A Rose for Beauty

Chapter 17

Lydia fretted all that morning. She couldn't think of a single plausible reason to go back into Glasbottle when she had been there just the day before, much less an errand that would allow her to go alone to visit with Mr. Hawke for what would certainly be hours. 

“You needn't look so worried!” Anna came up beside her as she was toasting some bread over the fire and squeezed her shoulders affectionately. “Father is feeling a little better, and I think it likely that he will be up and about in a few days, if we make him go more slowly this time. In fact,” she smiled, “if you send up an egg  with that toast, I believe I can convince him to eat it.”

Lydia smiled back halfheartedly, doing her best to erase the crease between her brows as she slid the crisped slice of bread off of the toasting fork and onto a plate. For a moment she longed to tell Anna everything, to confess to her about the magic and the dreams and the man that she saw there, but she bit her lip and took a breath and the moment passed. Anna was practical. Even her engagement back in town had been rooted in practical considerations! The day Anna believed in something she couldn't see or feel, cats would put on silk hats and learn to dance. 

After she finished tidying the mess from breakfast, Lydia went back upstairs for some privacy to mull over her problem. To her surprise, Clara was sitting on the bed, scowling at some fabric scraps and thread, and so Lydia secured a wrap and discreetly extracted the book from her drawer before retreating to the orchard. 

It was a glorious day despite the chill. The sky was a clear sapphire blue above the gold and russet canopy of autumn leaves, and the sun shone brightly enough that when Lydia turned her back to it she could feel its warmth on her shoulders. She sat down on the sunny side of a large tree and leaned against its trunk: the sun-warmed bark radiated gentle heat onto her back while the sun shone on her front, and with her wrap around her shoulders she was really quite comfortable. Well, she would be comfortable if she could find the rock she was sitting on. Lydia moved a bit and dug around for it, but to her surprise her fingers closed around not a rock, but a rather large walnut. She stared at it in surprise for a moment, then scanned the ground around her, suddenly becoming aware that the little round mounds dotting the grass nearby were hundreds of fallen walnuts. 

A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth despite her predicament. If there was such a thing as a nutcracker in the cottage, there would be celebrating tonight. Promising herself that she would gather the nuts after she had spent some time reading, Lydia turned to her book. She wasn't quite certain what she was looking for, but she was out of clever ideas and it was time to call in some reinforcements. 

The book opened helpfully to a recipe for apple-walnut porridge, but Lydia turned the page with a stern hand. Not now, she thought. After two pages of nut breads and sticky buns, it seemed to get the idea that she wanted something different. The next page was a treatise on reading the weather with autumn leaves, and after that came a cantrip for preventing colds with nothing more than salt and an onion. Next came a chapter on remedies for sleeplessness. You're getting warmer, she thought. Following that was the section on dreams she had read before, and Lydia fought off disappointment. Is that all? she thought. Is there nothing else in this book that can help me? When she turned the page, however, Lydia did a double-take. Instead of instructions or recipes or reference material, she seemed to have found a page out of someone's personal journal. It began right in the middle of a sentence.

“...says, but how can I be sure? The last time we tried, it was a near-disaster. He didn't wake up for almost a week, and my head! how it ached. He claimed he couldn't remember a thing, and he couldn't explain to me how he got those marks on his arm, either. I am reluctant to make another attempt without some breakthrough. The text gives very little information on how we are to pass the Guardian and I fear that without that knowledge we are putting ourselves in danger. Perhaps we should attempt another translation; I am not convinced that we have arrived at the correct meaning and some of the symbolism is quite obscure. Still; we are gaining more control in our ventures to the dream world before the gateway...”

The wind picked up, and Lydia heard some soft, pattering thumps. She looked up, but no one was there. Even the geese had wandered off to the other side of the orchard, so she returned to her reading, entranced.

“...he is right. The reward if we succeed is enough to spur us onward. Whatever dangers we face, we face together! I only pray that we can find the key soon. These experiments seem to be affecting my dreams in normal sleep and I fear that if we open the gateway too far without understanding how to control it -”

Something hit Lydia square on the top of her head, hard, and she cried out, jumping to the side and sweeping her arm above her. She heard another series of thumps, and the wind blowing through the leaves of the tree; after a moment she realized that she had been hit in the head with a falling walnut. It hurt, too, she thought, rubbing her head and looking up at the tree reproachfully. She turned back once more to her book and realized that she had lost her page. She looked for it frantically, flipping through page after page, backwards and forwards, but she could not find it again. She felt her temper rising and throttled it back. That's what you get for sitting under a nut tree, I suppose, she thought. Lydia tucked her book under her arm and went inside to get a basket for the walnuts, turning the passage she had read over and over in her mind. 

Thomas was lounging in the kitchen at loose ends, and once he learned what Lydia was about he offered to come outside and help her. Gathering nuts was a novel experience for both of them. The nuts had grown on the tree in round green hulls – one of the fruits Lydia hadn't been able to identify before – which split open into sections and revealed their nuts in the brown shells that they had been accustomed to seeing. Sometimes they fell free, and other times the nut fell from the tree still connected to its hull, which was easily peeled off by hand. The two of them learned quickly to cover their heads when the wind ruffled the leaves, as it invariably nudged loose a few more nuts which fell to earth – or their heads – like so many giant hailstones. 

“I never thought I'd be doing something like this,” Thomas remarked, “but it's a beautiful thing, isn't it?”

“You just want some nuts to put on your porridge tomorrow,” Lydia teased him.

Thomas laughed, revealing the straight white teeth and dimples that had made so many young ladies fancy themselves in love with him back when they were wealthy, but he shook his head as he peeled the hull from another walnut and tossed it in the basket. “It's not that,” he said, then corrected himself. “Well, not only that. You know, I never used to get my hands dirty unless William and I were pulling a prank on someone. Now I work hard every day just to make sure we have food to eat – and I love it. It's real. It means something.”

“Yes, it means that if anything goes wrong we won't have food to eat,” Lydia said.

 “Oh, I know,” Thomas said, serious now. “These trees have been a blessing in helping us get settled, but they won't support us forever. That's why I've been looking into an apprenticeship.”

“Aren't you a little old to be an apprentice?” 

“Yes,” he said, smiling again, “but the blacksmith says he needs some help around the forge and he'd rather have a man than a boy. He's willing to let me try my hand at it. Of course, I'd have to stay in town most nights instead of going back and forth every day -”

“Oh, Thomas,” Lydia said, anxious at the thought of their family separating. “When?”

“I told him I wanted to wait until Father was better,” he said, “but probably no more than another week.”

Lydia smiled at him, blinking rapidly to clear away the tears that tried to surface. After all, she scolded herself, it's only in Glasbottle. “That's wonderful news.”

Thomas gave her a hug then. “And just think, someday soon I may be making nails, or even pokers! With some hard work, persistence, and luck, one day I may even make a spoon.”

Lydia laughed, as Thomas had meant her to, and together the two of them carried a very full basket of walnuts into the cottage.