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There was an awful rusty old horseshoe that Imogen kept tacking up over the door.
It was beaten-up and clumsy and large, and it usually hung against the wall at a slightly lopsided angle, the nails not matching from one side to the next. Which was fine, of course; most of Laudna’s own things didn’t match either, so she didn’t mind. She’d gotten very good at salvaging from here and there—torn curtains; dinged plates; the parts for Pâté, who was her best friend. She could find her way to understanding it, if this was Imogen making do.
Besides, it had been quite a while since Laudna had seen a horseshoe this close-up. Horses were a bit leery of her, and if she’d managed to catch sight of one it would’ve been on the receiving end of a kick, ha ha. So it’s entirely possible that this was a nice horseshoe. Perhaps clunkiness was a desirable attribute for horseshoes, if they were to protect the feet of horses. Which would make the specimen that Imogen had chosen to decorate the walls with really the first in class of its kind, and the roughness an aesthetic choice—a referendum, perhaps, on the general disarray of their surroundings, a complement to the crumbling soot-blackened walls of the shack outside Savay and the rough-hewn floors of the abandoned barn near Tinnec. After all, they were bedding down among ashes, among hay; it was congruous with the general schema. Adding a horseshoe didn’t make things more beautiful, per se, but if Imogen preferred stylistic consistency to aesthetic standards, Laudna could make an effort to understand that.
But when Imogen hung the horseshoe in the little house on the outskirts of Gevindon, which had honest-to-goodness curtains and a front door that had seen an actual coat of paint on this side of the Apex War and glass in the windows—when Imogen hung the horseshoe in the house outside Gevindon, Laudna was stumped. After all, well. The house wasn’t as beautiful as Imogen’s home in Gelvaan had been, surely, but even so—how could she not notice the way the rust (or mud, possibly) left a reddish stain on the maple (maple!) of the walls, the way it highlighted the torn-up side of the curtains and drew the eye towards the crack in the doorframe?
“Maybe she’s been trying to get me to mend them?” she remarked hopefully to Pâté as she pinched holes out of the curtain fabric. Imogen was out at the market, getting them bread and eggs and possibly apples, and after seven and one-half weeks, Laudna was cautiously allowing herself to believe that she would return. “Like it’s, you know, a symbol of… of decay, or something, and she’s hanging it as a request?”
“I think she just likes it,” Pâté said back, and Laudna frowned.
“I don’t know. That doesn’t make a great deal of sense.”
“Why don’t it make sense?”
Laudna lifted her eyebrows at him. It was a stupid question with an obvious answer. “Well, because she’s Imogen.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Oh, come now, Pâté, you’ve known her just as long as I have,” Laudna scolded. “She’s—I mean, look at her. And Gelvaan was such a pretty town, and she brought us all those flowers to our shack—she makes everything beautiful. I should think that’s obvious.”
“She is real lovely,” Pâté said. “Got a nice face.”
It took Laudna a moment to understand his meaning. “Oh! Well, I meant she made it pretty with the flowers. But of course you’re right, she is very beautiful—”
“Nice knockers too,” Pâté said, and Laudna almost dropped him.
“Pâté!” she said, scandalized. “She’s our guest.”
She wasn’t sure where they’d been heading, exactly, the past two months. Those first few days she’d been so dazed with Imogen’s presence that she hadn’t even thought to question it, too certain that Imogen’s answer would be back, but as they’d wound their way further and further through the Highlands, she’d allowed the question to surface, immediately finding it to be as exposed as a minnow in a stream and twice as quick to dart out of her hands. Imogen had only shaken her head and said that the important part was away.
Oh! Laudna had said, and smiled as big as she could to try to ignore the way Delilah’s whisper curled into her mind: away from you, next.
It had been seven and one-half weeks, now, and Imogen was still traveling with Laudna, and every day that she woke to see Imogen’s bedroll still clinging to the ground across the room, that echo got a little hollower, a little easier to ignore. Yes, eventually Imogen would be leaving. She didn’t need a whisper to know that. But that day was still sometime in the future. Sometime down the road. They would have, if she was quite lucky, miles to travel still. Shacks to find. Corners to tidy. Walls to decorate. She had a bit more time to make it beautiful.
