PUCK

In the morning, before I head to the cliffs to train and possibly find Sean, Finn and I go to Dory Maud’s — him on his bicycle, me on Dove. The truth of it is that Finn means to do some odd jobs for them if he can and I’m hoping against hope that Dory’s sold some more teapots, because we’ve one lump of butter but no bread to stick around it and no flour to make bread.

We trudge into Skarmouth. I lead Dove at the moment to make certain she doesn’t turn a leg in a bit of uneven cobble. Finn leads the bicycle to make certain he can stare into Palsson’s shop without falling off a moving vehicle.

We both look mournfully in the bakery window as we pass, though I’d sworn to myself that I wouldn’t. Nothing says orphans like two kids breaking their necks looking at trays of November cakes and platters of shaped cookies and lovely soft loaves of bread still steaming the window they’re next to. Finn and I sigh at the same time and continue on our way to Fathom & Sons. I tie Dove out front and Finn tells his bicycle to stay. I’m not sure if the shop will be open or not; Elizabeth and Dory Maud might be at the booth by the cliff path instead.

But the door opens, and when we push inside, I’m surprised to find both Dory Maud and Elizabeth there, as well as a handsome blond man who is exclaiming over a stone grave pillow that Martin Devlin found in his field last year when he was digging for potatoes.

“— really put the head on this at burial!” he says.

Finn gives me a look. I eye the stranger. He’s a foreigner and in his thirties, maybe, but in the best possible way. I think the word for it is dashing or dapper or something like that. He holds a red flat cap in his hands.

“Ah, Puck,” says Dory Maud. “Puck Connolly.”

Finn and I exchange another look.

“Pleased to meet you,” I say to the stranger.

“Oh, but you haven’t met,” Dory Maud says. “Mr. Holly, this is Puck Connolly. Puck, this is Mr. George Holly.”

“Now I’m pleased to meet you,” I say crossly. “I was just dropping Finn off here and —” Elizabeth sidles up to me and places her claws in my skin.

“Just a moment! I need to steal her,” Elizabeth chirps. She whisks me into the back room and shoves closed the door behind us. So it is just us and four chairs and a table bigger than the floor and an audience of boxes filled with Dory Maud’s love letters to sailors. We are nose to nose and Elizabeth smells like a shipload of English roses. “Puck Connolly, you be your absolute level best to that man.”

“I was being nice.”

“No, you weren’t. I saw your face. I’m no fool! We need to encourage him. That American is richer than the Queen and we think he means to take a piece of Thisby back with him.”

I hope he’s taking the fertility statue. “What is it you’re trying to shove off on him?”

Elizabeth leans against the door to ensure no one interrupts. “Annie.”

“Annie!”

“If you’re going to repeat everything I say, I’ll give your tongue to him as well.”

“Does Annie know about this?”

“If only you had the brains to match your looks.” Elizabeth realizes she’s still holding my arm and releases me. “Now you go out there and be charming. As you can.”

I scowl and follow her back into the main room. All eyes turn toward me. Finn has somehow ended up holding the stone burial pillow.

“Done, ladies?” Dory Maud asks. I can’t think of the last time she’s used the word ladies to refer to something other than our chickens. “Mr. Holly was just expressing interest in you, Puck.”

Perhaps my alarm is written upon my face, because Holly adds quickly, “Sean Kendrick’s spoken of you.”

“You didn’t mention that before,” Dory Maud says, looking at me. “Puck, do you know what would be a wonderful thing, is if you took Mr. Holly and found him some breakfast.”

“Oh —” Holly and I protest at the same time.

“I have Dove outside,” I say.

Holly glances at me and says meaningfully, “And I was going to go watch the training.” I decide that I like him. It helps that he’s dapper, but the clever cinches it.

“Then you should take him by Palsson’s to get him one of the November cakes. Of course Annie knows how to make them as well, even better than Palsson’s,” Dory Maud says. “She was just saying that she’d like to make them for you, Mr. Holly, but of course there’s been no time. If you get them at Palsson’s, you can carry your breakfasts with you.”

Holly’s smile lights the room; Dory Maud and Elizabeth are both blown back fairly by the sheen of it.

“Will you let me buy you one of these things, Miss Connolly?” Holly asks. “And your brother, too?”

I think I may die from the stinging power of the knowing gaze Elizabeth wields. It is a gaze that says, I told you he was a rich American with money to spend. I glare at her and Dory Maud. “Certainly. And Dory, if you give me a bit of change, I’ll buy some extra … for Annie.”

