Page 12 of To Hunt a Ruby Remedy

Six

Ranulf

“Do you want me to show you the blackberry patch now?” I asked Scarlette as we finished breakfast.

Last night, I had discovered that I didn’t like her silences. They weren’t natural. Scarlette was meant to smile and talk and, most of all, ask questions. If I answered with single words, she stopped asking, folding in on herself. So, I answered. I answered fully, not wanting to dim her radiance.

I discovered that talking to Scarlette didn’t require me to pretend. So long as I talked to her, she didn’t care if I grumbled. She didn’t accuse me of being unfeeling or ask if I knew how to smile. Perhaps because with Scarlette I didn’t need to smile. I laughed.

It was dangerous, my shields cracking from the inside, but I’d repair those cracks. I knew what was coming and could protect myself. I’d be prepared.

“That would be perfect. I think I saw a basket in the guest room that is the right size. Let me grab it.”

I waited for her by the back door and led her out through the garden. The basket swung wildly from her arm with every step as she practically skipped at my side.

“You are going to leave a trail of blackberries on the forest floor and discover an empty basket when you return to the cottage if you keep that up.”

Scarlette laughed. “I’ll be more careful once the basket is full, but right now I’m too happy to care. The forest is so beautiful. I’ll miss it when I return home.”

An inevitability. A reminder that these moments with Scarlette were just that: moments, nothing more. Did she understand that, too?

“I never understood how my mother and sister could stand to leave,” I told her. In case that wasn’t warning enough, I added, “I love living out here.”

Scarlette’s smile grew impish. “I’m sure your desire to stay here has nothing to do with a dislike of dealing with strangers constantly, either.”

“True. But I still think I’d rather live in one of the forest villages than an isolated home away from the forest.”

She laughed. “You’d hate where I live. No trees, a few hundred nosy neighbors, and we are close enough to the capital that there are always travelers passing through. Solitude and nature are foreign concepts there.”

“How can nature be a foreign concept? Surely you have farms?”

Scarlette shrugged. “A farm is nothing like this. It’s not even a big garden. At least not the farms near Graenod. The farmland is just acre upon acre of wheat, barley, and corn.”

We arrived at the blackberry patch, and I plucked a plump berry from a bush. Sweet juice, with just the right amount of tartness, burst upon my tongue. “Why stay?”

I spoke casually, but my need to hear her answer was anything but casual. How strong were her ties to her home? I couldn’t lie to myself that I didn’t know why I cared, but at the same time, her answer didn’t matter. If she was devoted to her village, then she’d never consider living anywhere else. If she wasn’t, then what guarantee was there that she wouldn’t leave her next home, too?

There was no answer that would make me happy, so why had I even asked the question?

Scarlette paused with a berry halfway to her mouth. “Where else would I go? Mother and I have a home and jobs. The city would be even worse, and other villages wouldn’t have a need for us. We aren’t skilled at any particular craft. Mother mends and washes, and I serve drinks in a tavern.”

I frowned. That was what Scarlette spent her days doing back home? What a waste. “You are a skilled baker. Exceptionally organized and industrious. You should be able to make a home for yourself anywhere.”

“Thank you.” She dropped the berry into her basket and began picking more. “Things aren’t that easy, however. Opening a bakery would require finding a place where people would pay for bread and don’t already have access to it, then enough money to buy the building and ovens and everything else. I could probably find a job in another tavern, but any tavern that needed extra help would probably be no better than where I already work, and I’d have to find a new place to live. I’d lose money I don’t have trying to transition.”

For the first time, I wondered what her journey to Drakona Forest had cost Scarlette. I knew that only the truly desperate came all the way to the cottage, but I had forgotten somehow. Scarlette was just so happy; it was hard to remember that she couldn’t even afford a basic healing charm, that she had come to beg for charity on the advice of my sister. The journey would have cost her. Not only for food and a bed every night, but it meant days away from her job in that tavern.

Every day she remained in the forest cost her, even now that I was letting her stay in the cottage.

Ward shield me, sending her back to Wulfkin after she first showed up at my door had been cruel.

I shoved my hands in my pockets. “I should head back and work on your charm. Will you be able to find your way back to the cottage?”

She glanced over at me, surprised by my abrupt change of topic. “I can follow the path back. Thank you for showing me the way.”

I nodded, then pivoted and made my way back to the cottage. I thought I had seen a hint of disappointment mixed in with the surprise, but I had to be imagining it. Scarlette wouldn’t be disappointed that I was going back. She was desperate for the charm to save her mother. It was the only reason she was here.

She must be relieved that I wasn’t wasting any more time.

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