Chapter Twelve

At the start of her first summer alone, Marigold begins every day by talking to her bees and helping them find new flora to pollinate. She is working on a sunflower garden in an open glade, of which the bees and butterflies are growing quite fond. Recently, she crafted a mnemonic to remember which honeys are best suited for certain spells: lavender for love, clover for clarity, tupelo for truth, peach blossom for protection, black sage for betterment (really, healing is the correct word, but she needed something that started with a B), and acacia for all else. She spends her afternoons buried in a grimoire, studying. Her goal is to have the entire healing section memorized by this month's end. She wakes with the sun—any later and she would miss her first customers. They tend to come at the crack of dawn or late in the evening, not so much in between. It is a rare treat that someone comes at a reasonable hour. After helping her first customer—a farmer who needed the tip of their finger reattached after an incident with a pocketknife—she then takes a look at her inventory. Her supply of lavender honey is running dangerously low. She slips into a white day dress to head into the apiary because bees do not like dark colors. It reminds them of big predators like bears who want to steal from them.

The bees welcome her happily with loud buzzes, and she greets them with a smile. She pulls a frame heavy with honey from the lavender hives and brings it inside to drain. There is enough honey for about two jars, which is a healthy harvest. When she returns the empty frame to the hive, she stretches beneath the light, allowing her skin to soak up every drop of warm yellow heat.

In the distance, a little blue boat approaches, and her heart soars. She could recognize that little blue boat anywhere. August is home, and finally visiting again. She runs to greet him, her bare feet burning against the stone path.

"August!" she screams from the edge of the dock as she waves her hands in the air.

"Hello, Marigold," he calls from the boat. His voice is a little bit dull, like he's trying to cover up bad news. She helps him tie the boat and step onto the isle.

"Everything all right?" She steadies him with her hand on his shoulder. His chipper facade starts to fade, allowing her to see the ache that lies beyond his surface. Swollen eyes, gaunt cheeks, chapped lips. He shakes his head and says, "Not quite, unfortunately."

"What's the matter?" she asks as they walk together. He's alone, which is odd. She didn't anticipate being his first stop upon his return, and surely Lottie and Edmund would not want to leave his side after being apart for so long. "Where are your faithful companions?"

"Lottie would not be caught dead on a magical isle. She doesn't believe in anything fun," he says with a tired laugh. "And Edmund, well—it seems that he had not the patience to wait for my return. He's moved on."

She gasps so hard that she chokes on the air. "What? You two are no longer together?"

"So it seems. Though he lacked the decency to respond to my letters and tell me." They turn toward the cottage together as she lightly rubs his back.

"I am sorry, August. That's so unfair to you."

"Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I suppose it was not my place to ask him to wait for me for months. It's not easy to go that long without affection."

"I beg to differ! I have gone nearly five years without affection and I am perfectly fine. Edmund made a promise, and time does not give him permission to break it."

"I suppose that's true," he says solemnly before furrowing his brow. "Wait, did you say five years? What happened five years ago?"

"Didn't your mother ever teach you not to pry?" she says quickly as she opens the door to the cottage and rushes inside.

Following her, he says, "She tried, but that is not in my nature. Prying is my strongest talent."

The door closes behind him and he takes a seat at the table, looking up at her through his thick lashes. "Who broke your heart?"

Sighing, Marigold sits across from him. The breeze from the kitchen window tickles the back of her neck as she brings her hair to the side and fidgets with the ends. "There were a few small heartbreaks when I was young. A girl who never responded to my terribly written love letters, a boy who threw away my sad attempt at a portrait of him. But the real heartbreak, the one that felt like a knife wound, was George. He was my first and only love."

It feels strange to call it love now. It was hardly so grand—it was merely someone else giving her permission to love herself, and then trying to take that away.

"What made you love him?"

"Upon reflection," she says, tucking her hair behind her ear, "I am certain it was less about him and more about enjoying the feeling of being chosen by someone who I thought was better than me. I was infamously strange back home, you see, and he seemed to like that. For a short time, at least. But then he proposed to another girl in front of me right before I came here."

He takes her hand and gives her a sympathetic look. "Was she pretty?"

"Gorgeous."

He scoffs. "That's the worst."

Laughing, she says, "It's perfectly fine. Heartbreak is not always bad. It led me to my purpose here."

"Well, maybe you can help me find some purpose through this heartbreak of my own. I worry that it will take me a lifetime to heal from losing Edmund unless there's a spell to fix that."

