Page 20 of Mischief Maker
Right. I know.
“Thank you for the lesson,” I grunt. “I must be going now if I’m to gather all of this.”
Lucia just rubs her chin thoughtfully. “A purely transactional visit from a child? Who could have imagined.”
“It was good to see you, Mother,” I say, and I’m the tiniest bit honest, because despite the pain that comes with the truth, now I know how to help Faela.
“You too, Kireth.” She arches a brow at me. “Remember: forty-one.”
Chapter Eight
Faela
It’s been nearly five days since Kireth left, and I feel his absence acutely. I had gotten so accustomed to his chatter, his energetic presence, that it feels lonely and rather quiet without him around. With the crops all withering, there is little to do but attend to the livestock.
Has this immortal really become so important to me that I miss his companionship? I cannot get attached to him. When his tasks are spent and his time is up, he will leave me.
At the end of the fifth day, though, I hear Kireth’s singsong voice carry across the farm to where I’m spreading hay in the pen.
“Sad girl!” he calls out, springing into view as he comes down the road. “Where are you?”
I run to the fence and climb over it, and when he sees me, Kireth grins widely. I’m tempted to throw my arms around him, but I restrain myself.
“I’ve done as you asked,” he says, holding up the bag I’d given him when he left, “and I return bearing the solution.”
My heart leaps. So there is an answer to all of this. In the time that he’s been gone, the plants have further wilted and died, and now many of the stalks are black with sickness. I only hope that some of them can be saved with this cure he’s found.
“Thank you, thank you!” I could just kiss his face. “I don’t know what you did, but thank you.”
He wags a finger at me. “Don’t thank me until it works. And even then, don’t thank me. I’m doing what you asked.” He gestures at the house. “When you’re finished out here, let’s go inside. I have to brew a potion.”
I quickly wrap up my chores and gallop in through the front door. I don’t realize how much I’ve missed Kireth until he turns and smiles at me, that big, mischievous, enigmatic grin filling my heart with warm hope, and... longing. The need I’d felt for him the night before he left comes roaring back.
“My sad girl,” he says, crossing the distance between us. He lifts a finger to my face and runs it along my cheekbone. “Did you miss me?”
My mouth opens and closes, but no sound escapes. Of course I missed him. I missed his laughter, his jokes, his smiles. But I can’t tell him the truth, can I? And reveal just how weak I’ve become for him?
But a knowing look crosses his face as he watches me.
“Ah, I see.” His finger trails down from my cheek to my lips, and I gasp in surprise as he traces the seam of them.
Then I remember the potion. If there’s a way to bring back my farm, we must act quickly.
“Wait.” I sound a little breathless as I plant both my feet firmly on the ground. “What did you bring back? What do we need to do?”
Kireth blinks, as if he had forgotten. “Oh, right.” It’s with some reluctance that his hand leaves my mouth. He draws open the bag on the table, revealing an assortment of odd ingredients—plants, herbs, nuts, the corpse of a frog, a pinecone, a tiny bird’s egg, and a strange beetle I’ve never seen before. “Took me a while to find all of this.”
I peer down at everything he’s gathered. “What do we do with it?”
Kireth pulls a note out of his loincloth, and I wonder how that works. Does he have a pocket in there?
“I have a recipe.” He looks at me expectantly. “Should I make it?”
“Yes!” It comes out more forcefully than I’d intended. “I mean, yes. Please make it.”
“Forty,” he says, tallying in the air, and turns back to the table to begin.
There’s a lot of grinding with the mortar and pestle, and then Kireth asks me to retrieve some cold water from the river. When I return, he’s gutted the frog and mixed the innards up with the beetle and egg, along with the other brown-green mess. He adds some of the fresh water to the mixture and it’s an awful color as he swirls it around.
