Ember and Ink

Six years ago I kissed a man at a party and he disappeared the next morning.

I'm thirty-four now. I've lived in Thornwood for five and a half years. And it was one kiss, one, at Kaylee's thirtieth birthday party, on the back porch with the string lights sagging and somebody's drunk uncle singing inside.

Roy Abernathy. Kaylee's friend from her enchantment workshop. He carved runes into jewelry and he had sawdust on his sleeves and he laughed at every terrible joke I made, which should have been my first warning. Nobody finds me that funny.

We talked on that porch for two hours. About ink. He collected strange inks, ink made from squid, ink that glowed faintly blue, ink brewed from crushed ember flowers. I told him about my job at a museum back then, archiving old spell diagrams, the good ones, the ones nobody had catalogued in fifty years. He leaned in when I talked. Actually leaned in, like what I said mattered.

Then he kissed me. I kissed him back. It was electric. It was the kind of kiss where you forget the porch exists.

And the next morning, gone. Kaylee said he'd taken a commission up north. A big one. Months of work. He'd left before dawn without saying goodbye to anyone.

He left a sketch on the kitchen table. A phoenix, half finished, pencil lines fading out where the wing should have been. Nobody knew who it was for. I took it home. I still have it, pressed flat in a folder in my desk drawer at the museum, which is a normal thing to do with a drawing a stranger left behind, absolutely normal, don't look at me like that.

Six years. I dated other people. Good people, even. I stopped checking market listings for his name. Mostly.

Anyway.

---

Saturday morning, Thornwood market. Spell-lanterns bobbing over the stalls like fat lazy wasps. A courier bird landed on Moe Thorne's awning and started reciting somebody's love letter out loud, which is exactly the kind of gossip service you get from a bird raised in this village.

I was volunteering at the market desk because Kaylee runs the whole circus now and she has learned that I cannot say no to her.

"Stall checks," she said, handing me a clipboard. "Just walk the rows, make sure nobody's selling cursed items without a license. Easy."

"Define cursed."

"Tania. It's fruit and trinkets. Go."

So I went. Row three. And there, between a candle seller and a woman selling self-stirring teapots, a booth with neat little trays of jewelry. Silver rings. Pendants with runes carved so fine they looked like thread.

And behind the booth, Roy Abernathy. Thirty-six now, broader in the shoulders, hair tied back, talking to a customer with his hands moving the way they always did, like the air was clay.

My feet stopped. My brain stopped. Everything stopped except my heart, which apparently had kept a file open on this man for six years and now slammed it shut and slammed it open again in the same second.

Kaylee appeared at my elbow. I have never in my life seen a person smile so fast.

"Oh no," I said.

"Oh yes!"

"Kaylee, you did this."

"I did nothing! He applied in spring! I just didn't mention it." She grabbed my arm. "Come meet him."

"Absolutely not. I have to inspect this booth right here. This enchantment booth. Very important license issues."

"That's a lantern stall."

"They're very enchanted."

He saw me before she could drag me. I know because his voice stopped mid-sentence. I felt it, the way you feel someone look at you from across a room. I kept my eyes locked on a lantern like it held state secrets.

Then, behind me, a wave. I could hear it in his voice. "Tania?"

Well. There go my options.

I turned. Walked over. Put on the smooth, collected smile of a woman who had absolutely been hiding behind a lantern.

"Roy. Hi. Hey."

"Hey. You're here. In Thornwood. You live here?"

"I do. Five and a half years now. I work at the museum. Archivist." I gestured at the museum like it was right there. It was not right there.

"You always wanted to work with old papers," he said. He remembered. Wonderful. Terrible.

"And you always ran off to the north," I said, and then heard myself, and winced. "Sorry. That came out with teeth."

"No, it... yeah. Fair." He rubbed his thumb along the edge of the counter. "That commission was a mess. I should have said goodbye."

"Should have," Kaylee agreed cheerfully, from three feet away, where she was not needed and not wanted and not leaving.

A customer drifted over and asked about a ring. Roy answered, all business, showed her the rune, quoted a price, wrapped it in cloth. Steady hands. The flighty boy from that party had turned into someone who looked people in the eye when he sold them things.

The customer left. Moe Thorne drifted over from the next stall over, wearing the expression of a man settling in for a play.

"Tania Brice," Moe said, all warmth, zero innocence. "Roy Abernathy. You two know each other? No, of course you do, look at the two of you standing there like the booth is on fire."

"It's a lovely booth," I said.

"It is. Sit down before you knock something over." Moe turned to Roy, delighted. "Six years in this market, I've never seen the girl from the museum freeze at a jewelry stall."

"Moe," Kaylee said.

"What. I'm complimenting the ambiance."

Roy laughed. Actually laughed, quick and surprised, and something in my chest unclenched. Okay. He was nervous too. Good. Misery, meet company.

"I like your work," I said, nodding at the trays, because I needed to say something and that was the least dangerous thing available. "The ember rune on that pendant. That's precise work."

"You know your runes."

"I catalogue them for a living. If that pendant were forged I'd know in about four seconds."

"Would you?" He picked it up, held it out. "Check."

I took it. The metal was warm, which meant real ember rune, properly cut. I turned it over. On the back, tiny, almost hidden, a half-finished phoenix.

I looked up at him. He was watching my face very carefully.

"That's a familiar bird," I said, as casually as I have ever said anything, which is not casual at all.

"Is it? Huh. Guess my hand remembers things."

Kaylee made a noise like a kettle and turned it into a cough. Moe beamed at both of us like we were his best sellers of the season.

"You should come by the museum," I heard myself say. "We've got diagrams from the old ember guild. You'd lose your mind."

"I might," he said. "When's good?"

