He reeled back. “I . . . I was just trying to help.”
Caz chimed in. “He did fix it. AndIwas here.”
She knew that. It was just . . . Ugh, if he didn’t understand, she didn’t know how to explain it to him. “You invaded my privacy. Multiple times.” She waved her hand at the stove, the eggs, the daisies, the napkins.
“Ah.” It was a syllable stuffed with hurt and confusion.
Kiela squeezed her eyes shut. She reminded herself that her chimney was fixed, the eggs were delicious, and the crates were undisturbed. No harm had been done. Yet. He had to understand, though, that this wasn’t acceptable. “I don’t want you to get the impression that it’s okay to come over whenever you want. We aren’t friends.”
“Ah.”
She opened her eyes. He was staring at his plate, clearly unsure what to say, and she was torn between wanting to take all the words back and being glad she’d spoken up. He had to know he couldn’t keep dropping by, poking his nose wherever he wanted. It wasn’t safe, not with the secrets she was keeping. She couldn’t afford uninvited visitors.
They fell into another even-more-awkward silence.
Caz spoke first. “So, do merhorses eat plants?”
Chapter Six
At dawn, Kiela tackled the garden. It was key to her being able to stay here. The food she’d bought in the village wouldn’t last long, and she didn’t have enough coin leftover to buy much more—and after yesterday, she didn’t expect (or want) any more gifts from her overly friendly neighbor. She had to make this work.
Standing in the backyard, she put her hands on her hips and surveyed the tangle of green. The sun had warmed the air and now heated her shoulders and the back of her hair. She’d tied her hair back from her face with a ribbon, and she’d dressed in one of her mother’s old dresses, an earth-colored patchwork of soft browns and greens with lots of pockets for holding trowels and clippers and extra garden gloves. Her boots had been her mother’s as well, sturdy leather boots, softened with age, that could handle the dirt. The earth beneath the soles of her boots felt soft as a quilt, like it wanted her to lie down and be engulfed by the garden. Caz sat beside her, his leaves curled around his soil, as if nervous the vines would envelop him too. Vines had crept over the fence and swallowed whatever had previously grown here. Weeds had sprouted and taken over every inch of soil. Everywhere she looked was a riot of green.
Choked by vines, a tree bent over the right fence. A few of its limbs were leafless, and a bird with orange-and-green feathers perched on it. Puffing its chest out, it trilled a descending melody. Across the garden, another bird answered with a coo-like call. Elsewhere in the woods beyond the garden, more birds chirped and sang.
A breeze whisked across the garden, and the leaves shimmered in the sunlight as they fluttered. She inhaled the heavy scent of green, growing things—she could smell a hint of honey within the breeze, and she didn’t know which flowers it came from. Prickly bushes with pale flowers filled one corner, and shoots with balls of purple flowers towered over another. She breathed in again and thought the nobles in Alyssium would have paid fistfuls of money to smell as light and lovely as the air on Caltrey. Just breathing it in made her feel like she was waking up after a night of perfect, deep sleep. She’d never felt quite so aware of the taste and feel of the air, or of the sounds of the birds and the gentle rustle of leaves. It made her feel like she could tackle any challenge—if only she knew exactly how.
“Any idea where to start?” Kiela asked Caz.
“How am I supposed to know?”
“Well, I feel like you might be an expert on vegetation.”
He was quiet for a moment. “That is true.”
“So, tell me what’s a weed and what isn’t,” Kiela said.
“There’s no such thing as a weed,” Caz said. “That’s a cruel term made up by people who label some plants as ‘unwanted’ and some as ‘valuable,’ as if the worth of a living thing is measured by how useful it is to another living thing. As if a plant can’t have its own intrinsic worth.” He was so worked up that he raised his leaves high and shook them. It was the longest, most passionate speech she’d ever heard the spider plant make.
In her soothing librarian voice, Kiela said, “All right. From here on, the word ‘weed’ is banned in this garden.”
He lowered his leaves, pleased.
“How about you tell me which plants are which, and we’ll . . . organize them. So that they all have the chance to thrive. We can designate areas for different kinds of plants and transplant the rest outside the fence. Like at the library.” She walked toward the east side of the garden. “Here’s the Nonfiction section. Vegetables only here.”
“New Studies and Treaties,” Caz said, designating an area at the front of the Nonfiction section. “Your seeds can go here. And in the back, Histories—that’s the old growth.”
“In the front of the cottage, Fiction. That’ll be all the flowers.”
“What about the berries?”
“Journals of Scientific Papers,” she decided, because of the way the brambles both supported and strangled one another. “Along the far fence.”
They planned it out, giving each type of plant a corresponding book designation. Kiela hauled the gardening equipment out of the house. Caz held the smaller tools, the trowel and clippers, with his tendrils, and she wielded the hoe and shovel. Focusing on the front section, they set to work.
By the time the sun reached midday, they’d cleared a five-by-five-foot area in New Studies, which wasn’t much in the grand scheme of the overwhelming overgrowth, but it was enough, she judged, to plant some of the seeds she’d bought.
Caz coaxed her through the technique: a hole for each seed, then water, then soil on top, then more water. She spaced them out according to his directions and then sat back, satisfied. It was an excellent start. And it wasn’t so different from organizing a bookshelf. A bit dirtier, but she’d gotten just as sweaty hauling books from shelf to shelf. The birds continued to sing to one another, and the breeze cooled the sweat on her neck. Her lungs felt full of the sweet-as-honey air, and the ache in her muscles was a good kind of ache.
