“No, I don’t. I promise,” I told her. “It wasn’t me, it was something else.”
“But your garden magic—”
“It’s not really garden magic. I don’t know what it is. When I came here, I had no magic. Then, it was like Moss seeped into me, and suddenly I could grow things. Not extremely well but enough to be the Town Gardener.”
“Sothat’swhy you never traveled.” Rosie clicked her tongue together as if she’d finally found that pesky last puzzle piece that seemingly gets up and runs away at precisely the wrong moment.
“I’m so sorry, Rosie.” My voice broke around the edges. “I should have told you sooner.”
Rosie went quiet for a while, her eyes narrowing in and then widening, as if she was weighing each thought carefully.
“We have been friends for a very long time, Clara. Whether you want to admit it or not, I know you. I know you have issues expressing your feelings in the way that most people consider to be the norm. I know you’d rather die under the porch than admit that you need help. And I also know that you took time to learn my favorite teas for when I’m sad, contented, or tired; which sweater makes me the happiest so you can knit me backups when the others fray; which flowers I lean down to smell and which I do not so that your garden only has those I enjoy sniffing.”
My heart crunched in on itself and reformed again. What shape should it be now? There was something secretive in love. Something strange and unattainable to me, I had never understood it in the way others did. I did what I knew, what made the most sense, which were often the tiny pieces of someone they didn’t know anyone else could see. Their small, unknown secrets were what I could read clearly, whereas the typical way folks spoke of showing love—grand, sweeping emotions and feelings ofknowing—I couldn’t read at all. It felt like sandpaper on my brain when I tried to understand, which only made me fussy; thus, I knitted and gardened anddidthings for people.
“You love in a quiet way, like a shade tree in the summer. I know you keep things to yourself, and I do not hold that against you. Whatever reason you have for never telling me about your magic is perfectly understandable. But I do wantyou to know that I will not love you less because you don’t have magic. I suspect Moss will not care that much, either.”
“Town Gardeners are meant to have garden magic; that’s the requirement. What would they say if they knew that all along—”
“That all along they had ample harvests for their homes and shoppes?”
“Yes, but—”
“Clara, sometimes the rules you hold closely are not held by everyone.”
She gave my hand a squeeze and left it at that.
“I suppose that means that growing a garden in a month will be—”
“Impossible?” I let out a bemused laugh. Ah, doom, it really brings out the humor at inappropriate times.
“Possibly very difficult,” she offered. “Maybe Dwindle has enchanted soil, and everything will grow just fine.”
“Yes, perhaps the village surrounded by Shadow Woods and a stone’s throw away from the Witherings will have the most fertile soil in the land.” I laughed bitterly.
“And your magic is entirely gone outside of Moss?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“So do you have any ideas?”
“Well—” I sat up, curling my knees into my chest. “I did, but then it didn’t work. My heart, I think, broke irreparably about leaving and the magic leaked out.”
She gave a softhmm.
“And Hesper knew,” I said ruefully, wiping tears from my cheek.
“That you didn’t have magic?”
“Yep. She knew all along I didn’t have garden magic, and she behaved as if I did, asking me to try different ways to use my magic. What an ass.”
“Well, did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Try.”
“Whose side are you on?” I playfully slapped her arm, and despite the whirlwind of terror the last two weeks had been, I laughed. Because Rosie was here beside me, and my heart thrummed with something deep. Something pure.
