“Fine then! I need to know the color of the Crown Jewel Tulip so that I can match my dress to it. And my hair. And my nails. And my jewelry, you know. The usual.” She whippedout a small piece of parchment and a travel quill. “So, could you just tell me what the colors will be? I know it’s meant to be a secret, but I figured we were such good friends that you could give me a head start!”
Such good friends? I stifled a scoff. Helda and I were many things—but friends we were not. Besides, she’d been to plenty of Goddess Celebrations at this point. How had she missed the pinnacle of the entire ceremony?
Be sweet, I told myself.Or be not grumpy, you can do it.
“The Crown Jewel Tulip only blooms when Eldrene herself touches it.” I attempted to say it kindly.
“But you have it now, don’t you?”
“Yes, I—”
“What’s the point of you having it if nothing happens until she touches it?”
“It’s not like the tulip is just sitting in the box, Helda. Magic is an intricate thing—sometimes it needs as much of a growing season as everything else.”
She quirked an eyebrow up at me as if in disbelief.
“Is the tulip in there?” She pointed to the plain wooden box sitting under the oak tree. I gave her a curt nod. She pursed her lips together before narrowing her eyes at me.
“Why can’t Eldrene just grow it herself? What makes you sospecial?” Her sickeningly sweet tone lingered on “special.”
Tight coils wound their way around my heart, and the tenuous hold on my patience ebbed. The onlyspecialthing about me was that I ever managed to grow anything at all. Magic and I worked together about as well as Helda and I did.
“The pine needed for the tulip’s rest cannot be found where Eldrene is confined in Moss Wood.” Any warmth in my voiceevaporated like the morning dew. “As the Goddess Celebration Gardener, I am able to travel to the Idle Groves, retrieve the needles, and tend to the tulip bulb. Shecouldhave chosen anyone. I am not special—just in the right place at the right time.”
Any ole Town Gardener could serve as Celebration Gardener. All the job required was garden magic to tend the Crown Jewel Tulip. Before I showed up, the position of Celebration Gardener rotated around the realm. Folkdreadedthe job—granted, it’s a massive undertaking.
I showed up here at thirteen, alone and scraggly clothed, on the same day the former Town Gardener had just announced his sudden resignation—right when it was Moss’s turn to serve as Celebration Gardener. He was on his way to the Golden Isles, and thanks to a well-timedaccident, I looked to have both garden magic and a desperate desire to be Town Gardener. Some might call what happened that day Fate, but I called it my ability to keep a tight schedule.
And Moss’s magic, of course. But Helda needn’t know that.No oneneeded to know that.
“Something you do must be special,” Helda countered. “You take longer to harvest your crops than any other Town Gardener we’ve had. Yet Eldrene always requests you.”
“Some things take time,” I said as I rubbed at my temples, the coils around my heart growing tighter by the second.
“Is that not the benefit of having magic? It takes less time,” she quipped back.
“Perhaps,” I conceded.
“And you sing to your harvest; why? I’ve never heard of any other Town Gardener having to do that,” she said with asickeningly sweet tone, twirling her hair around her fingers like a threat.
“That’s the only way—”to get my magic to work most days. “That’s just how I do it.”
“Couldn’t anyone with garden magic do your job?” she pressed, one perfectly sculpted eyebrow raised high.
“Yes, but—”
“Then why you?” she asked again.
“I—well—” I scrambled for words, for anything to gain purchase in this conversation. The rosemary bush below my window began to yellow at the top—a telltale sign that my emotions were getting away from me. Why was I letting Helda get to me this way? There were plenty of things in this life that made me unsure of myself, but my work was not one of them.
My harvests were always on time—albeit never early. But who likes being too early anyhow? Moss was well-fed, shoppes overflowed with my crops, and the Goddess Celebration had never seen tulips grown better than mine. Magic did not make me special. But my life, my purpose, rested on my dedication to being Town Gardener. I loved this town more than folk knew, and it seeped into the very soil that I worked in. What’s more, Iwantedto be Celebration Gardener—so I’ve had the job ever since.
“Because being the Goddess Celebration Gardener is about more than just magic,” I said proudly. The tightness around my heart loosened, the rosemary bush below grew green again. “It’s about—wait, how do you know I sing to my garden?”
“And what does the squirrel have to do with it?” Helda flung her arms up into the air, her singsong voice taking on a discordant edge.
“What are you—”
