Page 25 of A Spell for Midwinter's Heart
His voice startled her, and she realized she’d been staring. She adjusted her glasses and cleared her throat.
“I, um, yes, almost. A little closer to me.”
He took half a step toward her, his hips landing flush with hers.
“Sorry,” he gasped, trying to back up and nearly slamming the sign into his own face in the process.
“No, stay there,” Rowan breathed, willing her voice to be casual and controlled. She rose to her tiptoes and positioned the final hook.
He inhaled sharply, and the sign slid back into place with a satisfying click. He took a few hasty steps back before nodding stiffly. “Thanks for the assist.”
“No problem,” said Rowan, willing the fire in her cheeks to die back down.
Cal Arthur was staring at them with a wide smile on his face. “Ain’t seen the two of you runnin’ around this place together since you were little.”
She stole a glance Gavin’s way, flooded with memories of playing together on the festival grounds while their moms were working: playing hide-and-seek among the booths, begging treats from vendors, feeding the sleigh horses forbidden fruit. Where had those memories gone?
More moments unmoored by time, she supposed.
The rest of their evening was much less eventful. They were catching up with one of their high school English teachers, Ms. Dorothy, who sold fiber arts at the market under the name the Knotty Lady, when cheering erupted in the direction of the street.
“Is the Solstice parade starting already?” asked Rowan.
They had completely lost track of time. Rowan pulled out herphone to half a dozen missed messages from her family, giving her updates on their progress and location.
“You two better run,” said Ms. Dorothy. “But not before you pay for those.” She nodded to the felted gloves Gavin had settled on for his cousins.
He chuckled as he opened his wallet. “Still a taskmaster, I see.”
“Can’t let business slip away from me,” she said, and though the old woman’s eyes tried to stay smiling, they had the same telltale stress lines Rowan had noticed in the faces of all her old friends since she’d arrived.
Anxiety flared in her chest as she remembered the decision looming overhead.
11
The sidewalks were jammed up by the time they arrived. The Solstice parade, at least, had drawn a crowd. Trying to push her way through the throng toward her family was appearing nigh impossible, and so when Rowan caught Gavin gazing into the distance with an intense look of wistfulness, she simply settled where he’d found a gap.
He acknowledged her presence with a nod. “Weren’t you meeting up with people?”
“Oh, the parade’ll start any second,” she said. “It okay if I watch from here?” Her nerves wavered as she waited out the second between question and answer.
But he only half smiled as he said, “Of course.”
Every light in the market, as well as in the nearby streets and businesses, winked out all at once. Everyone who had known what was coming had already put away their phones, and the crowd hissed at the few remaining spectators who weren’t getting the memo until theirs disappeared as well.
The town settled into comfortable darkness. Chattering settled to a rumble and then into silence. The world went still.
All that was left to do was listen to the soft murmurs of the heart, which the rest of the world so often drowned out.
Rowan stared into the velvety blackness and faced what she spent so much energy to ignore. The leaden coil of despair returned to her belly.
Every day she opened her phone to a fresh horror—the world’s ecosystems cracking, elections of autocrats, an exponentially widening gap between rich and poor—and instead of growing closer, unifying to overcome the challenge, it only seemed to drive people into tighter groups, each intent on being the one to survive.
She was overwhelmed. And afraid. She desperately wanted to make a difference, but she hadn’t. Not yet. What if she never did?
It all seemed so impossible.
Just as her thoughts got the better of her, the children arrived, floating in white robes, adorned in holly crowns and wrapped in ivy sashes at their waists. Their high, clear voices pierced the night, and the colorful Solstice lanterns they carried bobbed and dipped in the dark.