Pâté had an idea, then.
-
The days flew by with a project at hand. They always did. It was so exciting, to have something to work on, something to do, something to watch take shape under her fingers! As with most of Pâté’s ideas, it was a bit fiddly; there were lots of little bones involved, and although she’d been judicious with it, Laudna was nearly out of black yarn and would have to be even more careful than usual to make good use of the scraps.
She thought at first that she might work on it only when Imogen was out of the house, perhaps make up some excuses for a bit of privacy—but after one half-hearted request for a useless errand and a skeptical look from Imogen in response, she gave up on this and settled for ignoring Imogen’s curious looks as she worked, thrumming with excitement but determined to have it be a surprise and so merely chatting on, not letting her mind linger too much on her purpose. She’d told Imogen she didn’t mind having her in her head, and she didn’t; it was pleasant to have someone who wasn’t Delilah perched in there among her thoughts, and that was well worth the inconvenience.
So she allowed herself the precious treasure of Imogen’s company as she worked, and within a week it was done.
It was stunning: a skeletal wreath, edged in a homemade lace carefully knotted together from pulled-apart bits of yarn, the little ribs fanning out like a sunburst within a dark cloud around an intricate inner circle of vertebrae. She genuinely thought it might be her finest creation yet, and all for Imogen, too; she couldn’t wait to show her, to see that surprised grateful look on her face each time she looked up and saw it on the wall of the building. Something deserving of the word home. Something deserving of Imogen.
“I thought I was your finest creation yet,” Pâté said petulantly, and Laudna apologized.
“You’re right. It can be the second-finest.”
It was difficult to get the nails out of the horseshoe. She very nearly fell backwards off of the chair twice in the effort. Maybe someday, she thought with a bitter flare of irritation, she’d simply be able to climb the walls; wouldn’t that be something? “Got that one, Delilah?” she asked, shoving the long flat stone she’d found out by the woods under the metal nailhead again. “If you’re trying to make yourself useful.”
Silence, of course. Only ever there when Laudna didn’t want the company, and so rarely present when she did. Waggling conversation in front of Laudna like a dead rat to an ill-fed snake. Or perhaps Laudna was the rat.
“I don’t need you anymore anyway,” Laudna said, and she managed to get the second side of the horseshoe unattached from the wall. She tossed it to the floor where it thumped rustily.
Then—again of course—that whispery voice:
Now, now. I do hope you don’t say anything you might regret once she’s left you alone again.
Laudna ignored her.
-
When Imogen returned, Laudna waited for her to notice the new decoration, excitement simmering under her fingernails. It took a long time—Imogen came in overheated from the late summer sun, looking very pretty and flushed and disgruntled, and so Laudna sat her down at the table and went about getting her a cool wet cloth to put on her neck. As she bustled around looking for the right choice of fabric, she stole glances back at Imogen, who had leaned down and was brushing some mud off her shoe onto the floor, which was of course fine, and not looking over at the space above the door, which was less fine. “How was town?” Laudna said, hoping Imogen would ask about her own afternoon here in return and she’d have a natural segue, and Imogen told her about the weekend market’s wider sprawl and the stable she’d seen on the way out, the thought she’d had to do some odd jobs for coin. Could buy some of that honey Laudna’d been wanting, she said, which was very sweet of her, but she wasn’t looking at the door and when she came to the end of a sentence Laudna burst over the edge of the cliff, words tumbling out.
“There’s a surprise for you!”
Imogen drew up short, brows knitting together as she held the cool towel to her neck. “Oh?” Laudna thought she saw the tentative ghost of a smile touching the edges of her lips.
Emphatic with anticipation, she gestured to the space above the door. “I’ve made us a decoration! To brighten up the space! I know that you’ve been trying for quite a while to hint that these places weren’t quite nice enough, hanging that rusty old thing, and you’ve been so kind about it of course, not saying anything, but it was so hideous and I thought it would be nice to surprise you with something finer!”