We momentarily battle with our eyes, and then Dory Maud relents and gives me a few coins. And so it is two triumphant Connollys who lead George Holly from Fathom & Sons, Finn on one side and me on the other. Holly watches me untie Dove with great interest, and I watch him watching me with even greater interest. The way his eye travels along Dove — hock to stifle placement to topline to shoulder angle — tells me that he’s not just a casual tourist. I wonder how well he knows Sean.

“You know,” Finn says on the way back to Palsson’s, cheerful now that he’s getting food, “that Annie is blind, right?”

“Not entirely,” Holly corrects him. “Not entirely blind, I mean.”

“Is that what they told you!” Finn exclaims. I stare at them. Who is this person who can make Finn so loud so quickly?

“It is,” Holly says warmly. He inclines his head toward Finn and asks, “Now, what, exactly, is a November cake?”

He asks it with such genuine curiosity that of course Finn has to speak even more, describing the moist crumb, the nectar that seeps from the base of it, the icing that soaks into the cake before you can lick it off. It is probably the kindest thing I have ever seen in my life, George Holly asking my brother about baked goods. When Holly glances to me, I give him a sharp look, which I realize might not fall under being as charming as possible. But I’m not sure that clever, kind George Holly could possibly be played as easily as Dory Maud and Elizabeth think.

Together we stroll into Palsson’s. I try to maintain an air of dignity but it’s difficult to not be overcome by the odor that hangs in the air. It is all cinnamon and honey and yeast. Palsson’s is on a corner and made of windows and light. The walls are lined with unstained wooden shelves with open backs, so the sunlight comes unimpeded through the glass panes and makes big squares of gold across the floor. Every shelf towers with bread and cookies, cinnamon twists and November cakes, scones and biscuits. The only wall not so anointed is the back wall behind the counter, which is lined with sacks of flour waiting to become bread. I can smell even the flour, because there’s so much of it, and it’s sweet and palatable all on its own. Everything is golden and white and honey and nectar in here and I think that possibly I could live in this building and sleep among the flour sacks.

Palsson’s is crowded today, as always, with both customers and housewives who hold better conversations near someone else’s baking. George Holly gathers stares and whispers as he and Finn move among the shelves and then into the long line. He fits in perfectly, as blond as a November cake himself.

“Your aunt is a strong woman,” George Holly says to me.

“Dory Maud?”

“That’s the one.”

If Dory Maud has told him we’re related, I might take up spitting again. “She’s not my aunt.”

He is graciously apologetic. “Oh, I’m sorry. You seemed so familiar with her. I didn’t mean to overstep.”

“Everyone on Thisby is familiar,” I reply. “Stay here for a month and she’ll be your aunt as well.”

This makes Finn smile at the floor.

“My,” says George Holly. “What a laden promise that is.”

We move forward in line. Finn’s head is going back and forth like an owl’s from tray to tray as he weighs the merits of the different possibilities.

“Mr. Kendrick tells me that your pony has quite a set of legs on her,” Holly says conversationally. I hear someone behind the counter say bright red hat.

“Horse.”

“Hmm?”

“She’s fifteen-two hands. Horse. He said that?”

“Oh, excuse me, madam,” Holly says. This is because Mary Finch has just squeezed between him and a shelf to get to the window, and her hand went somewhere untoward on his person, a most fortunate accident on her part. Holly moves toward the counter and gathers his dignity back up to himself before he turns back to me. “Word on the beach is he said that if your pony — horse — goes straight while the capaill uisce go right, you might get somewhere.”

I wonder if Sean really believes this. I wonder if I really believe that. I must, or else why am I doing this? “I reckon that’s the plan. If we’re being familiar, how well is it you know Sean Kendrick?”

Mary Finch squeezes back by George Holly and his eyes go round for a moment as he receives some more Skarmouth hospitality. I try not to laugh.

“Oh,” he says. “Oh. Well, I was here to look at Malvern horses and we met. He’s a strange old bird, which is to say that I like him quite a bit.”

Finn taps on the counter to draw Holly’s attention to the cakes they’ve just set out under the glass. For a brief moment, their faces wear the same boyish, wistful longing, longing that’s not tempered by the knowledge that the line until they get to the cakes is only six feet long.

“In the interests of familiarity,” Holly says, “how well do you know him?”

My cheeks redden, which infuriates me. Curse this ginger hair and everything that comes with it. My father said once that if I didn’t have my mother’s ginger hair, I wouldn’t blush or curse as easily. Which I thought was unfair. I hardly ever curse or blush, even though I’ve had plenty of days that required both. I’m a quite level person, I think, given the circumstances.

