Margot Butterwell's Arc

Chapter 2 of 6

The grieving man told others. Within a week, Margot's diner filled every night. People came for the food that sat beside their pain. She should have felt proud. Instead she stood at her griddle at dawn, counting jars. Her enchanted ingredients were nearly gone. The magic lived in the ingredients. Her grandmother had said so. But the special herbs did not grow at any market. Margot had used the last of the glowing chamomile the night before. Without it, her soup was only soup. Her grilled cheese was only bread and cheese. The line outside would leave empty. Derek and Dylan slouched in from their dragon van, drawn by the crowd. Derek's ears drooped when he saw her face. "You look like the amp blew," he said. "I'm out," Margot said. "The ingredients that carry the magic. I have enough for maybe three more bowls." Dylan looked at the line through the window. "That's forty people," he said. Derek scratched behind one ear. "Where'd your grandma get the stuff?" Margot stopped. She had never asked. Her grandmother always had it, drying in bunches by the window. Chamomile and orange nasturtium, tangled together in a clay pot. Margot had assumed it came from a shop. But nothing in any shop ever glowed. She closed the diner. She left a note on the door and followed the old memory. Her grandmother used to leave before sunrise with an empty basket. She came back with the pot full. Margot walked the way she half-remembered, past a weathered pub with green trim, until the buildings thinned into open grass. A man leaned in the pub doorway, wiping a glass. Short, red-bearded, a leprechaun in a battered green hat. He studied her the way a man studies a face he might know. "You're the soup girl," Finnegan said. Flat. "Half my regulars go to you now." He nodded at the field beyond his pub. "Your gran walked out there. Every morning. Fifteen years I watched her." "You knew her?" "Knew her basket," he said. "Chamomile. The little orange flowers. She never bought them. She picked them." Margot crossed the grass. She found the patch where the field dipped low. Chamomile and nasturtium grew wild there, tangled together, faintly glowing in the gray light. The same arrangement her grandmother dried by the window. The magic had never come from a shop. It grew here, free, for anyone who knew where to look. She filled her basket until her arms ached. When she stood, Finnegan watched from his doorway. "That patch feeds a lot of sad people," he said. "Feed them well." Margot carried the blooms back and reopened the diner before noon. She served every person in the line. But standing at her griddle, she understood the new problem. One wild patch could not fill a legendary tavern. If her dream was to heal the whole realm, she needed to grow the magic herself.