Viv put down the rag with a prickle of surprise.
Taking the envelope, she studied the Territorial post marks that charted its path to Thune. The wax on the back bore the impression of a page and quill.
She cracked the seal and withdrew a folded letter.
Viv,
It’s been many years, and I don’t know how to sum them up, so I’m not even going to attempt it. I thought of you often and hoped you were out there alive. I confess, sometimes I doubted it, because the life you chose is a hard one. Imagine my delight when I heard you were well, and more than that, your life took turns I never could have imagined. I received the news of your shop, and your success, from Zelia Greatstrider, of all people. Coffee? I’m afraid it hasn’t arrived on this sleepy end of the Territory, but I’m intrigued.
I’d love to say that my life has been perfect, that I’ve seized every moment, that after you left there were no struggles or doubts, but that wouldn’t be true. It has been satisfactory, though. There have been many good days.
But hearing word of your ambitions made me think of the book I gave you. Crossed Purposes. It made me think of the story past the story. I think you found yours. And knowing that, it makes me imagine that I can find mine, too. And that I need to seek it out.
I love what I do. I know that. Once, you showed me how much. But I want to smell different air, to see different faces, to forge new connections. I cannot tell you how much you’ve inspired me.
Satchel is gone now. And I’m relieved that he chose to do more than stay here with me, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t lonely in his absence.
I will be traveling to Thune in Maias. A sabbatical, you might say. I do hope to see you when I arrive. I can picture you in my mind, with your sword and your impatience, and so look forward to holding a new image alongside it.
Have you been reading since you left Murk? I hope so. I find myself wondering if a seed was planted in you when you were stranded here so long ago, and maybe it took a long time to blossom. If I helped water it in any way, then that would make me very happy.
Yours,
Fern
P.S.—Maylee is well. I think you helped her understand who she needed to find, and then, at last, she did. I thought you might like to know.
“Fern,” murmured Viv.
“That must have been quite the letter,” observed Tandri with a curious smile. “Your face went a few places, anyway.”
Viv laid it down on the counter and gazed around Legends & Lattes. At the shop and the home she’d built. In her mind, she could see Thistleburr and the red door and the hurricane lamp and the warm press of books on all sides. She glanced at the stack of chapbooks and novels tucked under the counter.
“I never told you about Murk, did I,” said Viv.
“No, you didn’t.” Tandri joined her on the other side of the counter and squeezed her shoulder. “But by your expression, it’s a good story.”
“We’ll probably need a drink or two. It’s not a short one.” She could already imagine Tandri’s amused expression when she recounted her fumbling summer romance with Maylee.
“Start talking, I’ll fix us both a hot cup.”
“Yeah …” Viv trailed off as a series of gears meshed in her mind. Something interlocking after twenty years. “Hey, that place next door is still for sale, isn’t it?”
“Jeremiah’s place? I think so. Why?”
Viv did some sums in her head, thinking about the savings they’d amassed over the past few years and about old connections and little windows. “Just thinking. An old friend is coming to town. Could be she decides to stay, and if so …” She glanced at Tandri. “What do you think about maybe … a bookstore next door? I wonder if Cal is up for another renovation … ?”
“A bookstore?” Tandri blinked. “Is this to do with that letter?”
Viv thought of the words Berk had said to her all those years ago. Sometimes we aren’t the right people yet.
But now, maybe she was.
“Yeah, a bookstore.” Viv stared at Tandri, and without thinking about it, tucked a lock of hair behind her wife’s ear. “You know, books are what brought me to you.”
“Mmm. Not coffee?”
“Long before that.”
“I guess I’m thankful then.”
Viv thought about that for a moment.
“Actually, it was probably getting stabbed in the leg that did it.”
And as Tandri laughed, waiting for the full story, Viv was grateful for all the wrong times that had led to this right one.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Well, none of this went as expected.
I’m writing these acknowledgements, and it hasn’t even been a year since Legends & Lattes was released. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that.
When Tor UK acquired the rights to Legends & Lattes to republish it, part of the deal was that I’d write a second book. Fortunately, I knew exactly what that book would be. I already had it in mind, crystal-clear, and surely I’d be able to write it in six months. After all, it only took a month for the first book. Easy-peasy, right?
Ha.
Friends, that’s not the book you’re holding.
My second book was going to be cozy fantasy mystery set in the city of Thune – Fantasy Murder She Wrote. It centered around the magical college of Ackers, involving a five-hundred-year-old elf and instructor of Thaumic Forensics. After being passed over for the deanship of Ackers for someone infinitely less qualified, she angrily retired from her professorship to become a romance novelist. A not particularly successful one. Thus, when contacted years later to investigate the death of the dean who took her job, she returned to Thune and Ackers – with her affable himbo in tow – to investigate the mysterious death, if only to shake the hand of whoever did it. Along the way we’d learn about the way that magic functions in the Territory, more about the Madrigal and Lack and Thune’s underworld, and we’d follow the formation of her fledgling detective agency in the rooms above a university bookshop.
Gosh, I knew exactly how it was going to go. I had a ten-thousand-word outline. I was unstoppable.
I got about twenty thousand words in and loathed it. Everything felt mechanical, making sure person A got to place B, and information C was discovered. It felt like a big list of chores. There were glimmers of things there that I really liked, but deep down, the book just didn’t have any heart.
I confessed this to my editors Georgia & Lindsey in absolute terror, but they were kind and supportive as I lurched to another, alternate book.
And then another.
And then another.
And that’s the one you’re holding.
It wasn’t all wasted – it sounds gross, but I harvested a lot of organs from those three failed books, and they’re here, pumping away in Bookshops & Bonedust. Several characters emerged from the wreckage to populate Murk.
Everyone tells you the second book is the hardest, and they’re right. The real challenge for me was untangling what I was feeling while I was writing. Was this horrible nausea I was experiencing because the story was bad, or was it because I was now writing for expectations, and didn’t want to let anyone down? I couldn’t tell. It took me three attempts to untangle it, and correctly identify those emotions.