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The Truth About Gardening

SALLIE ROSE

“I do not understand why the Mountain Goats get to have all the fun! Why can’t we gravels make beautiful nature jewelry, too?”

Lyxnia, head of the castle staff, demands—apparently speaking for all the fae who watched us work from inside their stone casts all day.

Three shocks greeted me when I crept out of the Stone Fae King’s chamber this morning.

One: A host of about twelve other goats had accompanied Brelliard to help me install the garden I’d heard whispering to me from beneath the bramble the day before.

Two: Commander Skorrin kept his word, assigning a few soldiers to rip out nearly every last bramble. There was now a huge patch of fresh dirt where the nest of vines used to be.

And…

Three: Most of the servant statues I’d had to navigate around yesterday were standing in a huge arc around the place I’d designated for the Bramble Garden this morning.

Honestly, I didn’t know whether to be honored or completely creeped out by all the stone eyes staring down at us as I handed out assignments to the goats.

But with so much to do before my scheduled execution tomorrow night, I decided to go with "honored."

I rolled up the sleeves of the oversized taarhorn knit dress I’d scored off Rinthiah last night and got started on the long list of mother seed spells I’d need to cast if I wanted to get everything in the ground before sneaking back into the king’s chambers at suns’ set.

I felt the statues’ quiet encouragement on me throughout the day as I managed Brelliard and his crew through breaking up the newly exposed soil with repurposed gravel rakes, building lattice walls to section off the garden from the rest of the terrace and house, and constructing tiered planters for rare fruits, vegetables, and—if I could figure out a way to consult with the fae healer before tomorrow night—maybe a few medicinal herbs.

After breaking for a midday meal of vegetable pies, courtesy of the castle’s Mountain Goat day staff, we sowed the seeds, sprouts, and rootballs I’d spent all morning magicking.

My unexpected crew ended up planting not just the promised row of luntunia bushes but two extra beds bursting with moonlilies, starpetals, and the first green shoots of whispervine to crawl up the goats’ new latticework.

If I had full-strength Earth Fae power, the entire garden would’ve bloomed in less than a tick of the suns. Instead, I finally got firsthand understanding of how and why my father had developed such a bad back hump.

To grow the garden with my seriously diluted magic, I had to kneel over every single mound, press my hands into the soil, and whisper—willing each seed, rootball, and sprout to grow, please.

By the time I finished, my spine throbbed, my fingers were cramped, and the suns had moved to the opposite side of the castle, which apparently triggered the fae in the garden to uncast early from stone sleep.

As I’d hoped, they were thrilled to see the garden’s progress with their own glowing eyes.

But that joy evaporated quickly when I announced I had to return to their king’s sleeping chambers before the suns fully set. (That note said I would be punished if I wasn’t there when he woke up—not that I couldn’t leave his room)

“I, too, would like to help make nature jewelry,” declared Rinthiah, the king’s personal door servant.

I’d learned over the course of the day that her name didn’t actually include Door . That was just her castle role title. Since I wouldn’t want to be called Handmaiden Sallie Rose , I dropped their servant titles quickly.

As much as I appreciated Rinthiah, since she was the one who gave me something to wear and made sure I didn’t sleep on bare stone last night, I had to set the record straight.

“I promise you, gardening’s not as fun as it looks. You’re really not missing out.”

“The Eryx Oblation lies!” Brelliard bellows, his bray echoing through the crowd of servant fae. “Never have I known peace like this day, with my hooves in the dirt and the suns on my horns!”

“I solved a riddle that’s plagued me for months!” another goat brays.

And just in case that wasn’t enough to convince the castle staff that I was full of compost: “I only worked a few ticks after midday,” says the female goat who brought out the vegetable pies, “but I invented three new recipes. It did not even feel like toil.”

“Did anyone else forgive a dead relative while planting?” asks a goat behind me.

“Yes! I’m writing the male who broke our engagement a letter of repentance,” another goat answers.

“I, too, have a tale of forgiveness,” says Jaaliah, who introduced herself at the top of the work day as Brelliard’s wife. “Brell and I were quite cross with each other this morn when he insisted I come garden, but now we plan to make merry after last meal.”

To punctuate this declaration, Jaaliah hooks her single left horn under the first of Brelliard’s three right ones.

“In truth, I’ve never felt so randy after a full day of work!” Brelliard adds. So, so unhelpfully.

Then Nettling, the white goat with the blue beard who’d helped Brelliard drive the carriage that brought me here steps forward and says in the most reverent of tones, “I’m sure I heard my mother’s voice. She said she was well, despite her too-soon death from the fainting sickness.”

A sympathetic murmur ripples through the Stone Fae… followed by a collective glare in my direction.

“I, too, would like to commune with the voice of my dead mother,” says Peth, another door servant.

“My mind is so oft a race with stress,” grumbles Lyxnia. “A few hours of peace would be welcome.”

“My partner and I have not had sex in nearly a solar!” Rinthiah practically wails.

I begin backing toward the glass doors of the great hall.

“Honestly, I’d love to night garden—I really would, but I wouldn’t even be able to see enough to instruct you.

Darn these inferior, weak human eyes!” I make a big show of shaking my fist at my fate of being born without my own set of glowing, see-in-the-dark orbs.

“Anyway, we can talk more tomorrow night—aka, the last time you’ll see me before I’m ritually sacrificed to your moon god.

