Part 28 In which Jack is independent

Marlot woke up to an unseasonably cold morning, bundled up in her blankets she sleepily shuffled into the kitchen, relit the fire, and hung the tea pot over it. “Jack! Are you hungry?” there was no answer. Marlot listened for any sounds of movement coming from behind his closed door but she heard nothing. Knocking she said “Come on Jack, it’s time to get up. Are you warm enough, we might need to find you another blanket if the nights are going to be like this,” But there was no answer. “Jack?” she asked as she pushed open the door. The room was full of odds and ends left over from its days as a storage space. Most of it had been moved out after Jack was made but there was still quite a bit they needed to go through, although it looked like Jack had been hard at work without her, setting up his new home. A witch can collect a lot in nearly two hundred years. Jack’s bed was crammed into the back corner nicely made up with no golem in sight. Marlot chewed her bottom lip, where could he be, she wondered.

The witch sat down in the window seat so she could get a good look at the garden, but he wasn’t there either. “Jack!” she yelled out the door, hoping for, but not expecting, and answer. “Jack! Where are you?!” Jinx rubbed up against Marlot’s leg and meowed.

“I’ll feed you in a minute, I need to find Jack.”

It had been almost a month since the trip to the village and every couple of days Marlot had noticed some of the village men walking along the edge of the wood and looking toward the cabin. She wasn’t worried, her garden wall had at least a century’s worth of spells on it to ward of any unwanted visitors, or any visitors at all, unless they were specifically given permission to cross.

Her real worry was the golem’s fondness for being outside. He had been trading off between fairy tales and Marlot’s spell book for weeks, usually reading them under his apple tree where she could see him. Had he wondered beyond the wall, or had those men found a way in?

The witch tried to spend the rest of the day pretending she wasn’t worried about Jack. She pulled a book off the shelf and curled up in the window seat, but Jack and the beanstalk lay closed in her lap as she stared blankly out the window. Jinx eventually crawled into her lap on top of the book and nuzzled her until she scratched his head.

“Maybe he went somewhere with Lilly,” she said to the cat, “that would explain why she hasn’t come by yet today. Or it could just be because she was here yesterday.” Jinx started to purr oblivious to anything she was saying.

Near noon she saw something move in the trees but it turned out to be nothing more than a deer, she tried to busy herself around the cabin but Jack was so good at keeping it clean that there was precious little for her to do and she always found herself back at the window.

Marlot started dinner as the sun began to set behind the trees, she was so lonely without the golem around and she realized for the hundredth time that day how much she depended on him now. She was stirring the stew when the door opened behind her. Jack’s lopsided smile was lit by the flames of the fire. Marlot froze for a moment before running across the small space between them, throwing her arms around his neck.

“Marlot, why are you crying?”

She didn’t realize she was, “I was that worried about you my silly scarecrow.” Was her answer as she dried her face on a sleeve, “where have you been all day?”

“You were worried?”

“Of course I was.”

“But I only went to the village.”

“And you didn’t feel the need to tell me?”

Jack pulled away from her looking puzzled, “But I thought I wasn’t your servant.”

“You’re not, what does that have to do with anything?”

He has stopped smiling, a defensive look glinting in his eyes, “I didn’t realize I needed to ask permission to go to the village.”

They both stopped and stared at each other for a moment, then Marlot took a deep breath and held his hands in hers, remember that he doesn’t know everything, he is only a few months old, go easy on him, her sensible self said. “Jack, you don’t need to ask permission to go places, but it is polite to tell people where you are going so they don’t worry about you, or at least know where to look if something does go wrong. Do you understand?”

He thought it over for a moment and then looked her in the eye, “I’m sorry Marlot, I didn’t mean to worry you, but I wanted to get you a present.”

Will he ever cease to surprise me, she thought “Really? For what?”

“Your birthday.”