“Olly! I wasn’t ex—” Terryl Nevin looked up, her eyes widening with delight when she noticed— “Eunny! What are you doing here?”
“Zhenya, Ma. Looking for Zhenya,” Ollas said, stooping down to kiss his mother’s cheek. The family resemblance was strong, from their dark curls to their full faces, though Terryl’s hair was more gray than brown, now, and her cheeks hollowed with age. But they had the same smile, the same laugh.
There was something endearing about the picture they made, but it carried with it a sense of melancholy, too, and Eunny couldn’t have said why.
“Stacks, red corner. Something about murals.” Terryl smiled at Eunny. “I haven’t seen you up in these parts in ages.”
True. Eunny hadn’t set foot in the library since her Initiate-level days. She’d done some repair work for different sections, but the materials came to her, usually by way of Zhenya. Still, Terryl herself was hardly a stranger, being Auntie Yerina’s best friend and all. Eunny had known the woman since she was a kid, and saw her often enough down at the Mighty Leaf. Back when open crafting nights had still been regular events at the café, Terryl had regularly attended and helped with any sewing questions.
A pang that was more guilt than sadness hit Eunny as she ducked her head. “Guess schooling wasn’t quite done with me yet.” She nudged Ollas. “He’s a terrible influence. Good teacher, though.”
Ollas’s ears went red. “We’re going to find Zhen.”
Eunny waved. “It was good to see you, Terryl.”
“Come by any time, dear.”
Leaving a grinning Terryl at her desk, they trotted off to the red corner and found Zhenya seated on the top rung of a ladder as she scribbled away in a notebook.
“I’m no expert, but this can’t be safe,” Eunny remarked.
“What are you doing here?” Zhenya stowed her pen and climbed down with exaggerated care.
“Looking for you. Is there, uh, some place”—Eunny glanced around—“a little more private?”
Zhenya led them to one of the empty study rooms, closing the door behind them and activating the noise ward. “Is this about your propagation experiment in Trunk?”
Eunny and Ollas exchanged looks. “You explain,” Eunny said.
Ollas complied, filling in the gaps in what Zhenya already knew—or had surmised on her own from poking around their not-so-hidden tray in the storage greenhouse. Eunny supplemented his commentary as needed, admitting that her magic might well have poured out and triggered a hidden imprinting spell, if one existed in the seeds Ollas had found. She avoided mentioning that her gift was still very much present and had been fed into the delegation plants, even if in small amounts. She left the effusive comments on the nascent pull of the plants to Ollas. Neither brought up how their sleeping together might’ve been the catalyst for Eunny’s cuttings’ dramatic growth.
“You’ve done more with imprinted spellwork than me,” Ollas said. “Does any of this sound familiar?”
“I was doing work on imbued iconography,” Zhenya said. “Which is sort of related, because the inks with highest water resistance originated in the north. The methods do, at any rate.”
“What does water resistance have to do with the delegation plants?” Eunny asked.
“Nothing. The methods. Seeds were imbued with different magics to try and influence the resulting plants with those qualities.” Zhenya flipped back a dozen pages in her overstuffed notebook, scanning the contents with an ink-stained finger. She stopped, tapping a line. “The imbuing process, the sequence, it’s usually done in stages. Each requires… magic.”
“Magic,” Eunny repeated, slowly.
Zhenya nodded. “From what I’ve read, and there’s not much, so this is barely more than conjecture, but these imprinting sequences are a safeguard. A means to keep different properties separate, but also secure. Linked to the mage. Or mages, in your case.”
“What are— I’m not an academic, Zhen. Simple words. Explain it like I’m five.”
Her eyes drifted upward in thought. “I think the seeds imprinted on you. Like baby ducks. It’s possible they had previously been spelled to require earth and light magic to grow, and when your, um, accident happened, you unintentionally triggered that spell.”
“Okay,” Eunny said weakly. “So, the plants are imprinted on us. Like ducks. Great. What does that mean?”
“Your magic bonded to the natural bit of life in each seed. But like I said, there are stages. That stored life doesn’t last forever, imbued or not. You said one of your divisions died in a weird way?”
Eunny snuck a glance at Ollas. His brow was furrowed in thought, and he nodded, murmuring, “Like it had dried out. Lack of magic, instead of water?”
Zhenya nodded. “It makes the most sense. It sounds like you’ve woken the next stage of the imprinting sequence, the blooming period.”
“Only we haven’t gotten any of them to bloom,” Eunny said.
Zhenya gave a small shrug. “They’re going to need more magic. Presumably yours, Eunny, though I guess it’s possible another source of light magic could take them over. Like calls to like, in most cases.”
