By Monday, the storm had lightened to a drizzle, but I had to wait until the evening for more wool, Hyraj getting some on her lunch break. It felt good to have wool again. Well, not really wool. It was made from plants. Sounded something like cotton from what Hyraj told me, but I didn’t really know what cotton was like. Sort of puffy balls?

Anyway, I had more wool, so I got back to knitting. Only for Hyraj to let out a chuckle.

I looked up, seeing her smiling. “What it is?” I asked, curious.

“That is it, I thought how strange it seemed to see you without your knitting the other night. Only now, thinking back, knitting has been part of your routine for only a pair of months or so.”

I laughed at that. “Well, I agree,” I said, smile lingering.

Her gaze stayed on me for a long moment, then slid away. She turned in her seat to face her book again. “Good knitting,” she said.

My turn to stare a bit longer before getting started on my next piece.

I still only knew how to knit, like, rectangles, but the cook had said she could teach me a bit more. She was preparing for the “wet harvest”, about time for the storms to settle down. That was going to be pickling, making flour, drying out some things before putting them in a cellar. Oh did she love having a cellar, mouth pulled into such a grin when mentioning that. None of the old houses had them, she told me, that kind of thing just asking for trouble when the stormy season rolled around. But now, they knew how to make cellars that didn’t flood. Just like they knew how to make safe buildings with more than one floor.

The soft smile I had now turned empty. Later, she’d said, and I didn’t know if there was a later. Mr Arl would eventually leave, then… what?

I didn’t want to think about it, but couldn’t not think about it. Paralysed. Change was never good, not for me. At best, it ended up the same, but I still had to adjust to it. To them. My world didn’t really change, just the people in it. Always in that old building.

Maybe that was why, thinking about the future, I just wanted to stay here. Always wanted to stay in place. I could be the cook’s apprentice, help her and learn until she would eventually retire and I could take over. Cooking was a lot more interesting than I’d thought. One day, I hoped I could peel and chop as quick as her, could change recipes on a whim, make sure nice food.

For now, though, I still had work to do.

The next day, amidst the drizzle, Sisi and I shuffled along, some lunch in hand for Mr Arl. What I’d noticed, Sisi really didn’t like being kept indoors for long. It wasn’t so much that she needed to see her dad, but that she needed to get out, the frustration of being stuck inside what made her anxious. That said, the office was the closest place we could visit.

On the way, I ended up remembering some of what Hyraj had told me—about the elders who used magic when there was a drought. I wondered if magic could do something about floods too. Not to mention, there were water towers for all the plumbing, but what about the other end? Was the world going to be okay with constantly “magicking” more water into it or were there places where they magicked the water away?

My thoughts meandering, that led me to some of the things I’d “researched” in my old world. Like evaporating sea water to purify it. The cook didn’t use salt, but, well, from what Hyraj said, this was still kind of a poor area? Maybe there was some in Mr Arl’s kitchen….

At the office, I let Sisi have her moment. She handed over the sandwiches and Mr Arl gave her a big hug, squeezing those little giggles out of her, no care for how wet her coat was. Well, it wasn’t that cold. He’d dry in no time.

On the way out, she waved the entire time, stumbling out the door.

“Careful, now,” I said, trying to keep the laugh out of my voice.

She hummed, still looking behind. I let out the laugh this time.

Back at the house, to try and keep her mind off of being stuck inside, I (attempted to) read her stories from her book. Just one book. It wasn’t quite the “lunder canon” Mr Arl had mentioned when telling me the story about the princess, but it seemed to be similar. A collection of fables. Wait, did fables have to have animal characters? Because these stories didn’t, so maybe they were just fairy tales….

Whatever the case, I plodded through a couple of the stories, a bit of a struggle since it kind of had old-fashioned words. It sort of sunk in that Hyraj’s book wasn’t exactly a classic, the style just kind of posh.

“What does ‘herrin’ mean?” Sisi asked.

I read over the sentence a couple more times. “Honestly, I don’t know.”

She nodded. “We can ask papa later, okay?”

I held back my laugh. “Okay,” I said.

While we were almost at the equinox, later was still very much when the sun was out, the days not really feeling any shorter. And as always, Sisi ran off to greet Mr Arl the moment he knocked on the door. I shuffled along after putting my knitting things away, in time to catch Mr Arl saying, “—the old way of speaking for ‘hern’. Before that, it was ‘her arin’. Can you think what it means?”

“Her arin… oh, is it goodnight?” she asked, staring straight up at him.

He chuckled, hat over his mouth, and mussed up her hair. “As clever as your mother,” he softly said.

I tried to keep out of the way until then, choosing now to step out. He glanced over, then not-so-subtly put his hat back on, almost funny how often he forgot. I didn’t blame him, though. After all, with Sisi in front of him, it couldn’t have been easy to think about anything else.

Some stray thoughts came to me then, flickers of memory from the day. “Mr Arl?”

“That is it?” he said.

“We were reading some of her stories, and something I wonder… are there… many people who do magic?” I asked, struggling to find the words as the pressure got to me.