"Whenever. Anytime. Tuesdays are quiet."

"Then Tuesday." He said it fast, like he was afraid he'd talk himself out of it. Good. Company in the misery again.

Kaylee steered me away ten minutes later, clipboard and all, and did not stop grinning the entire length of row three.

"Six years," she said. "Six years and you took one look at his booth and hid behind a lantern."

"It was a very distracting lantern."

"He kept a phoenix on the back of his pendant, Tania."

"I noticed the phoenix."

"You noticed the phoenix."

"I'm going to catalogue something now. Alone. Quietly. With no witnesses."

"You're going to spend all Tuesday preparing diagrams to impress him."

"...I'm going to spend some of Tuesday preparing diagrams to impress him."

She patted my shoulder like I'd said something wise. The lantern seller waved at me on the way past. I did not hide this time. Growth.

Tuesday, then. The museum. The old papers. Me, thirty-four, with a folder in my desk drawer that suddenly felt a lot heavier than paper.

I should probably throw that sketch away.

I'm not going to.

The next day I came back to the market. On purpose. With a plan.

The plan had one step. Buy something from Roy Abernathy.

Brilliant, right? Six years of composure and my grand strategy was retail.

Kaylee didn't even pretend she wasn't watching. She was at the market desk, clipboard up, eyes down, failing completely. "Just browsing," she said to the ledger. "Nobody browses a jewelry stall for forty minutes, Tania."

"I'm pacing myself."

Roy had the ember pendant out again. Or a twin. He was carving something small in his hands, a burin between his fingers, sawdust on the sleeve of his shirt. Some things hold.

He looked up when I reached the stall. Didn't grin. Just went a little still, the way he used to go still when he was listening.

"Morning," he said.

"Morning. I need to buy something." I pointed at a tray before I could lose my nerve. "That one. The bracelet. With the ember rune."

He pulled it out. Thin copper band, three runes cut along the inside, a small stone set at the clasp. He laid it on a square of cloth like it was a museum piece.

"For you or a gift?" he asked.

"For me." Very smooth. "Testing purposes."

"Testing."

"I archive magic, Roy. I have professional obligations."

He laughed that quick laugh again. Then he held the bracelet out on his palm, and I realized there was a whole procedure coming, and he wasn't going to let me skip it.

"Then you should know how it works," he said. "It's not just decoration."

"Is that a sales pitch?"

"It's a lecture. Free of charge. Give me your hand."

I gave him my hand. My brain noted, usefully, that I had washed it twice before leaving the house. He slid the bracelet over my wrist, and his fingers brushed the inside of it, warm skin, and I forgot entirely what a rune was.

"Warm stone," he said, tapping the clasp. "Ember-cut. When the air gets cold it feeds a little heat back into your wrist. Nothing grand. No fireballs."

"Show me."

He couldn't exactly make the market cold. So he did the next thing. He took my hand, the bracelet hand, and cupped both of his around it like he was hiding a bird. I watched his thumb settle over the stone. I watched nothing at all, really. My attention had left the building.

"Feel it?" he asked.

"Mm."

"Tania."

"Yes. I feel it. It's very warm. You're very good at this." My voice came out about a third of its usual volume.

He let go, slow, and we both kept our smart remarks to ourselves. He wrote a price on a tag, then crossed something out and wrote a smaller number.

"That's not the price from yesterday," I said.

"Volunteer discount."

"Kaylee would argue that's not a thing."

"Let her."

I paid. He wrapped the band in cloth even though I was putting it straight on. He wrapped it anyway. Some rituals you don't argue with.

There was a moment where I could have walked away. Back to the desk, to the ledger, to safety. Instead I heard myself say the dangerous thing.

"Do you want tea? There's a cafe at the end of row four. Spiced. It's good."

"I want tea," he said, before I'd even finished. He was already setting his shut sign against the counter. "Moe, watch the stall?"

"I live to watch stalls," Moe said, sliding over with the eagerness of a man getting front-row seats. "Take your time. All of it. Take all of the time."

---

The cafe had little iron tables and a lantern that hummed when the wind hit it. We took the corner table. Roy sat with his back to the wall, which I remembered him doing at that party too. Six years and the habit held.

The tea came in clay mugs, cinnamon and clove and something sharper underneath. I wrapped both hands around mine and decided to be brave in the smallest possible increments.

"So," I said. "The commission."

He looked into his mug for a while.

"A woman up north," he said. "Shorehaven. Old money. She wanted a full rune suite for her hall. Doors, hearth, warding on the windows. Forty pieces."

"Forty."

"Forty. And she paid like it was forty. It was more money than I'd seen in a year of market stalls." He turned the mug a quarter turn. "I got the letter the night of Kaylee's party, waiting at my lodgings when I walked home. Left before dawn. Told myself the offer would rot if I waited."

"So you didn't wait."

"I didn't wait." He said it flat. "The work itself was good. The carving was good. Everything around the carving was a mess. She changed her mind about the design four times. She paid late. She paid in arguments, mostly. And the whole time..."

He stopped. I waited. The lantern hummed.

"The whole time I kept thinking about a woman I'd kissed on a porch," he said. "Two hours of talking about inks, and then one kiss, and then I was on a coach at dawn like a coward."

"You were on a coach at dawn," I agreed. "I checked the guest room. Your sketch was still on the kitchen table."

"I know. I left it on purpose." He rubbed the edge of his mug with a thumb. "That was the coward part. I couldn't say goodbye, so I left a drawing instead. Thought maybe you'd think less of me for it and it would be cleaner."

"I kept it."

His head came up fast.

"The phoenix sketch," I said. "It's in a folder in my desk at the museum. Flat. Pressed. Six years."