I drank from the mug and set it carefully back on the table.
Tavia said, softly, “Well. She’s certainly her father’s daughter.”
“Yes. I am,” I agreed firmly.
“That’s a certainty,” muttered Mild. She breathed out through her nose and added, “And here I scolded Elm for telling tales when she said Bee could talk if she wanted to.” She began to beat whatever she was stirring very hard. Tavia said nothing, but brought me a couple of slices of last week’s bread, toasted to freshen it up and slathered with butter.
“So. You’re talking now, eh?” Tavia asked me.
I glanced at her and suddenly felt embarrassed. I looked at the table. “Yes. I am.”
I saw her curt nod out of the corner of my eye. “That would have pleased your lady mother. She told me once that you could speak a great many words, but were shy.”
I looked down at the scarred tabletop, feeling uncomfortable. I resented that she had known I could speak and said nothing. But I also valued that she had kept my secret. Perhaps there was more to Tavia than I had believed.
She set a little pot of my mother’s honey on the board next to my bread. I looked at it. Now that Mama was gone, who would tend the bees in the summer and harvest the honey? I knew I should do it, but doubted I’d be successful. I’d tried over the last few months, but my solo results had been uneven. I had watched my mother and helped her, and yet when I tried to harvest the honey and the wax by myself, I had made a terrible mess. The few candles I had made were lumpy and graceless, the pots of honey tainted with small bits of wax and possibly bits of bees. I hadn’t had the courage to show them to anyone. Cleaning up the mess to leave the honey-and-candle room tidy had taken me hours. I found myself wondering if we would buy all our candles now. Where did one go to buy candles? And would we buy scented ones for special days? They could not be scented like my mother’s had been.
I looked up as my father came into the kitchen. “I was looking for you,” he said sternly. “You weren’t in your bed.”
“I was here, getting food. Papa, I don’t want to burn Mama’s candles anymore. I want to save them.”
He stared at me for three heartbeats. “Save them for what?”
“Special times. Times when I want to remember how she smelled. Papa, who will do all the things she did? Who will tend the hives and put up the honey and sew my clothes and put little bags of lavender in my clothing chest? Do all those things just stop now that she’s gone?”
He stood very still in the kitchen, looking at me with his dark, broken eyes. He was untidy, his curly hair growing out raggedly from his mourning cut, his beard a tattered thing, and his shirt still wrinkled from last night’s rain. I could tell he hadn’t shaken it out and put it neat, but had taken it off and tossed it onto a chair or the bedpost. I felt sorry for him; Mama had always reminded him to do things the right way. Then I remembered I hadn’t brushed my hair before I left my room. I hadn’t brushed it out last night, either. It wasn’t long enough to braid. I reached up and felt it standing up in tufts all over my head. We were a pair, he and I.
Slowly, he began again, starting to move as if he were coming back to life. He walked to the table and sat down heavily across from me. “She did a lot of things around here, didn’t she? So many things. You never miss the water until the well runs dry.”
I looked at him. He sighed. “We’ll save her scented candles. For you. And as for those other things, well. Your sister Nettle already told me that I’d best hire more help to keep the house in better order. I suppose she was right. She might be planning to visit here more often and to bring friends with her when she comes. So there will be other people coming to live here and help us do things. I’ve already sent for my cousin. She’ll arrive in a few days. Her name is Shun. She’s about twenty. I hope you’ll like her.”
Mild and Tavia were listening in so hard, it made a sort of silence in the kitchen. I wanted to demand how I could have a cousin I’d never heard of. Did that mean my father had a brother or sister I didn’t know about? I wanted to ask but could not while they were listening so hard. I spoke bluntly. “I don’t want anyone else to come and live here. Can’t we just manage on our own?”