The next morning is overcast, so Elsa doesn’t wake up until there’s the sound of movement downstairs.
When she realizes what time it is, she throws back the coverlet, sits up, stretches, and stands to get dressed.
Her pullover is undisturbed over the wireless. Apparently the fairy-mice didn’t mind. She tosses it in her laundry bag. The air when she cracks the window is rather cool, so she pulls her spare jumper over her blouse and buttons the front.
Her stomach growls, so she doesn’t bother with her shoes before trotting downstairs.
At the stove, Miss Granger is frying bacon and eggs. Elsa’s stomach growls harder. She notices that the stove and grates are spotlessly clean. Looks like Annie’s stories of the fairy mice were correct.
Annie’s already sitting at the table, still in her nightdress. She has a pen and a notebook in front of her, but her eyes are bleary and Elsa guesses she’s not a morning person.
Miss Granger passes both of them plates of eggs and bacon and fried bread. Thanks to her sleepy eyes, Elsa manages to slip her bacon onto her plate without note, before sandwiching her eggs between the folded bread and wolfing it down.
“Eat up,” Miss Granger tells her, “Elsa, I’d like to give you a tour this morning, if you feel up to it.”
Elsa nods eagerly, licking a bit of soft yolk from her upper lip.
When Elsa’s finished drinking the last of her milk, Mr. Granger rushes downstairs, his tie askew.
“Have to run,” he tells them, kissing his wife once on the cheek.
“That’s what happens when you sleep late.”
He pauses to pat Annie on the shoulder.
“Keep up the work, I’ll go over it with you after tea.”
Miss Granger rinses the dishes at the sink, and Elsa jumps up to help her dry. She points to tell her where they belong in the cabinets, which contain all sorts of very ordinary looking dishware.
Miss Granger pats Annie on the shoulder.
“Still want to spend your entire day inside?”
Annie doesn’t respond, but Miss Granger doesn’t seem expectant of a response.
“Follow me Elsa,” she says over her shoulder, “I’ll show you everything that goes into keeping this place running every day.”
The door in the back opens up into the back garden, smaller and less well kept than the front. There’s a footpath, and a hundred meters or so behind the fence, is the barn.
“Make sure to latch the gate,” Miss Granger tells her, “Otherwise we might end up having tea with a chicken or two in the living room.”
The barn looks like, well, like a barn. Elsa isn’t sure if there’s supposed to be much variation in design.
Elsa has seen pictures before, of cows and sheep and other animals, but seeing them up close is an entirely different story. She didn’t expect them to be quite so...big.
Miss Granger chuckles.
“Wide eyed city girls. Annie screeched when she saw Bea the first day. Never wanted anything else to do with her.”
She pats the spotted heifer on the flank, before letting her out the door. Still a bit wary, Elsa reaches out to do the same. Her hide is smooth and warm.
“I did the milking before breakfast, so we just need to let her out to graze. After her, the sheep too.”
The sheep thankfully aren’t as big and intimidating as Bea is, though Elsa still keeps her distance. She watches as Miss Granger shoos them out the barn door too.
She stares off after them, not seeing any fences.
“Don’t they...wander off?”
“Oh no,” Miss Granger insists, “The safe paths are marked, and so are our property lines. I put the charms on every newborn lamb telling them this in the spring, and it mostly works out. Though there was an incident yesterday involving one of the fences by the forest. No charm is foolproof.”
“Is doing…” magic, “things like that, is it difficult?”
“It takes some skill, and a fair bit of understanding, but these are relatively small enchantments.”
Before they leave the barn, something brushes up against Elsa.
She jumps a bit, before realizing it’s just the gray cat from yesterday. While Elsa kneels down to pet it, Miss Granger chides her.
“Sleeping on the job again Luz? If I find a single mouse out here, you’re going to be left out of the barn so fast even you couldn’t land on your feet.”
Luz sits back on her haunches before the voice says,
“So many threats, perhaps my prey will be left on the doorstep this time.”
