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She shouldn’t be cold . She was sweating so much, but the sweat chilled on her skin. She felt cold sink into her bones. Looking up, she saw frost lacing the cracked glass. “Yarrow!”

He raised his head, and his breath fogged in front of him. “Everyone, out!”

“Lotti, get down from there!” Terlu called. She scooped up her coat and pulled it on. The ivy was in the middle of hauling a banana tree. With stiffening hands, Terlu helped her load it into the wheelbarrow. She rolled it out of the greenhouse and then went back in.

Dendy was shoving his trowel beneath a plant with elephant-ear leaves and shiny yellow flowers that looked like trumpets. Its leaves were flopped over him, and the whole plant shook as his trowel hit against its roots.

“Temperature’s falling,” Terlu told him. “Your leaves will freeze.”

“Just a few more minutes.”

She joined him with her own trowel. It grew colder and colder, seeping through her coat. Her breath fogged in front of her. She saw frost begin to form on the tips of the philodendron’s leaves, and he began to shiver. “Okay, that’s it.”

Dendy wrapped his tendrils around the roots of the bush as its shiny yellow blossoms drooped and shriveled into brown husks. “I can’t leave them—”

“Yarrow!” Terlu called. She looked up and saw Lotti was clinging to one of the rafters. The little rose still hadn’t left yet either. “Lotti, you have to come down now !”

Yarrow ran to them.

As Dendy insisted that he wasn’t leaving until the plant was extracted, Yarrow began digging at the roots to the flowering elephant-ear-leaf bush. Lifting his trowel with his leaves again, Dendy dug too. Soil flew into the air as the temperature plummeted.

Shivering hard, Terlu hurried to beneath the rafter where Lotti was perched. “You need to come down! Lotti, please! You’ll freeze!”

“I can’t!” Lotti wailed. “It’s all iced up! I’ll fall! I’ll splat!”

The cold was beginning to hurt. It burned her throat as she breathed in.

The temperature had to have plummeted far beneath freezing, beyond what any plant could survive.

If Lotti stayed, she’d die. If I stay… She’d have frostbite if she lingered any longer.

These weren’t normal winter temperatures. It was deeply, deadly cold.

“You can catch me!” Lotti said.

“No, don’t—” Terlu wasn’t good at catching.

When she was a kid, a favorite beach game was tossing a cloth ball to your teammates, keeping it away from the other team, but she was routinely the last to be picked to play, due to the fact that she tended to close her eyes whenever anything flew at her.

But Lotti was already pushing herself off the edge. “Wheeeee!”

Terlu felt as if everything faded around her, the world narrowing to just her and the falling rose.

She reached her arms up, and she felt as if she were moving slowly, so slowly, too slowly.

Her hands felt too small— I’ll miss, and she’ll fall and splat, and it will be my fault…

She scooted to the left. No, right. No, left—

Lotti landed in her palms.

Terlu breathed again.

She cradled the little plant to her and jogged out of the greenhouse. She burst into the next room, into the warmth, and fell onto her knees. Heat pressed into her, and her fingers and toes felt as if they were burning. “Yarrow?”

No answer.

He hadn’t joined them.

“Dendy?”

The philodendron wasn’t here either. Both had stayed in the deadly cold greenhouse. The windows were iced in flowerlike patterns that rendered them opaque.

She set Lotti on the ground, and the ivy, Risa, circled her, coiling snakelike, tight around the rose. “I’ll warm you,” Risa told Lotti.

The little rose shivered. “Thank you.”

Terlu forced herself to stand. She had not prepared properly for an emergency like this—a lifetime of studying languages and then a stint as a statue did not make one as physically fit as a full-time gardener, which was normally fine.

She plunged back into the frigid greenhouse.

Both Yarrow and Dendy were attempting to pull the flowering bush toward the door. She joined them, but as she grabbed for one of the branches, it snapped off. “It’s frozen,” she said gently. “Dendy, it’s over. We have to go.”

The philodendron was stiffening.

“Yarrow, you have to leave it.” She scooped Dendy’s root ball and leaves into her arms. “Come on. It’s subzero. You can’t stay in here.”

“Take him,” Yarrow said.

She hesitated.

“Go!”

Scooping up Dendy, she ran to the safety and warmth of the next greenhouse. The plant felt brittle in her arms. “Almost there,” she whispered. “Hang in there. You’ll be okay.”

She reached the doorway and half fell through it.

Joining the others, Terlu dropped to the ground. “Dendy, say something. Please.”

He was silent. And still.

“What do I do? He’s so cold.” She touched one of his leaves and then cried out as it broke off in her fingers. She felt tears well up in her eyes. Every bit of her hurt. She’d tried so hard. All of them had. And it wasn’t enough. “Dendy… Please, wake up.”

She felt hands on her shoulders.

“He needs warm water,” Yarrow said behind her. “Bring him by the stove.”

She got to her feet and carried the philodendron, his tendrils of frostbitten leaves trailing behind them. He felt so thin and brittle in her arms. His root ball barely had any soil, as if his roots were no longer able to hold dirt together. Some of his leaves had blackened.

“I’ll find a pot,” Yarrow said.

He met her by the stove with a pot that was already three-quarters full of warm, soft soil. Gently, she placed Dendy in it. He should have burrowed his roots into the fresh soil by himself, but he didn’t, and so she cupped dirt in her hands and buried his roots in the soil.

Yarrow began to snip off the dead leaves. “He’ll grow back. Philodendrons are hardy.”

“The flowering bush?”

He shook his head.

“And the rest of the plants?”

“I need to replant the ones we rescued as quickly as possible,” he said, not answering her question—which was its own answer. His golden skin was speckled with sweat and dirt, and his eyes looked haunted. “Stay with Dendy. He… shouldn’t be alone when he wakes.”

She nodded, and he stood and walked away.

Cradling Dendy’s pot closer to her, she soaked in the warmth from the stove.

She told herself she’d help Yarrow as soon as Dendy woke.

She felt a pressure on her shoe and looked down.

Lotti had climbed onto her foot and was attempting to crawl up her sock.

Reaching down, Terlu scooped up the little rose and set her on her lap.

“I tried to help,” Lotti said.

“Me too.”

“It wasn’t enough.”

There wasn’t anything that Terlu could say to that.

She cuddled both the resurrection rose and the silent philodendron closer to her.

After a bit, the winged cat flew to settle next to the stove.

He curled up beside her, and with her free hand, she petted him as well.

Nearby, the diamond dragonflies perched on branches and flowers and vines. They no longer danced.

Through the doorway, in the failing greenhouse, the tropical plants froze and then burned as the enchantments flared and then died.

She cried silently for the loss of all those innocent plants, for Yarrow, for feeling helpless, and for Dendy, who still had not spoken or moved, despite the warmth of the stove, the fresh soil, and the pruning.

At last, the tears stopped.

She took a breath.

She felt as if she could move again. “I should help Yarrow.”

“I’ll help toooo,” Dendy said and stretched out his remaining leaves.