Juniper didn’t know about whatever had the townsfolk so worked up—she would have blurted it out to me first thing if she did. I felt a surge of unease. The people of Brylee had a tendency to get worried about every tiny thing, but Cora and Wren were usually a little more sensible. If they felt the need to shield Juniper from what was happening, then perhaps it truly was a cause for concern.
“Junie, there you are!” A young woman hurried into the room, her eyes fixed on her daughter. “I thought I told you to stay in the—” Her eyes fell on me. “Oh, Lady, you’ve arrived. That would explain it, then.”
The disapproving look she had fixed on her daughter didn’t relent, but the girl let go of my hand and ran happily to her mother anyway. She rushed through an almost unintelligible sentence from which I caught the word muffin.
Wren’s expression dissolved into a reluctant smile, and she nodded. Juniper ran off toward the far bench where I could see a cooling rack filled with muffins. Wren gave me an apologetic look.
“I hope you’re hungry. She won’t relax until you’ve had one, I’m afraid. I needed an excuse to be out of the classroom this morning, and Juniper has been begging me to do some baking with her.”
I gave her an inquiring look.
“Frank and Selena are nearly old enough for apprenticeships now, and they’re both outdoing each other trying to prove how reliable they are, so I’ve been wanting to give them a chance to take charge of the younger ones.” She chuckled. “Juniper was a little too eager to escape her schooling, but she’s still young. I wouldn’t even have started her at it yet if I wasn’t responsible for the older children as well.”
I smiled to indicate my willingness to become a muffin taster and slipped onto one of the stools surrounding the enormous, worn wooden table that filled the middle of the kitchen. Wren and Juniper had been at the haven for more than three years now, and I knew that she took her role of teacher to the haven’s children seriously. Her attention for them hadn’t wavered, despite their numbers being low this year—Cora having found adoptive families for three of the younger ones only a few months ago, and two of the older ones having left for apprenticeships that she had secured.
Normally at least some new children would have arrived to replace them, but we’d been seeing fewer and fewer people making their way to the haven from distant towns. Travel all across the kingdom had been dropping from all reports.
I was glad Wren was getting a small break. And perhaps she could answer my question. Glancing toward Juniper, I confirmed she was still busy selecting the perfect muffin. When I looked back at Wren, it was with a raised eyebrow and an inquiring tilt of my head.
When she didn’t immediately seem to understand, I jerked my head toward the front door and the rest of town. Adopting an exaggerated expression of concern, I mimed my best impression of the townsfolk I had passed.
A woman several decades our senior, her hair in no-nonsense braids against her scalp, entered the room just in time to witness my performance. She snorted a laugh.
“Are you sure you’re not a long-lost member of my family? You look exactly like my old Aunt Florinda. She wore an expression just like that every day of her life.”
Wren chuckled. Only my brown hair, thick and wavy, looked anything like Cora’s—and since she always wore hers in braids, even that wasn’t much of a similarity. Certainly my pale skin and blue eyes looked nothing like the warm brown of hers.
I smiled as well, but inside I hid a sigh. I knew every branch of my family tree, tracing back multiple generations—my father had insisted on it. There was no chance I had any relatives half as down-to-earth and kind as Cora. I would have to content myself with being adopted into the haven’s strange family in heart, if not in actuality.
When Wren’s humor subsided, I made a series of hand gestures that produced a sigh from Cora, her face falling into more serious lines. Juniper trotted back toward us before she could reply, however, proudly bearing a muffin on a little plate which she placed before me.
“What are you talking about?” She looked between us all.
“Nothing that concerns you,” said Wren. “Lady has her muffin now, so why don’t you get