“Oma was right. I never should have been the Wishtress.” I needed to cry—or ask Oma for a wish. Oma herself could use a wish from her stock to undo the canals. If their freezing was truly this detrimental, surely she’d undo it—for her own sake at the very least.

While I was crumbling inside, Anouk seemed far too calm about it all. “The Talent chose you, Myrthe. It was no accident.”

How did she manage to bat away the worries? The largeness of mistakes? Had she ever made a mistake in her life? It was hard to imagine her weighed down by regrets or navigating them at all. “Don’t let Oma hear you say that. She’d be furious.”

“Oma’s always furious.” Anouk unfolded a canvas cloth and draped it over the counter that faced the street. “You’ve been forced to hide so much of yourself. I’m proud to see you letting some out.”

“Girls!” Oma popped up behind us like a squirrel on alert. She smacked my shoulder with her sharp knuckles and gnarled hand. “Get the wares out. With a crowd like this we should sell double.”

“Yes, Oma.” Always the opportunist. Not a word about the frozen canals. She didn’t suspect me, then.

She shoved a crate of oats into Anouk’s arms. “Take these to the miller and get them ground.”

“Yes, Oma.” To me Anouk muttered, “With both you and me of marrying age, you’d think she’d stop treating us like children.” She winked and disappeared from the stall.

In the same way my mood soured with the arrival of spring and summer, Oma’s took flight, energized by the arrival of markt season—when we made munten to see us through winter. Even though with my Talent we shouldn’t need to work at all. But Oma refused to use the wishes like that.

She didn’t trust using the wishes to create wealth from nothing. There had to be a proper story behind any gains in case militairen came knocking.

How did we make our yearly income? By selling flour and bread at markt. Where did we get the flour for the bread? From a local miller. Oma never told me which one. How did we pay for the flour? From the munten made at markt.

And there was the circle. If more questions were asked, we could play dumb. But the small, in-between things were where we hid the wishes. A wish used for a little extra coin to pay for the grain. A wish used to grind the heads of grain into flour.

I wrestled with this every year. If my tears could grant wishes, why not wish for the people to have food or the income they needed? What would the true harm be if they learned about my Wishtress Talent? I could help them—heal people from the pox, feed the canal rats, or build them warm homes.