Page 15 of Growing Memories (Valley of Sylveren #2)

Chapter Nine

Do you ever miss it? Graelynd. Your life there?

Eunny’s life in Graelynd had revolved around her mother’s Coalition work, even as she’d scratched and fought for every scrap of distance between them she could get.

Hard to escape Bioon’s long shadow, though, even when Eunny’s apothecary practice seemingly had no connection to her.

But the politicking of Central District was bad enough, and that would’ve been without having Bioon as a mother.

The nature of Eunny’s small-time apothecary work back then was always at odds with the lifestyle and interests of Central folk.

She might have felt a few regretful, nostalgic pangs for the idea of it, working with herbs and finding the best ways to help an individual’s little hurts, but the reality of her old life held nothing of note.

And with regard to her life now, right now, Eunny hadn’t seen it coming.

A week passed, one blurring into two and then three.

The days took on a steady rhythm of mornings spent helping Ollas to his Initiate One class—Introduction to Arcane Agroecology, which Eunny usually sat in on—or the elective, depending on the day.

Most afternoons went to greenhouse work.

Since Ollas didn’t need her for his office hours, Eunny usually lazed around the apartment and caught up on her reading.

She’d meant to use the time to do some research on better repair techniques for when she had to return to Song’s Scrap and the mountain of overdue work. What had survived the collapse, anyway.

Except it was hard to drum up enthusiasm for such an endeavor.

Which was how she found herself asking more about the elective and the horticulture side of it.

Ollas suggested an herbalism textbook, and what started out as idle curiosity grew into something more dedicated while Ollas was away at his office hours.

It was just to make her more efficient while she helped out, Eunny told herself.

Nothing professional, nothing like apothecary work.

Strictly gardening know-how. This interest she felt in reading a textbook of all things, it was just…

nostalgia. Apothecary work was something she’d thought would be her life.

Completely normal to feel a feeling when revisiting it.

The apartment door opened, pulling Eunny from her jumble of thoughts as Gransen arrived home from class.

“Coming back to the dark side?” he said, sliding into a seat across from her at the kitchen table.

Eunny shut the book. “Gremlin. No, just something Nev recommended.”

“Nev.” Gransen rested his chin in his hands, elbows propped on the table as he grinned at her. “So cute how you have your own pet name for him.”

“You call him ‘Olly.’”

“Everyone calls him that.”

“You and his mother.”

Gransen made a trifling gesture with his hand. “So, you and Nev. I’m trying to remember the last time I saw you be so chipper. Coincidence?” He blinked earnestly at her baleful look.

“I’m here because of what happened at the café. I had to.”

Gransen peered at her, head tilting from side to side. “Did you?”

“My roof fell on him,” Eunny said, incredulous. “He could’ve lost his job because of?—”

“I know, I know, you’re doing him a favor. Olly, my awkward little bean.”

She scoffed. “Nothing little about him.”

He immediately leaned forward. “How would you know?”

“I meant he’s tall.” Her shoulders hunched up around her ears. “Don’t talk to me.”

“Sure you did.” Gransen sighed dramatically. “Everyone rides in on a white horse to help a friend.”

“He got hurt helping me. Come on, Granse, you know that.” Eunny gestured at the couch bed Ollas was relegated to sleeping upon and the end table with the salve and bandages—though they hadn’t been needed as much of late.

“I couldn’t be the reason he had to give up something else,” she murmured, trying for a wry smile. It felt more like a sad grimace.

Gransen sobered, continuing in a softer tone, “I think he’s really glad you came up here. Grateful, even. Your friendship was?—”

“He shouldn’t be.” She looked down at the table. “I’m like a bad luck charm. That’s nothing to be grateful for.”

“He doesn’t blame you. You do know that, right? Olly would never?—”

“He should,” Eunny cut in, voice harsh. “And if he can’t hold me accountable, then maybe it’s for the best that I do. I’ve done nothing to deserve his gratitude.”

