“Are those—” Calisa began to ask.
“My seedlings.” Melidor dropped to her knees and began to gather them all into various pockets in her skirt. “They need to be planted to grow, and I was thinking…that is, I washoping…” In a rush, she said, “I want to plant them here. I know it’s not my home, but I think it would be such a lovely birthplace for them, in the peace and quiet, without all the expectations and pressures. Can I plant them here?”
Calisa opened her mouth to say yes, of course, but she stopped herself. “Your seedlings? Wow. Um, will you be staying to take care of them? If not and you plant them here, who will take care of them? What do they need?”
“The sun, the rain, the soil.” Melidor waved at all of it. “But don’t worry. It only takes a few days before they’re mobile, and then they’ll follow me home.”
“Mobile? Wait, I thought you said you were going to plant them. Like, roots in the ground. Stationary, planted plants.”
Melidor laughed. “Oh no, they’re not plants! They’re babies.”
Calisa gawked at her.
“Baby dryads. You have to plant them—that’s how they’re born, how I was born.”
Understanding suddenly blossomed in her mind. “You came here to decide if you were ready to become a mom. And these will be your children.” Wow, no wonder the dryad had needed time and space to decide. That was huge.
“Yes,” Melidor said. Shyly, she added, “Would you like to help me plant them?”
Calisa felt her eyes widen even more. That wasn’t a question she ever expected to be asked. She was flattered. Honored. Slightly unnerved. “Will that make me their parent too?”
Another laugh. Her laugh sounded like wind through pine trees. It crinkled as it whooshed. “Of course not. They came frommyflowers, which makes me their only parent. You’d be more like an aunt.”
I could be an aunt. “That doesn’t come with any babysitting responsibilities, does it?”
“You may have to occasionally feed them carrot cake, whenever we come back to visit.”
Calisa smiled. “I can do that.”
“I think behind the inn, with a view of the mountains…” With Melidor carrying her sprouts in her pockets, they headed around the inn. Seeing the stream, Melidor squealed. “That would be the perfect place! Fetch a trowel, please.”
Calisa found a trowel in the greenhouse and joined Melidorby the side of the brook. Nearby, the lizard watched them lazily from a rock in the middle of the water. He’d spread his wings out wide and was drying them in the sun. He didn’t flinch when the seedlings chirped at him.
“Dig where it’s soft, beside that moss,” Melidor instructed.
Calisa knelt on the moss and stabbed the dirt with the tip of the trowel. It slid in easily. “How deep and how many holes?”
“Three inches will do. Sixteen holes.”
She paused. “You’re going to have sixteen babies at once?”
“This season,” Melidor clarified. “The first dryad spawning season is always only a few. Next year it will be twice as many.”
I’ll have to bake a lot of carrot cake.“There must be a lot of dryads.”
“One per tree in my realm.” Looking at the pine forest that spread over the mountains, she admitted, “It can be overwhelming, which is why I came here. I wanted space to think for myself, to decide if this is what I wanted, for me. There are no other dryads here. It’s quiet.”
Such a major life decision. How did she know what the right thing to do was? This would change the course of her life. “How did you decide?” Calisa asked as she dug.
“This morning, I woke up and felt the golden sun on my face, and I just knew that this was what I wanted to do next,” Melidor said. “I think I needed the quiet to decide. Or maybe my heart always knew, and it was waiting for me to have enough peace and quiet to listen?”
“You don’t have any doubts?”
She flapped her hands dismissively. “Of course I do, silly.Doubts. Worries. Fears. But…I’m going to love these babies. I already do. So how can I say no to that?” Melidor smiled beatifically at her pockets.
She seemed so at peace with her decision, which was very different from the first time Calisa had met her when she’d raced off into the woods, cawing like a furious bird.Being here helped her.It gave her distance and time and quiet and carrot cake.Auntie Zeehasto come back. This inn has to stay open.
As Calisa finished the first few holes, Melidor dropped the sprouts in. She cooed to them as she tucked the dirt loosely around them, allowing the green tip to poke through the soil. In a few minutes, they had all sixteen planted.
