Page 5 of Muddled Magic
Almost.
I turned when I felt someone tugging at my dress, finding little Clover with her thumb in her mouth and a snapdragon sprig in her hand. My favorite flower.
My niece plucked her thumb from her mouth long enough to say, “Momma said you were sad so I got you a flower.” Then she thrust the snapdragon at me.
My smile wasn’t forced in the slightest. “Thank you, Clover. Watch this.” I sent a tendril of magic into the bare roots, the solo sprig bursting into a full bouquet. The little girl squealed with delight, then squeezed between me and Rose, climbing up on the bench to reach the table for one of the many vases so the new flowers could get a drink.
The vases were stuffed full of Aunt Hyacinth’s masterpieces, so we used my water glass instead. I was very happy with just the peach wine, anyway. Then Clover, deciding her Auntie Meadow needed her more than her mother did, plunked down in my lap to share a lunch off my plate.
“I love chicken,” Clover said, leaning forward to take a drumstick from the platter as it was passed down the table. She took a wing in her other little fist, just to be sure. Then she craned her head back at me, her brown curls scrunching around chubby little cheeks. “Isn’t chicken great?”
“Sure is,” I replied. “And your Auntie Peony is a fantastic cook.”
And yet today, I found it tasted no better than dust.
CHAPTER THREE
Breakfast in the Hawthorne family, unless it was a Sunday, was an individual affair. After the early morning training sessions with Dad, you decided how to spend the rest of your morning before the real work around the manor began at eight. Some members went back to bed, some congregated on the terrace, others went for solitary walks with just coffee or tea, some skipped it all together, but one thing was for sure—between seven and eight o’clock in the morning, that time was your own.
Which was why, after checking the chores chart in the hallway, I took my breakfast of toast and apple butter on the go instead of curling up in my favorite nook with my book du jour. My steps were brisk as I traveled the well-worn path to the woodpile. It was situated in the only woods Grandmother allowed to grow on the estate, and it only grew trees that were preferred by witches for their protection abilities: ash, rowan, and holly.
Cousins Boar and Otter were already there, lean Otter reclining on a stack of felled logs and tuning his guitar, burly Boar splitting wood with an axe. He didn’t need to, not when magic could do the splitting for him, but my cousin was obsessed with his physique, and chopping wood was a practice in strength, cardio, and joint fluidity.
“I need you to switch jobs with me today,” I told him without preamble.
“Good morning to you too, Meadow,” he said with a bemused half-smile, wrangling a log as big around as his chest was on the stump to split. “And not a chance.”
“Otter?” I quipped. “What about you?”
“What’s your chore?” the musician asked, carefully extracting a guitar string from the tiny claws of a kitten. One of the manor cats Grandmother allowed to exist on the property—so long as they earned their keep by presenting the matriarch of our family proof of their vermin-catching abilities every morning—had borne a litter on the summer solstice, and her kittens had taken to following my gentle cousin around, drawn to his music and easy personality. All five of them played around his lap and legs, tiny claws catching in his cloths, but he never admonished them.
“I’m in the vegetable garden,” I answered in a rush, hoping he was too preoccupied with his guitar and the kittens to truly hear me.
“Ugh, you’re harvesting?” Otter blew me a raspberry and then swished the hair out of his eyes with a flick of his head. “Nope.”
He strung the replacement string and listened intently as he strummed a note before twisting a tuning peg a smidge. Finally satisfied with his guitar, he told Boar, “I’m ready now.”
“About time, maestro.”
“Oye, the work day technically doesn’t start for another fifteen minutes, thank you very much.”
“This whole cord needs split before tonight,” Boar fired back. “Hearth’s gonna be busy, so we need to get busy.” He swung the axe, the log splintering into four pieces. Then he grinned at me, making his pectoral muscles dance under his peasant top.
Aunt Eranthis, the family’s accountant and seamstress, had been stuck in the Renaissance Era of fashion for the men and “milkmaid” for the women for decades. That meant mix-and-match drawstring peasant tops, button breeches and trousers, and sundresses that always had some kind of floral embellishment on them. She even made our winterwear, which was in the style of fashionable cloaks, though Grandmother made sure we always had more modern clothing on hand for beyond-the-manor excursions.
I rolled my eyes at my cousin’s display. “Yes, you’re very strong and muscly, whoop-de-do. But I need you to do me a solid and switch with me. It could be worse, you know. I could be tasked with cleaning out the coops today.”
All three of us shuddered at the thought. The manor kept enough chickens, ducks, and geese to feed close to forty people, which was to say, a lot, and while they were free-ranging, their coops were still large and in need of frequent cleaning.
“But you like being a picker, that’s your thing,” Boar said, not convinced. “You’re a foodie like Mom and a gardening nutjob like Aunt Hyacinth.”
“My mom is not a nutjob,” Otter cut in.
We both gave him a look. Aunt Hyacinth was the most high-strung of her generation, and everyone knew it. That’s why calm Uncle Badger was her perfect mate—an anchor through all her perfectionist neuroses.
Otter shrugged, letting his protest drop. “She’s my mother. I have to defend her, even if what you’re saying is true.”
Boar situated another log and swung again, the dry wood splitting easily and adding to the pile surrounding the stump. “You gonna do your job or what, Otter?”