Always such a stickler for the rules,Diana thought, with mild exasperation. She half-hoped, half-dreaded, that Ash might become a little more rebellious when he got older.
“My friend didn’t say I couldn’t get any expert help, so I think it’ll be all right,” Calvin explained. “The only thing I know about the answer is that it has something to do with nature. But here goes: ‘I am mother and father, but never birth or nurse. I have a bark, but no bite. I'm rarely still, but I never wander. What am I?’”
Ash thought for a moment, clearly running the words back through his mind. “Nature,” he finally said. “Something that has bark but no bite. Wouldn’t that be a tree?”
Diana blinked, crowding in around Calvin’s shoulder to look down at the riddle. “Oh – I see what you mean,” she said, as Ash leaned over Calvin’s other shoulder. Excitement fluttered in her chest. “But… what about these other parts? ‘Mother and father, but never birth or nurse?’”
As she said it, the answer suddenly seemed clear in front of her. “Oh my God – of course! Trees – well, a lot of them – can have both pollen and seeds, so they have both male and female parts. But the wind blows the pollen to another tree, so it’s not like female trees have little tree babies that they need to, uh, raise, I guess,” she laughed. “Does that make sense?”
“Well, I’m sure it would if I knew as much about gardening as you do,” Calvin laughed. “But the way you explained it, sure, that takes care of that part!”
“There’s still the last bit, though,” Diana said, pointing at the final line of the riddle. “‘I’m rarely still, but I never wander.’ Does that still fit in with it being a tree?”
“Well, I guess trees’ branchesdomove around in the wind a lot – and sometimes even get blown right down by it,” Calvin said, giving Diana a quick half-smile, clearly remembering their near-miss that morning. “But I can’t say I’ve ever seen one uproot itself and wander around.”
Ash giggled a little – something that so rarely happened that for a moment Diana was surprised to hear it.
“That’d be pretty funny,” he said. “If you woke up in the morning, Mom, and your garden was totally different from the day before. Like the plants didn’t like where you put them.”
Diana laughed heartily, reaching over to ruffle Ash’s hair. “After all my hard work! Such a bunch of ingrates! But I thinkyou’re right, Calvin – trees aren’t still very often with all the wind we get up here, but they certainly don’t wander around.”
There was a moment of silence as they looked around the table at each other.
“Is that it, then?” Calvin asked, sounding almost stunned. “Is that the answer? A tree?”
“I think so,” Ash said, nodding. “I guess you can ask your friend, and they can say whether you got it right.”
“I – I guess so,” Calvin agreed, though Diana knew the caution in his voice was only because it wasn’t as simple as just being told if he’d got the answer right – there was a lot more riding on it than that. But at least Sieval hadn’t seemed to think Calvin would bring a double curse down on himself if he got it wrong.
No, she’ll probably just send him away again to continue with the curse he has,Diana thought, a little anxiously.Or give him another, even harder riddle.
But no, she told herself, giving herself a mental shake. She couldn’t let herself get pessimistic. She’d never known Ash to be wrong when it came to wordplays or puzzles – if he said the answer was a tree, then she was confident that the sprite would be happy.
“I’ll definitely go ask my friend about this just as soon as I can,” Calvin said with a broad smile. “I’m sure that’s the right answer. Thanks, Ash – I never would have figured that out without you.”
“It’s okay.” Ash gave him a shy smile. “It was fun to think about it. I really like that kind of thing.”
“Oh! But do you need to go get your things together to go to Janie’s?” Diana said, the remembrance of the sleepover suddenly popping back into her head.
Despite shifters and sprites and magical riddles, the work of a mom never stops!
“Do you know what you need to pack?” she asked Ash, as, obedient as ever, he hopped up from his chair to start getting ready.
“Pajamas, toothbrush, stuff for tomorrow,” Ash listed off on his fingers. “Um. Snacks and stuff?”
“You can grab some popcorn out of the cupboard,” Diana told him. “But you already had some cake and pancakes today. So remember that when you’re at Janie’s. Did she tell you to bring anything to help with dinner?”
“No,” Ash shook his head. “She said her grandma would be making dinner tonight.”
Diana half-laughed, half-groaned. “Well, if Eula’s cooking, there’ll be enough to feed an army!”
None of it probably very healthy, but Diana figured one day of Eula’s amazing – if cholesterol-packed – food wouldn’t do any harm, except to make her own cooking look even worse by comparison.
“All right then – you go pack your backpack, and I’ll check it before we go to make sure you haven’t forgotten anything, all right? What time do you need me to drop you there?”
“Janie’s mom said she’d pick me up, if I was allowed to go – you need to text her,” Ash informed them as he hurried out of the room, clearly more excited by the idea of the sleepover than he was letting on.
“Oh well, that makes life a little easier,” Diana sighed as she pulled out her phone, firing off a quick text to let Janie’s mom, Katie, know to come by whenever she was ready. The answer was almost immediate:Just at the grocery store – there in ten.