Her magic being dragged out from under her, tearing away even as she tried so desperately to yank it back. How it had seared across Ollas, the crackling energy beneath her fingertips as his body writhed.

“I can never make it up to him, what I did,” Eunny whispered. “Can’t you see that?”

Gransen said nothing, mouth twisting as he considered her words.

She set her book aside and grabbed her cloak. “Good talk, but I’m going out for a bit.”

“Eun.” Gransen’s voice had her pause at the door. “Your feelings are your feelings. I respect that. But Ollas doesn’t blame you, and you should accept that, too. If you let yourself unclench for a minute, you’ll realize it. Give him a chance.”

“A chance to what?”

Gransen gave her a look. Eunny returned it.

“Are you going to make me say it?” he said, exasperated. “Because I will.”

Ollas, with his freckles and his enthusiasm for gardening, which she’d always taken for nerdiness but which was also, unsettlingly, compelling.

Those shy smiles when she teased him. Ollas, so happy that she was around.

She’d realized it, subconsciously at the very least. Enjoyed it, too—that warm little sense of satisfaction she got at his attention, that pleasure.

Eunny wouldn’t admit it, but she was beginning to crave those feelings.

Wanted to give them a chance to grow, to flourish, to see where they led.

Wanted to take Ollas’s forgiveness and run with it.

The solemnity was long gone from Gransen’s face, a smug grin spreading from ear to ear.

“No.” She left.

Disgruntled, Eunny wandered along the path through the greenhouse complex, eventually ducking into an empty Trunk when the constant drizzle grew to a downpour.

She could always haul in some more bags of the water-retention amendment the elective was using.

The spellwork to keep even moisture levels was fragile, and had a tendency to break down if it didn’t like the precise ratios of imbued amendments or arcane work the students were testing.

Alongside the elective, Eunny had her own tray for an allotment of the same seeds the course used.

Better to learn with the same materials, she told Ollas, since if she’d been an actual student she’d have lacked the prerequisites to even get through the door.

It would be hard enough trying to mimic the students’ work without trying to devise a new experiment.

Even at the small scale of a single elective, the sheer volume at which they trialed seeds with abandon was astounding to her.

Ollas hadn’t been kidding when he’d said there’d be a lot of failures and false starts.

The students planted flat after flat, only to have their seeds sprout and die.

In the beginning, the whole sad cycle happened within the same day.

It had taken nearly two weeks before the seedlings started to last overnight.

Another four days before they’d finally struck a promising mix that achieved faster, stable budding.

Reaching for the Trunk’s wheelbarrow, Eunny paused as her eye caught on a new tray in the greenhouse’s second antechamber.

She went inside, crouching down beneath the rows of overflow plants and cuttings.

A big philodendron had been scooted to the side to make space for a small tray only large enough to hold a pair of starter pots.

Each held a small clump, no more than two or three stems of a nondescript, grass-like plant.

A flare in the back of Eunny’s mind was followed by a flurry of twitches in her eye. She swore, jerking back from the low shelf, and stood, leaning against the upper rack for support. Why would those things be in here?

Ollas’s mumbling to himself about having planted the overgrown patch on purpose, of needing to check…something. Innocent sounding words, but an irrational sense of dread settled in the pit of her stomach as she stared at the freshly propagated plants.

A knock on the antechamber’s door drew her attention. Zhenya stood on the other side, visible through the window dominating the upper half of the door.

“Hey, Eunny,” Zhenya called, her voice muffled by the glass. “Everything all right?”

“Yeah, just…headache.” Understatement.

Grateful for an excuse to escape, Eunny went into the greenhouse’s main room, where Zhenya had gathered small bags of different amendments and other materials into a stack of flat trays.

“What’s all this for?” Eunny asked, reaching out to steady a piece of burlap Zhenya had tried to balance atop her load.

“The elective,” Zhenya said. “Trying to prolong the corruption in the soil samples.”

“Not something you hear every day, even at Sylveren.”