“I can’t keep expecting you to bring me food,” Kaitlyn said, “I’m going to need to figure out some kind of food for myself.”

“Well, I can at least help you through the summer, but come autumn we tend to get pretty tired,” the dryad said.

Kaitlyn nodded and asked, “Do you sleep through the winter?”

“Sometimes,” Javorora said, “my tree does, and honestly there isn’t enough to do during the winter.”

“Oh, I always loved the winter,” Kaitlyn smiled, “skating on the lake and building snowmen.”

“Skating?” Javorora asked.

“The local blacksmith had his apprentices make these blade-like things with frames around them. they tied onto our shoes and let us skate on the ice on the local lake,” Kaitlyn said with a smile. “It is incredibly fun.”

“Maybe this winter I’ll come out of my tree and we can go down to the lake and try something,” Javorora said non-committally.

“In the meantime, I’m going to start by cleaning this place,” Kaitlyn said, “I think the house will be happier if it’s clean.”

“A house can’t feel,” Javorora said, “it isn’t a tree.”

“Oh I disagree,” Kaitlyn said, “even houses without magic can tell when they are loved.”

Javorora looked at Kaitlyn with an expression of disbelief. Kaitlyn shook her head and said, “I’m not crazy. When you walk into a house, you can sense whether it is being loved and cared for. And it isn’t just how clean it is, there is a feeling. Some places you walk in and it’s spotless but you can tell the people who live there don’t love their home. It’s just clean because they have servants or something. Then you go to another home which is cluttered and busy and loved. You can feel the difference.”

Kaitlyn finished her porridge and stood up. She first decided to take stock of what the little hut had. The door faced the south, with the straw bed being on the western wall with a large stone hearth. An old table was pushed against the northwestern corner, cluttered with trash. In the northeastern corner there was a cupboard. A pair of windows let in light along the northern and eastern walls, an old rotting chair sitting under one the northern window. Along the eastern wall stood a loom and spinning wheel.

“Well, I’d love to know how the witch who lived here fed herself,” Kaitlyn muttered. “That cupboard could hold a day or two’s worth of food, but not much else.”

“She probably stole with her magic,” Javorora said with a shrug. “It’s two days just to walk to the nearest settlement, and that is a settlement of satyrs. They would probably trade with a witch.”

“Satyrs?” Kaitlyn was surprised, “They live in settlements?”

“Yes, they have a very cute little village tucked up around a hill, with the grandmothers living at the top,” Javorora said. “If you break your curse with this house, I’ll take you there sometime.”

Kaitlyn didn’t respond immediately, instead she went to the cupboard to open it and to examine what is inside. There were three bowls of various sizes, a knife with a nick in the blade, two cups of different sizes, and some rotting rags. Kaitlyn wrinkled her nose and picked up the rags to toss them outside. She took out the bowls, the cups and the knife and set them on the door which still lay on the floor.

The table was covered with things useful and things not. A mortar and pestle, a tin chamber stick with a numb of a candle still embedded on it. Several pretty rocks and a few bones with runes carved on them. A fork was stuck in a small bottle which looked like an ink well. The remains of herbs and unidentifiable debris. More rags.

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Kaitlyn took the mortar and pestle to the other utensils on the door. She left the pot and long spoon Javorora had been using at the fire. She ran and hand through her hair and looked at the dryad, “Well, there isn’t much here to start with. I’ll have to do some gathering in the forest.”

“What about that door?” Javorora asked, pointing to a tiny door right beside the cupboard. Kaitlyn had to move the remains of the chair, but then she opened it. It was a small room which only seemed to pass through to another door. But the room itself was full of gardening tools, two iron traps for animals, and a lot of cages designed to hold small animals. The room itself was barely two feet long, and the sloped roof in the room showed it was nestled tightly under the eaves.

Kaitlyn was grateful that the house had been abandoned long enough that anything that had been kept in this room had escaped or died years before. She stepped across to the second door and carefully opened it. It opened to the back of the house, and she sighed with relief. A garden. Overrun with weeds, but Kaitlyn saw the bright green of peas on several vines and recognized the leaves of squash, potatoes, and onions immediately. There was also a massive jasmine bush right next to the door, half-climbing the house.

There wasn’t enough to feed much more than herself, and Kaitlyn would still need to learn how to use those traps to catch some meat, perhaps fish, or forage for wild grains. She sighed heavily. It was enough to help her get started, but it was not enough to sustain her for long. She was going to need to put in a lot of work to make this hut liveable again.

“So?” Javorora poked her head out and saw the plants. She squealed happily and dove out the door to the little stone wall half-buried, “Chamomile!”

“Javorora, do you know how to use those traps?” Kaitlyn asked.

“No,” Javorora said, “I don’t like iron very much. I’m not fae, but iron always makes me think of axes.”

Kaitlyn nodded. she returned to the main room and picked up her new dishes. She took them out to the well and drew up fresh water. She scrubbed them thoroughly. Sand would be high on her list of things to gather in the near future so she could better clean and even polish the wooden dishes.

After cleaning her new utensils, Kaitlyn took a nap. With her skirt and shirt dry she put them on and went into the garden. Javorora had been playing out there and somehow the rows of plants already looked a little neater. Kaitlyn took the spade and garden fork from the little work shed. She began the arduous process of weeding, aerating, and shifting plants to give them better spacing. She ended up digging up a small pile of potatoes. She brought out the largest bowl and piled the potatoes in it.

She washed the cleanest of the rags and brought water in to begin the process of cleaning the table so she could work on it. When it was finally clean enough to work on, Kaitlyn cut up two potatoes and added them to the mushroom broth Javorora had been feeding her. She went back to the garden and dug up a young onion and a carrot and added these as well.

Exhausted, Kaitlyn sat on the little stool in front of the spinning wheel. Javorora finally came in and said, “It already looks so much better inside and out! Could the house have a cleaning spell on it?”

Kaitlyn laughed a little and said, “I don’t think so, I just spent the entire morning cleaning and gardening. I’m telling you Javorora, houses know when they are being taken care of. Maybe especially magical ones, but any house.”

Javorora rolled her eyes and went to the pot, “Oh, that smells pretty yummy, what did you do?”

“Just added some of the vegetables from the garden. Tonight when I bank the fire I’ll put another two potatoes underneath the coals and eat them baked tomorrow,” Kaitlyn said. “If I wanted to go gather some plants for weaving, do you know where I should go?”

Javorora tilted her head and then said, “I think I know a place where there are some nettles, but I know they can be painful.”

“I guess I’ll have to manage,” Kaitlyn said, “my clothes are in tatters, I kind of desperately need some thread and I can’t exactly go away for several days with no money and nothing to even barter with to try to get some. There’s that loom, and I that is something I know how to do. I’ll make some thread and at least be able to mend my clothes.”

“I’ll take you down to the streams tomorrow if you think you won’t be too tired,” Javorora said. “I’d like to see if I can find some herbs down there any way.”

Kaitlyn nodded and then said, “Would you like some of my…. I’m not sure I can call it a stew. My half-stew?”

Javorora grinned and said, “Absolutely.”

The two of them ate and Kaitlyn worried. Her father was a tailor, she had helped her mother in the garden and the house but she didn’t know how to do a lot of the things she would need to do. She didn’t know how to make a basket like the one Javorora carried. She didn’t know how to hunt, to skin a rabbit or gut a fish. She knew how to pluck a chicken and she knew those who could catch pheasant claimed they were basically chickens in the wild.

After dinner Kaitlyn went out into the little garden and dug a hole. For the first time in days, she finally was able to relieve herself completely. She felt lighter as she returned to the hut and carefully picked up the front door to close it.