Page 43

By the time he’d finished combining the ingredients into a sandy mixture, she was calm enough to take it from him. She walked the perimeter of the greenhouse, scattering it onto the ground, taking care not to allow more than a few inches of space between the grains.

Terlu felt Yarrow’s eyes on her as she walked, but she didn’t know what he was thinking about. Their kiss, or turtles? Returning, she handed him the empty bowl. “Do you prefer land turtles or sea turtles?”

“Sorry? Um, sea turtle? We have one, with the ocean plants.”

“I’ve heard some species of sea turtles can live up to five hundred years,” Terlu said.

“There’s an island—aptly named Turtle Island—where the oldest sea turtles come to lay their eggs every year without fail.

Its inhabitants have a festival every year to celebrate when the eggs hatch, and they have all these amazing myths about the Great Turtle, Marzipul, who created the Crescent Islands, hatching them from eggs she—”

“Terlu.” He looked amused.

“The spell. Yes.” She looked down at the paper, then took a deep breath.

She tried to think of the syllables and only that.

It was easier when she was looking at the words.

She’d always taken refuge in words whenever anything was difficult or confusing or too much.

They were both her shelter and her shield.

Calmer, Terlu read the words of the spell.

Around them, the air shimmered, wavering like heat over a stove but with colors in it: flecks of amber and emerald. She reached out a hand—it was so vivid that she felt like she could touch it. Yarrow caught her wrist. “You don’t know if it’s safe,” he said.

She withdrew. He continued to hold her wrist, softly, from behind her, his arm wrapped lightly around her waist. All around the greenhouse, the air undulated.

If Laiken were still alive, she would have had a very pointed discussion with him about his incomplete notes. When she’d finished airing her grievances, he could have described what a successful spell looked like versus a failed experiment so she’d know the difference.

The shimmering air began to form spheres. Soon, the greenhouse was filled with iridescent bubbles. They floated past Terlu and Yarrow. One rose to the ceiling and then popped. Others began to pop, a cascade of gentle pop, pop, pop .

“Not what I expected,” Terlu said.

Yarrow released her and rummaged through the basket for another set of ingredients, while Terlu walked through the array of bubbles. She touched one, and it popped. She smelled strawberries. She popped another and thought it smelled like citrus. “Yarrow, you have to try this.”

He paused, stood, and popped a bubble. “It smells like cinnamon.”

They strolled around the greenhouse, popping bubbles. “Ooh, this one… what’s this one?” She didn’t recognize it. It vanished nearly as quickly as the bubbles themselves, but Yarrow still leaned forward and sniffed.

“Anise.” He popped another. “Vanilla.”

“Love vanilla.”

“It’s a vining orchid,” Yarrow said. “Needs a warm climate—cold slows its growth. It takes three years before the plant begins to produce beans.”

“You should put your gardening knowledge in a book, preserve it for the next generation,” Terlu said. “Preferably not in code.”

He shrugged. “Not enough time.”

Maybe he would have enough time if she could fix the greenhouses. Or if he had more help. But she’d tried sending the letter, and she wasn’t sure what their next move was.

She wasn’t about to say it out loud, but she was grateful that none of his relatives had come back.

She did wish they’d written so that Yarrow would know they were safe.

She could tell he worried about them, even though he didn’t say the words out loud often.

But she didn’t wish that they’d come. If a member of his family actually had showed up, she wasn’t sure how they’d have reacted to her trying (and failing) to fill the late sorcerer’s shoes.

There was no hiding this much magic.

Of course, that meant she’d need to come up with another solution to how to care for the massive Greenhouse of Belde.

“Do you think you could train the sentient plants to become full-time gardeners?” They had helped with the dying greenhouse, and they were helping now with sealing the cracks in the glass in the already-failed greenhouses.

She thought they’d be willing to do more.

“Only if they want to be trained,” Yarrow said. “They didn’t ask to be created. It should be their choice what they do with their lives.”

“Some of them might choose to help, if they were asked. Look at how eagerly they jumped to fix the glass.” Everyone wanted to have purpose, regardless of whether they were flora or fauna. “And for those who don’t want to… maybe they could be trained to be better singers.”

He laughed.

As soon as the ingredients were ready again, Terlu tried the next variant of the spell. She watched as the air shimmered again. This time, it coalesced around them into a large bubble.

“Better,” she said.

She walked to the edge and popped it. It dispersed around them into shards of tiny rainbows. A rain of rainbows. Glancing back at Yarrow, she saw the rainbow shards were clinging to him. Smiling, she crossed back to him. “You have a little—” She brushed a wiggle of rainbow off his cheek.