His expression didn’t look pleasant. I had learned a little even though he, like Hyraj, usually kept up a good mask. Or maybe he also didn’t keep his mask up around me as much.

“To put it… appropriately,” he said, patting Sisi’s shoulders, “these days, it is mostly the work of families with more money than kindness. Otherwise, there are some in the cities that do the real work. So, to answer your question, no, not many.”

I tried not to wince, my smile so very apologetic. “Ah, that it… well, I shall… be off,” I said, stumbling through my goodbye.

“Good workings,” he said, a bit of a laugh to his voice that reassured me I hadn’t offended him. “We shall see you after’morrow.”

“Yes, after… oh, the equinox, right. After’morrow,” I said, still struggling to be polite and translate.

My head buzzed the whole way home, feeling incredibly self-conscious and trying to translate the other part of what Mr Arl had said. Families with more money than kindness…. Hyraj had said her family was a big deal, that her parents expected her to become “governor” and she honestly believed she could. It hadn’t sunk in what that really meant.

Like, by my world’s standards, Hyraj’s family were multi-millionaires? Maybe billionaires? Well, I didn’t really know much about politics. England was, like, all old money, right? The House of Lords….

That was Hyraj, and who was I? Just some girl.

Arriving back at the dorms, it was another day where I struggled to bring myself to knock on the door and, even once inside, I rushed to leave and help the cook. I didn’t know if Hyraj noticed, going back to her book after letting me in.

Anyway, I tried to focus on the cooking, didn’t want to make a mistake. The cook trusted me with more tasks these days. Chopping, even frying—not just peeling and washing vegetables. Among her many tricks, today we were frying stale bread into sort of croutons. They were more like fingers than cubes, which made them perfect for creamy soup. Spicy croutons using an oil that was used to “pickle”, well, not chilli peppers, but something like them, just kind of oniony with layers. So it was a spicy oil, crunchy croutons, and a creamy soup. Complementary as always.

“Ah, tomorrow is a good day,” she said.

I hummed in answer, trying to focus on my frying. But it wasn’t often she talked about not-food, so I quickly turned to her and asked, “That is it?”

She chuckled, unusual in how she didn’t cover her mouth. No, she turned to the side, away from me. I didn’t know if that was how she was brought up or from working in a kitchen. This wasn’t, like, a medieval world—they had a pretty good idea of hygiene.

“Yes, yes, the guests are far from home,” she said softly, more muttering aloud than speaking to me.

Then she waved me off, loosely gesturing back at the pan. Wok? I panicked for a second, but the batch of croutons were fine.

“The weather looks good for the equinox,” she said, “so it is a good day. They see, they see.”

Her more casual manner of speaking threw me off a bit, easy to follow when talking cooking, not so easy for other things. Still, I understood she was looking forward to it and wasn’t going to “spoil” it for me. “That is it?”

“Tha’s it,” she said, punctuating her statement with a heavy thump; I glanced over, seeing her opening a small barrel. “Tonight, a little treat.”

I wanted to watch, but was overly worried about the croutons, so just listened as she shuffled around, took out a bowl, doing something with the barrel. As she did, I strained this batch of croutons and prepared to add the next. Before I could, though, her shuffling came over to me.

“Give,” she said, her free hand sort of flicking at me, other hand holding the bowl.

Confused, I moved over and she took my place.

“Here.” She offered up the bowl, spoon included.

I hesitated. “For me?” I asked.

“Yes, yes,” she said.

“To… eat?” I asked, glancing in the bowl.

“Yes, yes, yes.”

The more times she repeated something, the more irritated she was, so I stopped there and just took the bowl, saying, “My thanks.”

“Ha, their thanks after trying it.”

I swallowed my smile, always a bit fun helping her, then looked at the bowl. It had what kind of looked like gooseberries? Something seemed almost familiar about them, but, unable to remember, I gave in and just scooped one up. It was still wet, soaking in something in the barrel, and kind of… jiggled?

No point staring at it, I popped it into my mouth. At first, I almost gagged at the very unexpected saltiness, but then I chewed and it practically popped, filling my mouth with a sweet, smooth flavour. Almost milky. It soon clicked, sort of like an overly sweet tea. I smiled, remembering evenings at the orphanage, making little cups of sweet tea for the little ones. Oh they loved pretending to be grown-ups.

“Know how, tea bruises so easy, and the merchants don’t want to pull along barrels of water, so they dry them out. But here, we can get some fresh and pickle them,” the cook said.

“It’s lovely,” I whispered. A bridge between my past and present. A silly thought, I thought of how lovely it would be to stay here. It was a stereotype, but very much true that English people loved tea, maybe the only thing about me that was really English….

Looking over, she stared at me with a big grin. “You let me know and I treat you whenever you need it, okay?”

One time could have been a mistake, twice a coincidence, but her using “you” three times like that—I felt strangely happy about it. Like she was accepting me. “Okay,” I said.

Before she turned back to the croutons, she gestured for me to eat the rest, so I did, cherishing every tea-berry.