Imogen was still looking up at the wreath.
Laudna held the question for one second, two, to let her take it in. Then: “What do you think?”
“It’s real nice,” Imogen said, but the words didn’t sound enthusiastic. They didn’t sound pleased. They sounded quiet, and when Imogen looked away from the wreath, she didn’t look back at Laudna. “Where’s, um?”
“The—oh, the horseshoe?” Laudna said, suddenly self-conscious and unsure why. “Over by the door, I hadn’t gotten to it yet… I thought it could be useful as a cooking tool, you know, to hang the pot above the fire, it’s a bit sturdier than my current set-up—it’s just leaning against the wall, though, we could use it for anything. Is that… okay?”
The ground felt a little less than solid beneath her feet.
“Yeah,” Imogen said. “Yeah, it’s fine.”
“Do you not like it?” Laudna asked, and Imogen did look back at her then. Her expression sat behind her eyes and Laudna didn’t know how to read it or how to find what it meant. She thought it might be sad. She thought that someday, if Imogen stayed for long enough, she would teach herself to read all of Imogen’s faces so that she could keep her from ever being sad again. With a desperate swoop of her stomach, she feared she wouldn’t get that chance.
“No, I do,” Imogen said, and she turned up one side of her mouth. Relief burst in Laudna’s mouth like a sweet berry. “I… do you wanna tell me about how you made it?”
“Yes!” she said, seizing the offering, and she dove for her leftover supplies and began clattering them onto the table for a demonstration.
-
The next morning, Imogen was still there. And the next. And the next.
So it was all right, probably! Laudna told herself this as she rambled her way out toward the ravine edge for a scavenging trip. In fact, Imogen had gone out of her way to compliment the wreath again. She had apologized for being distracted. Said she loved that Laudna made this thing for them. Pressed gratitude into Laudna’s hands that Laudna held with bewildered, muddled hope. It seemed truthful, she trusted Imogen, but under it sat what felt like that dull little nut of sadness. She wondered if Imogen hated it and was, again, being polite. Being kind towards Laudna’s feelings, as she always was. Perhaps if Laudna improved it. Perhaps if she added feathers, or wove in some scrap of purple to show Imogen she was thinking of her and her lovely hair.
“Or else it’s just the horseshoe,” Pâté said. “She liked the horseshoe.”
It had disappeared from its spot next to the door and Laudna thought she’d seen the rusty weight of it dragging down the fabric at the bottom of Imogen’s knapsack. She had glanced up at her beautiful wreath covering the rusty smudges on the wall.
“No,” Laudna said, aware she was being stubborn but unwilling to look at the feeling. “That doesn’t make sense, Pâté. It’s garbage.”
“You like garbage. I’m garbage. That wreath is garbage. Everything we own is garbage.”
“It’s ugly garbage,” Laudna said, and she stuffed him, protesting, into a pocket of her skirt.
And it was a lucky day: she did find a purple ribbon out along the path, and a blue one and some sandwiches besides, a whole lunch tin worth, and she felt only a little guilty as she shook her Form of Dread back off of herself and soothed her Unsettling Presence. The girl in her fine tidy clothes would go home to a mother who shopped at the market and Laudna would be able to take these back to Imogen for dinner and that would be one more entire day Imogen would stay. And she could add the ribbon to the wreath tomorrow and that would be another.
When, a few hours later, flush with her finds (to which she’d added several dead beetles, a large bundle of acorns, six of a slightly shriveled fruit she didn’t recognize, and a very nice sharp rock that she’d washed clear in the stream), she bustled into the cabin, knocking the door open with an elbow to maneuver her way through the resulting gap without abandoning any of her armful of cargo, expecting to organize it all on the table and perhaps begin to grind the acorn flour before Imogen returned home so that she could offer her a nice surprise—it took her a moment to register Imogen sitting on the half-broken settee in the corner.
