Page 35

“I DO NOT WANT to be here,” Mary Ann whispered as the footman helped them from the carriage.

Cath’s gaze swept to the top of the black iron gate before them, all curled bars and jagged-teeth finials. Jack-O’-Lanterns were staked along the top of the gate, their grotesquely carved faces staring down at the road, strings of their internal pulp stuck to the bars underneath.

On the opposite side of the gate, acres of dark mud were spotted with vines and leaves and gourds—most were goldish-orange, but others were ghost-white or yellow-green or speckled with crimson.

There were pumpkins as small as Catherine’s ear and some the size of the carriage.

There were smooth pumpkins and warted pumpkins, fat pumpkins and narrow, caved-in pumpkins that lay like beached whales in the mud.

Fog had rolled in from the nearby forest, covering the ground in misty gray.

Though Catherine was wearing her heaviest shawl, she felt chilled to the bone as she looked out onto the gloomy patch.

“I’m beginning to have second thoughts myself,” she confessed.

“Let’s leave,” Mary Ann prodded, latching on to Catherine’s doubts with renewed enthusiasm.

“We’ll get pumpkins at the market like everyone else.

They’ll probably be more cost effective anyway.

Or, better yet, let’s not make a pumpkin dessert at all.

Why not something with peaches? Everyone likes peaches. ”

“Pumpkins are seasonal right now and seasonal desserts are always best. And they do say that Sir Peter’s sugar pie pumpkins are the sweetest in the kingdom.”

“Fine, but—why not currants? Currants are seasonal. Or apples? You make a fine apple crumble…”

Catherine chewed on her lower lip. “I do make a fine apple crumble,” she agreed. Sighed. Roughly shook her head. “We’re being silly. We’re here, and I’ve already chosen a recipe, and we might as well get this over with. He’s a farmer, isn’t he? He’ll be glad for our business.”

“Are you sure? It’s not very welcoming.” Mary Ann eyed the piked Jack-O’-Lanterns. “In fact, he could really use a business adviser.”

“Too bad your expertise is already spoken for. Come on, we’ll be in and out in the flutter of a hummingbird’s wing.

” Cath inched closer to the gate. She could see a small cottage situated to the north side of the patch, with a curl of smoke coming out of the chimney and firelight flickering through the windows. “They seem to be home.”

The gate squeaked on its reluctant hinges as she pushed it open.

“Oh, fine,” Mary Ann muttered. “Wait one moment while I grab my bonnet.” She rushed back to the carriage.

Knotting her hands together, Catherine stepped onto the path that bordered the pumpkin patch.

She inhaled the smell of fresh-churned dirt and growing things, but beneath the freshness was also something akin to mold and rot.

She grimaced. It was impossible to imagine anything pleasant coming from this land, but the rumors about Peter’s famed pumpkins were unmistakable.

Great baking began with exceptional ingredients. And she needed to win this contest.

“I feel like we’re trespassing,” Mary Ann said, shutting the gate behind them.

Cath turned, about to agree, but stopped short. Mary Ann’s bonnet was one she’d never seen before. Simple but beautiful, made of crisp blue-dyed muslin that matched Mary Ann’s eyes. It was tied with a sunflower-yellow ribbon.

“You have a new bonnet.”

“Yes, I bought it yesterday. At Hatta’s Marvelous Millinery.” Mary Ann looped the ribbons into a bow.

Cath’s eyes widened. “You didn’t!” she said, trying to imagine Mary Ann browsing through the shop where she’d drank tea and stood on the table and cowered from a monster attack.

“What?” said Mary Ann, grinning cheekily. “I simply had to see it after you told me about the tea party. Besides, it’s hardly your secret to keep. All the town’s gossip has been about the extraordinary new hat shop. Now there’s a man who knows how to market to his customers. What do you think?”

“It’s… lovely,” Cath answered. “You’re lovely in it.”

Mary Ann shrugged modestly. “It’s by no means the most elaborate piece that was on display, but the moment I saw it I felt like it was just right. Wearing it makes me feel almost…” She hesitated a long moment. Too long.

“What?” Cath prodded.

Mary Ann looked away. “Whimsical,” she murmured.

It took Catherine a moment to realize her friend was blushing.

Mary Ann never blushed.

“Whimsical,” Cath repeated.

“It’s silly, I know. But you’re always dreaming of roses and lemon trees, and the Marquess has such a grand imagination when it comes to the stories he tells, and even Cheshire is passionate over tuna and cream.

Whereas, to me, life is all numbers and logic.

