But Oma didn’t value the same things I did.

Nor did she fear the same things I feared.

Things that kept me captive under my Talent, watching her use my wishes as she deemed best—sell my wishes to people she deemed worthy. These were merely a flake of the blizzard of questions that had built up in me. Now that I’d officially reached seventy seasons, I couldn’t bear going without answers any longer.

“This is pointless,” I said to Anouk when she returned. I lifted a bag of wheat flour onto the counter and shoved a wood scoop into its soft, powdery mouth.

Anouk set a bag of barley flour next to mine. “We have this conversation every year. Just ask her.”

“She ignored my age day.”

“She’ll explain it all to you, I’m sure, in time.”

“In whose time? Hers? When she’s on her deathbed? When my wishes have all dried up?” Anouk had far more faith in Oma than I did. I’d spent the last five and a half years waiting—hoping—for Oma to teach me to use my wishes. Teach me to write up the contracts she penned. Teach me how to be safe with these wishes. She knew so much about them, but she wouldn’t tell me how she knew or how she learned. I was at her mercy. And if she ever learned that I was the cause behind the frozen canal, she’d keep me filling wish quotas to the end of my days.

I turned my back on the shoppers and dropped my voice. “This Markt Day was supposed to be different.” I stacked fat rounds of bread in a basket while Oma prepared for the secret wealthy vendors inside the back tent.

Preparing my wishes to sell.

Despite my irritation, I was nervous to ask her. Oma was a spitfire, but she was also practical. Surely she would understand my inquiry. She had to, because I had already broken the rules. I’d used a wish—a raw wish. For Sven. Part of me feared Sven might reveal that to Oma.

I had to get to her first.

I eyed the tent behind us and sucked in a deep breath. Better now before I lost my nerve. I placed the last loaf in the basket and brushed off my hands, but the patter of bare feet on dusty earth gave me pause. Or rather an excuse to stay at the front of the booth.

This was the one part of summer that lifted my spirits.

The children came straight to my booth, ignoring shouts of “Canal rats!” from other vendors. The vendor irritation wasn’t unfounded. Children who lived off canal water and homes of tree bark scraps were expert pickpockets and sly thieves. In the rush of Markt Day, a vendor could do little to fend off their deft fingers.