Sweet Romance17 min read
The Inn Between Worlds (Two Sweet Extras)
ButterPicks12 views
I remember the first time people started pointing at our door like it hung some story between its hinges.
"Look—it's them," someone nudged. "The monk who gave it all up and the witch he took."
"They say she left the mountain for him," another voice whispered, loud enough for the whole room to hear.
I laughed and leaned against Laurent. He smelled like was always the same: wood smoke and a faint clean salt from the river where he still liked to wash his hands. Guests at the inn gathered in the front room, wine mugs in hand, and watched us like a pair of actors on a small, private stage.
"Are you—are you the little demon who lured him?" a man called from a table.
"You two must be trouble," a woman said, giggling. "Do you keep wild things in that room of yours?"
"Do you still wear that robe?" another asked. "Or do you sleep in his robes now?"
I felt a sleepy weight in my limbs from last night’s wine. I had made a clumsy attempt at teasing old Zongwu—Laurent in this life—and we stayed up later than usual. It was the first day after a long dull week; I was content to let my head droop and be lazy, propped against his shoulder with my eyes half-closed.
He sat still as always, all quiet and steady, and watched the room with the cool distance he had when he had been a monk. I used to hide behind him when strangers stared. Once, I would place myself in front of him as if I were a curtain between Laurent and the world.
That night I did nothing. I let him absorb the curiosities and jokes. In time he sighed, and in front of all those eyes he lifted me into his arms and walked me upstairs. That was when I understood: he did not care what others thought. When he loved, he loved out loud, even so softly that only we could hear it.
"You're more popular than me," I muttered, tugging at his sleeve. "Everyone looks at you when they come in. I feel a little embarrassed."
He gave me a dry glance and said softly, "What will you have me do?"
I pouted, then leaned in. "Kiss me."
He kept quiet a long moment. I was about to pull back, thinking he would be shy, when warm lips pressed to mine. It was quick and gentle and left my ears hot.
"You bit me," I gasped, pulling away and stroking my lip. "How daring."
"There is nothing daring at all about kissing my wife," he said with a half-smile. "You said kiss, I kissed."
From downstairs came a chorus of teasing. "He must be in love! Boss's wife, you’re lucky."
"Is it sugar or vinegar in the stew today?" someone called.
"It's sour!" another argued. "It's vinegar, clearly."
I tucked myself against Laurent, making a face at the crowd. "They are lying. There was sugar. Sweet sugar. Right, my husband?"
He hummed, the way he did when something was both amusing and not. "We'll go upstairs. You should sleep."
We went up and he caught me in his arms the moment the door closed. His forehead rested against mine. "Who were you staring at?" he asked in a low voice I had come to know as the one that could stop storms.
"No one," I said. "Maybe the monks. Some had kind faces. I looked for old habits, that's all."
"Do you like monks?" he asked again, but his eyes were already strange—quiet and a little tight. He pushed me down onto the bed without ceremony and pulled my clothing free as if impatient.
"You like them?" he asked, sitting on the edge and watching me with half-closed eyes.
"I like you," I said, breathless. "I've always liked you."
He paused. He had no patience for me when jealousy crept in; it sat in his chest like a small, bitter stone. His hands moved harder for a moment and I noticed how he looked not at me but beyond me, as if trying to banish imagined visitors from the corner of the room.
"You like monks?" he asked again, but then his fingers softened and he kissed me, that same fierce tenderness I had first felt the night we fled the temple to make a home together.
That night, in the half dream before sleep took me, I thought of the old life in Baohua Temple. I thought of incense that curled like smoke snakes and the quiet of the hallways. I thought of Laurent's steady hands in those days and now.
When I discovered I was pregnant, he sat as if someone had locked his chest with a sudden sound. He stared at the common room and then at the child we would be bringing into the world.
"You will be a parent," I teased, poking his ribs. "Stop looking like a monk about to be thrown into a storm."