“You’re home!” Laudna said, and she nearly dropped the acorns. “This is nice, I thought you’d be out—the odd jobs at the stable—did they not need you today? I found a lovely stream I can show you if you’re free! And some fruits, I think they’re edible, although I don’t really know for certain yet—”
As she spoke, she realized that Imogen had been hunched around herself, a small and miserable-looking ball, and as she raised her face to Laudna it was wet.
“Oh,” Laudna said, and she did drop the acorns then and hurried to the couch, falling to her knees beside it. “Oh, no, Imogen, what’s the matter? Did something—has someone hurt you? I’ll take care of it, I will, I—are you all right? Oh, are you injured?” Her hands were fluttering at Imogen’s shoulders, her knee, wanting to touch to comfort and not sure if she was allowed, if that would be something Imogen would want, if that was something people did. After an anxious moment she dove back towards the door and grabbed for the kerchief Imogen had lent her, the acorns scattering from it across the floor, and she cast a hasty cantrip to clean it and held it out towards Imogen’s face.
Imogen shook her head and there was a forced wet little curve up to her mouth that made Laudna’s heart lunge against her chest.
“No, m’fine, m’fine, I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be sorry,” Laudna said furiously, and she leaned forward to blot Imogen’s tears. Imogen let her for a moment before stilling Laudna’s hand with her own. “What’s happened, what’s—?”
It was then that she looked down at Imogen’s lap and saw that she had been cradling the rusty horseshoe.
“Oh,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Imogen said hastily. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I don’t need to hang it up, I know I’m sort of—sort of crashin’ your life here, and I can be outta your hair whenever you need, I don’t wanna be a bother. I know you hate it. I just miss…” She stumbled to a stop.
Words felt misshapen in Laudna’s mouth. She’d messed it up, she’d tried to do something nice and she’d broken all of it, and didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how to mend it. “Miss…?”
“I’d—I’ve never lived anywhere else.” Imogen’s voice trembled. “I didn’t—I never—I didn’t think I’d miss it.”
A whisper from Delilah: See.
“It’s stupid, I’m sorry,” Imogen said, and tears had made their way back into her voice. “I know it’s—it’s real dumb. I don’t…”
“No,” Laudna said. The world echoed a bit distant around her. She’d know this was coming, she had, she’d known. Delilah was murmuring to her and she tried to segment it out of her mind, reached down for Pâté with one anxious hand and then realized it was still holding the handkerchief. It could be a suit for him. No, it was Imogen’s. She’d find another. Delilah was murmuring and Imogen was, Imogen was— “No, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, of course I understand, of course, that’s—you’re not stupid, you could never be stupid, I’m the one who—that is—I’m sorry if you felt that—we can turn around tomorrow. Or tonight. Tonight? Or—” Imogen was shaking her head now and the handkerchief was twisting and twisting in Laudna’s hands and the words were unstuck in a panicked flow, “Or I don’t have to go with you, of course, if you wanted to go into town I’m sure you could find a, a caravan passing through, or a—”
Imogen opened her mouth and Laudna pulled herself up short, offers and suggestions bumping clumsily against each other. The silence fumbled between them for another beat, then two, until Imogen found her words. “I don’t… I don’t wanna go back.”
“Oh,” Laudna said. The relief melted confusingly and dribbled into the worried cracks that had begun to branch into her chest. “You don’t?”
“Course not,” Imogen said. She managed the rough edge of a watery smile, then looked down and rubbed a thumb across the horseshoe. “I hated it there, you know that.”
