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The cat meowed from the ceiling and jolted Terlu out of her shock. She hurried after the gardener. “Wait, please! I don’t understand—” She rounded the corner and saw the path split five ways, each vanishing beneath a canopy of roses.

Had he really just… left? Who did that?

Sure, he’d said she could rest in his cottage, which was lovely of him, but she didn’t know where it was. Or who he was.

“Come back, please! I don’t even know your name.

” She picked a path at random and started down it.

A few yards in, she decided he couldn’t have gone this way—there were too many roses that crisscrossed the walkway for him to have used it.

She pivoted and hurried back to the junction.

“You can work while we talk. Or I can help you work. I know how to make myself useful. Favorite family story: Once, there was a storm coming, and no one had given me a job to do, so I decided to move every single chicken into the house. I was three years old, determined to help, and the chickens were feisty, but I got them all in before the wind hit. My parents retold that every time it stormed—they said it was the funniest sight: three-year-old me waddling determinedly with my arms full of fussy poultry. Hey, you can’t just bring someone back to life and then walk away! ”

Except that was exactly what he’d done. He’d fled, as if he were the criminal and she an imperial investigator.

She hurried down the second path, which ended in an arbor overflowing with copious amounts of roses.

A cascade of snowy white roses spilled over dark green leaves, stunningly beautiful but unhelpful.

I lost him. She wanted to weep, which wasn’t like her at all.

She was more of a put-a-smile-on-and-blunder-ahead kind of person than a weeper, at least under usual circumstances.

But she hadn’t been under “usual circumstances” for a while, and right now she was hungry, achy, and bone-deep tired.

She wished she were back in the library, even as quiet and empty as it was, by one of the great fireplaces with a mug of hot chocolate in her hands.

“Get it together, Terlu,” she said out loud.

“At least you know there’s someone here. ”

It wasn’t much consolation since he’d practically run from her, but she was still better off than she’d been before she knew there was someone else on this island, wasn’t she?

The silence was beginning to sound loud. She thought of the storage room, and she hugged her arms, reassured to touch flesh and not polished wood. I’m not there anymore. I’m alive again. And I’m not alone.

Returning to the heart of the rose room, Terlu looked up at the rafters.

“Kitty? Want to come with me?” She spotted a bit of gray fur and a flash of green feathers, but he didn’t fly down.

Of course she didn’t expect the winged cat to come when she called—as friendly as he was, he was still a cat.

It was nice that he hadn’t abandoned her entirely. “What do you think I should do?”

He didn’t answer, but it didn’t matter because she’d already decided to walk down a third path. If it failed, she’d try the fourth and then the fifth. Rest and food could wait. I’m not giving up. I’ll find him, and he will answer my questions.

Hopefully.

In addition to the roses on the trellis above her, this path also had miniature rosebushes tucked along both sides that boasted blossoms with tiny overlapping petals in pale pink. Fallen petals were strewn over the slate stones as if the garden were a bridal bower.

Thankfully, this path ended in a door. As she opened it, the cat swooped low over her head to fly through above her.

Following him, she stepped into an array of flowers more varied than she could have imagined.

While the first and second greenhouses had been saturated in green and the rose room had been filled with delicate and elegant pastels and jewel tones, this one looked as if it had been drenched by a rainbow.

“Wow,” she said, gawking at all of it.

Lilies bloomed in a thousand different shades of yellow, red, orange, and white, with stripes and polka dots. Bell-like flowers in pink and blue clustered on bushes. Fat firework-like clumps of brilliant white flowers exploded on another.

Between them flew butterflies like no butterfly she’d ever seen—their wings changed color with each flap: red to blue to yellow to black to silver to purple. She marveled at the ripple of rainbow as they floated from blossom to blossom.

“Hello?” she called, more out of politeness than any belief the gardener would answer.

She walked through and wondered: What was this place?

Where did all these plants come from? And the flower bird, the dancing dragonflies, and the color-changing butterflies?

Why were these extraordinary greenhouses here?

Leaning over, Terlu inhaled the scent of a cluster of purple flowers on a bush.

Lilac? She’d never seen a lilac with such large blooms, but it smelled like lilac, heady and sweet.

