He led me through the garden, glancing over his shoulder every two or so paces. “Let me hold those for you,” he said, taking my starlight-harvesting buckets.
Off to one side, a metal contraption caught my attention. It was something like a staircase, about eight feet high, with four wooden crates fixed to the top of it and a bunch of pulleyed ropes dangling down.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“What?” Travis looked to see where I was pointing. “Oh, that’s the harvester. Ma’s picky about bruises on her custard apples. For a long time, we was having to climb up, bring down what few apples we could carry in our arms, then climb back up again. Which was fine before business got good, but now we’re too busy for it. So I made that for her. She can climb up one time and set the fruit in the crates real gentle. Then, with those ropes, we can lower the boxes down and land ’em soft.” He shrugged. “Looks funny, but it works good.”
The perfect tool for the job, was how it seemed to me. With Travis’s smarts and his handyman know-how, it was hard to imagine how even the stars could do better.
Travis walked me to the cabin door, set his hand on the door handle, and said, “Sorry if the place smells funny. It’s Ma’s herbal fixin’s.”
But the house didn’t smell funny. It smelled miraculous—sweet like chocolate and spicy-clean like a summer day at the river. There was the impossible, otherworldly smell of newborn babies and the scent of good grandmas leaning over your shoulder while you’re puzzling out your homework. I even caught a whiff of snow and spring rain.
“How does she do it?” I asked, whispering with the sheer wonder of it.
“Do what?” Travis asked.
I was still trying to find the words when Miz Tromp appeared.
“Genuine! Welcome!” She held a bunch of celery in one hand. “You got that basil, Travis? Toss it in the pot, will you?”
“Anything I can do to help?” I asked, following them both into the kitchen.
Every burner on the stove was taken up by a pot billowing clouds of steam into the air. The counters were full, too, with bowls and cutting boards and vegetables in every hue I could name. My stomach rumbled.
“She could decorate the cake, Ma,” Travis said.
“Sure,” said Miz Tromp. “Cake’s on the top shelf, orchids on the bottom.”
Travis went to the fridge and came out with a white cake so perfect it made me croon. With its rounded edges and fluffy icing, it couldn’t possibly be anything other than store-bought. Real food just didn’t look like that!
Travis set the cake on a table and went back to the fridge. “It was gonna be a wedding cake, but the bride chickened out,” he explained.
“Travis, be nice,” said his ma. “It is true, though. It was going to be a wedding cake. I do like to cook for guests, Genuine, but I normally don’t go to that much trouble.”
“You made this?” I asked.
“I did,” she said. “If you’re interested, I can teach you how someday. Meantime, though, pretty it up for us, will you?”
Travis set a box at the edge of the table and pulled off the lid. It was filled with flowers.
“You decorate a cake with flowers?” I asked, not exactly sure what I thought of that.
“You can eat ’em, see?” Travis took one and ate it.
When he offered me one, his ma piped up, “Those are for the cake!”
I took the yellow flower from Travis and traced the dashed stripe that ran the length of one of its petals. “Really? Right on the icing?”
He nodded encouragingly.
Carefully, I set the flower at the very center of the cake. It made me smile—though it took me some time to figure out why. I’ll tell you now, but I don’t expect you’ll understand it.
You know how things stop growing in winter and all the trees are bare? That flower on that white-iced cake made me wonder, for just a second, what it would be like to live in a world where flowers could blossom in winter, where in spite of freezing weather, the alive things kept on growing, as if to say, “You can’t stop me!”
Sounds silly, I know.
Travis handed me the flowers one at a time until I’d used up the whole box.
Miz Tromp looked over her shoulder while she stirred something on the stove. “Very nice. Maybe I should hire you.”
“Genuine’s already got a job, Ma. She’s a wish fetcher,” Travis said.
“Mm. So she does. I want to talk about that over dinner, Genuine. Whatever happened to my wish?” She said it with a smile, though, so I knew she remembered I’d told her to be patient.
In all my born days, I’d never had such a supper! Travis heaped up so much spaghetti onto my plate, there was barely enough room for fancified greens and bread with olive paste—which may sound peculiar but nearly brought tears of joy to my eyes. When he got to serving the meatballs, one actually rolled off my mountain of food. Thankfully, I caught it with my napkin before it hit the floor.
“Uh, maybe I’ll just take this one to Gram,” I said and set it aside.
Full up and feelin’ fine, Travis and I did the dishes while Miz Tromp packaged the leftovers—including a whole bag of goodies for me to take home. Then I quick ran out to whistle down some starlight, and Travis and I got to baking.
We were pulling our first triple-sized batch of biscuits from the oven when there came a knock at the door.
“I’ll get it,” Miz Tromp said. “I wonder if it’s the Teagues, changed their mind about the wedding cake.”
“Tell ’em they’re too late!” Travis called. He’d managed two slices, even after his own outsized dinner.
We heard some mumbling in the hall, and then Miz Tromp reappeared with Edie Walton, Penny’s daughter, and a man I’d never seen before.
“Some folks to see you, Genuine,” Travis’s ma told me.
“Edie! What are you doing here?” With the upscuddle between her ma and me, I was fairly certain it was nothing good.
Edie, who’d graduated from Sass Public only last June, was the prettiest girl in town. She had long blond hair and dimpled cheeks and a smile so sweet folks said she could charm the moon from the sky.