Page 15

Feeling as small as a worm, Terlu scooped up the little plant and tucked her within her coat. She followed Yarrow out the door, back into the snow. It was closer to sunset now, with the low light causing the trees’ shadows to stretch out long on the white snow.

He led them into the greenhouse.

Lotti let out a little gasp. “It’s grown so much! Oh, Laiken, I wish you were here!” Her voice hitched in a sob.

Yarrow didn’t speak as he led them through the path. That seemed to be the way he was—not someone who was used to much chitchat. She wondered if that meant he was the kind of person who liked silence or who just liked other people to fill the silence.

Either way, she got the distinct sense that he didn’t like her very much.

Lotti was not overly fond of her either.

I’ve messed everything up.

How could she fix this? There was always a solution, unless one got oneself stuck as a statue, but even that wasn’t finite, as it turned out. I’ll find a way to make it up to them. Somehow.

Terlu was still trying to figure out what to do or say when Yarrow led them through a side door to yet another greenhouse that she hadn’t seen before. She wondered if there was a map to all the rooms somewhere, or maybe she could make one.

This greenhouse was smaller, with only a few plants. Just a handful of pots were on the shelves—a few were flowers, such as an orchid and a daisy. One was a small bush with clumps of thin leaves. Another was an ivy that swept from the top shelf to the floor.

“Oh!” Lotti said.

“What?” Terlu asked.

“I know this room. Yes. I know these shelves, these pots, this air.” She then screeched at the top of her lungs—if she’d had lungs, “WAKE UP!”

There was silence. Only the hum of the stove in the center of the greenhouse, and the sound of gravel under Yarrow’s feet as he walked down the row, surveying the pots.

Like the other rooms, it smelled of fresh dirt and clean air, but with so few plants, it only smelled very faintly of green growth and flowers.

It reminded Terlu a bit of a near-empty hospital: clean, silent, waiting.

“Water them,” Lotti commanded.

“I have watered them,” Yarrow said. “It doesn’t make a difference.”

“Try again.”

Crossing the greenhouse to a pump, he filled a watering can and returned to the pots.

He added water to each of them, checking the soil to make sure the water was the appropriate level of moisture for the type of plant.

Some he only gave a few drops; others he filled until their pots dripped.

When he finished, he set the can down and stood beside Terlu and Lotti.

“Why aren’t they already awake?” Lotti asked.

“Are they… They’re not dead. I can see they aren’t.

” Her voice was shaking more and more with each word.

She jumped out of Terlu’s hands and landed beside one of the pots.

“Come on, please wake up! Don’t leave me alone! Laiken is gone. I can’t lose you too!”

Terlu looked around the room as she slowly realized what these plants had in common, or more accurately, what Lotti and Yarrow both thought they did: They were supposed to be like Lotti. Like Caz.

But for some reason, they weren’t.

A thought hit her like a thunderclap:

It’s not a coincidence that I’m here.

Yarrow was talking. “I must have been… around eight or nine?… when they went silent. It was the first indication we got that there could be something wrong with the magic, though it was years before any of the greenhouses themselves failed. That only began after Laiken’s death.”

“You have to wake up,” Lotti pleaded.

As Lotti continued to beg the plants to talk to her, Terlu turned the words over in her head: It’s not a coincidence.

I’m meant to be here. They felt right. True.

Yarrow had appealed to the capital for a sorcerer to help his plants, which included a greenhouse of enchanted plants who were supposed to be awake and aware but weren’t, and in response, they’d sent Terlu Perna.

While Lotti pleaded with the silent plants, Terlu asked Yarrow, “Who sent me here?”

His eyes were glued to the little rose.

“Please,” Terlu begged, “I need to know.”

Glancing at her, he withdrew a letter from the inner pocket of his jacket and handed it to her. “My request was passed around awhile before it was answered. A long while.” He then shifted his focus back to Lotti, who was pleading with a silent philodendron.

Terlu opened the envelope and unfolded the letter.

It was on very familiar stationery, emblazoned with the seal of the Great Library of Alyssium.

She felt the silken softness of the paper, and she smelled the rich, dusty scent of the stacks held within the fibers.

There was a humming in her head, and she made herself sit down cross-legged on the gravel path while she read the words.

It was written in an elegant hand and very brief.

Addressed to the Head Gardener of Belde, Yarrow Verdane, it said that the writer hoped to provide a solution to multiple problems at once, and it directed Yarrow in how to perform the spell that would release Terlu, with the spell written out phonetically and a clear list of ingredients.

It said nothing of who Terlu was or why she was a statue or why she was sent here, nor did it mention any pardon or any official end of her sentence.

But there was a signature at the bottom, in clear swooping letters:

Rijes Velk, the head librarian of the Great Library of Alyssium.

She’d sworn in court that Terlu wouldn’t work magic again, staked her reputation on it. Yet she’d sent Terlu here, with a spell to be cast illegally—why?

A solution to multiple problems, she’d written.

Terlu’s heart beat faster as she turned those words over in her head.

In front of her, Lotti was screaming at the philodendron to wake and crying for Laiken to come back, to not be dead, to not leave them like this. Yarrow was trying (and failing) to console her. He had a panicked look on his face, as if he were seconds from fleeing.

I know why I was sent here.

“I’m supposed to wake them,” Terlu said out loud.