Profit and loss. Practical and safe. I thought it might be nice to let myself just…

dream. For once.” She fidgeted with a yellow ribbon.

“With this hat, it seems possible. Why”—her eyes brightened—“this morning, I even had a fantasy that I’d single-handedly balanced the budget for the royal treasury, and all of Hearts saw me as a hero. ”

Cath shook her head, baffled. “Had some villain knocked the budgie off balance?”

“Never mind that. It was the hero part that was important. All my life, I never dreamed I could be anything but a maid, just plain old me.”

“Oh, Mary Ann.” Cath pulled her into an embrace. “I never knew you felt that way. I would share all my dreams with you if I could.”

“I know, Cath. And you do. You share the most important dream with me… our dream.”

Cath smiled. “Yes, and this is the beginning of it. These pumpkins, this baking contest, and those twenty gold crowns. Of course, I’ll need my brilliant business partner to tell me what to do with those crowns once we have them. I would be sure to make horrible decisions if left to my own devices.”

“You would,” said Mary Ann, without apology. “But have no fear. The bonnet doesn’t seem to affect my head for basic mathematics.”

“Good. Then let’s go find the best pumpkins in this patch, shall we?”

They picked their way toward the cottage, their boots squishing into the ankle-deep mud.

To their right, they passed a picket fence—or what had once been a picket fence—though now it looked more like a series of uneven, half-rotted wooden boards with crackled, peeling paint.

It surrounded a smaller patch, set off from the farm’s main acreage, bearing signs of recent destruction and still smelling of smoke.

Charred vines piled on top of one another, blackened stumps that may have once been pumpkins, blistered paint where flame had touched the fence boards.

This corner of the patch looked abandoned.

The dirt path turned to loose gravel and weeds as they approached the cottage. Their footsteps crunched in the eerie quiet .

Cath plastered on a friendly smile and knocked on the door. They waited, their shoulders pressed together for warmth, but the only noise inside was the pop and crackle of a lonely fireplace. Catherine knocked again, harder, but was met with more silence.

After a third knock, she began to wonder if Peter Peter and his wife weren’t home after all. She took a step back and searched the windows, but they were hung with a mesh of pumpkin vines.

“I suppose they’re not home,” Mary Ann said, sagging with relief.

Catherine scanned the patch. The pumpkins were like baubles disappearing into the fog. She had half a mind to grab a few and run.

“Do you hear that?” said Mary Ann.

Catherine cocked her head and listened. A faint noise—sawing, she thought, the back-and-forth grate of teeth ripping through wood.

“Let’s go see.” She ducked away from the cottage door.

“Must we?” Mary Ann whined, but she followed Cath anyhow, through a tangle of vines that had overgrown their row and crossed over the mud-squelching path.

Rounding to the back of the cottage, Cath spotted a pair of lanterns flickering off the limbs of the encroaching forest, silhouetting the shells of two enormous pumpkins.

They were the biggest pumpkins she’d ever seen.

Their severed stems were the width of tree trunks and their orange flesh reached the same height as the cottage’s roof.

The pumpkin farthest from them had even been carved to look like a building of sorts, with tiny square windows cut from its flesh and an iron pipe sticking out through the ceiling that could have been a chimney.

Peter Peter was standing on a rickety ladder against the second pumpkin, pushing a saw back and forth through its shell.

He was dressed in filthy overalls and sweating, every muscle straining as he pushed the saw in and out, out and in.

Watery orange liquid oozed from the cut and dripped down the pumpkin’s side .

Afraid to startle him, Catherine and Mary Ann waited until he’d finished the cut.

Hanging the saw from a hook on the ladder, he pushed at the pumpkin’s shell, forcing a tall, thin piece of flesh into the gourd.

It left a window barely wider than Catherine’s hand.

Inside she could see the stringy guts and seeds dangling from the pumpkin’s ceiling.

The smell of fresh-cut squash rolled over them.

Covering her mouth, Catherine coughed.

Peter turned so fast he nearly slipped off the ladder, but caught himself on a vine that hung down the pumpkin’s side.

“What’re you doing here?” he barked.

“Good day, Sir Peter,” said Catherine, curtsying. “We’re so sorry to bother you, but I was hoping I might be able to purchase some of your famed sugar pie pumpkins. I’m entering the baking contest at tomorrow’s Turtle Days Festival and I have my heart set on making a spiced pumpkin cake.”

Peter glared at them and Cath had the horrible vision of him sawing them both into pieces.

She shuddered. Mary Ann glanced sideways at her, and Catherine brightened her smile to hide the horrifying thoughts in her head.