I piled all the decayed roots and leaves in the back garden near the willow tree—the only bit of green in the whole place. For now.
The fourth bed took me completely by surprise.
Instead of rocks and roots, I found leftover radish seeds. Their flat-oval shape and reddish hue stood out starkly against the depleted soil. At first, I thought it might have been just a few seeds. But as I gently broke apart the top layer of soil, I saw seeds set an inch apart in neat rows—perfectly suspended in their sowing pattern.
They had forgotten to die like everything else. Or maybe withering magic could only access life, and the seeds chosenotto grow so as to avoid such a fate.
A seed has thepotentialof life—it’s just dormant.
That’s where my magic came into play in Moss. I would activate the sleeping life within, encouraging it to awaken.
Images of buttercups, strange flowers in odd places, and the like popped into my head.
I wonder…my heart mused.
No, I was being ridiculous. How many times had I reached for magic before Moss and after? Those flowers along the way couldn’t have been me. If they were, I would have felt it, right? But the steely resolve I had in thinking I was foolish for giving anything a shot was becoming less like steel and more like thread.
And that kernel in my chest was warming again as I looked out at this garden, still in disarray but changing, as I listened to Hesper humming to herself as she repaired a roof on a ladder she’d built from wood that more than likely assumed it would turn to dust before ever being of use again (wood has feelings, too).
Just try, Clara.
So I did.
I sang to the seeds as I would have before. I pretended that I had magic again. Instead of reaching, I assumed it was already there.
Nothing happened. The seeds didn’t budge. I didn’t feel the usual tug from my heart to the seeds in my hand. But I had to admit, believing something could work felt a bit better than knowing it wouldn’t.
I placed the seeds tenderly back into their garden bed and covered them up.
“Back to sleep you go,” I sang.
By the end of the day, the garden beds were entirely cleared out, repaired, and ready for planting. I also cleared out the front of the cottage, which was completely overgrown with briars and brambles.
Everything looked empty and a little sad—because even dead, it still offered the memory of life.
But now there was room for growth.
Somehow.
Some way.
Hesper had done a miraculous job repairing the roof. The thatching went from bedraggled to quite quaint. She managed to repair the chimney, too, unclogging it from years of plants and animals residing within. In her spare time, she also tore away the ivy that was encroaching too close to the cottage door, uncovering crescent-moon-shaped shutters adorning the front windows.
I squealed in delight.
“You like moons, princess?” Hesper asked, her eyes on me.
“Very much,” I said, looking only at her.
The gray, hot day was morphing into a somewhat pleasant evening, a sliver of orange sky peeping through the clouds. Maybe it was the sunset that caused my heart to burn in my chest. Maybe it was something else.
Hesper turned toward the garden beds, and her eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“Now that, even you can’t deny.” She pointed toward the back of the garden. I had been staring at her the entire time, so I didn’t know what she was talking about at first. But I followed her finger to the fourth garden bed.
“What?” I asked. There was nothing there. Just an empty—
Oh my Goddess.
