“You know it’s better this way.”
“Better? Better this way?” Ivo snapped. “That’s cheap. This is gluttony.”
“Gluttony is for poseurs and for faking belief.” Maisie dumped her cargo onto the edge of a column, both arms full of homemade sweets and shiny scavenged trinkets. “That’s what’s greedy, expecting praise. I’m genuine.”
Ivo huffed, watching as she stood a bundle of candied apples back up. It was a cold mid-autumn evening, unhindered by the wide-open pavilion they paused under, and even his good jacket didn’t feel like enough. “You’re genuine?”
“Genuinely.”
“Genuinely, I’m not so sure about that.”
Maisie pushed herself up onto the ledge, counting out her gifts beside her. They had come back to the pavilion once the sun started to dip and the crowds started to get boring—or, at least, that was Ivo’s reasoning. According to Maisie, it was because the real big event was kicking off soon, and she wanted to get ready early. Alright, then, he’d said. Sure, he’d brought a present or two of his own, a few sweet rolls he wouldn’t mind burning, but the slightest bit of shelter from the wind was just as much appreciated.
Ivo pulled his collar tighter around his neck. At the altar behind them, a firekeeper fanned air onto a flickering bundle of kindling. “It’s not supposed to be for you, you know.”
“Oh,” Maisie smiled. “I know.”
“What did you bring, anyways?” Ivo continued, eyeing her supply. It was a near-unsightly pile of nonsense, anything from anywhere with any sort of gleam. Carefully wrapped caramels, tied up in scraps of pine-green thread, stood at attention beside a stack of mismatched rings and bottles of fuzzy aged cider. Nobody he’d ever known brought that much as an offering. How she’d gotten ahold of it all was one question; how she managed to carry it without dropping or crushing or squashing any of it was far, far beyond him.
Maisie leant back against the column behind her, her legs swinging. She twisted one of the candied apples’ sticks between her fingers. “Oh, just a bit of this and that.”
This and that? It looked like she had emptied half her kitchen. “Well, at least pawn the stuff or something. Or sell some of it, maybe. You could probably let it go for a lot more.”
Maisie glanced down at him. “A lot more than what?”
“A lot more than whatever it could give you—”
She shushed him frantically, and he blinked in surprise. “You don’t trust it?”
“…It? Yeah, I mean—I mean, yeah, no,” Ivo said. The warmth of the growing fires on his shoulder did little to help his goosebumps. “I do. I really do, I promise, it’s just—it’s not like you can take it back, right?”
Maisie sat back with a frown, staring off towards the streamers on the ceiling. She looked perfectly calm, but then again, she always did; he recognized something more foreign in her eyes, some sudden distance, and he wasn’t sure whether it was contemplation or something more severe. “Take it…back?”
“Yeah, take it back. I mean, it’s a lot.”
“A lot?”
“It’s…a lot.” Ivo turned, waving his hand, looking for something else to say. Being the source of all his lapses in vocabulary was exclusively Maisie’s domain, though he did pride himself on how rarely it happened. “I just wouldn’t want to see all your hard work go to waste.”
At that she perked up. “It can’t go to waste. You should know that.”
“Know that? What’s to know?” He felt a spark of irritation in his stomach, and immediately did his best to snuff it out. The last thing he ever wanted to mess with was Maisie’s belief. God, he’d never hear the end of it.
“Know that it can’t ever be ungrateful,” Maisie said. She was fidgeting with something from the pile, he noticed, pushing ceramic beads back and forth with her fingernail—the bracelet he’d gotten for her, back on her sixteenth birthday. He’d always been proud of the choice; he’d gone to the crafts market to pick it up, dug around for the handsomest gold charms and burgundy beads he could find, and she seemed to think it was just as flattering. She’d worn it every day, after all. Every day until today.
It’d be worthless, he realised, in a few short minutes, heaped up with everything else and set ablaze.
Belief be damned. “You’re being ungrateful, Maisie. I mean, look at everything you’re giving up, and for what? Trying to leverage some mystery generosity in your favour? Lord, what’s gotten into you? When’d you get so selfish?”
“Selfish?” The chill in her voice rivalled the evening air. “I am not.”
“You’re not? How are you going to prove it?”
Maisie slipped off the ledge and, turning her back to him, began piling her gifts back into her arms. Immediately, the girl he knew became impenetrable. Anything he might have said would have been shot out of the air on sight; she crammed a wine bottle under her arm, and he flinched to see how tensely she squeezed it. A set of handmade glass ornaments nearly slipped out of her grasp—somebody else’s hard work. She never learned glassworking, he knew, because she hated the patience more than anything.
Ivo nudged her shoulder eventually, offered to carry something for her, but she shoved him off, eyes bitter. She started towards the fire without him, her flushed cheeks already alight with the glow.
“I’m going to get plenty,” she had said. “And you won’t. It’s proof enough.”
Artwork by Devon.