“So do you.” He knocked a puff of colorful cloud off her shoulder. It dissipated in the air. He flicked another away from her hair, and she shooed away more colorful wisps of air from his arm.

Laughing, she leaned forward and blew away a puff that lingered near his neck.

A flick of seriousness passed over his face, and she looked into his eyes to realize she was only inches from him again.

“You have another rainbow…” He cupped her face in one hand and rubbed his thumb over her cheek. “… here.”

“Oh?”

“And here.” He touched her lips.

“You want to kiss me again,” Terlu stated.

He withdrew his hand. “It’s okay. I want to kiss you too.

But is it just because I’m the only one here, or because you actually like me?

Because I didn’t get the impression you like me very much, and I don’t want to be kissing someone who is just kissing me because I have lips. ”

“I…”

“It’s okay if you don’t like me, if I’m just useful. Admittedly, the bubbles and the rainbows aren’t useful, but I have the potential for usefulness, and you need help. But needing me and liking me aren’t the same thing either.”

He took a step backward. “I don’t…”

“And I feel like there’s a lot I don’t know about you,” Terlu said.

“Have you ever been in love? Do you ever want to be in love? Not that I’m in love.

” Yet, a piece of her whispered. “As I said, there’s a lot we don’t know about each other, but I’m not good at kissing without caring.

You should know that up front. I get all my emotions mixed up together, and if you don’t want to feel the same way—potentially, I mean, not right now, but at least being open to it in the future…

then we shouldn’t even start down that path, because it will make it difficult to work together, and there’s a lot of work to do if we’re going to save the greenhouses. ”

He looked a bit dazed.

She’d been told by past lovers that she was sometimes too much, and here she was doing it again, being too much. But if he can’t handle too much, then maybe this won’t work?

Or maybe she was overthinking things. In time, they’d get to know one another, and then they’d either like each other or they wouldn’t.

That didn’t mean they couldn’t kiss right now.

Surely, she possessed enough emotional maturity to separate work from whatever happened or didn’t happen between them, especially vital work such as preserving the greenhouses.

“Sorry,” she said. “I overthink things.”

Yarrow shook his head. “I’ve never known anyone like you.”

Terlu wasn’t certain if that was a compliment or a criticism or just an observation. She forced herself to smile. “Well, to start with, I’m not a plant.”

“You aren’t,” he said gravely.

She’d meant it as a joke. “Let’s… try again.”

Focusing on her notes, Terlu picked out the next spell to try.

It was far easier to study the words than to try to read his face right now.

She wished she could try again on the conversation.

I should have just kissed him. She hadn’t meant to complicate everything, but if she grew to care about him (and his honey cakes and honey rolls and honeyed kisses) while he only liked her for her proximity…

She didn’t want that kind of heartbreak.

It would be better to stay friends, if that was even what they were.

Quietly, he asked, “Who hurt you?”

She froze and looked at him. “I didn’t say…

” Closing her mouth, she swallowed. She didn’t know how to answer that.

It wasn’t as if she’d had a grand heartbreak.

She had no real trauma to explain why she was the way she was.

It was more just years’ worth of little cracks in her heart, like in the glass panes of the failed greenhouses.

Her family loved her, but she never really found her place with them on Eano.

And the library… She never truly fit there either.

She drifted through life, wanting and reaching but never having, always feeling just a little lost and just a little empty and just a little lonely. “I’m just too sensitive.”

Yarrow grunted. “I don’t know what that means.”

“I’m hurt when I shouldn’t be.”

“If you’re hurt, you’re hurt. It doesn’t matter if anyone else thinks you don’t have a good enough reason. Pain doesn’t require approval.”

She opened and closed her mouth. No one had ever said that to her before.

She turned the words over in her head and decided that it was easy to say that, but he hadn’t been there when she burst into tears after a library patron had told her that she’d brought him the wrong book.

The patron had questioned her credentials, and she’d cared too much what he thought.

Or the time she’d worn silk scarves with a brightly colored dress to what she’d thought was a romantic dinner, and her date had only wanted access to a spellbook on the shelves to help her cheat on a university exam.

Little nothing moments that she should have been able to forget but instead they lingered with her. “I always want everyone to like me.”

“I—”

She wanted him to say “I like you.” Or anything reassuring.

Perhaps he liked that she didn’t snore at night or he liked that she always hung her towel so it would dry or that she had woken the plants or that she didn’t whistle in an annoying fashion.

But he didn’t get the chance to say whatever he was going to say.

Several plants barreled through the door, with Lotti in the lead, bounding ahead on her roots and leaves. “There are people on the island!” the rose announced.