—I had to pause a moment as I stood on the edge of a beautiful garden with trees and flowers just beginning to bud, winding white stone paths, and three different fountains. One of the fountains had a figure on tip-toe, finger pointing at the sky, who looked an awful lot like Hydris.
“Come along,” Lars said as he started speed walking again. “This place isn’t for you yet.”
Right, because I was the help. We maintained the garden but didn’t partake of it.
Hold on. “What do you mean by ‘yet’?”
“Yet?”
“Yeah, you said the garden wasn’t for meyet.”
“Huh. Can’t imagine.” He managed to make his rickety-looking body move even faster. “We’ll start with the stables. This way.”
One of us was absolutely losing it and, considering I was in a fairytale right now, I couldn’t rule out the possibility that the lunatic was me. Maybe I was unconscious in a hospital bed, my head cracked open from slipping on those rocks. I hadn’t realized I was into fairies and such, but clearly I’d been harboring a secret desire to be their stable boy.
What a stable it was, though. Practically a palace itself just from the outside, it was the same cream-colored stone, two stories, and at least two football fields. There had to be thirty stalls on each side, and all of them big enough to be an efficient one-bedroom apartment. It must’ve been feeding time because folks were bustling about with buckets as the horses poked their heads over gates to whinny at them.
I jerked to a stop as a tall, delicate-looking white horse gazed at me with big blue eyes because… Because there was a silver horn in the center of its forehead!
“Is that…aunicorn?”
“It is,” Lars said. “Each of the princes were gifted a foal when they were young.”
A sudden image filled my mind of Hydris in his gauzy robe laughing delightedly as he rode this amazing creature through a field of blue flowers. It made me smile for a moment, but then I shook my head as if to dislodge him from my brain. I probably needed to stop thinking of the disappointing prince. It was possible I’d never see him again.
Chapter 3
Turned out that manual labor was not a substitute for a workout because I’d never worked so hard in my entire life.
It had been two days since Lars introduced me to the Head Gardener and the Stable Master. Two days of using wheelbarrows piled high with dirt or shit, carrying bales of hay, and seemingly endless hours of raking and shoveling. I bathed each night over a bowl of hot water with the harshest soap I’d ever used and fell into bed absolutely exhausted. I took some comfort in the fact that I did seem to be helping my fellow laborers, so I was earning my hearty meals, clothes, and that bed.
And from these folks, I learned about the curse.
“Nothing grows here?” I asked in confusion since the plants all around us seemed just fine. Me, Sarosh, and Doran were on a break for lunch and sitting in a part of the garden no one could see from the palace. “Like in specific places? Or certain plants won’t grow?”
“No, that’s the wrong word.” Sarosh had a shaved head, dark skin, and big brown eyes. He took particular pleasure in filling my wheelbarrow, but he was good people. “It grows to a point, and then?—”
“Nothingripens,” Doran said and held up a perfectly normal strawberry. “These are an exception because strawberries ripen in the early spring. But anything that grows in spring and ripens in summer just doesn’t anymore. It’ll all rot if we don’t pick it early.” Doran was as tall as me but leaner and had a voice like thunder. That was about the most I’d ever heard him say at one time.
“That,” Sarosh said with a finger pointed at Doran. “We used to have a perfectly normal growing season. As the Spring Court, we kicked off spring for every other court. Now we’re locked into our individual seasons.” He shook his head sadly. “I can only imagine the people of Winter are struggling just to feed themselves.”
I winced at the thought of an endless winter. Had they had supplies enough to get them through setting up… Greenhouses maybe? And then waiting for anything to grow. Er, would anything grow? I had to ask, “If nothing ripens here, does anything grow in the Winter Court at all?”
Both of them shrugged, and Sarosh said, “We don’t know. The barriers cut us all off from visiting, but I heard a rumor you can’t hear through them either.”
“And that horse,” Doran added.
Sarosh groaned with a hand over his heart. “Bless it. The poor thing.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but… “What horse?”
“Another rumor, but they say a group from here sent a horse with a wagon full of supplies into Winter—because the animals and such can pass through the barrier whenever they want to.But after a few times, suddenly a lake appeared and…” He cut himself off, his face screwing up like he was in pain.
“It drowned,” Doran finished.
“Well, shit.” I patted Sarosh. He was one of the stablehands and talked to the horses like they were his babies.
“So not only is there a barrier,” I said, “but it can change itself to make sure no one and nothing gets through it. And no one knows who did all this? Because that sounds evil and I would’ve thought you’d know who your enemy was.”