“I do.” She did. She’d forgotten. “But you said…”
“Yeah. Stupid, isn’t it? I just… I dunno. I don’t know.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s just…” Imogen looked up and sighed. “I’m bad at explainin’ things, I’m sorry, I’m tryin’. It’s like… Don’t you ever miss where you came from?” Her eyes fell back onto Laudna and she immediately looked like she regretted the question. “Sorry, I know we don’t talk about…”
“No, it’s all right.” It was almost a relief to be back on ground that she understood. Laudna had rattled out the basics—she’s dead, isn’t that funny! her killer lives in her head!—in a delirious, possibly slightly unclear rush not long after they’d met in Gelvaan, overcome by the thrill of Imogen coming back to see her and nervous to share the thing that might keep it from happening again, needing to know so that she wouldn’t have to wait sitting at the door and hoping, hoping. And Imogen had been thoughtful, Imogen had been kind. Was always kind. Imogen hadn’t asked any more questions after that, and it struck Laudna now that of course she had been wondering.
“It was—rather horrible, actually,” she said. “I mean, not at first, but by the time I… left.” She realized then that she was still kneeling on the floor beside Imogen and awkwardly looked at the settee next to her, and to her vast relief, Imogen patted it. Her bones creaked a bit as she sat.
“The woman who—who killed me, she took over the place when I was a young woman. It was quite awful, there was some kind of coup, it was supposedly quite bloody… Things got bad very fast after that. Famine, you know, and lots of undead things. Ironic now, I suppose, ha ha.” She stole a look at Imogen, whose face was locked in a distressed sort of expression. “I’ve tried not to think about it, if I’m being honest. It’s been a great many years. Whatever’s left of it, there wouldn’t be much to return to. Certainly no one I know. Or no one who would want to see me.”
“Your parents?” Imogen whispered, and Laudna shook her head.
“Dead.”
“I’m so sorry.” An uncertain pause. “Do you miss them?”
Yes. No. There had been a lot of things to miss and even more to forget, a horrible lonely tasteless jumble. After a few years, she’d tried to fold some memories into their own little carton to keep them safe and intact, but they’d already gone shadow-stained and cold. “I don’t know. Do you miss your father?”
Imogen shrugged. “I dunno.” Then she sniffed again and wiped at her nose with her arm. “I guess I… this is pathetic.”
“You could never be pathetic.”
A damp, wobbly little half-lift of her lips, almost sadder than no smile at all. “I mostly miss—I mostly just miss Flora,” Imogen said. She touched the horseshoe and started crying again in earnest. “Is that terrible?”
“Oh, Imogen,” Laudna said, and even though she still wasn’t sure if it was the kind of thing they did, the kind of thing Imogen would want from her, cold and brittle and knobby as she was, she leaned forward and wrapped Imogen in her arms. A muffled sob, and then Imogen was holding her back.
Tentatively, Laudna lifted a hand and stroked her hair, and Imogen’s breathing did a sort of sobby catch and then she let out a long, shaky exhale against Laudna’s shoulder. Laudna did it again and Imogen leaned further into her and they were holding each other, and some long-forgotten rattly rusty thing inside of Laudna mended itself.
They sat like that as a minute stretched to two and to three, and then as Imogen’s breathing slowed and steadied, Laudna said, “Do you want to tell me about her? Flora?”
Imogen nodded, sat back. Her face was tear-streaked but grateful, and Laudna offered her the bandana again. She smiled, a real smile that kindled a light in Laudna, and took it. “You met her, once. That first day? I was ridin’ her out the fields, we used to do that a lot, our favorite trail was out past the place you were stayin’, it went into the trees a little ways… She liked the shade. I didn’t hate it either, mind, gets real hot in the summers, but she liked it best of all, so I’d take her there before we’d go out to the spot with all the wildflowers.”
“You took me there,” Laudna said. “It was beautiful.”
Imogen nodded. She was rubbing a thumb along a groove in the rusted metal. “I braided some of the flowers into her mane sometimes. She’ll let me do it long as I give her carrots, but not too many or she won’t eat right for a few days. She’s sensitive. She didn’t like when the farrier came to change the horseshoes either, everyone else got all excited for the attention but she always wanted me there with her, or Cynthia.” She gave the horseshoe a halfhearted little shake.
“It makes you feel connected to her,” Laudna said.
“Yeah.” Imogen bit her lip. “But I don’t have to hang it up or anything, really. I know you hate it.”
