Page 59

On the bed by the window in Yarrow’s cottage, Terlu curled up with the notebook, a stack of paper for her to take notes, and a charcoal pencil, wrapped tightly in a strip of rag to keep her fingers clean.

Yarrow had returned to the greenhouse to help rehome the singing flora, while she puzzled through the pages.

By the final notebook, Laiken’s code was even more complex.

He not only used his codebook, but he wrote backward as well. It was going to be a slog to translate.

She dug in.

Outside, sunset stained the sky rose and amber above the pine trees. Wind whistled softly through the branches, swirling clouds of stray snow. The fire crackled in the fireplace. She heard a scratching at the door. “Rrr-eow!”

Leaving the notes on Yarrow’s desk, she opened the door. Emeral trotted in. “Hello, sir,” Terlu said to him. “Welcome home from your latest adventures.” She filled his water dish.

Curling around her ankles, he meowed for dinner, despite the enormous fish she knew he’d eaten earlier, and she caved and gave him a slice of cooked grouse from the icebox. While he ate, she returned to the bed and continued to work.

After devouring the grouse, he flew to the bed, kneaded the blanket, and settled down beside her.

She showed him the page she was reading.

“In this instance, what do you think isador means? Is it acting as a verb on its own or… No, wait, it’s modified.

Look here, this word… Yes, it normally means growth but it has a strong connotation of finite time.

” She’d only seen this combination once before, in a poem in which the writer bid goodbye to their dead lover.

It was often interpreted as a metaphor for aging, mourning the loss of one’s youth.

“But I think the literal translation is more apt because of the fact that the sorcerer died. Not that he knew he was going to die—it was an accident—but I think he was feeling his own mortality.”

“Rr-eow?” Emeral said.

“He knew he could die someday. Frankly, I think he was overly preoccupied with his own death, given that he wasn’t sick or injured.”

If she was interpreting this correctly, he had been working on a spell that would take effect after his death. Well, that had happened. So what was it he’d wanted to be his legacy?

The door opened, and Yarrow came inside, stomping the snow off his boots and hanging his coat and scarf on a hook. “Temperature’s dropping outside. Going to be a cold one.”

“Mmm.”

“Did you eat?”

“Nnmmm.”

“I’ll cook.”

Terlu glanced up. “He was working on a spell that would be triggered by his death. Did anything unusual happen on the island or in the greenhouses when he died?”

Yarrow added more wood to the fire, and the flames crackled gratefully.

“Not that I know of. In fact, that’s one of the things I remember about it—that it was all so ordinary.

This great man who created miracle after miracle, who shaped all these lives, who created his own world…

he died in such an ordinary, random, pointless way. ”

“When did the first greenhouse fail? How soon after his death?”

He considered it for a moment. “A couple months?”

She frowned at the notebook. Okay, maybe his final spell wasn’t connected to the failures. He might not have had a chance to finish and activate the spell, whatever it was.

“But the first failure could have happened sooner,” Yarrow said. “That’s just when we discovered it.”

“Hmm.” Terlu continued to translate the pages, scratching out options on her notepaper and then writing the translation into the margins of the notebook when she was certain she had it correct.

She was careful not to leave any marks on any of Laiken’s text, in case a later reading caused her to change her mind.

While she worked, Yarrow cooked. He had two fillets of a fish that he laid on a skillet over the fire.

He sprinkled on herbs, salt, and pepper, then added cranberries.

She could smell them as the scent permeated the cottage and the butter popped around the fish.

He hummed softly to himself, which made a soothing background as she read.

When the fish was finished, he carried a fillet over to her on a plate.

“Oh, I can come to the table.” She brought the notebook with her.

He laid the plate in front of her on the table, and sat in the opposite chair with his own fillet.

Ignoring the fish, she didn’t stop reading.

“I think he added nonsense in the middle of this page just to throw off anyone who was trying to translate. Or there’s some extra code…

But I think it’s actually just gibberish. ”

“Sounds like something he’d do.”

