The next few days sped by with Alice working hard each day to fix up the cottage. As helpful as the house spirit was, it still took time to clean and repair everything that needed it, but as in the novel, whenever something stumped her the house provided a book or a hint to help. Soon, the kitchen was sparkling, the bedroom was cozy and warm and inviting, and the living space was bright and cheerful. On the fourth day, once the cottage interior was tidied and sorted to her liking, Alice turned her attention to the garden.

The garden was a terrible mess, but to Alice, it was gorgeous. She spent the next two weeks working on clearing it and caring for the plants that had overgrown it. She didn’t want to destroy any of them, so she planned to trim and replant them, clearing the plots for her planned vegetable garden but keeping the blackberry and rose bush patches to harvest in the late summer. She could make jams, cakes, and teas from the blackberries and rose hips in the late summer and early fall.

As she worked, she was thrilled to learn she was talented at gardening in this world. As far as she could tell, it was still spring, but as she worked in the garden, she noticed the blackberries and roses beginning to bloom, which should not happen until early summer. The buds grew and unfurled faster than they should, too, and she struggled to hold back a sense of wild hope. Maybe, just maybe, she had magic here. She had always wished for the power to better understand and care for her plants before, and one of the most exciting things about the novel to her had been the fact that there was magic at all and that she might be able to use it. Her whole life had been so mundane, trapped in a cycle of work and chores, with only time to eat and sleep between the overtime she needed to do to pay off her loans and manage her rent costs. It was one thing for the cottage to be magical, for the world around her to be special. It was quite another thing for her to learn she had a power of her own.

She started by cutting back the blackberry and rose bushes and digging and relocating those that had grown into the vegetable plots. It was hard, prickly work. Luckily, she had found gardening tools and thick coveralls and gloves to protect herself, but she still ended up scratched and torn from the thorns and blistered from the digging. Next, she tilled the soil in the garden plots, digging out stones and weeds, and cleared the grass from the path, cleaning off the stones. Fixing the gate was still beyond her, but the simple repairs to the garden walls were not, and she replaced the fallen stones carefully and methodically.

As the weeks passed, the cottage seemed to grow more and more displeased when she came back inside in the evenings. She kept finding things slightly out of her reach when she looked for them, and she grew nervous, thinking that perhaps she had offended the spirit by spending her time outside. She had thought that the garden was as much a part of the house as the inside – after all, the shed seemed just as magically helpful – but perhaps she had been mistaken.

A bit despondently, Alice settled back in for another dinner of porridge and tea one evening to find that when she turned to set her bowl on the table, she was blocked by two books, one on the chair and the other on the table where she had been about to put the bowl. One was titled Health and Nutrition, and the other Simple Remedies. Alice stared at the books for a long moment before bursting into relieved laughter.

“So you were worried this whole time? Oh, dear, I thought you were angry!”

Laughing so hard she had tears in her eyes, Alice sat down in the other chair. It seemed as though the cottage was really very annoyed that she was ignoring her cuts and bruises, and that she had not eaten anything but porridge for weeks now. Her heart was warm at the realization. She could barely remember having anyone – anything? – care for her wellbeing the way the cottage did. Not since her parents had died.

“I’ll go to the village tomorrow,” she promised. She could try foraging for more food like the princess had in the story, but she needed vegetable seeds anyway, so it seemed as though that was the best choice. And although the house had some cloth for bandages, there was no medicine or salve for her cuts. She had even found some money stashed in a kitchen drawer – that had been a shock, as it wasn’t mentioned in the story. It had sent Alice spiraling for a few hours, wondering if she actually wasn’t in the cottage from the story but had instead stolen someone else's home and belongings. Eventually, the cottage had knocked over a chair to snap her out of it, and Alice had thought it through more calmly. The cottage had clearly been abandoned for years, and she would make sure to repay them if anyone returned. Furthermore, it was so exactly like the cottage from the novel that it was inconceivable she had gotten it wrong.  

So, she would go to the village. It was time to start planting in the gardens, and anyway, she wasn’t on the run like the princess had been, so she had no reason to hide in the cottage. If she was honest with herself, she knew she had been avoiding going to the village for supplies, even though it was quite logical to do so, because she was nervous about meeting new people here. It was all too likely that her lack of social skills in her world would be just as problematic here, and she did not want to ruin her peace and happiness by offending anyone. Alice had always wanted friends but had long lost hope that she might easily find some. This world had already given her so much, and it felt horribly ungrateful of her to wish for more.

At that last thought, she paused, a spoonful of porridge halfway to her mouth. The world really had given her too much, hadn’t it? And she was just taking it. She had wondered initially what the princess might do if and when she arrived to find Alice here. Alice knew that the story mattered most – she would not risk wrecking a world she already loved dearly – and she had decided immediately that if that were to happen, she would step aside and move on. She could find somewhere else to live and leave the cottage to take care of the princess. But really, if she thought about it, would the princess be brave enough to approach the cottage with Alice in it? In the novel, the princess avoided the town for months before she grew confident enough to risk being seen by anyone, terrified the witch would find her and finish what she started. What if her being here doomed the princess and ruined the story?

The window shutter slammed as it had that first night, startling Alice enough that she dropped her spoon.

“I’m just thinking! I won’t leave immediately.”  The firelight flickered, and she imagined the cottage huffing exasperatedly. She smiled. “I can’t promise not to leave at all. You don’t want me to ruin everything, do you?”

The firelight flickered again, seeming both annoyed and a bit uncertain. Alice was getting better at reading the spirit – at least, she thought she was. It seemed as though the spirit did not know exactly what she was talking about. It wasn’t as though Alice had explained the whole ‘from another universe and this world is actually a novel and might not even be real’ problem.

Sighing, Alice looked down at the mess she had made when she dropped her spoon. She really did not want to leave, but she probably didn’t have much time to say. The novel had said the princess arrived during the spring, and it was well into the season. If Alice was going to leave, she needed to decide now. If she was going to stay, then she needed a plan for when the princess arrived.

She considered it more. It was probably just helpful to the princess that Alice had set up the cottage already. And Alice could make sure to pretend not to know who the princess was when they met, that way the princess would feel safer. Feeling horribly selfish, Alice stood up decisively and walked to grab a rag.

 “I’ll stay.” The cottage creaked happily. Alice sighed as she wiped down the table. “Don’t worry. I’ll stay.”

As soon as she said that, there was a knock at the door.