“I don’t hate it,” Laudna said quickly. Imogen looked at her, and shit, fuck, right, the mind reading. “I mean, I think it’s—it’s not my style, certainly, but—”
“Laudna, it’s okay,” Imogen said. “I don’t mind if you hate it. I’m a big girl, I can handle it. Flora’s not gonna be here either way. I’m not in Gelvaan anymore and that’s—that’s a good thing. A really good thing. I’ll just get used to it, promise.”
“No, let’s—” Laudna started to say, and then an idea hit her. A new one. It was wonderful and she pivoted as quickly as she could, before Imogen could see it. A new surprise. “I met a couple of horses, I think. Flora is the one with a stripe down her nose, right?”
“A blaze,” Imogen said, taking the pivot in stride. “Stripes are a little narrower—she’s got a pretty wide face, though, so it’s kinda on the line between ‘em. Daddy called it a stripe, but I don’t think he’s right. Her mama had a blaze too, and—” She paused. “You don’t really wanna hear all of this, do you?”
“Tell me everything,” Laudna said, and Imogen smiled.
-
After that, Laudna started to scavenge scraps with newfound fervor.
It was important to get it done quickly, but there were so many pieces that she wanted to get right. She had to source a piece of nice wood thick and soft enough not to splinter with sturdy nails through it, had to find nails that weren’t rusty—or vinegar for the unavoidable preexisting rust, maybe, if it was too much to Prestidigitate. Wire, likely, in the event that the nails failed or the wood was too thin, or for decoration, and she did have some very old pliers but wouldn’t it be fun to try to make some new ones out of the nails with her Mending, and she already had those lovely blue and purple ribbons. Leather could be useful as well. The paper could come from her journal, and she’d need to find a willow or some kind of vines for charcoal, she was almost certain she’d seen something serviceable down near the creek…
Then there was the matter of coming up with all sorts of fun things to think about to keep Imogen from catching a glimpse of her project. She’d begun working on a little song about their travels, and she flung herself into workshopping new verses whenever Imogen looked her way:
And the river it went swiftly and the evenings they were cold
But not so cold or quiet as the evenings past and old
With the company of Imogen and Laudna and Pâté
Another sun comes up upon another friendly day
They say the cabin’s haunted and you know it may be true
But the haunting’s much more fun when it is me and also you
With a presence that’s unsettling and a whisper in your head
But inside a fire’s burning and we’re cozy off to bed
You know lightning can be purple, just as purple as her hair
And the dancing lights she makes can make it purple everywhere
And the purple’s just as purple as the lovely sky is blue
Because Imogen is capable of all things good and true
“Laudna, stop,” Imogen said, rolling her eyes when she caught that last one, but there was a light in her eyes that made Laudna want to switch to singing aloud:
She is brave and she’s courageous and she moves things with her mind
Which is brilliant and useful just as much as she is kind
She can ride a hundred horses and finds carrots for the stew
There must be another thousand of the things that she can do
Imogen bit back a smile. “A hundred horses?”
“Well, not at once, presumably,” Laudna said. “Although really it should be any horse then, I suppose, or every horse, but those don’t fit the meter nearly as well.”
“I s’pose not,” Imogen allowed, and she went back to practicing her Prestidigitation on the rusty nails the way Laudna had shown her, but it wasn’t long before Laudna, with great joy and relief, heard the quiet sound of her humming.
True to Imogen’s word, she had been seeming, more or less, to be doing all right. Subdued, at times, but still engaged, still laughing at Laudna’s jokes and showing interest in her stories. Laudna had been keeping a close and apprehensive eye on all of it. That night after Imogen had fallen into tear-softened, worn-out sleep, Laudna had taken the horseshoe from Imogen’s bag, Prestidigitated off the worst of the rust, and very carefully propped it up on Imogen’s bedside table. She’d lain awake after, bracing herself for whispers from Delilah and the rush of self-recrimination when Imogen was gone in the morning—but Imogen had still been there, and she’d looked at the bedside display with a softness that meant that Laudna was on the right track.