Miss Granger swats him with the end of a broom set by the door.
“She talks big words, but I have never seen a mouse escape her clutches. And she knows that if I get tired of her, no one else will take her in, for they’ve all grown sick of her attitude.”
They pass the chicken coop, which is fenced in neatly.
“I have found that chickens are often resistant to most kinds of magic, so they must be carefully fenced in. Annie takes care of this for us in the morning, leaving feed, gathering eggs, letting me know if anything needs to be patched.”
Elsa stares off at the coop. The eggs she had eaten for breakfast had been some of the best she had ever tasted. She wonders if there’s any magic involved there, or if they just tasted better so much closer to the chickens.
“What do you grow on the farm?” she asks when they pass.
“Oats and wheat for sale. The wool from the sheep fetches a fine price too, there’s a weaver in the village that loves using it. There’s not much to do with them right now, harvesting doesn’t start until August, and planting afterward. This time of year we just watch for drought, and sometimes Shirley the miller’s daughter comes by to send her weeding rabbits through the wheat.”
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Elsa hopes she gets to see that. She’s always heard that rabbits would eat anything they could get their paws on, and imagined they would have no place in a farm other than as livestock.
“The big job right now comes right here.”
They’ve reached the vegetable patch, and Elsa’s excitement rises. It seems such an ordinary thing, but she’s so used to only seeing fruits and vegetables coming to the store already in crates
“Potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, garlic, peas, beans, carrots, turnips, sugar beets, strawberries and cabbage. Pumpkins and corn go into the ground later this month, maybe they’ll come out better than last year.”
The whole patch is larger than even the back gardens of houses Elsa had seen visiting the towns in Devon. To a city girl by the side of the road, it would look like a farm in itself.
“Shirley’s rabbits can take care of the big fields, but for these, weeding by hand is a necessary,” Miss Granger says, pulling out her gloves, and putting them on before kneeling down between two rows.
Elsa kneels down alongside her, her knees in the dirt.
“You don’t have to-”
“I want to,” Elsa insists, “I’m not scared of getting a bit dirty. I needed a bath later anyway.”
They move up and down the rows of vegetables, some only seedlings. The scent of wet dirt and green growing things is heavy in Elsa’s nose
At one point Miss Granger spares a glance to her knees.
“I’ll find you some trousers and boots,” she insists, “You shouldn’t be tearing up what you brought working out here in them.”
Elsa is grateful. She doesn’t tell her that the other clothes she’d brought, two skirts, two jumpers, a handful of blouses and one too small dress, were all the clothes she had aside from her school uniforms, which would have been ridiculous to wear out here. The shop did well enough, Dad and Mum always said, but they were far from well off.
“Is this all just for the farm?” She asks at one point, after plucking some rather stubborn creeping vine from a bean plant.
Miss Granger nods, before leaning back and stretching. Elsa wonders if she wished she was still young enough to kneel straight in the dirt.
“The flour and oats are bought by people throughout the valley, but the rest is saved for us. Not too many like going over the rim, so supplies are sometimes low on things unless we can grow them ourselves. We try for self reliance.”
At least that is good, Elsa thinks. Too little of England is like that. She remembers Dad ranting on occasion about the amount of produce, of food in general that had to come from overseas. People would complain about his prices without thinking of how much it cost to ship things from France, or Spain, or even further away. Mum sometimes whispered about the great war, about how you couldn't find things like buttons or shoelaces or other things. Elsa understands wanting to be self-reliant.
The morning continues, with both of them chatting back and forth. Elsa tells Miss Granger about the famous places she had seen in London, about Fred and Thomas, about Mum and Dad and the shop. Miss Granger tells her about how the land the farm lies on had been empty for over a decade and a half before Lady Sylvia had rented it to them. She points out a spot along the horizon, before the woods starts proper. She says their land ends just beyond there. The previous owners had tried to start an orchard, and there were apple and pear trees they picked from later in the year.
“What are your favorite fruits?”
