“Nat,” Duke said, striding forward. “Did I surprise you?”
Duke had ash on his face and clothes, and a shopping cart under one arm.
Nat was about to ask why he’d brought back a shopping cart, when he realized that the cart didn’t look right.
Instead of an excitable, gleaming steel thing like the ones at the grocery store, this cart looked... melted. Its straight sides had gone wavy, kind of droopy.
“Oh no!” Nat scrambled to his feet. “What happened to that cart?”
Duke winced. “Someone abandoned it near the burning forest. It wandered in and couldn’t find its way out.”
The cart flipped its wheels wearily.
There was magic in metals. It began as wisps of energy in metal ores, growing more concentrated when the ores were refined into pure metal. When the metallic parts of an object moved together constantly, it changed the magic in that object, turning it sentient. It was why door locks could smile, faucets could bite, and shopping carts frolicked in parking lots.
Except it also meant that the carts were aware when bad things happened to them.
Nat reached for the cart, his heart racing. “What are you going to do with it?”
“I’ll fix it up this weekend,” Duke said. “It shouldn’t take much more than some hammering to get it mostly straight again.”
“I feel so bad for it.”
Duke set the cart between them, watching as Nat ran his hand carefully over its cooled metal. The cart lifted its warped flap weakly and nudged against Nat; Nat gently petted it.
Maybe he felt so strongly about the cart because it reminded him of himself, all banged up and not fully functional anymore.
From the way Duke was watching him, maybe he knew that too. Nat blushed.
“Be gentle with the cart,” Duke told Mallie, who had shifted back into a human child. She approached the cart carefully. “Just because it doesn’tlookfragile, doesn’t mean it isn’t.”
“Like Wanda. I got it,” Mallie said. She went up to the cart and petted it gently on the side, murmuring softly.
Nat was struck by a sudden fondness for Duke’s children—Mallie, with her attachment to sweet, innocent creatures, and Teddy, who was razing the entire second bush to its bare branches.
“Urk!” Nat said.
Duke glanced over. “That reminds me. Why were you so anxious when I got back?”
Nat lost the battle even before it had begun. He peeked at the two stripped bushes—Teddy was now ravaging athirdone—and all he could say was, “I’m sorry!”
Duke raised his eyebrows. “Why?”
“Because I started first with the leaf gathering! Then Teddy offered to help, and... and two of your bushes now look like they might die.”
Only then did Duke seem to notice the scattered leaves. “Why do you need leaves?”
“Because there aren’t enough on the ground! And I didn’t want to rip them off your trees.” Nat winced. “Teddy said you don’t mind, though.”
Duke snorted, his lips curving handsomely. “Yeah, they’ll grow back.” He took a step closer, cradling Nat’s jaw with his large hand. “Now, whatdoyou plan on doing with the leaves?”
“I... I don’t know. I just needed to...” Nat gestured at the half-circle on the ground. “Make a leaf wall, I guess.”
Duke stared at the half-circle, then back at Nat. “A leaf wall. Are you sure that’s what you’re making?”
“What else can it be?” Nat cried. “All I know is that it should be taller, but I don’t have enough leaves for it.”
“Dry leaves, or fresh leaves?”