So it was with hope that Laudna continued about her preparations.
After a rushed three days of scavenging, she was nearly set. There was a fourth day lost to bad weather, when an inopportune rainstorm soaked through her paper while she was outside at the pasture sketching, and a fifth to getting the shading to look the way she wanted, and there could nearly have been a sixth had Imogen not walked in while she had everything laid out on the table fluttering over it and whether it was just right.
“Out!” she said, and Imogen looked startled and a little affronted. “No, no, I’m sorry, Imogen, it’s—I’ve got a surprise for you and I just—ten minutes! Give me ten minutes!”
“Okay?” Imogen said, and Laudna furiously refocused her thoughts onto a new verse of the song about—she flailed for a moment—Imogen’s cooking skills, which were in truth quite terrible but which were brought forth with such sweet and concentrated effort that they were worthy of every commendation. Imogen’s eyebrows lifted and buckled, and then a hint of a smile warmed her face and she said, “Okay. Ten minutes. I’ll just go back out to the—to the creek, and—”
“Out!” Laudna sang again, and she bustled a perplexed Imogen out the door and hurried to finish getting organized.
It was another twenty minutes or so before the door creaked back open, which was good, because there were final touches to do on the drawing before she tucked it back between the pages of her journal, and she couldn’t resist the temptation to knock a last bit of rust off the horseshoe. It still looked worn, she thought, but good. Worthy of Imogen. She looked up when Imogen poked her head inside.
“Can I come back now?”
“Yes!” Laudna swept her inside. “Welcome to craft day!”
Imogen dropped her bag beside the door and surveyed the table. Laudna saw her eyes snag on the horseshoe and she looked up with a question on her face.
“It’s all right,” Laudna said hurriedly, “please don’t worry, it’s going to be—you’re going to like it, I promise. Please, I understand. Trust me?”
Imogen looked back down at the table, and after a single searching beat she looked up again and nodded. “Always.”
A rush of relief. “Come sit, come sit!”
Imogen allowed herself to be steered into a seat. “I’m no good at those things, Laudna, you know that,” she said, but Laudna was pleased to see her pick up the piece of wood and turn it over in her hands. “What’re we makin’?”
“Nonsense, you’re very capable. And you’ll see when we’re done, that’s part of the surprise. Here, we’re starting with the wood, I’ve neatened it up a bit to make it the right size for the horseshoe, we just have to line them up, and look, these are the nails you were practicing your Prestidigitation on—”
It did take most of her resolve not to overly correct Imogen as she drove the nails crookedly through the horseshoe, nor to weigh in as she criss-crossed the wires imprecisely around the edges. Laudna’s original plan for the project had involved a lot more decoration, a clever sort of weaving with the leather and ribbon that she thought would evoke a decorated bridle, but she scrapped that idea quickly for a more basic version and was touched to see the rough-hewn intensity of Imogen’s focus.
“You make this look easy,” Imogen grumbled after a few minutes of poking a ribbon through the little holes Laudna had bored for her in the leather.
“Well, thirty years alone is rather a long time to fill,” Laudna said lightly, and then stumbled when Imogen looked up at her.
“Thirty?”
“Oh—yes,” Laudna said. “I think so, or very nearly. I thought I’d said.”
“I didn’t think—I knew it was a long time, but—that’s so many years, Laudna,” Imogen said, and she reached out and touched Laudna’s hand. Laudna’s heart stilled and rebirthed itself at the easy contact, and she turned her own hand to take Imogen’s into it.
“The time passes,” she said. “I was thinking, actually, the other day. You asked if I was ever homesick, but there have been so many homes since then. One becomes rather adept at building them anew over and over with the pieces one can carry. Like a snail, or a turtle. I suppose that’s why I made Pâté, really, to have something that could come with me. The linens and so on too. It’s a comfort to know that even when I move on, there are pieces I can bring with me and ways I can start over. Building something a bit old and new each time.”
Imogen’s eyes held her, gentle and considering, and it felt important, suddenly, to get to the surprise.
