“Because I don’t have to.” He’s right, though: I can’t prove it.I smell my great-aunt’s spaghetti Bolognese when I mix stems correctlyis not concrete evidence.
I look at him now, and this time my smile is genuine. I can tell it frustrates him. “Anyway, it’s obvious.In a garden where tea roses bloom with the snowdrops, there must live a witch. That’s common knowledge.” I gesture to my tea roses, then my snowdrops, both in full bloom. “You see?”
“Anyone can make up anything, that doesn’t make it so,” he counters. “I could say that if you sit in a yellow chair at the exact coordinates of the South Pole, it will start raining licorice.”
“That’s absurd,” I reply amiably. “There’s no such thing as the South Pole.”
“What?”
When I don’t reply, he lays a hand over my crown-in-progress and slides it toward himself, to get my attention. “What did you say?”
“The earth is flat. There is no South Pole.”
I watch horror dawn in his (variegated tulip, I can’t help but think) eyes, and it’s excellent. I hold his stare for a full ten seconds before laughter bubbles out. “Kidding.”
He mops his forehead, arching backward. “Don’t scare me like that.”
“I had you, didn’t I?”
“How could I have known you were kidding? By the way, you control when your snowdrops and tea roses bloom. You have them in pots on your porch, circumventing their natural life cycle.”
“Go outside and check the rest of the garden. You’ll find all sorts of plants that aren’t supposed to bloom until late summer, and they’ll be bigger and prettier than any you’ve ever seen. Explain that.”
“Illegal fertilizers.” He lays yellow roses together with ivy, and pink roses with myrtle, like I’m doing, to help me along. I push a wire and tape toward him. He begins to assemble. “Tell me how your magic works, at least.”
“Witchcraft is a mix of respecting basic cornerstones and intuitive improvisation.”
He laughs again. “That is some vague word salad you’re trying to get me to eat, there, Mother Nature.”
“This right here?” I point to my Wonder Wall, which is loaded with Polaroids of customers holding up the flora fortunes that changed their lives. “When I finished that talisman right there, it felt like a kitten on a tree stump, pouncing on a butterfly.” I indicate a woman and her posy. “This one felt likethe last page of a dark fairytale.” I gesture to other bouquets. “Solving a mystery. The first lick of ice cream in summer. The strike of midnight on New Year’s, when the person you want to kiss suddenly appears, backlit by fireworks. Andthatis how I know magic is real.”
His expression is exactly what I would have guessed. It’s impossible to convey the sensation of magic flowing through my hands without sounding bananas.
“You mean you don’t even have any magical amulets that light up when you chant at them? Spooky spells that shake the ground? You’re giving me nothing.”
“There’re plenty of places to sit,” I say, plucking a spotted leaf and flicking it playfully in his direction. He closes his fist around the leaf just before it makes contact, scrunching his nose with a smile. “You don’t have to stand directly on my nerves.”
“Hey, just trying to understand you.”
Why bother?I think. I glance sidelong at him again, catching him staring. “What is it?”
“You’re so calm here. This is your happy place.”
“Yes, it is.” I wind a finger. “And the rest?”
“The rest of what?”
“I can tell you want to say something else. Other words are hiding in there for me.”
His smile is a flare of genuine wonder, pleased that I pegged him so accurately, but then he softens. “That something else is... the way you...”
I wait for him to finish, but he changes the subject instead. Traces one of my flower tattoos, half of its buds closed, just beginning to bloom. He swallows. “What kind of flower is this?”
“Lily of the valley.”
He thinks.Return to happiness. Alex’s thumb brushes the pinkoutline of another flower that grows on my arm, one of its petals in an everlasting process of falling away. “And this one?”
“Carnation.”