He drew me in and wrapped his arms around me. "We will have reasons to awake," he said. "I imagine our child with your laugh and my stubbornness. I imagine the little fingers who will pull at my arm."
He looked like he might cry but he wouldn't. He pressed a hand over my belly. "I love you, Colette," he said.
"You said that the other night," I murmured.
"I will say it again," he promised. "If it makes it truer."
We moved from the village to a guesthouse on the border of two roads, one that led to the human town and one that melted into the wood where spirits liked to sit on low branches. The inn was both a home and a little glass jar of our private life. It was the perfect place for two people who belonged to both the ash of an altar and the bark of a tree.
When our daughter arrived, she was quiet and then she smiled. That smile did something odd: a thin green sprout, the color of tender wood, slid like a secret thread from her fingertip and curled gently around my husband's finger.
Laurent froze as if he had been struck. He sat very still, staring at the tiny branch as if it were proof of some impossible prayer. I laughed despite the pain of labor because the sight was so small and absurd and perfect.
"She's a little locust-child," I said, the name arriving before the breath that followed it.
He cradled her like a treasure. "She is like you," he said, the tenderness in his voice so open I could see how it would soften him in ways nothing else did.
There was a long time where we both learned the edge of being parents. She was called Camille. She climbed onto Laurent's shoulders when she was three and plucked fruit from branches in a way that should have been impossible for such a small body. She hung a vine from his hand and swung like a child of wind.
Once, when she was little and had been told not to cross the path into town without us, she slipped away. It happened quick and loud: she came back with cheeks flushed and a look of mischief.
"Who did you meet?" Laurent asked, bending to look at her.
She blinked and, after a pause, said, "They said my mother is famous."
"I am not famous," I said, smiling.
"They said you are a fox who stole a monk," she said plainly. "I thought it's an interesting phrase. I wanted to see who would say such things."
Laurent did not scold at first. He simply narrowed his eyes and then, in that calm way he had when he finally decided to speak, he said, "Not everyone has to be like your mother. Not everyone sees beauty where you do."
She pouted. "But I wanted to be like you."
That was the first time I noticed how people watched him differently when he held a child.
Time moved and brought a second child. This one was quieter in a different way. He had a light about him — not a shine but a gentle glow that made people look twice. We named him Adam. He grew like the slow, deliberate way a candle burns: steady, warm. Adam took to study and listening; he followed Laurent wherever the elder man went and learned the small, patient things monks do without having to be told. When he was old enough to choose, he asked to return to a place like the temple — not to leave us, but to learn the discipline that lay in Laurent's bones. We let him, because Laurent wanted it and because Adam's heart leaned towards that quiet place.
Camille grew up quick and wild. She liked to test the rules the way wind tests closed shutters. She admired beauty in dresses and laughed at men who tried to be clever. One spring, at seven, she slipped out at dusk, thinking she could pick a perfect suitor for herself among the travelers. She wanted to be like me — mischievous, bold, certain — but she had not yet learned the world had ways to pin mischief down.
Not far outside, she met travelers who were not what they pretended to be. Men in layered robes who claimed to be priests from a distant order, smiling polite and all business. Camille was young and proud. When they mocked her smallness, she tossed a little pinch of power in their hair, the way a child would—pulling a few strands like a nettle. It stung them more than they expected.
The tallest of them slapped a paper to her forehead and she froze where she stood. She blinked slowly, like someone held in a slow photograph. When we realized what had happened, I felt a coldness somewhere behind my ribs. I could have run, but Laurent did not run. He sat, quiet, as if time were the only thing he needed before action. He knew how to be still.
"Who did this?" I hissed.
A voice came back from the shadow. "We mean no harm. We only seek to protect travelers from spirits. The child should be brought to the order for proper examen."
They tried to dress their greed in words about safety. They wanted to remove what they thought dangerous. Camille's vine curled uselessly at the edge of our tatami mat. I strained toward her and felt the knot in my throat.
