The Enchanted Greenhouse(100)
She eyed the stairs and wondered if she could. She’d never met a ghost before. How much did they remember of who they were and what they’d once known? And how much could they communicate with the living?
I could find out simply by going upstairs.
If she could communicate with him and if he wanted to be cooperative, it could cut her research time down significantly. Perhaps it could even be the key to saving the greenhouse. Or maybe she was just hoping for a miracle.
Leaving the notebook open on the desk, Terlu walked up the twisty, narrow stairs. She felt colder as she walked up and wasn’t sure if it was a ghostly cold or just because she was farther from the stove. Wasn’t heat supposed to rise? It should be warmer upstairs, but instead it felt dark and drab. Like it should have a ghost. She shivered and hugged her arms as she looked around.
Yarrow’s relatives had sprawled their belongings over the upstairs too—heaps of clothes on the bed, a hairbrush on the dresser, a tiny statue of a gryphon on the bedside table—but somehow it still felt gray and unwelcoming. She noticed that no one seemed to have slept in the bed, which was odd. It wasn’t as if Laiken needed it anymore, and it had been years since he’d died. She would have thought practicality would have won over sentiment.
Crossing to the bed, she asked softly, “Sorcerer Laiken? Are you here?”
She didn’t hear an answer or feel anything other than the chill of the room.
“My name’s Terlu Perna, and I’m trying to figure out the spells to save your greenhouse. The magic is failing, and your plants are dying. If you help me…”
She heard a sigh like the wind in the trees.
“Sorcerer Laiken?” She turned toward the window. Had it been the ghost, or had it been the wind? “Just point me to where I can find the answers. Can you do that?”
Silence.
She began to feel ridiculous. Either he didn’t understand or he didn’t care. Or he isn’t here. She’d never seen a ghost, and she’d certainly never heard of one contributing to anyone’s scholarly studies. Of course if she could find a way to communicate …
Perhaps if she brought a few of the books up here …
“One second. I’ll be back.” It might be a waste of time, but she was certain she’d sensed some kind of presence in his bedroom. If he retained any of his old self, he’d want to save his greenhouse, wouldn’t he?
Terlu trotted downstairs. If he could indicate which book she should focus on—
Before she could select more than a handful of volumes, the door to the workshop slammed open and Dendy lurched through the doorway, his leaves sprawling across the floor. “Terluuu! Aaanyone else here?”
She rushed to him. “Just me and Emeral. What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“Another greenhouse is faaailing! Caaalling everyone tooo come help.” He darted back outside, swinging himself out by his tendrils.
Terlu dropped the notebooks on the table and followed, grabbing her coat as she passed by it. “Which greenhouse?” she yelled after him. “Where do I go?”
“The siiiinging one,” he called as he hurried toward the dock.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The enchanted plants were still singing as their world crashed down around them. Terlu passed by one of Yarrow’s cousins as he carted out a pot with a flowering bush that was belting out a wordless melody in a high soprano. Scanning the greenhouse, Terlu spotted Yarrow in the center, digging at the roots of one of the tulip trees, with his father beside him. Neither were talking, both focused on the task at hand. The tulip tree crooned, a baritone.
Lotti was in the rafters shouting directions to the gardeners and sentient plants who swarmed beneath her. Everyone was moving at top speed, working together to get the singing trees out of the soil and to haul the pots with flowers into a safe greenhouse before the temperature went haywire. At least half the pots had already been transported, which was remarkable.
Terlu called up to her, “Lotti, can you see where it started?”
“What?”
Louder, she asked, “Where did the failure start?” She knew she should help with the digging and hauling, but if she could pinpoint the cause … She couldn’t stop this greenhouse from dying, but perhaps knowing the source could help her predict which greenhouse would be next to fall. If she could guess that with any degree of accuracy, they could move the plants to safety preemptively. It was worth sparing a few precious seconds now.
“Firrrst cracks were on the east waaall,” Dendy said as he passed her, propelling his root ball forward with his leaves. He spared one tendril to point eastward.
She hurried to the east wall of windows, where the cracks were continuing to spread. Each new crack sounded like a slap. Swarming over the glass, multiple talking plants—the ivy, the orchid, and the fireweed—were casting the crack-healing spell as quickly as they could.
That won’t help if the temperature fluctuates like it did in the last one.
But she let them try.
“What doesn’t make sense is why all the spells fail at once,” Terlu said, mostly to herself. It had to be that one failure triggered the next, not that they all coincidentally failed simultaneously every time. All the greenhouse-creation spells were linked to one another, as she’d discovered when she tried to pry them apart, which meant it had to be a cascading failure, didn’t it? So if she were able to stop the first malfunction …