Page 52 of The Lone Wolf Café
“I am. We can still stay here though.” I saw the faintest hint of a blush tint Rowena’s cheeks. “No one’s going to come through between now and three. Everyone’s setting up for the pumpkin carving contest tonight.”
The pumpkin carving contest.I opened my mouth, then snapped it shut.
My first instinct, as usual, was to pry. To ask Rowena why she wasn’t going to this event. Why she didn’t go toanyevent. Why she was a recluse in her own community, one full of witches who seemed to avoid her.
But prying would get me nowhere. It already made Rowena, Juniper, and plenty of other witches in town uncomfortable. It made Fritzi run away, and Mavro literally poof out of existence. It was driving people away from me.
And Rowena just invited me to spend time with her. We could decorate cookies and sip coffee and tea while a warm fire crackled in the fireplace. I could listen to her hum that little tune, until I’d memorized enough of it to join her. Maybe we’d bump into each other again while working.
Maybe she’d hug me again.
Enjoy the moments you have,I reminded myself.Take advantage of this time, and stop dwelling on the future.
“Sounds great,” I smiled, and her glossy brown eyes lit up. “I’ll bring the cookies to the front of the shop.”
“And I’ll boil some tea,” Rowena replied. “I know you’re not a fan of it, but I have a new blend I’d like you to try.”
“Okay,” I nodded. It was true – I still didn’t like tea. But I was willing to try it. For Rowena, I was willing to try anything.
“Let’s do it.”
I hadn’t felt so happy and content in a long time.
Now that the café wasn’t swarming with customers, it finally felt cozy and relaxed. The faerie fire orbs glowed a dull, warm color, somewhere between orange and yellow, their fiery shadessoftened by the opaque off-white fabric of the lanterns. Mavro happily settled himself onto the hot plate with a piece of charcoal, and Rowena struck a match and lit the fireplace. She even pulled out a few large, earth-toned candles, and the autumn scents of cinnamon, pine, and hazelnut wafted through my nose as I prepared our cookie-frosting station.
I sighed, enjoying the feeling of my lungs expanding and contracting. The soothing sounds of the teapot boiling and the fireplace crackling made me want to curl up in one of the high-backed chairs with a plush blanket and a hefty book.
But of course, I couldn’t. We had work to do.
And to top it all off, for the first time since I’d arrived at the café, Rowena fetched a record from the back closet and plopped it into the vintage record player near the front door.
“Where’d you get that record player?” I asked. Even with my limited knowledge of the outside world, I knew record players were ancient technology by human standards.
“It was my mother’s,” Rowena replied, her tone both sorrowful and reminiscent.
“She… she passed, didn’t she?”
Rowena nodded. “Six years ago. I was nineteen. We witches have the best healing abilities in the world… but there’s only so much we can do for cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright,” Rowena smiled sadly. “I have lots of beautiful memories of her. Including listening to this old record player.”
Rowena turned the device on, and she lowered a needle-like instrument onto the record as it began to spin. The record player had a very rich, loud, velvety sound for such a little device, and the café was soon filled with the rustic hum of old folk music.
The cookie frosting started off as a serious project. Rowena and I experimented with different piping tips and styles, creating a variety of rosettes and swirls on the cookies. When itcame to sprinkles, I dumped a bunch of them on each cookie, while Rowena placed them individually, in a more methodical manner.
The record player filled the air with sound, so we were content to work without conversation. But in between songs, when Rowena had to flip the records or swap them out, we chatted about our lives.
I learned lots of little details about Rowena. She was twenty-five years old, and her birthday was in September. Like me, she was an avid reader, and we had some heated debates about our favorite fantasy novels. She drank a cup of Earl Grey every morning because it was her mother’s habit when she was a teenager. Like Rowena, her mother was never a fan of coffee.
Rowena enjoyed rainy and snowy days when she could light the fireplace, make herself a cup of tea, and read a good book without anyone bothering her. I knew she kept to herself because she was an outcast, but I got the sense she enjoyed the peace and quiet of only having herself for company.
I could relate to that. For the first time in my life, I’d been on my own in that run-down little cottage, reading alone next to my faerie fire lanterns every night. At first, being alone terrified me, since on Hollenboro I was constantly surrounded by my pack. But now, I’d come to enjoy it. Because solitude wasn’t just about being alone. It was about independence. Being able to learn and explore and navigate the world on my own terms.
I even offered Rowena some information about myself. Like how I’d spent much of my life taking care of my younger sisters after my mother passed. How I was always surrounded by family, and my life was full of activity, yet I felt so isolated. How at night, I’d sit on the shoreline of my home island while the cold air billowed around me, wondering what was at the other end of the vast, dark ocean that sprawled all the way across the horizon.
Of course, I explained all this in the context of being a human living on one of the lobster fishing islands off the coast. Plenty of them were populated by humans, and being able to tell my story without giving away my identity brought me a sense of peace and comfort. I’d never had these sorts of discussions with anyone before.