"Let her go," I said.
The tall man, Bram Bacon, stepped forward, fingers already moving to the talisman on her head. He had a smile that was all calculation. "We cannot release her. You are adults who consort with spirits. The law says the order must examine."
Laurent's eyes were calm. "We are not bound by your order's law."
"The villagers will follow," Bram said. "They will believe us if we say it is dangerous."
The room had filled quickly. Word spread — people like to see scandal. There were enough heads peeking in the doorway to make the room hush. People watched this family as if we were the interesting bit of a small, messy play.
"I will buy your proof," Laurent said.
"Proof?" Bram smiled. "We have talismans. We have rites. We will show you that she is dangerous to travelers and to herself."
Laurent rose then, and I felt everyone lean in. He was not the loud type for arguments, but when his voice came it had that still weight that moved the room like a breeze moves long grass.
"Bring proof into the open," he said. "Let everyone see what you do with her. If you demand a public exam, then the public will watch the examers."
"You would make a show?" Bram mocked. "You are afraid your child is dangerous."
"Or scared they are exactly like us," Laurent answered, voice steady. "Bring your instruments. Bring the chants. We will see."
Bram looked around, desperate now to keep the matter small. He signaled to the others. Dallas Moretti and Youssef Palmer, both in similar robes, shuffled forward, unsure. The crowd buzzed.
"Bring the altar," Bram said after a pause. "We will perform an exorcism."
"Bring witnesses too," Laurent said. "Bring the magistrate, bring any travelers who think they've been hurt by wandering spirits. If there's truth, let it face truth."
They had counted on whispers, not on confronting light. The tall man hesitated. He could have walked away then, but he did not. The chance to gain the village's eye was too tempting.
That was when I felt my anger change into something colder. I could have used my power then, but Laurent held my arm with a gentleness I recognized as the same hand that would ease my fear. He did not stop me because he wanted the exposure to be clean and honest. He wanted people to see the truth and choose.
They set up a small folding altar in the main room. Bram and his men arranged bowls and candles like props in a play. People sat on the mats and chairs around the room. Camille was still frozen like a carved doll. I knelt beside her and whispered, "Camille," and fingers twitched.
"Is she dangerous?" a woman called.
"She seems harmless to me," someone else answered.
Bram began the ceremony. He chanted in a low, oily voice. His hands flicked talismans and the room cooled like the air before rain. He said words meant to shame spirits, to force them into a corner. When he drew a line in the air and motioned for the paper talisman to peel, his fingers trembled.
"See," he said loudly. "The signs are clear. There is spirit residue. She should be taught or bound."
Laurent stood quietly until Bram got to his boldest claim, then he spoke.
"You have touched my child without respect," Laurent said. "If you say such things, you must show how you come to them."
Bram smiled too widely. "We have the rituals. We have the writs. We have the books."
"I asked for proof," Laurent said. "Let me show you more evidence of who we are."
He placed his hand on the small branch curled around Camille's finger. He whispered a word only she and I had ever heard. The tiny vine unfurled like a note being read. In an instant, it grew, thin and green, and painted a pattern across the room—soft filigree that traced Laurent's palm and pulsed with a faint light. It did not frighten; it shone like the edge of a leaf when sun finds it.
People leaned forward. The city watchman, a rotund man with a long nose who had been joking earlier, stood unsteady. Even Bram's bravado shrank. No one had expected the child's small, harmless-looking power to be anything other than a trick.
"That is proof of our family," Laurent said. "We are not your danger."
"You use your powers to deceive," Bram said, flinging accusations the way a nervous man throws stones.
"No," I said, because I could feel the heat of people leaning with every word. "He loves his child. We live among people. We feed travelers. We do not hide to harm."
The room hummed. Someone in the back cleared his throat. "Some of us have seen good from them."
"Then who are you to decide for all of us?" a woman said.
