than me if anything can be saved.

” Eunny waved toward the ancient cutting blade she’d managed to cram into a corner of the rear wall.

The tool itself could probably have survived a dozen cave-ins, but the crate shelves Eunny had stacked together for holding excess bookbinding supplies, not so much.

Bits of cord and ribbon in a variety of colors were nothing but tangled snarls amidst smashed glue pots and folding tools.

Paper of both decorative and utilitarian sorts hadn’t been cleaned up from the floor so much as swept, or shoved, into piles.

Zhenya wilted a bit at the sight but rallied with a brave smile. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“I’ll be right there.” Eunny turned to Gransen, who was sliding what looked disturbingly like fabric swatches into his bag. “Granse, what are you?—”

“You’re busy, and I have reading to catch up on. I’ll just look through all these and bring you a short list later.”

“Why do you need— Are those for curtains? We don’t even have windows?—”

“Don’t worry, I’ll handle it. Bye!” The miscreant’s last word was drawn out behind him as he beat a hasty retreat from the shop.

Scrubbing a hand across her face, Eunny sighed and trudged over to where Zhenya picked through one of the piles.

Most of it ended up in the burlap sack she’d designated for the rubbish pit.

Though they were both of Hanyeok descent, instead of having dark bay-black hair Zhenya’s was pearl white —a mark of her being from Deiju Island, a small island off Hanyeok’s coast—and had acquired a few colorful stray threads from the bedraggled ribbons she’d rescued.

“Thanks, but you really don’t have to do this.” Eunny dragged one of the repair café’s few surviving stools over and plopped down. “Might be a better use of everyone’s time if I just threw everything away.”

The Valley was showing a bit of kindness, turning the rain back to merely gray skies.

But not even late summer in the Valley was the kind of weather to dry out a month’s worth of rain in a single day.

It did make for a more comfortable time as she logged the damages, though.

A marginal amount of comfort. Really, all the log did was make it irrefutable that Song’s Scrap had been a roof for junk.

The scattered supplies kept for repairs might’ve proved useful once, but exposed to the elements and smashed to bits, they became trash just the same as the broken pieces they’d been meant to fix.

“We can salvage some.” Zhenya patted another sack next to her, the gathered objects sitting atop it so small that Eunny hadn’t even noticed them.

Why bother, Eunny almost said. Maybe this was a sign. She loved the town, but she’d put off turning Song’s Scrap into a real building for so long. It had been something to deal with when she was ready. Once it felt deserved. Maybe the destruction was its own kind of answer.

Once they’d filled the first garbage-bound sack, Eunny lugged it to join the wreckage of the back door. As she went to grab a new sack, she noticed Zhenya had brought her satchel and left it on the front counter. “Were you working before this?”

“No. Not really,” Zhenya said, her tone less than convincing. “I was just, er, getting a second opinion on my new anti-fade ink samples for the greenhouse.”

Definitely working, then. Eunny had known the little white-haired inkmaker for years; some things never changed. Research and study were as much Zhenya’s passions as they were her actual job, assisting the head of the botany department, Professor Rai. But a second opinion, that likely meant?—

“Does that mean you’ve seen Ollas?” Eunny asked, wincing at how hesitant she sounded.

Eunny had known Zhenya since they were children, but with Zhenya being a few years younger, they hadn’t grown from acquaintances to good friends until Eunny had moved to Sylvan six years back.

And, though Zhenya was a Graelynder, too, after her Initiate levels at Sylveren University, the Valley had become her new home.

Since she seemed to live between the library and the university’s greenhouse complex, a friendship with Ollas had been practically inevitable.

Useful, too, with Eunny’s guilt gnawing away at her. “How is he? Gransen wasn’t much help when I asked.”

“Just came from seeing him. He talked the menders into letting him go home already.” Zhenya shook her head, a smile playing across her lips as she set some bloated paper scraps on her “save” pile.

Her expression went solemn. “He’s okay, but it’ll be a slow process.

He’s worried with the term starting so soon. ”

“The university will give him some grace, won’t they?”

“He’s co-teaching a new elective with Professor Rai, doing most of the greenhouse work. He thinks he’ll need to— Well, I probably shouldn’t… He’s just worrying.” Zhenya flushed, ducking her head.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry,” Eunny mumbled.

Remorse churned in her gut. Bad enough that Ollas had gotten hurt in her damned café, trying to keep her safe.

But now it might screw up his own work? Gods all break.

Eunny Song, wrecking lives and livelihoods.

Maybe that was a tad melodramatic, but co-teaching sounded like a big opportunity for a relatively young, low-magic-base professor like Ollas.

She glanced toward the back door, biting her lip as she recalled the way she’d reached out, unthinking. And how he’d stopped her. She remembered what had happened the last time she’d tried to heal him.

“Can’t the students help out?” Eunny asked.

“Yes, but they’re only in the greenhouses during lab hours, or they’ll have their other classes to work on. Ollas does a lot of prep and extra work outside of the usual times. He’s thorough. It’s why he’s such a good fit for the elective.”

Zhenya started to muse aloud over the potential replacements if Ollas resigned, but Eunny’s attention was split.

There had to be some way she could make this right without trying to heal him again.

It was an understatement to say she didn’t know much about growing things.

She struggled to grow weeds. Back when she did her apothecary work, she’d been unashamed to only use acquired ingredients rather than try to raise a backyard medicinal garden.

But it sounded like Ollas just needed an able body.

He might already see her as the Healer Who Hurts, but she wouldn’t have Derailer of Careers added to her list of titles.

If it meant helping Ollas keep his job, she’d tote him around on her back to water every plant in the greenhouse by hand.

The sky was starting to darken as Eunny approached the Grove, domain of the earth mages at Sylveren University.

She’d been back on campus several times since the trade delegation had gone awry.

The rescue. The day her magic failed. But she’d never been in the great tree, only around the greenhouses.

It felt a little strange, but not uncomfortable.

No flares of hostility, no surges of anger bubbling beneath her skin like she got when she was around the House of Syvrine and its healing ward.

Toward the Grove, she felt only curiosity.

Maybe a bit of awe. The large maple tree soared as tall as the elementalists’ towers on Sylveren University’s campus, its fiery leaves imparting an autumnal feel year-round.

Tiny motes of golden light twinkled throughout the foliage, lazily drifting skyward, a few sparkles bouncing off the windows as they made their journey up.

Buildings had been constructed in harmony with the massive tree, some within and others winding throughout the sturdy trunk and its lower branches.

At the base of the trunk was the entrance to the Heartwood, the locus of all Grove activity.

Eunny bypassed the bustle of the common room and clambered up the staircase to the residential branch of the Grove before she lost her nerve. It would be fine.