The party ended at midnight, we all filed home and went to sleep, and... life returned to normal. I didn't yet know whether it was good normal or bad normal.

I woke at dawn—with the rise of the sun and the crow of the rooster—and went to water the garden and gather eggs from the chicken coop in the back yard. Mam woke then, too, and began to work at her mending. Some days she baked bread. Other days she didn't.

We'd eat breakfast, and then we'd get to work: cleaning the house, running errands for the neighbors, harvesting produce to sell on market day, weeding the garden.

The days were full of physical work, and at first, I went to bed satisfied. Soon, that changed. It was monotonous. The same thing: again, and again, and again, until I was doing everything except for really living.

It had been fine before I left. I'd taken comfort in the easy routines. Now it was boring. Now nothing new seemed to ever happen. I'd reluctantly left for adventure, and come back unable to deal with the lack of it.

While Mam didn't notice, Aunt Marla did.

"You seem different," she said. "What's wrong?"

But I remembered what Mam had said about the villagers thinking that I'd come back too high and mighty for them. Aunt Marla had defended me then, but if she realized Mam had been right, would she continue to do so?

"I'm all right," I said. "Just tired."

I wasn't lying. Not really. I was only leaving out a bit of the truth.

Market day rolled around soon enough, and the sudden transfer from nothing happening to everything happening—with all the noise and crowds and interactions that entailed—almost sent me into a downward spiral.

Luckily, I was too excited to pay heed to the fast-beating manner of my heart. I'd been too busy until now—but on this market day, I'd get to see my friends and have a good, long talk with them for the first time in weeks.

I'd missed them. A lot. Every time I thought of something funny to say, or remembered a detail from our adventures, or woken up breathing hard from a nightmare about the Magician, I'd wanted to sneak away from my responsibilities and visit them. I'd wanted to use our Blessings and talk and laugh together until our throats hurt.

When I saw a flash of Lark's dirty blonde hair through the crowd, I quickly headed in that direction, tapping her on the shoulder when I caught up to her.

She whirled around. A bright grin spread on her face when she saw me. "Fyra! I was hoping I'd run into you. Reed's hanging out at Bran's table. We thought you might like to join us."

"Are you kidding?" I said. "Of course I want to hang out with you. It's been too long."

"Agreed."

She grabbed my hand so we wouldn't be separated, and together, we wove through the mass of people who were buying and selling and talking.

Like she'd said, Bran and Reed were hanging out together at Bran's table. Reed tossed back his head and laughed at something Bran had said.

Lark and I sat down in some extra chairs beside the table.

"What's so funny?" I asked.

"Potato puns," said Reed.

Lark rolled her eyes. "Great." She turned to me. "I'm not sure I've ever told you this, but Reed has a terrible sense of humor."

He glared at her. "I do not!"

"Yes you do," she said, laughing.

"Then why do you laugh anyway?"

"Because they're so bad they're funny."

Bran chuckled. "She's not wrong."

Reed whirled to look at him, glaring. "You were punning too!"

"And I freely admit that they were bad. As all puns are."

"Puns are works of art."

"Are they though?"

"All puns aside," I interjected, "how have you all been?"

"Great," said Lark enthusiastically. "My little sister is three inches taller than she was when I left."

"As well as you'd expect," Bran said.

"Awful," Reed admitted, "but I'll be fine."

We all turned to him.

"Awful?" Bran asked. "Why?"

Reed shrugged. "It's just... everything's different. Now that my father knows about my power, he's constantly harping on me to avoid using it so that I don't tarnish the family name. Or something like that." He looked down at his hands. "Also, everything is just so... simple. Empty. Boring. I do variations of the same thing every day."

Bran looked up in surprise. "You feel that way too? I keep drifting off and daydreaming about when we were on our own, having adventures." He grinned. "Most of the things were terrifying at the time, but looking back to them, we had it pretty good."

"I've got the same problem," I said. "Each day goes so fast. It's like I've accomplished nothing by the end of it."

One by one, we looked at Lark.

"Well?" prompted Bran. "What about you?"

"I'm bored too." She smiled softly. "Probably less so than you, but I'm still bored. My family is trying hard to help me adjust."

"My father's just trying to throw me back into it all," Reed said. "He thinks I'll figure it out eventually."

"My parents are the same," said Bran.

I looked down at my feet. "My Mam too."

"Maybe we need to do something?" Bran suggested. "We could test the townspeople to see which of them are Blessed, so we can start training them."

Reed shook his head. "My father... Let's just say that he doesn't favor Blesseds very much at this point."

"Does he have a choice?" I wondered. "There are going to be more Blesseds eventually, whether he likes it or not."

"He'll deal with that when it happens," said Reed. "For now, he's trying his best to make sure all the town improvements are added successfully."

"Things'll probably improve eventually." Lark smiled. "Anyway, do you all have today free? Will we be able to hang out with each other? Or do you have things that need to be done?"

I shook my head. "I'm good. My mam is glad I've finally got friends. She told me I could hang out with you until dinnertime."

"I'm stuck at this table," said Bran, "but otherwise, I'll be good."

"It depends." Reed tilted his head back, staring up at the sky, and I wondered if he was thinking about what life on the Calamity had been like, or if he was simply trying to absorb the pure blue of the sky while he could. "My father might want me to help him if something comes up. This is the first time we're trying the new market rules. Things may need to be tweaked."

Lark reached out to give him a gentle nudge with her hand—more of a motion of understanding than anything else. "We'll just have to hope that it all runs smoothly, then."

"Yeah," said Reed. "I guess so."

A short blanket of silence settled over us.

A loud crash rang throughout the street. A child screamed. We jolted to our feet as one and sprinted to where the noise originated.

A pile of crates had been stacked beside a stall—apples that had been harvested from Aunt Marla's orchard. Now they were on the ground. Red apples rolled to a resting point in the dust of the road, looking for a moment like specks of blood. A small, limp arm peeped out from beneath one of the heavy boxes.

"Tona!" screamed a woman. "Tona!"

The bystanders remained frozen for a moment. Then everything became a rush of movement. I lost track of my friends, buffeted by the waves of people who rushed forward to help—to watch—to offer consolation to the screaming woman and to Aunt Marla, who had covered her mouth with a shaking hand as she watched the proceedings.

"I stacked them too high," she said. "I stacked them too high. I shouldn't have done that."

I squeezed through the crowd until I was at her side. Her eyes snapped to me. I took her shaking hand in mine, smoothing out the knots of tightness, trying to calm her. We kept our eyes latched together.

Gasps spun through the crowd around us.

I turned to see what had caused the noise and saw a familiar face.

Reed stood in front of the crates, just finishing scribbling something on his forearm. With a set focus I'd never seen in his face before, he drew it out of his arm. A creature. A monster, almost. Although I didn't know what made a monster a monster. Perhaps it wasn't one; it was just strange.

It stood on two legs and had short, thick arms. As I watched, it quickly lifted the crates out of the way, setting them to the side like the rough wooden building blocks children played with.

Healer Erna rushed forward to the child.

Reed fell to the ground, and the thing he had drawn dissipated into nothingness as though it had never been there in the first place.

And then the whispers started.

Magic. He used magic.

Does this mean the curse is coming back?

How could he put us in such danger?

How could he use something so wicked?

Uh oh, that's not good. Vote if you hope nothing bad happens to Reed!