“Anyway, you can be a lot more liberal with a needle once you’re dead,” Laudna said brightly. “Fewer nerve endings in the fingers. Do you want help?”
“Oh—yes, please,” Imogen said, and she handed over the ribbon.
From there it was a short ways to finishing the project: stringing the beribboned leather through a couple holes near the top of the wood backing, carefully centered so that it would hang straight, and a few gentle taps with a hammer to make sure the horseshoe was flush enough with the wood to hold the paper.
“Nearly done!” Laudna sang, running a final Prestidigitating finger over the horseshoe’s edge. “What do you think?”
She watched Imogen take in their handiwork. It didn’t look too bad, to be honest; a bit clumsy but attractive in its way. It looked homemade and earnest and kind. Laudna trembled with the want for her to love it.
“Were you thinkin’... that we could hang it up?” Imogen asked. She sounded hopeful but careful, so careful. “Laudna, I meant it, we don’t gotta—”
“Wait!” Laudna said, and she dove for the journal. “Wait, wait. You haven’t seen the final touch yet.”
From among its pages she produced the drawing she’d been laboring over in careful charcoal lines, fixed with magic not to smudge and painstaking in the details.
“I don’t know if I got it exactly right,” she said, nervous. “I went out to the field to sketch, but they move around so much, and of course I only met Flora the one time, and I think your hair looks a bit odd at the side but you won’t notice it so much when it’s in the frame, I think—assuming you want to put it in,” she added quickly, “we could also just hang it as is, I promise I’ll be kind about it even if it’s a bit—”
“Oh,” Imogen breathed. It looked like her eyes had filled with tears, and she reached out and almost touched the paper as though it might spook and vanish. Laudna pushed it towards her, and she picked it up and held it close. “Is this—?”
“You and Flora. I didn’t get the blaze too narrow?”
Imogen shook her head, still looking at the page. “It’s perfect,” she said. She looked up at Laudna and her expression was wildflowers in a sunlit, the wind of a horseback ride. “You did this for me?”
Laudna’s nerves flipped, and Pâté detached himself from her belt and danced onto the table. “Don’t give her too much credit now,” he said. “She’s the one what did the work, but I’m the one what thought you might like it.”
“I do,” Imogen said. “Thank you, Pâté.” But her lovely eyes were still on Laudna, and so Laudna swallowed and tried to speak for herself.
“What Pâté thought,” Laudna said, “is that you might—well, you know, we have lots of things making this home, for us. But if you’re staying—which you don’t have to do, of course, and I know this could never be home, not truly. But we thought—I thought—that you might, well, you know. As you’re here. I was hoping you might consider this a home, of sorts. And I wanted to make a place for you in it.”
Imogen’s eyes had already been teary, but it now looked like she was about to cry in earnest. She opened her mouth to speak, seemed unable to find words, and then she nodded, quick and firm, like she was afraid the moment might get away.
“Yes?” Laudna said, hope brimming.
Imogen nodded again. The paper was gripped tight in her hands. She might have crinkled it, but even so, she was holding it like something precious. “Can I—” she said. Her voice was crackly, and she cleared her throat and started over. “Can we hang it up, now?”
"If the lady of the house agrees," Laudna said, and Imogen's laugh was the best thing she'd ever heard. "Do you want to do the honors?"
“Yeah.” Imogen wiped her eyes with her sleeve, pushed her hair back and straightened her kerchief. She smiled. “Yeah, I’d love that.”
Inside Laudna, something was unbuilding itself, tentative and searching and sure. A spackled wall fell. In the dust was something new. She reached out for Imogen’s hand, and when she squeezed, Imogen squeezed back.
"Thank you," Imogen said softly.
She reached for the horseshoe, and carefully, so carefully, she slid Laudna's drawing into the picture frame they’d made together.
And Laudna watched, heart aglow, as in her brilliant, talented, telekinetic way, Imogen lifted it, clumsy and crooked and beautiful, to the spot where it belonged: over the door of the home the two of them shared.