Page 48 of Bane Bloom

This was quite low on the list of things I wished to discuss, and a protest was nearly past my lips when I reminded myself how hard this was for him. Let him work up to it in his way.

“Annie has asked me to,” I replied, “and yes, I’d like to go. Perhaps you’d like to as well?”

He shook his head. “But I’ll take you.”

“Why not go, Thomas?”

“No one really wants me there, lass.”

“Annie does.” And so do I.

“Mrs. Foss is kind. And she’s not from Buttermere.”

I sighed and reached for the teapot, filling both our mugs. He took a bite of the tart, and after that he folded his arms and rested them on the table.

“Will you tell me about Elfame?” I asked gently.

Eyeing me, he gave a slow nod. He took a drink from his steaming mug.

“It is a realm of Fairy.”

“And it is a real place, not just a storybook one.”

His lips parted, though he hesitated before replying, “Maybe not in the way you mean. But aye.”

“Please, Thomas. No more riddles.”

His chest expanded with a breath. “It’s not like a place on a map. It’s a place that’s there sometimes, and sometimes not.”

“How can that be?”

He lifted an eyebrow, and that was all. I was beginning to know him, so I understood. How should I know?

“But it’s connected with the house somehow,” I said.

Again he nodded. “Pine Cottage was abandoned many years ago. When my grandfather was restoring it and building the glasshouse, relics were found that made him believe a wortcunner had once lived here—what many people would call a witch. He looked into old records, and it seems he was right. A woman who lived here some two hundred years ago was put to the witch test and later hanged.”

“Heavens!” I stared at him. “What is a witch test?”

He met my gaze. “She was bound, rowed onto the lake, and thrown in. The record said that she floated, which meant she was a witch, and she was convicted at the Carlisle assizes.”

I frowned, confused. “But if she hadn’t floated, she—?”

“Would have died anyway.”

“How was that considered just?”

Thomas only shook his head. “The court record said the woman had confessed to having a fairy familiar. My mother told me that my grandfather became fixed on this, and he came to believe fairies had overtaken the property after the woman’s death.”

“And he was right,” I guessed.

Thomas adjusted in his seat, hand going again to his mug. “The boundary between our world and theirs has worn very thin here. Outsiders don’t see it. At least not at first. Even I can’t always see it.”

“What you meant by ‘there sometimes, and sometimes not.’”

“Aye.”

I sipped my tea, avoiding a large chip in the mug’s rim. I felt oddly calm. It’s good to finally have answers, even strange ones. But it was more than that. Thomas, too, was calming. When he’s not vexing.