Terlu felt herself blush.
Ducking his head to avoid her gaze, Yarrow knelt beside her and began to organize the ingredients into piles, dividing them by type.
Lotti climbed out of the basket and scurried up onto the shelves with the potted plants. “Hmm… Who first…”
“Choose a friend,” Terlu suggested.
Lotti waddled past another pot. “Not you then,” she said to the fireweed.
Yarrow neatened the piles of ingredients, straightening the stems and branches and lining the berries and nuts into precise rows. It reminded her of the rituals of the Temple of the Stars, whose acolytes believed that if they did not position the sacred stones in precise patterns, the stars would cease to shine and sailors would lose their way. She’d read their myths once, full of stories of lost wanderers and forgotten dreams, saved by the careful precision of those on land. “How did you learn to be a gardener?” Terlu asked him. “Did you study somewhere, or were you self-taught?”
“There wasn’t a school, if that’s what you mean, but I had plenty of teachers. My father. My grandma and grandpa, before they passed. Uncles and aunts. Lots of cousins. Everyone had their specialty.”
He misses them.She could hear it in his voice. She wondered if they ever missed this place, if they were ever tempted to return, if they were just waiting for an invitation. “You should invite them for the Winter Feast.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Much too far to travel for a meal.”
“It’s not just a meal.”
He shrugged.
“You’re not taking into account the cakes.”
Yarrow grinned. “Honey cakes.”
“And blueberry cake. Lemon cake. Vanilla swirl cake. Also, candied oranges. Have you ever had candied orange covered in chocolate? It’s amazing. My grandfather candied the orange slices himself. Secret recipe. He never told anyone. So far as I know, he never even wrote it in code. You know, it makes no sense that Laiken wouldn’t arrange for anyone to refresh his spells on the greenhouses, given how much he cared about protecting his plants.”
“He thought he’d always be here,” Yarrow said.
Pausing by an orchid, Lotti asked in a forlorn voice, “How did he die?”
“An accident,” Yarrow said. “He fell down the stairs. A great sorcerer, perhaps the greatest sorcerer of his generation, but he still broke his neck. My father was the one to find him when he didn’t come to care for the orchids. He used to tend them himself daily—he wouldn’t let anyone else touch them. After Laiken died, my father said his spirit lingered to lecture him about the care of orchids for three hours, before finally falling silent.”
“Orchids are fussy,” Lotti said, dismissing the one she’d paused beside. She moved on to the Venus flytrap. “Foolish Laiken. He should have kept me awake. Maybe I couldn’t have kept him from falling down the stairs, but at least then he wouldn’t have died alone.” Her voice wavered on her last words.
Terlu imagined how she must feel, both angry and sad and then angry that she was sad and sad that she was angry. There was a horrible helplessness to knowing your fate was out of your hands. Lotti hadn’t been able to save herself, and she hadn’t been here to save him.
“I’ll keep you watered,” Yarrow promised.
“You’ll teach me to water myself,” Lotti said, and then added wistfully, “Please? I want to know how to work the pump. I don’twant to have to depend on anyone ever again.” She heard the knot of emotions in Lotti’s voice.She’d relied on Laiken, and he’d let her down.Terlu’s heart ached for the little rose. Their stories weren’t similar, but she knew how it felt to be powerless over your own fate, to be set aside and forgotten.
“I don’t know if—”
Terlu spoke up. “If you attach a rope to the pump handle, she could use that for leverage. Perhaps even attach a weight to it? She shouldn’t have to ever fear that she’ll be abandoned again.” No one should ever have to fear that.
He considered it and then nodded. “We’ll find a way.”
“Good,” Lotti said. And then added to Terlu, “Thank you.” She moved along the shelf, past several of the sleeping plants, including a delphinium and a thistle. “Don’t wake the orchid first. How about the philodendron? He was a steady fellow. Quiet and unassuming, despite the size of his leaves.”
Yarrow lifted the pot with the philodendron off its stand and set it on the walkway beside Terlu. She took each ingredient and combined them, twisting a stretch of grass around the packet and then knotting it as if it were a ribbon.
“Do you have a trowel?” Terlu asked. “I want to bury the ingredients between the roots. That should focus the spell on its target.” Or at least that was the theory as she understood it. She was acutely aware of her lack of formal training. Usually it took years at the university before an imperial sorcerer was allowed to experiment with spells, and even then they were supervised by multiple senior sorcerers, to prevent accidents. This was, at best, foolhardy. But she didn’t see much choice. She couldn’t leave them stuck in an enchanted sleep, not when there was a chance she could wake them, as Yarrow had done for her.
He pulled a trowel out of one of his many pockets, and he dug a small hole in the dirt, carefully so as not to break the plant’s roots. She handed him the packet of spell ingredients, and he tucked it into the hole and covered it up. “Ready,” Yarrow said.
She supposed that was it. Everything was ready.
She’d been over the spell again and again, ensured that each syllable conveyed the precise meaning she wished it to. She was confident in the words.