Finn’s eyeballing me, too curious about the answer to Holly’s question. I say, “A little. We’re friendly.”

“Like you and your aunt?” Holly asks. When I scowl at him, he suggests, “Like cousins? Like siblings?”

“I don’t know him as well as Mary Finch knows you,” I tell him. When he looks perplexed, I make a little pinching motion and he winces as if his underparts feel her attentions once more.

“Fair enough,” Holly says.

We stand at the counter and Bev Palsson swaps money for cakes. Finn buys an obscene number of cinnamon twists with Dory Maud’s money. Once we actually have them in our hands and stand outside the door where Dove is tied, Finn makes George Holly unwrap one of the cakes so that Finn can observe his reaction. Holly takes a bite, honey slipping over his lip, and closes his eyes in pleasure so pronounced that it’s hard to tell if it’s exaggerated for Finn’s benefit.

“I’m told,” Holly says, “that food tastes better in your memories. I don’t see how I can improve on this in a memory.”

Finn is pleased by this. It’s as if he made them himself. I see something bittersweet in Holly’s expression, though; I think, possibly, that this island has begun to get its hooks into him, and this makes me like him even more. Anyone Thisby chooses to seduce can’t be half-bad.

Holly asks, “Finn, would you be so kind as to ask them for another bag so we can separate these into two parcels? And if I give you this, would you fetch me another twist to take back to my room? Get another one for yourself, too, so your other hand doesn’t feel empty.”

Once Finn is dispatched, Holly says, “Puck, I’m stepping so badly over the line here that I might never return. But there’s quite a few people who don’t care to have you on the beach. I’m not sure if you’ve heard.”

I think of Peg Gratton telling me not to let anyone else tighten my girth. I lose my appetite for my sticky breakfast. “I’ve an inkling.”

There’s genuine worry on George Holly’s face. “You’re the first, aren’t you? The first woman?”

It’s strange to be called a woman, but I nod.

“It just sounds quite bad down there,” he says. “I wouldn’t say anything if I didn’t think it seemed dangerous.”

How quickly George Holly’s become one of us — that I should be riding in a race against a few dozen capaill uisce and he thinks it’s the men I should be worried about.

“I know not to trust anyone,” I say. “Except …”

Holly studies my face. “You do fancy him, don’t you? What a strange, wonderful, repressed place this is.”

I glare at him, relieved that I seem to be out of blushes, or perhaps I’m still blushing and can’t get any redder. “I’m not the one letting myself be played by three sisters with four and a half eyes between them.”

Holly laughs delightedly. “Very true.”

Dove strives for my November cake and I push her away with my elbow. “Annie’s all right,” I say. “Do you think she’s pretty?”

“I do.”

“I reckon she finds you agreeable, too,” I say. I glance at him sideways with a sly smile. “Since she can’t see any farther than her arm. I wouldn’t count on her baking you any of these cakes, though. There’s a reason Palsson’s is full of women. Thisby women are lazy.”

“Lazy as you?”

“Just about.”

“I think I could bear that.” He glances up; Finn has just broached the door of Palsson’s, bearing two bags, and he approaches us looking cheerful. Holly says to me, “I sure do wish you the best of luck, Miss Connolly. And I hope you won’t wait for Sean Kendrick to realize that he’s lonely.”

I want to ask him, Wait for what? but Finn’s come up then and it’s not a question I want to ask in front of one of my brothers.

So we merely exchange pleasantries, and Holly goes on his way to watch the training on the beach, I go my way to get Dove to the cliff top, and Finn gets ready to go back to Dory Maud’s to do odd jobs.

“Did you hear his accent?” Finn asks.

“I wasn’t born deaf.”

“If I were Gabe, I’d go to America instead of the mainland.”

This statement ruins any good mood I had germinating in my soul. “If you were Gabe, I’d slap you.”

Finn is unperturbed. He gives Dove’s rump a friendly pat before starting away.

“Hey.” I stop him and remove another two cakes from the bag. “Now go.”

He trots gleefully off, so easily pleased by the arrival of food. I balance my cakes in one hand and take Dove’s reins with the other, leading her toward the cliffs. I think about George Holly’s comment about food tasting better in memories. It strikes me as a strange, luxurious statement. It assumes you’ll have not only that moment when you take the first bite but then enough moments in front of it for that mouthful to become a memory. My future’s not that certain that I can afford to wonder what will become of the taste later. And in any case, the November cake tastes plenty sweet to me now.