Downwind

Anouk Feld came round the Reading Tent with a tray of soft new sticks and followed their nose.

Anouk rolls slow sticks of resin and pressed petal behind the tent, and names each batch for what it smells of: “Rain on the Shed”, “Thursday”. For years Anouk has wanted one batch that smells like Sunday supper, and has never come close. Yesterday a walker with a notebook passed the tent saying somebody was doing Sunday supper on a Thursday. Anouk laughed at that. Then the wind turned this morning, and Anouk stopped laughing.

The smell led past the onion vat and under the drying lines to the oldest vat, with its lid pressed down tight. It smelled of onions gone soft in a pot, and sage, and bread somewhere close.

Piet Ferrabee, the dyer, was stirring the walnut vat beside it with their back turned, very hard.

“Piet,” Anouk said. “Something in here smells like Sunday supper.”

Piet set the paddle down, and told them. It came out in a rush. The oldest vat was making the green Piet had chased for six seasons, and it smelled like that while it came. Anouk’s sticks would need to sit over the open steam to take the smell. Every hour the lid was off, the vat would cool, and the green would slip.

“I knew yesterday,” Piet said. “I kept the lid shut.”

Anouk looked at the vat for a while, and then at Piet, who was plainly ashamed. Anouk wanted the lid off so badly their hands ached on the tray. Years of batches, and here it was, a finger’s width away under a lid.

“Keep your lid on,” Anouk said. “Six seasons is six seasons.”

Then Anouk turned an empty pail upside down at the far edge of the yard, where the wind came off the vat. Anouk sat on it with the tray across their knees.

All afternoon Anouk breathed the smell that came round the edges of the lid, eyes shut, trying to keep it. Every so often Piet looked up from the walnut vat, and Anouk waved.

The sticks on the tray smelled of nothing but themselves.