Finn finally saw the flower fully bloom as she checked on the garden this morning. She painstakingly gathered all the pollen into a small jar and prepared to go see Jimmy for the day.
Mayra jumped at the chance to go visit the old man again, and hurriedly wrapped up a tart that she had serendipitously baked the day before. Mrs. Sherman gave her a mildly disapproving look but said nothing on the subject, instead choosing to help Victoria get ready for the school she had started attending with other local children.
"Who is that?" The little girl asked at the mention of Jimmy.
"Never you mind, it's nothing for you to be concerned with," Mrs. Sherman's mild scolding earned a sigh from the little girl, but there was no backtalk. It was bad enough that Finn and Mayra were mixed up with that odd person; the doctor's wife would brook no tolerance for involving an innocent child in the strange goings-on.
If Jimmy hadn't smuggled Finn into the city and provided the herbs that saved her life, Mrs. Sherman would regret ever mentioning the man to Roland at all.
A pang hit her heart and her mouth twisted downward. The thought of her surrogate son, now gone, still brought a lot of pain. She gave Victoria a hug and sent her off to finish getting ready, then excused herself for a moment, wiping her face with a rag to catch her tears.
Finn and Mayra watched her go, reflecting her sadness. The depth of a mother's grief cannot be measured. It was a bit of a heavy start, but the two girls decided to be on their way, borrowing the Shermans' horses once again with the doctor's permission.
Off again on the road which looked more familiar each time they took it, the girls chatted about shallow things. The last conversation they had on this road was about Roland and Riley, and which one Finn should choose. Now one was dead and the other was in danger from the same evil. Neither wanted to dwell very long on that today, especially after Mrs. Sherman's small act of mourning when she left the room earlier.
Mayra was considering purchasing fabric to sew a new dress, and Finn was giving her opinions on colors and fabrics. Their clothes were mostly homespun wool, and though they didn't stand out as being strange in the outlying lands, Mayra was interested in something more stylish.
The project would prove a distraction for her from the less stable parts of her heart, so Finn didn't criticize the prospect of thinking about new clothes while their families were in danger. There was only so much they could do with their time, and the rest could be occupied in these simple ways.
Perhaps Finn should help Jessie with the clothes the other woman was sewing for the orphans... but then, most of them received new clothes once they found a forever home. The orphanage really only needed enough to keep them clothed until that time.
After an hour or so discussing patterns and styles that Mayra had been looking over in the shops, they came to Jimmy's boulder once again. Only this time, there was what looked to be the mouth of a dark cave gaping in the side of the boulder.
"What could have caused a hole like that??" Mayra exclaimed. Having walked around the boulder several times on previous visits, she was certain it had never been there before.
"I'm not--" Finn stopped speaking as Jimmy stepped seemingly out of nothingness and the darkness closed behind him, leaving nothing but the normal side of the boulder behind.
Both women gaped at him. He stared back at them.
"You girls need something?" The words snapped them out of their stupor.
"We brought you butter tart--" Mayra began.
"And the pollen of that flower." Finn finished.
Jimmy's expression changed instantly from one of crusty indifference to expectant delight. It was an almost startling transformation and he trotted eagerly closer. Finn held out the jar containing the pollen, wondering what its properties were that could earn such a strong reaction from the little man.
Jimmy snatched the dish from Mayra and inhaled deeply. "Finally something decent! None of that blasted cake. Nobody likes cake."
The girls blinked and then Mayra beamed, "Well why didn't you say so? I can bake you all sorts of tarts!"
"Not all sorts. Just this kind." Jimmy pointedly replied. Mayra nodded solemnly. She had no idea he could feel so strongly about baked goods. Clearly she'd stumbled upon some strange quirk of this mysterious character.
Setting aside the tart for a moment, he took the jar of pollen that Finn was still holding out. "Oh, and thanks for this too."
"You're welcome," Finn smiled. "I... that is, may I have another lesson?"
Jimmy pursed his lips and produced a slip of paper from his pocket, handing to her. "Here's a recipe. You get two questions."
Finn examined the paper in her hands. At the top it said, "Poultice" in plain lettering. Several herbs listed as ingredients were ones she didn't recognize at all. Deciding there would be too many questions just to understand the basics of this more complicated recipe, she opted to choose from the topics she had pondered before.
"The disappearing and reappearing, how does that work?" She chose for her first question. Having actually seen him do it this time, it was the most looming question in Finn's mind.
"It's not so much disappearing as it is traveling," Jimmy slowly responded. He seemed to be carefully weighting how to explain it to her. "There's... another world, see. Probably several in fact, but mainly the one. It's connected to ours all over if you just open a door between them. There's not much there, it's just dark and quiet. Nice and restful. I use it to store stuff, or I send things there when I want them out of the way, like a wall or a gate."
Finn remained quiet, hoping he would elaborate without her having to spend her second question on this topic. After studying her a moment, he obliged.
"There's a mix of herbs you can use to go between them, or if you make enough, you can boil a stick or another type of wood in the mixture to give it the same power. Wood's special, ya see. It can pick up the powers from other plants with the right ratios. Doesn't last forever, but a couple hundred years or so for most powers."
Mayra looked confused, but Finn nodded slowly, trying to absorb all the information she was being given. Somehow it made sense to her, intuitively, that wood could absorb properties of other plants. Steeping it in various substances could change its smell, so clearly it could pick up something from other kinds of plants. She fleetingly wondered about steeping wood in the healing tea recipe she had, and whether that would have any effect on people.
Making a mental note to think more on that later, she refocused and considered for a moment before asking her second question. She wanted to ask what the pollen was for, but there seemed to be something more pressing in her mind. Surely she would find out eventually on her own what kind of use the flower pollen had. After all, it lived in the garden she tended.
Taking a deep breath, she settled on her next question.
"You mentioned 'non-humans' last time. Can you tell me more about what you meant by that, and who they are?" Finn ventured a guess that this information might be important. If he had meant animals, Jimmy would have said so. She hoped he would brush past the fact that it was a two-part question, since he'd willingly answered her layer query before.
"Oh, I meant everybody that's not what you might call 'people'. You know, goblins and halflings and such. Sorcerers might claim to be mostly human, but I have my suspicions they ain't." He spat in the dirt. "I'm sure you know that people weren't suddenly doing all those fancy things you talked about. I mean, might be mostly people, but they've got help, you mark my words. I don't know who they've got teaching them, but it's bound to be somebody. That's why you gotta be careful. Don't trust none of 'em."
Finn fleetingly wondered how often in one conversation she and Mayra could be utterly flabbergasted. Surely the situation would settle into something more easily believable sooner or later.
"Don't act shocked, girls, like you never seen any non-humans before." Jimmy chided the two.
"But... we haven't!" Mayra declared.
"What you mean you haven't? Why, there's part of one right in front o' you now!" Jimmy stood to his full, proud, stunted height.
"... PART of one??" Finn looked around, half expecting to see some horrific dismembered piece of an ancient creature.
"Well, sure. I'm not full blood, mind you. Grandmama was Halfing. Sweet Mama Millicent was half-halfling, so I'm whatcha might call a quarter-halfing."