“Who did he think was going to steal his work?”

“Everyone,” Yarrow said. “By the end, he trusted no one. Dad suspected he was on the verge of sending us away, leaving zero gardeners on Belde. If he hadn’t died…”

Terlu looked up from the notebook. “Would you have gone then?”

He took a drink of water before he answered. “I don’t know if I would’ve had a choice, if that had happened. This was Laiken’s greenhouse.”

“It’s yours now.” She wondered if he’d ever stop thinking of it as the sorcerer’s. Laiken’s ghost haunted more than just his tower, metaphorically at least. Literally, it did seem to be confined, which she was grateful for.

He shrugged. “Suppose so. Yes. He left no heir, unless you can find a record of it. By law, it falls to whoever inhabits and cares for it, which would be me. And the plants.” A hint of a smile crossed his lips.

“Laiken would have hated that a gardener inherited. He viewed us the same way he viewed a shovel or a bee, a tool to keep his gardens alive. In one of her letters, my sister asked if I had stayed merely to spite him… Maybe in part I did.”

He’s right. Laiken didn’t want anyone to have this place.

The sorcerer had dismissed all but two of the inhabitants of the island, and he’d put the sentient plants to sleep—he’d intended to leave the island fully uninhabited.

“I think he wanted to seal his greenhouse away from the world.” She showed him a passage on the eighth page of the journal.

“He was experimenting here with variations of the word that means protect, which is also found in the bubble spell.”

“Eat your fish before it gets cold.”

Emeral sauntered over to the table and wove between Terlu and Yarrow’s legs.

“Or before the cat eats it.”

She put down the notebook, a safe distance from the food, and took a bite of the fish. Closing her eyes, she savored how light and fresh it was. Not fishy at all. It tasted of salt and sweet, with a hint of bite from the cranberries. She opened her eyes and realized he was watching her. “Perfect.”

He smiled.

Together, they ate.

He slipped a chunk to Emeral beneath the table. She raised both her eyebrows at the cat. “How do you still have an appetite?”

Smug, the cat returned to the hearth and curled up next to the fire. He began to wash his fur and his feathers.

It was nice to eat together, knowing they were each wrapped in their own thoughts and knowing those thoughts overlapped.

She wasn’t wondering what he was thinking of her or what he wanted from her.

As soon as she finished, she moved to clean her dish, but he intercepted her. “Read,” he said. “I’ll clean.”

“Thanks.” She returned to curl in the blankets with the notebook.

When he finished, he sat beside her with his book on orchids. He brought a lantern closer, positioning it so that the light fell onto her lap. “Let me know how I can help.”

“You are helping,” she said.

He smiled again and opened his book to the sixth chapter, where he’d left a bookmark.

They read side by side as night nestled over the forest and the greenhouse. In the distance, she heard voices rise, then fall. An owl hooted.

Her fingers began to cramp, and she shook out her hand.

Yarrow covered her fingers with his and massaged her palm. She let him caress the base of each finger, the back of her hand, and her wrist. “Better?”

“Yes.”

She kept reading until her eyes felt like they hurt when she blinked. She bit back a yawn. “I’m close,” she said. “I should…”

“You can sleep. No one would blame you.”

“But we don’t know when the next greenhouse will fail.”

“For the first time, we were able to save nearly every plant before the temperature plummeted,” Yarrow said. “We’ll do it again if we need to. You have time. You can sleep.”

Perhaps he was right.

She put the notebook and her stack of notes on the desk near the beds. He lifted the quilt, and she burrowed in, curling up against him. He wrapped his arm around her.

The winged cat flew from the hearth onto the bed, curling up in the dip between their bodies. Pressed together, all three of them slept.

Terlu had never had such a peaceful and deep sleep.

At dawn, she woke.

She launched herself out of bed so fast that Yarrow sat up abruptly and Emeral sprang into the air with a yelp. Yarrow asked, “Are you okay?”