Aelindra Moonwhisper's Arc

Chapter 7 of 9

The vines were still small when Aelindra went back inside, but she could feel the shop settling around her like a coat that finally fit. The boy stood by the counter with the blanket still on his shoulders. He watched her scrape flour into a bowl. He did not ask what she was doing. She looked at him and thought about the six weeks he had counted for himself on the cobblestones, and she thought about how many hands she would need before frost. "Come here," she said. "You're going to learn." He came. She showed him how to measure flour with the flat of a knife. She showed him how to feel butter for the right cold. He copied her hands. He did not talk. When she cracked an egg he cracked one, and his shell came clean on the first try. She had cracked a hundred before she got that. She said so. He shrugged. "Watched you this morning," he said. She taught him the small magic next, because he had already seen the large one. She held his palm over the bowl and told him to think of a person he wanted to help. He closed his eyes. His hand went warm under hers. The dough in the bowl gave one slow turn on its own. The oven made a low pleased sound from the corner, moss shifting on its shoulders. "Quick learner," the oven said. Aelindra kept her face still. She had not expected the dough to move for him on the first try. She asked him small things while they worked. Where he slept before. What he ate. Who he had lost. He gave her one sentence at a time and then went back to the flour. A boy froze last winter three feet from him. His mother had a cough and then did not. He liked bread better than meat. He said all of this while shaping a bun. He did not stop shaping. The rain cloud drifted down from the rafter and hung near the boy's shoulder. He did not rain. He watched the boy's hands and made a small huffing sound that in a person would have been approval. The boy glanced up at him. "Your cloud likes me," he said. "He's picky," Aelindra said. Nimbus did not argue. He stayed by the boy through the whole tray. They baked six buns together. Three carried a small warmth she guided into them. Three were only buns. She lined them on the cooling rack and stepped back. The boy stood beside her, hands white with flour, breathing steady. She had a helper now. She had someone to teach. She had also, she realized, given a child forbidden magic in his hands, and she could not take it back.