Until then, I really should get back before?—”

Everyone around me suddenly drops to their knees.

And I sigh. “He’s standing right behind me, isn’t he?”

“Turn around, princess,” that smoke-and-glass voice commands before a single fae or goat can answer.

I turn, and yep, sure enough, there’s the Stone Fae King himself, in that same body-hugging leather armor he wore last night.

No bandolier of knives that could easily slice through me this time.

But the red glow beneath the cracks in his skin is pulsing in a way that doesn’t require any familiarity with Stone Fae anatomy to interpret: the king is seriously pissed off with me.

“Heya, VeyVey,” I say, playing it cool with a little wave. “You’re up early!”

And looking especially lethal tonight , I silently add. What does he do—spray himself with danger perfume every morning so he’s, like, radiating it?

“Did you not see my note?”

Apparently, Veyrion has decided not to match my nonchalant energy. It’s taking everything in me not to step to the side, because it really does feel like his eyes are about to shoot lasers.

“I did,” I admit. “And in all fairness, I thought I’d get back before you woke up. But I lost track of time.”

“Easy to do,” declares Brelliard behind me. “Gardening is so pleasurable, the time passes in a blink.”

I can just about feel the Stone Fae servants fuming, even with their heads fully bowed.

And I have to turn to tell my original Mountain Goat assistant, “Okay, Brell, you are really overselling this experience.”

“Not to mention rubbing it in!” a Stone Fae servant whose name I don’t know yet angrily calls out.

“Will I be called upon to quell this civil war you appear to have catalyzed between my goats and gravels?” Veyrion asks.

Brelliard and the fae servant who dared look up to squabble quickly duck their heads back down. But the flash of fear on their faces before they do makes me sick to my stomach.

I turn back to their bully of a king. “Don’t take any of this out on them. I’m grateful— truly grateful—for the goats’ help and the additional offers from your castle staff. And you should be, too.”

He returns his glowing gaze to mine, tilting his head.

“Are you truly attempting to tell me how to handle my subjects?”

“Of course not.” I tilt my own head, matching his energy despite being so much shorter.

“I’m just pointing out that your subjects are wonderful.

Not to mention super underappreciated. So if you’re upset with my actions, I’m merely suggesting, with all due respect, that you don’t take it out on your blameless subjects but add it to my punishment bill. ”

Veyrion may no longer be in statue form, but he stills like one, his expression unreadable.

And I stand there, eyes flared, totally willing to go into stare-off mode if that keeps his attention on me and off the poor staff, who remain on their knees.

But another, even haughtier voice causes me to blink first. “This is unacceptable. You are not to tell our king what he may or may not do!”

I don’t realize he’s brought backup this time until a female with lustrous black hair, pointy ears, a long, thin nose, and uncracked, smooth gray skin comes to stand directly behind him on his left.

She’s dripping in jewelry that matches her glowing blue eyes, and her chin is lifted like it lives in the air full-time. That, and her feminine version of Veyrion’s smoke-and-glass accent, makes me guess she’s one of his courtiers. Probably a noble with a title attached.

Perhaps even one of those “willing vessels” he talked about—the ones that help him get off before raids.

Did he go to her last night after I turned him down?

That thought tangles with the hate in my chest, turning it a dark and ugly green I do not like.

And why does this stone-weed wormette keep talking?

“Also, you are meant to bow when facing our sovereign,” she informs me.

Well, that’s a whole lesson in court etiquette I didn’t understand before. It explains why no one behind me has stood up yet, and why the servants always jump out of his way in the halls. Otherwise, they’d have to drop to their knees and go through all this kowtowing fertilizer.

“You are to take a respectful position on your knees right now ,” the female at Veyrion’s side commands. “And you are not to rise until you have our king’s back.”

“Or what?” I ask her. “Does your king slit my throat on a nightmare altar and let me bleed out while you all watch? Oh wait, that’s tomorrow night, right after the wedding.”

Her eyes flare with outrage. “Why, you insolent little?—”

She raises her hand the same way Seraphyne did when she meant to hit me.

But I am no longer trapped in service to that spoiled greenhouse serpent.

I grip the trowel Brelliard’s sister found for me—technically a poop scoop for the animals in the pens, but I chose to call it a trowel. Main point: it has a pointed end I will not hesitate to use.

Sketching out a plan to stab her in one of her glowing blue eyes, I say, “Bring it on, weed worm. I have absolutely nothing to lose.”

The beautiful female steps forward with a menacing hiss.

“Yilara!” Veyrion holds up a hand, and it stops her in her tracks. “You will cease arguing with my Oblation and leave her punishment to your sovereign.”

The fae he calls Yilara immediately lowers her hand and steps back, though not before flashing her fangs at me.

“Goats, retire for the night so that you are fit for duty in the morn,” Veyrion commands. “And gravels, attend to your duties.”

As Yilara and everyone around me scurries to obey, I really want to point out that the moons haven’t even risen yet, so technically, none of the servants are due at work.

But before I can, the Stone Fae King takes me firmly by the arm and starts pulling me toward the castle’s back doors.

“As for you, little troublemaker,” he murmurs, “you are coming with me. This eve’s punishment will indeed be long.”

Then he leans down and speaks his smoke-and-glass voice directly into my ear.…

“And trust… this time I will not stop until it is fully done.”