Bram's smile thinned. He summoned the courage of men who had once coaxed crowds and now found their crowd looking back. "We must keep people safe. We will show you the contrivance."
Laurent met his gaze without turning away. "Then do your worst. Show us."
Bram ordered his men to play the parts of priests in earnest. They lit more candles and began a louder chant. It had the cadence of something old and impressive. People watched, and for a beat, the room was tense. Then the chant broke.
Something in the altar swayed—not the talismans, but people's faces. The candles guttered like laughter. The tall man's voice faltered and then snapped.
A child in the room, a boy who sold seeds each morning, coughed and stepped forward. "Why are you so frightened?" he asked plainly. "These are two people who feed us when merchants are gone. What proof do you have besides your words?"
"No one here has been harmed," another voice said. The watchman found his voice. He stepped toward Bram. "You make noise and force fear. Show what you can do without lies."
Bram tried to keep control. He gestured to the paper talisman on Camille's forehead. "It must be prepared according to custom," he insisted.
"Bring your customs into the open," Laurent said. "If you accuse us, let everyone hear the words you use. Let everyone see the book you claim to use."
At that, Bram faltered again. People were watching. He had no real book, only scraps of paper with phrases that could mean anything. He had come for the show, not to be judged in daylight.
"Do it now," Laurent said. "Only the truth stands in daylight."
Sweat formed on Bram's upper lip. Dallas and Youssef shuffled. There were no solid witnesses to the harm they had proclaimed. The villagers began to murmur and point out details: Bram's travels, his habit of taking coin and offering nothing in return, his talent for telling a story twice to make it frightening.
The crowd turned. In minutes the mood shifted from curiosity to suspicion to anger. No one applauded Bram's theatrics anymore. They wanted honesty.
"Why did you pin the child?" a woman demanded.
Bram's face hardened. "For safety. For the community."
"For coin," someone else said. "We heard what you demanded for routine cleansings. You asked for payments and then said we'd be cursed if we refused."
The accusation spread like oil on water. People leaned and peaked closer. An old woman with more teeth than nails spat and said, "We have had enough of false priests."
Bram's face went white. He tried to regain the ceremony, but his chants cracked without the agreement of the room. He hopped between phrases and threats. Dallas and Youssef looked helpless.
"This is your moment, then," Laurent said quietly.
Camille stirred. The talisman drifted from her brow as if someone invisible had peeled it away. She blinked and laughed. "I wanted to tease them," she said, rubbing her head. "They scared me."
"Did they hurt you?" I asked.
She shrugged. "Not really. They were angry that I pulled their hair."
The crowd laughed. Laughter is a powerful thing. It pushed the air and cleared the need for Bram's rituals. People began to stand up and shout, "Out with the thieves!" "No more lies!"
Bram's face split between fury and fear. He made a show of protest, calling us liars and spiritualists and worse. But as he spun his accusations, a traveler's cloak fell to show a coin pouch embroidered with the same mark as a pamphlet he had been selling in the market square. A seamster stepped forward and said, "This man sold me a charm last month and took my coin. He said it would keep my house from spirits."
"You stole from the village," the watchman said, finally.
His voice carried. Bram tried to shout back, but the villagers moved like a tide. They wanted their coins back or a shame to set the story straight. Bram realized then the act had turned. He was the one being judged.
He tried to bargain, to call for the magistrate, to pull some greater force into the scene. But the magistrate was a sensible man who did not like to be used as a prop for con artists. He arrived, tired, and listened as the crowd told the tale. The magistrate asked the right questions. Bram could not answer without exposing the schemes that had filled his pockets.
"Return what you took," the magistrate said. "If you have proof of harms, present it. If you cannot, then you will leave and not return with this troupe."
Bram's mouth opened and closed. For a moment he attempted to breaststroke through words, to turn blame on Laurent and me. "They entice travelers," he yelled. "They hide their nature—"
"Do you have names of those harmed?" the magistrate asked.
