I would stay until the job was finished. And I always got the job finished.
“I want to help you,” I began. “I want to help this town. Perhaps it may take me months or years to convince the soil to live, but if there is one thing I can promise you, it is my stringent planning and stubborn commitment to have things turn out precisely the way I want them to.”
“Months to years?” he asked, raising his bushy eyebrows, looking up at the sky as he absentmindedly peeled chipping paint away from the bench. “From my understanding, you only have a month to grow a garden. That’s what Eldrene’s sentinels said.”
“Yes, a month,” I said. The timeline caged me; at the reminder, I struggled again to take a full breath. I had all but resigned myself to the fact I wouldn’t see Moss again. “If I don’t succeed, Eldrene will dole out whatever punishment she sees fit.”
A fact that had haunted me since the start, but I could not linger on it now.
“Well, then we’ll just have to make that work. Say you don’t grow a garden in a month, what’s the worst that could happen? We keep on our path, you on yours. And we’ll be glad we met along the way.” Angus gave my hand a pat. “I’m just glad you’re here, Clara.”
I opened my mouth to respond but quickly shut it instead, focusing on the ground. What would I say? I wished I could tell him,Me too. But that would be lie. Because that would mean that I felt like enough, and I didn’t. Not yet.
Maybe I would down the road. Without my seeds, though, all I had was myself. So for now, being here and being alive would have to be the tools I relied on.
I let my gaze rest on Hesper; the sight of her always managed to bring me up out of whatever chasm I’d put myself into. The kernel of warmth came back, a tiny candle burning just for her.
There she is, my heart sang sweetly as I gave Hesper a tentative smile; she gave me one right back.
Hesper nudged my boot, and I nudged hers right back. When I lifted up my shoe, however, I saw a familiar shape underneath.
“Ah, a buttercup!” Angus said cheerfully. “The flower of Dwindle, you know. I shan’t pick it. Don’t want to waste all that sunshine. Do you like them?”
“Very much,” I managed to say.
Signs are rare and almost never come when asked for—but that flower was all the sign I needed, and that tug in my heart gave an almighty pull.
“We are set to have ourfamousDwindle Farmers Market at the end of this month, by the way.” He winked, twiddling his fingers together somewhat wildly.
“You have markets with no produce?” I asked, the logistical part of my brain overriding the bluntness of the question.
“Er, no—” he said, his tone leading, his eyebrows wiggling. “We haven’t had one in, oh, I don’t know, decades upon decades. But things have changed, so…”
Oh.
Oh.
“I see.” I let the information settle. This wasn’t just about a garden for Dwindle; I also had a market to supply. And this wasn’t just any market; I knew what it would mean to them. After so long living in grayness and nightmares, they had a chance to reemerge, joining the fray of Nestryia.
They were grasping onto hope in the form of stacked vegetables and baskets of fruit.
I supposed no quest—nothing in life, really—was ever about thethingone was doing and much more about the journey along the way (a ridiculous sentiment to those more goal oriented than emotion oriented). And Angus had just given me the perfect goal. The quest given to me against my will was irksome at best, life-shattering at worst. But a farmers market was right up my alley.
A market in a month, he says?
Then a market they will have.
“There is a gardener’s cottage on the outskirts of town. I thought it might suit you and yourfriend.” Angus eyed Hesper mischievously. “We’ve not had a Town Gardener here for years, so the place needs work. And the chimney is quite a pretty perch for any familiar and the familiar’s familiar, if I do say so myself.” Angus pointed up at the skies, where Edge carried Warty in his talons.
Crumbs peppered onto us, courtesy of Warty’s snacking overhead.
The narrowed streets began to widen, the shoppes giving way to open space and grass, and then we were on a plain dirt path that wound its way up a small hill, where a cottage rested atop it. That same thread of familiarity that had tugged on me when I saw Dwindle happened again as I looked at the gardener’s cottage.
A strand between here and me.
Perhaps it was the moss growing on the roof, or the circular windows, or the crisscross beams against the white plastered cottage, or the wild ivy painting the cottage walls bright green, or the yellow round door that yearned for me to open it… or, perhaps, this was what fate felt like. An essence of knowing and not knowing, but a sense of belonging, nonetheless.
Angus spoke, but I didn’t hear him anymore. I walked through the creaky wooden gates and into the garden beds beyond. There were four large raised garden beds for various crops, several overturned flowerpots, and a willow tree towering proudly in the corner of the grounds, just like the oak at my home. Six panels of elegantly twisted wire were stacked against the cottage for vine-creeping plants. And an old hat and apron hung on a hook by the door, sun-bleached but intact.