Elsa chuckles.
“Peaches. I imagine I’ll be a proper adult by the time I get to taste another one of them. We used to get them in the store during summer, but I haven’t eaten one in over a year. Dad says most of them come from Spain or Italy.”
Miss Granger nods.
“I’ve got a sapling in my greenhouse, but it’s going to be just a test of time to see if it produces.”
Elsa’s heart quickens. She’s seen drawings of greenhouses, and dimly remembers seeing a building off to the east side of the farm house that shone in the sun, but she’s never been in a real one before.
By the time the vegetable patch is free of weeds, Elsa feels her muscles burn and her blouse soaked through with sweat. It’s not a particularly warm day, but the sun is now high in the sky.
“It’s about dinnertime,” Miss Granger says, “Let’s go see what we can round up.”
When they re-enter the farmhouse, Elsa suddenly feels a bit like an ox or other beast of burden, like she’s lumbering about the otherwise civilized house. This doesn’t last long thankfully, as Annie seems to have expected them.
“This is the last of the bread Miss,” she tells Miss Granger as she sets out the tray of sliced bread with cheese and blackberry jam. Elsa happily takes her portion and pours herself a tall glass of milk.
“We need to go to the market tomorrow anyhow, we can get more then. Did Jack already come by for the milk cans?”
“Yes, he left the pay in that envelope on the table.”
Elsa licks her thumb, and wonders if there’s somewhere in town that might sell her a pack of hairpins. It’s been a fight today keeping the front bits out of her face.
When they’ve finished up, Annie’s gone back to her book.
“What are you reading?” Elsa asks her.
Annie makes a face.
“I’m not sure really.”
Elsa peeks a little closer. It’s a reader, but one written for children, maybe first or second year of primary school. She remembers reading them, deadly dull lines about manners and morals. She’ll have to go through her books and find something better for her, Annie will never see the point of reading better if that’s all she has.
“Elsa, I’m going to head out to the greenhouse if you’d still like to see it.”
That distracts her, and Elsa jumps to follow her.
“Now, I call this a greenhouse,” Miss Granger starts, leading her to a building made of wood and glass that’s a bit of a ways past the vegetable patch. “But it’s more accurate to call it my workshop. The enchantments in here are quite a bit more...complex than the ones on the rest of the farm. So I ask you to please stick close to me and avoid touching anything unless I say it’s safe.”
The glass door swings open easily, and Elsa is completely bowled over.
Every inch of the inside is in use. There’s a dozen or so wooden work tables, label with paper and pots and measuring instruments. Glass trays hold sand and dirt and small seedlings. Between the tables, more plants grow in pots, vines spilling over and onto the ground. More hang from the ceiling, and in one corner, a small tree even grows under the glass cover.
“Dealing with the variables outside, the temperature, the rain, the wind. Any attempts to alter those is very big magic.
“How do you mean?” Elsa asks, staring up at the ceiling and turning in a circle, slowly, drinking everything in.
“Well, let’s take the rain. Too much rain will drown a plant, too little will starve it. But where do I stop? Rainstorms aren’t small, they’re quite large sometimes. If I ask the rain to stop over newly planted seedlings, I risk damaging someone else’s crop. Also, how do I tell it to come back? Rain and sun are fundamental, but they are not living things, they do not think or reason. It’s much easier-”
She gestures to the peach sapling.
“To convince just the air inside this shed, or these trays, or these boxes, to stay a bit warm, and a bit moist. There’s not as much to balance.”
This, rather than just enjoyable, Elsa finds fascinating. She stares in wonder as Miss Granger points out various plants, the peach sapling, a tea bush, several different types of peppers.
“It’s my dream,” she mentions, “to have a cacao tree in here, but it has so far eluded even my skills. Imagine it- being able to grow and process your own chocolate.”
Elsa’s drooling. It’s been so long since she’s had chocolate made by anyone at all. She sits cross-legged on the floor, mesmerized as Miss Granger moves between tables, checking and measuring. Sometimes she retrieves her wand, and Elsa watches, jaw agape, as little sparks, or sometimes smoke, exits the tip.