Bram could not produce a single name. The crowd, which had been eager to watch, now turned on him. People hissed. Someone threw a rotten apple and it smashed at his feet. The apple was not care; it was an act; it said that Bram's kind were not welcome.
"Get out," the old woman shouted. "Take your tricks elsewhere."
Bram stormed out, his pride shredded. Dallas and Youssef followed, dragging their robes like a child trailing a dress. People spat. Someone mocked the talismans by showing the cheap string that sealed them. Another took a scrap of paper Bram had used and tore it theatrically in half.
The whole scene lasted a long time. Bram's face changed from smug to furious to terrified, and finally to broken. He begged in the road for a coach. He demanded the magistrate's protection, but the magistrate had no patience for men who preyed on villages with well-tailored lies.
"You will leave now," the magistrate said, almost gently. "You may walk until you find a place where people still buy your fear. But leave this village. You will never again do this here."
There was a moment when Bram tried to force an apology. He stumbled and offered money. The magistrate refused it. Bram's final scene was not a quiet remorse but a specter of his own making: he was driven out of the village, his robe ripped in places by the fingers of angry housewives and by the hands of men who had been cheated. They demanded restitution. Bram fled with what dignity he had left. In the end he left not on a carriage but on a mist of shame that fell like a thin rain.
I watched it all with a strange mix of feelings. I wanted to feel satisfied, the warm rush of the wrong person being caught. I felt that, but I also saw how quickly people could be cruel. Bram had used fear to survive, and now fear had ejected him. There was a moment where I considered picking up one of the torn talismans and kissing it like a child might a broken toy. Laurent saw me and squeezed my hand as if to say, "We will keep our own little ones safe."
Camille sat on Laurent's knee afterward, and he smoothed her hair. "Do not do it again without telling us," he told her. "I do not like being surprised."
"I needed an adventure," she said, indignant and proud.
"You will get many adventures," he promised, "but not ones that drag you into other people's greed."
The day's end found our inn warm with people talking about traveling men and the courage of a few who refused to be frightened. People left coin on the table and gave to Camille a small toy carved from a branch. The merchant who had earlier been joking brought a small jar of honey. Even Bram's leaving felt like a lesson burned into the community.
When the day shrank into night again, Laurent kissed me with a gentleness that felt like forgiveness and thanks both. He had watched the crowd. He had believed in letting the truth have its say. He had known how to ask the right thing at the right time: exposure.
"Why did you let them leave with such humiliation?" I asked later in bed, my fingers idly tracing the tiny locust-sprout scar on my wrist that matched my daughter's branch.
"Because shame often fixes the wrong faster than a blade," he said softly. "Because they needed to see themselves in the way people see them. Because forcing the wrong man to apologize in a quiet room only gives him another secret."
"That sounds like a lesson in being cruel."
"It was not cruelty," he said. "It was truth, shown in the light."
He kissed me. "And you are safe."
Our family continued, and the inn kept being a place where stories arrived and left. Camille learned to test limits in safer ways. Adam traveled between our home and the temple, learning to balance the quiet and the wild. He would come home and stand awkwardly by the hearth, then leave again with a small bow to us, as if he had not seen the years at all.
Years passed. I watched love change shape in our house. It grew like a vine, slow and sometimes clumsy, sometimes bright with flowers when we laughed. It bent toward the sun when we needed warmth and curled close during cold times. Laurent was patient in ways that surprised me—he learned to joke in little safe places, he learned to touch me like he had not when he was a monk. He would, in the smallest moments, take off his outer robe and drape it over my shoulders without a word. Once, when I was shivering after a market walk and did not say anything, he simply came behind me and tightened the belt of my dress, the action itself a promise.
That was one of my favorite heart-racing moments: when he put his robe over my shoulders without speaking.
Another was when he bent down in front of our daughter at a small festival and put a paper crown on her head, pretending to appoint her a princess of the roadside. He did it with such solemnity that even the children believed it mattered.