“Rrr-eow.”

The cat flew past her, his feathers brushing her cheek.

“Oh? Do you know where he went?” Terlu asked.

Whether he did or not, following the winged cat seemed like a much better idea than wandering aimlessly, hoping to stumble across a man who’d made it very clear he was done talking with her. She kept the cat in sight as she wound through the glorious flower beds.

She noticed there were no weeds in any of the beds, despite the riot of colorful growth.

The ones with lilies had only lilies, and the lilac bushes were rooted in weed-free soil.

A wheelbarrow by the side of the path was piled high with plant debris.

These were clearly not abandoned greenhouses, as she’d first thought.

A butterfly landed on a lily and closed its wings.

Colors shimmered over it in waves, red to purple, chased by blue then green, green then gold.

There could be more than one gardener. She’d already walked through more enormous greenhouses in this complex than could possibly be cared for by a single person, and there seemed to be no end in sight.

She liked the idea of finding a different, friendlier gardener.

Walking faster, Terlu followed the winged cat to another door and opened it—to be greeted with a whoosh of winter wind and a swirl of snow. She shut the door. “Not that way.”

Landing on the ground, the cat pawed at the door. “Rrr-eow.”

“You don’t want to go outside. It’s cold.”

There wasn’t anything out there but snow and trees… was there? The gardener had said his cottage was outside the greenhouse, nearby. Could that be what the cat wanted? Or did he just want to chase birds?

The cat rubbed against her ankles and then headbutted the door. Terlu noticed there was a hook near the door with a heavy beige coat hanging on it, as well as a thick red scarf.

“What’s outside?” Terlu asked the cat.

He meowed again.

She took the coat off the hook and wrapped herself in it, then added the scarf for good measure.

It was soft wool, and it smelled faintly of pine and cloves and nutmeg.

The far-too-large coat swallowed her, which she didn’t mind since it would keep her warm.

“All right, but if you just want to chase sparrows, then I’m coming right back in. ”

Ready this time, she opened the door and stepped out into the snow.

It had piled up as high as her ankles and drifted even higher against the side of the greenhouse, and it was still falling, now in fat flakes that clumped together, dotting the sleeves of the coat and the ends of the scarf.

Flapping his wings, the cat flew out of the greenhouse toward the forest.

“Wait for me,” she told him.

Testing the handle to make sure the door wouldn’t lock behind her, Terlu closed it and then waded into the snow. After all the flowers, the wintery air tasted like fresh mint, clean and sharp on her tongue.

Ahead were the pine trees, their branches painted with snow, and between them—was that a cottage?

It was! With the winged cat flying beside her, she headed for it.

She saw a curl of smoke rising up from the chimney and smelled woodsmoke, tangy in the air.

Snow coated the cottage’s roof, and icicles had dripped down in front of the windows. It looked like it was laced with sugar.

Closer, she saw it had gray shingles, green shutters, and a green door, the same colors as the winged cat.

Snow-filled window boxes were in front of the two windows on either side of the door, and the walkway had been cleared at some point—the snow was half the depth as elsewhere.

Someone must have swept it aside before the latest batch of snow.

The gardener? Was this his cottage? He’d said it was just outside the greenhouse, but how could she be certain she’d chosen the correct door to exit the vast structure?

Surely there were other inhabitants in other cottages on the island as well.

Well, I did say I wanted to find a different gardener.

The cat glided to the front door and landed on the stoop. He pawed at the door, and Terlu joined him, knocking with her chilled fist. She shoved her hands back into the coat pockets as soon as she’d knocked, waiting for whoever lived in the cottage to answer the door.

When no one came, she knocked again and then peered through the window. She could only see a bit of inside, given the position of a cabinet, but she saw the corner of a wood table and a fireplace beyond it. Within the hearth, amber flames danced merrily.

He had said she could rest in his cottage, so she wouldn’t really be breaking and entering if she went inside, right? Unless, again, it wasn’t his cottage.

Terlu tried the doorknob, and it twisted easily. Pushing the door open a few inches, she called out, “Hello? Anyone home? May I come in, please?”