Page 17 of Sweets and Sycamores

“Because he’s my boss.” And he’d never corrected her, and he kept calling her Alecsandra, and as much as she wanted to correct him every time, she didn’t.

Mia tsked. “I had no idea my brother was one for honorifics,” she muttered more to herself.

Allie stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, and Mia halted with her.

“Brother?”

“Yes,” Mia said as if it was as obvious as the sun in the sky. “Dom’s my brother. He didn’t tell you?” Allie shook her head, and Mia laughed. “Wait, did you think—is that why you left the bakery earlier? You thought—”

“I didn’t think anything!” Allie blurted out, but Mia was still laughing.

“Come on.” Mia motioned for Allie to keep walking.

They strolled to the end of Maple Street and where Allie usually made a right to go to her secluded space in the forest, now they made a left, heading around the market, and in a couple of minutes they stopped in front of a blue-painted building.

“The Mystical Creatures Institute” was written in large, white letters on top of the double wooden doors.

Allie and Mia walked inside, the receiving hall empty save for a cherry-red wood desk at the end.

Behind it sat a petite lady with gray hair and elongated eyes, who Allie recognized from the bakery as Mrs. Chen.

She’d come in every two days to get fresh bread and was one of Allie’s chief scowlers.

“Hi Mrs. Chen!” Mia chirped.

“Hello, dear.” The elderly lady offered her a smile, which quickly wilted when she noticed Allie approaching the desk as well.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Chen.” The woman made a gruff sound and looked through her round glasses at the paper in Allie’s hand. “I think there was a mistake with a delivery this week. A baby dragon was delivered to the bakery instead of here,” she explained.

Mrs. Chen took the paper from her and studied it at arm’s length.

“It says here the delivery was three days ago. Why did you only bring it today?”

“The Institute was closed during the time I was not working,” Allie said, keeping her voice even. Mrs. Chen scoffed and shoved the paper back at her.

“You can bring the creature back here during the week.”

Okay. All right. She could do that. She would tell Dominic she needed some time to take care of this.

“But what will happen to him here?” Allie couldn’t help the question that bubbled out from inside her.

The lady rolled her eyes as if it took her immense effort to answer. “We’ll store him with the others and put him up for adoption.”

Allie knew she was trying her luck with another question, but if she were to bring Ekko here, she needed to know what his fate would be.

“Are dragons adopted often?”

“Girl, I’m busy. Go.” She gestured for them to leave.

Mia and Allie muttered their goodbyes and went back outside.

“For what it’s worth, I helped around the Institute last summer when they catalogued all the creatures, and I remember there were more than fifty dragons already housed.” Mia squeezed her arm.

“Thanks,” Allie whispered.

She didn’t want to leave Ekko in a cage for gods knew how many years. She thought about keeping him, but what would Dominic say?

A problem for later today, Allie decided as she took a long breath of chilly air. She loved the cooler temperatures more with each day and didn’t miss the sweat and stickiness of Pearls Fields. Or Pearls Fields at all.

They walked down the wide street lined with sycamores on both sides. The huge, coppery trees had trunks so thick that three or four people could embrace them.

“So all the trees here are sycamores?” Allie asked, watching the amber giants flutter their leaves in the chill midday breeze.

“Indeed. Sycamore Falls is rooted in old magic, and there was a spell placed on the land here long before the town came to exist. Before humans settled here, it was known as the Land of the Sycamores. Most of them are hundreds, if not thousands of years old. They’re wise and their magic is pure, and they keep this place safe and sheltered from any calamities. Well, at least until last year.”

“What happened last year?”

Mia studied Allie’s face for a while, and she wondered if the Archivist was Reading her. She didn’t know if Archivists had that type of magic, but she had nothing to hide, so she waited patiently until something settled on Mia’s face, and she spoke again.

“A terrible tornado wrecked the town,” she said on a long sigh.

“There were a couple of casualties too, and many people injured. We rebuilt quickly using a lot of new magic, and that was when the town officially became a ‘new magic’ place. Still, no one expected it. The land here and surrounding the town should have been protected by the sycamores’ magic. ”

“Does this mean that the sycamores are…sick?” Allie asked.

“Something like that.” Mia’s cheery demeanor was diminished by a sadness clinging to the corners of her eyes, and Allie thought of giving her a moment of silence to process the pain that wreckage must have caused.

Petra had taught Allie when she was little that magic breaks sometimes, or it sickens.

They had read books together on this, and Allie knew that happened when something or someone interfered with a spell.

Unfortunately, there were rarely cures for broken magic, and the few that existed could be performed only by a special class of magic wielders: Mages.

Mages were Wizards or Witches who had immense power, elemental or not, that allowed them to weave magic and spells to their will, making them the only wielders who could cure broken magic.

But they were also rare and precious, very few of them born in a generation.

The Diviners’ Order, an organization Mages were signed up to just by virtue of being born, protected the Mages and dictated their lives by assigning them missions. It was a job one was born with.

“Were any Mages assigned here to investigate the magic on the sycamores?” Allie broke the silence.

Mia looked at her again as she had a few moments ago, but it seemed like this time she decided against sharing more with Allie.

“Here we are,” she said instead as they came to the entrance of an enormous park.

The park was right at the foot of the mountain, an open field with scattered wooden benches and light posts. People walked their pets, some were running, or just enjoying the warm sunlight. On the far-right side was a tent with a sign that read “Harvest Festival Registrations.”

Mia headed toward the tent and Allie trailed her silently, wondering if she shouldn’t have asked about the Mages.

Maybe it was a sensitive subject around the town because the Order hadn’t sent anybody.

If that was the case, and the incident already happened one year ago…

It was just a matter of time until something happened again.

After Mia signed some papers and picked the best available locations for her storytelling booth and for Dom’s Sweets as well, they went back to Maple Street the same way they came.

A question brewed in Allie’s mind and heart, and she wished her instincts were wrong, although they rarely were.

“Hey, Mia.” The Archivist turned her brown eyes on her. “That Witch you mentioned on the night we met… Did she have anything to do with the spell on the sycamores?”

Mia’s mouth pressed into a line as she nodded. “She’s the one who broke it.”

Allie wanted nothing more than to have been wrong about this.

Her heart squeezed thinking about all the pain this one person had caused.

Even after all her life as a Witch, she didn’t understand how most of them were so selfish and…

evil. But she understood completely why people here were on edge around her.

This was one of those days when she really, really wished she wasn’t a Witch.