And there was the time he stepped in front of a merchant who tried to haggle too low for a toy Camille loved, and he paid the difference without a word, then winked at me. Those small, private gestures were the things that mattered most.
Once, after a long day, he pressed his forehead to mine and whispered, "I love you." That was simple, and it hit me like a bell. It was one of the moments that felt like being chosen.
Our life held small dramas and small joys. I taught Camille how to be careful with her power and how to be bold without being foolish. She learned to pick her mischief carefully. Adam stayed close and grew into a man who was patient and kind in ways that echoed his father.
When Adam chose to take vows as a lay disciple and live some months at the temple, Laurent's chest tightened like someone holding back a storm. But he never forced the boy. He supported him, and I supported him, because we both believed in letting a child choose the life that fit the shape of his heart.
We had our nights like anyone else — nights where we argued about the little things like who would wake up with the child, or who would mend a torn shirt. We always made up in the end in a way that tasted both of salt and honey. Sometimes the making up was a kiss that lasted longer than necessary. Sometimes it was a shared silence with a cup of tea.
Once the village gathered for a midsummer festival. There were paper lanterns and small cakes, and all the families stretched out blankets under the trees. Camille raced through the grass with stilts she had fashioned from old branches. Adam returned from the monastery for the holiday and walked with us, a young man looking like someone who owned his decisions.
Laurent sat beside me and watched our children. He drew a small breath and then said quietly, "Do you ever regret it?"
"Regret what?" I asked.
"Leaving the order. Leaving the temple."
"I do not regret choosing you," I said.
He smiled in the small, wry way he had when he was pleased. "I was just thinking of the quiet sometimes."
"I like the loud of our home," I murmured. "I like the people who come and bring new stories."
"Then the world is good to us," he said.
"What about our neighbors?" I asked, nodding at the villagers who waved to Camille.
"They are good," he replied. "They are true."
We sat quiet then, listening to the hum of crickets as the festival took over the field. Camille came and plopped into my lap, breathless and hot, and held up a small wooden coin she had carved.
"For the inn," she said, proud.
He took it and put it in his pocket. "For luck," he said.
There are always new stories to tell: the time a merchant forgot to pay his rent and we nearly closed down the inn for a week, or when a wandering poet left a poem that made me blush, or when a child injured herself jumping between roofs and came to me crying and I healed her with a poultice and a silly song.
Sometimes, late at night, I would look over at Laurent and watch his breathing. How quiet he was, how simple a man could be after carrying whole books of the world inside him. He would sleep like a man who had given himself to something larger than himself and still had room for tenderness.
When people later retold our story—"The monk who gave up his robes for the woman"—they sometimes whispered as if to make themselves sound astonished. But his leaving the order had been not a throwaway but an honest trading of one life for another. He had given away some things and chosen others. Love does that. It makes you trade.
If there is a last lesson I have learned here, it is this: let truth be in daylight. Let people be judged where other people can watch. It makes deception fall apart faster than any single voice. And keep your family close enough that even when the world comes with its talismans, you can show the world who you are.
Now, many seasons later, the inn still stands between the road to town and the wood. The little locust branch that curled from Camille's fingertip has grown into a tiny sprig she keeps in a box, drying like a pressed flower. I take it out sometimes, wind it around my finger and remember how Laurent looked at that first sight: a man who would never again be only a monk, who would love with the same quiet certainty he once used on prayers.
In the evenings when the inn is quiet and the customers have left, he will sometimes put his hand over mine and hum a tune he used to hum in the temple. Then he will lean forward and press his forehead to mine and say softly, "I love you."
I will look back at him and say, "I know."
And when the night is very still, I can hear the soft creak of the inn, like a small boat adjusting to the tide. I take the small green sprig out, wind it around my finger, and think of a child who laughed the first day she was born and gave us that delicate thread of tree to hold. The inn is a place between things—between wood and stone, between silence and laughter, between monk and wife—and I like it here.
The End
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