This continues on the rest of the afternoon, with few words, until Miss Granger looks at her watch and announces,
“Well, I think we should go see what there is for tea. You can go on ahead, I'll herd everyone back into the barn.”
Tea turns out to be chicken soup made from yesterday’s leftovers. It’s thickened with carrots and noodles, and Elsa swigs it down happy when Mr returns from the school.
“Last day is finally finished, now there’s only the end of term celebration Monday, and I will be free to stay home and sit on my backside all day.”
Miss Granger smiles.
“It’s sweet that you think I would allow that. I will not allow you to foist your portion of our work off on these nice girls here.”
Elsa feels her face burn. Then she goes white. Monday. That meant today was Friday. She shoves down her feelings with another spoon of soup.
Once Miss Granger clears the dishes, Elsa asks her.
“May I take a bath this evening?”
Miss Granger nods over her shoulder.
“Give me a few, I’ll show you where everything is. Good there won’t be a conflict, Annie seems partial to taking morning baths, and Peter and I are much of the same mind.”
After a day and a half of surprises, the bath is blessedly ordinary, a big porcelain tub with brass fittings. Elsa’s pleased to find that the farmhouse has proper running water. The flat did too, but it was often unpredictable to say the least. Here, when she turns on the hot tap, the water steams up and stays hot.
“You have one of Lady Sylvia’s ancestors to thank for that. When the valley was still being built, she divined where the waters were. We’ve had running water longer than most of the country knew such a thing existed, parts of the school are even heated by an old hot spring.”
That’s yet another mention in the last two days of the mysterious Lady Sylvia.
Miss Granger had said the soap was under the sink. Retrieving it, Elsa notices a bag of laundry soap and a length of twine. While the water is still running, she clambers up the stairs to retrieve her clothes from the previous day.
The water stays warm, and she uses the soap and rag to scrub every crevice. She still doesn’t quite understand how the dirt manages to get inside her ears, but there it is. By the time she’s sure she’s clean, the water has taken on a light brown tone from all the outside dirt. Yet somehow, this actually makes her feel good.
When she’s finished, warm and sleepy, she manages to pull herself from the tub and empty it. She fills it back up an inch or two, and retrieves the bag of laundry soap.
The soap is odd, it feels soft in her hands and has a vague sparkle once it hits the water. She never seems to need to rinse it from the fabric either.
She squeezes everything out, and hangs them using the twine. God, how she hated laundry, Mum always did the wash in the bathtub, and she did everything she could to avoid helping-
Her heart suddenly twists upon itself. Mum.
Was she sad, at home without her? Had the bombs come to London yet? She thinks of Friday, of the candles. It was always the candles, between her and dad. Dad would chide her for still lighting them, and the past year it had escalated. Mum never lit them long enough to get in trouble with the ARP wardens, but Dad yelled all the same, that “they” would see them. He used to say that too, but Elsa thinks the “they” has changed.
Did they fight again tonight? Did they miss her terribly?
Before she knows it, she’s bent over the tub, holding her stomach. A strangled sob escapes her throat. She hopes the tears don’t spoil her laundry.
She hadn’t realized she was making enough noise to be heard, but when she leaves the lavatory in her nightdress, Miss Granger is standing in the kitchen still, and pushes a mug of cocoa on her. There are still tear tracks on her face when she mutters a “thank you.”
That night, Elsa tries to distract herself. She turns on the wireless in the corner, but gets no reception, as she expected. One day, she’ll have to hike up to the edge of the valley to see if you can get a better signal.
She sits at the window and stares out over the land. This place is really quite lovely, like something out of one of her books. She stares into the sky, once again looking for German planes.
Something off near the forest moves and distracts her train of thought. It’s silvery-white, and for a moment, she thinks it’s just a horse. She frowns though. Why would a lone horse, without a saddle, be wandering near the forest?