Outside, the day was crisp but beautiful. She inhaled deeply. Overhead, birds were singing to one another, cascading trills from high in the branches. She caught a glimpse of a red cardinal, bright scarlet against the white snow, green pine, and blue sky, as it flew over the top of the greenhouses.
The snow crunched under her feet as she let herself inside and then hung up the coat and scarf. “Gardener? Kitty? Good morning!”
Silence greeted her.
“Good morning, flowers,” she said to the plants.
None of them answered her either.
She walked between the lilies and lilacs, inhaling their heady perfume and listening for any hint of sound from any direction that would tell her where to go. She thought she heard a hum to her left. She followed that path.
Opening the door to the next greenhouse, she was greeted with music.
Smaller than the prior rooms, this greenhouse was an octagon filled with flowers both in pots and planted directly into the soil, all in full blossom: tulips, daffodils, lilies, roses, and orchids, as well as tulip trees, magnolia trees, and dogwood trees. Every flower on every plant and tree was singing wordlessly in perfect harmony.
No one had written this music. It flowed and evolved, notes tumbling over one another and then joining in chords more by happy accident than design. The harmonies melded and split and flowed around her, washing over her as gently as a stream over stones, and Terlu stood on the path and felt the tears flow down her cheeks. She wasn’t certain why she was crying—I’m alive. I slept, I washed, I ate. She had no reason to cry.Stop it,she told herself, but that had no effect.
If she hadn’t just been thinking about Caz, then it might not have hit her so hard, but shewasthinking about him, the friend she’d made and lost, when she walked into the greenhouse of singing flowers.
She cried for the life she’d lost along with her new friend. Even if she hadn’t particularly liked that life, it had been hers. She’d earned that library position, though it hadn’t been what she’d dreamed it would be. She cried, too, for Caz himself. Was he happy? She hoped so. Was he safe? She wondered if she’d ever know. Did he know what had happened to her? Did he mourn when she was turned into a statue? Did he know she’d been saved? Did anyone? She thought of her family on Eano, her parents and her sister and her aunts, uncles, and cousins, and she wished they were here or she was there. If she could find a way to write to them… but what would she say? How would she explain? She didn’t even know if they knew what had happened to her, how badly she’d messed up. It was better if they didn’t know.
They could mourn the woman they’d hoped she’d be, rather than worry about the criminal she was.
The floral music flowed around her, soothing her and comforting her, and at last her tears stopped. She took a shaky breath and wasn’t sure if she felt better or just more damp. “You sound beautiful,” she said out loud. She wondered if any of them could hear her, and if they did, could they understand her? Were any of them like Caz was, fully awake and aware? “Hello? My name’s Terlu. Can any of you speak?”
The flowers didn’t stop singing.
Not like Caz then.
Terlu walked through the greenhouse, counting the singing plants and trees. Sixty-three—no, wait, there was a little bluebell in a bright pink pot that was singing high soprano, beneath a dogwood tree that crooned in baritone. Sixty-four, an extraordinary number. She knelt next to the bluebell and admired how its petals widened with each crystal-clear note.
This was a chorus that an emperor would envy.
Who had enchanted them all to sing like this? This required alotof spellwork, very advanced spellwork too. Could the gardener have done it? He’d woken her, but he’d claimed he wasn’t a sorcerer. Had he lied? Why would he lie? It wasn’t illegal for sorcerers to cast spells. If he was a sorcerer, it would be safer for him to tell the truth. So she supposed it wasn’t him? But if he wasn’t responsible for this chorus, then who was? Who else was here?
She left the singing greenhouse through a door painted with musical notes.
One of the other miraculous things about this place, in addition to the wealth of plants and the harmony of the flowers, was the way the doorways truly separated each room. Heat, moisture, cold—none of it leaked into the next greenhouse, even when the door itself was open.It has to be a spell, a very complex and advanced one.Like with the singing flowers, but more practical. Terlu stepped across the threshold and noted that, once again, this climate was entirely different from the prior one. It was hot and dry and far quieter, with paths and garden beds that were filled with sand. Cacti grew here:tall ones with arms that reached toward the ceiling, as well as short, spiky nobs that poked through the ground. A few had starlike yellow flowers clustered between their leaves and one had a cascade of trumpetlike pink flowers. She spotted a rabbit-size gryphon on top of one of the larger cacti. It let out a little leonine roar before it flew up to the rafters. She wondered if it was friends with the winged cat.
She found the next greenhouse quickly and walked into a pleasantly warm room full of potted trees. Fruit trees? Ooh, were any of them orange trees? Imagine a fresh orange only a few weeks from the winter solstice! Her home island boasted fantastic groves of orange trees, but they were never ripe in winter. Her favorite Winter Feast treat had been candied orange covered in chocolate. Her first Winter Solstice in Alyssium she’d scoured the city for a confectioner who’d sell candied chocolate orange. She’d found one that sold an orange-liqueur chocolate, but it hadn’t been the same.
Terlu opened the next door, wondering what wonders she’d find. But instead of a display of glorious green or a false sun or an unexpected chorus or a random gryphon, she walked into a plant graveyard. It was such a shocking contrast that she gasped out loud. Her breath hung in the air, a cloud of mist, and she hugged her arms as she walked farther in.
Above her, the glass was splintered, with a few panes that were fully shattered. Snow had drifted inside and was sprinkled across the beds of brittle and withered plants and broken glass. The brown skeletons of shriveled vines clung to the pillars, and the remnants of sprouts sat curled in pots of dry dirt.
What in the world had happened here?
All the other rooms she’d seen had been brimming with life, but this greenhouse was silent and cold. Her footsteps crunched as she walked to the door on the opposite side. She hurried through into another just-shy-of-freezing room full of desiccated plants.
Why had this happened? How had the gardener allowed it?
She continued through dead greenhouse after dead greenhouse, shivering, until at last she’d had enough and reversed directions. Ifshe’d known how many had been abandoned, she would have borrowed that coat again.
Her shoes crunched on the gravel, the only sound as she walked back through the silent greenhouses. They were shrouded in their silence. She’d seen a total of five abandoned rooms, but who knew how many more there were? She walked quickly, not merely because of the cold—it felt like she’d infiltrated a graveyard. As a living being, she didn’t belong. She felt her heart beat faster, her breath shorten.
She was halfway across the first dead greenhouse, almost back to the living, when she saw the gardener hurrying toward her.
Smiling in relief, Terlu opened her mouth to greet him.