"A spell to mend a broken heart," she says knowingly, and he nods. She flips through her grimoire quickly, though she is nearly certain she remembers the spell perfectly. She had just read it yesterday.

"Give me a few moments and I'll have it ready for you. And again, I'm so sorry to see you like this. I can't even imagine how you must be feeling."

He smiles and shrugs. "Even with a broken heart, I still would rather feel this loss than never have had the love at all."

She flinches, suddenly wobbling under the weight of her curse. She shakes it off and says, "Ah, so you're a hopeless romantic, then?"

"I'm certainly a romantic, and at this time, I do feel quite hopeless," he says with a laugh as he pushes his curly black hair off his forehead.

"Well, I can fix the hopeless part, but I do hope you keep your romanticism." She smiles and starts gathering tools and ingredients.

"Can I help you at all?" He rolls up his blue linen sleeves.

She almost shakes her head before glaring up at the top shelf. That shelf is her nemesis. No shelf has any business being that high. "Could you grab that jar of blue hyacinth petals there for me?"

He barely has to stretch to reach the jar. He hands it to her and returns to his position at the table.

"You're a peach," she says as she sprinkles the petals into her bowl. She grabs black sage honey, orange peels, lavender essence, and the last of her moon water, mixing everything with a hard stone grinder. August laughs softly behind her, and she turns to find him crouched beneath the kitchen table.

"What are you doing down there?"

"Come see," he calls, and she puts her tools down lightly to follow his voice. She joins him beneath the table, where he points to nearly illegible writing on the underside of the wood. It reads:

M + A = Best Friends

There are also stick figure drawings of the two of them, surrounded by unnaturally tall flowers. Or maybe they are supposed to be trees? Or… birds with long legs? It's impossible to tell. The pair erupt in laughter.

"I cannot believe this is still here," he says when he catches his breath.

"I didn't even remember this until now!"

"I think I did the writing and you did the drawing," he says as he traces everything with his finger.

She hides her eyes in her hands and says, "That sounds right. I've always been a terrible artist."

"What are you talking about? Those are the nicest rain clouds I've ever seen," August says through his laughter.

She has tears in her eyes from laughing. "I think they were supposed to be flowers."

"Oh no," he says as he starts to crawl out from under the table. "Then, yes, a terrible artist," he says, extending his hand to her and helping her stand.

She straightens her dress and says, "Thank you for reminding me of that. Do you think there are other poor drawings hidden around here?"

"I'm sure of it. We did everything together when we were young, including vandalism."

She giggles, turning back to her work to complete his spell. "How did you and I come to be? Your family knew my grandmother, I take it."

"Well, the whole town knew Althea. But my mother became very close with your mother and grandmother after she came here desperate to have a child. Your grandmother gave her a spell, and then I was born just a few months after you. So in a way, I owe my life to honey magic," he says, and her heart flutters. She thinks of her grandmother, many years ago, helping the young woman who would eventually mother the boy standing in front of her. Life has such a peculiar way of bringing people together.

Once the mixture forms a grainy wet paste, she needs only one more ingredient to add.

"August, can you make yourself cry?" she asks over her shoulder.

"I can certainly say I have never tried."

"Well, can you give it a try? I need a tear from the broken heart to complete the spell. Or I could stomp on your foot really hard. Or get one of the bees to sting you," she says, though she is only partly joking.

"I see. Let me try."

He widens his eyes and stares at her unblinking for almost a full minute. The pair keep laughing in each other's faces during this staring contest, and the tears finally come. He shuts his eyes tightly and blinks rapidly to recover from the dry burn, and she brings over a tiny teaspoon to scrape the tears from his cheek. She stirs them into the bowl and begins to pour the mixture into a perfect heart-shaped bottle.

"You'll take this home and keep it at your bedside. Put a small amount over your heart before falling asleep."

August eagerly takes the bottle from her and seems to try to stop himself from wrapping her in a hug, but he cannot. He embraces her and spins her around in a complete circle before allowing her feet back on the ground.

"You are my favorite witch in the whole wide world! What do I owe you for this?"

Head spinning, she says, "Happy to be of service. You owe me nothing, but I would appreciate your company more often now that you are back."

"I can promise that. I'll return as often as I can, and hopefully in better spirits after this spell works."

She beams. "I look forward to it, August."

"Farewell, Marigold," he says, bowing out of the door. As he leaves, there is a sinking feeling in her stomach, like she didn't know how badly she wanted him to stay until he was already gone. His tiny boat floats out of view from her vantage point of the window, and she is alone again.