“Is that so?” Hesper stopped her swinging, looking up at me with a curious gleam in her eyes. “Hmm.” Then she got back to work.
She knows something isn’t right.
If she could scent a squirrel, I’m sure she could sense just how weak of a vessel I was.
“I noticed your washbasin sparkled, so I assumed you must wash every day.” She reset a new stump, bigger than the last, and with her arms up high in the air, she murmured, “What a shame.”
“Why?” I asked, blinking dumbly as I watched her back muscles bunch for another hit.
Thwack.
The stump cleaved in two like butter.
She turned toward me, wiping a smear of sweat from her upper lip with the back of her hand. “I like the smell.”
With that, she stuck the axe into the cutting wood with one hand and went back inside the cottage as if nothing happened.As if what she’d said was absolutely normal. As if she did not just jolt my entire body with her words, her dark eyes, her scarred, wet upper lip.
I took a freezing cold bath.
“And how many seeds will you be needing?” Farmer Gristle asked, his bristly white mustache fluttering with each word. “Your usual amount?”
“Uh, no,” I replied.
“Oh, right. Excuse me.” He put a hand over his heart in apology.
“No, no, it’s all right. Nothing to be excused for,” I said, trying to muster a warm smile. “A small pack is all I need. Please put whatever you think would be good for travel in the mix.”
Farmer Gristle gave me a kind nod and set to curating the seed pack. I had been coming to his tiny farm shoppe ever since I became Moss’s Town Gardener. The shoppe was basically a wooden shack, but the walls were covered in vessels that held all sorts of seeds. Everyone thought his shoppe to be minimal and lackluster. To me, an entire world lived in here, just waiting to be sung to life.
He had a small garden that fed his family and his goats, but he took a special interest in harvesting seeds. Gristle meticulously cared for each seed, which made my job of magicking them to life easier. What shred of magic I possessed mixed with the love that Gristle poured in, and everything grew without issue, and quickly. I could provide a whole harvestin two weeks’ time with his seeds, sometimes even less than that. Sometimes I thought Gristle might be magic himself; he certainly had more magic than me.
Gristle’s seeds were priceless to me and always had been. Now, though, I was banking everything on them. They’d never failed me before, and hopefully, I wouldn’t fail them now.
“Here you are,” he said, handing over a linen seed pack. It was light and easy to carry, but in my hands, the weight of the world pressed upon it. I must keep this safe at all costs. “All durable, able to sustain some rough conditions, high germination rate.”
If I could magic these seeds now, with Moss’s magic, then I couldfinishgrowing the garden in Dwindle—hoping I didn’t get eaten by the monsters on my way there—and come back home. To say “this was my only hope” seemed melodramatic but, in truth, this seed pack was actually my only hope.
“Thank you.” I made to walk out the door, but Gristle stopped me.
“Clara.” He leaned over his shoppe counter. “I worry I will never see you again.” A tear slipped down his cheek.
“I’ll be all right.”
A lie.
“Perhaps Dwindle isn’t so bad, but withering magicis. It is a poison.” His voice shook, barely a whisper, but he steadied himself. “Sending you into all of that is wrong. I don’t care what wrath I may incur by saying that aloud. It’swrong.” His whisper turned into forceful conviction. Hesper stirred in the corner, but she kept her distance.
I gently patted his hand that rested on my shoulder.
“Nothing a few Gristle seeds and magic can’t fix.” I winked at him, even though my heart sank right along with his.
“Perhaps you’re right.” He stood up tall, wiping the tears away from his eyes. “I shouldn’t worry. Your magic has blessed Moss for ages now.”
Fraud.
My to-do list rang through my mind, wiping away the emotion and guilt welling up inside of me. Reminding me that maybe, just maybe, Gristle held all the answers I needed.
“Gristle, you know I have a few weeks to set my affairs in order.” He shook his head yes. “One of the reasons is to find a Town Gardener, and I thought maybe you’d like to—”
