The Enchanted Greenhouse(102)

“They’ll still fail.” Birch stabbed the ground with his cane for emphasis. “I am telling you, there’s something rotten at the core of this island. Say you’re right, and there’s no rival sorcerer. Only Laiken. Still doesn’t mean it’s natural. It could be his fault—he could have sabotaged his creation. He didn’t want the greenhouses outlasting him and so he ensured they’d die.”

“You’re wrong,” Yarrow said. “He wanted them to last forever. In fact, it was his major concern.” He turned to Terlu. “You’ve studied the spells. Tell my father it’s just time and decay.”

Terlu froze. She hadn’t told any of Yarrow’s relatives that she’d studied Laiken’s spells. What if Birch asked why she’d studied them? What if he connected the plants’ activities to her? What would he say when he realized she broke the law?

But Birch didn’t even glance at her. He was too busy glowering at Yarrow, his bushy eyebrows so low that they nearly swallowed his eyes.

Maybe he doesn’t care that I’ve cast spells?

Or maybe he was too distracted to care now, but he would later when he’d had a chance to think about it.

“The island’s cursed,” Birch insisted. “We should have never come back, and you should have left with us.”

“There’s no curse,” Yarrow said.

Mulling it over, Terlu frowned at the door to the dying greenhouse. Actually, she thought, it would explain a few things—the suddenness and randomness of the failures, for example. What if there was a spell intended to cause the failures? If there was, then no matter how many greenhouses they fixed, they’d still continue to fail.

“And no rival sorcerer,” Yarrow said stubbornly.

She’d seen no evidence of any spellwork that didn’t originate with Laiken. But she couldn’t let go of the idea that the failures were deliberate. She didn’t know why anyone would want this, but it was possible. There was, of course, one person who would know for certain. Or, more accurately, who knew.

“I say it’s—” Birch began.

Stepping between Birch and Yarrow, she said, “I need to talk to the ghost.”

Yarrow stopped glaring at his father to blink at her. “What?”

“To do that, I need your help, both of you,” Terlu said. “Laiken doesn’t know me. I know neither of you want anything to do with him, but he might have answers, and he’s more likely to listen to one of his gardeners than to me.”

Yarrow shook his head. “He didn’t have any interest in his gardeners.”

His father agreed with him. “He wasn’t good with people.”

Nudging Terlu’s foot with her leaf, Lotti piped up, “Take me! If Laiken is there, even a piece of him … I want to talk to him. He’ll listen to me. I think.”

She might be right. Lotti held up her leaves, and Terlu bent down and lifted her up. Closing her petals tighter, the rose curled her leaves around her root ball.

“Come with us,” Terlu pleaded with the two men.

She expected an argument or even excuses, but instead Yarrow merely nodded. Sighing, Birch nodded as well.

While the other gardeners and sentient plants reorganized the singing plants and took stock of what survived—nearly all the plants this time, thankfully—Terlu headed out of the greenhouse with the resurrection rose, Yarrow, and his father.

* * *

Back in the sorcerer’s tower, Terlu, with Lotti, climbed the stairs first, followed by Yarrow and Birch. They’d quit arguing and dropped into an angry silence, which she didn’t think was an improvement, but at least they’d both come.

She lowered Lotti onto the bedside table. “Can you sense him?”

Lotti waved her petals and leaves in the air. “Laiken? Are you here? Papa?”

Terlu wondered if she should leave the rose alone with him. But no, she had important questions to ask. Or try to ask. There was no guarantee that a ghost could understand anything the living said—it depended how much of him remained.

She shivered.

Was that him, the chill in the air, the shadows on the wall?

“If you’re here, your plants need you,” Terlu said.

“Why did you— No, that’s not what we’re here to ask,” Lotti corrected herself. She folded her petals as if she were petitioning a judge. “We need your help. Your children need you. We’re awake, you see, but the greenhouses are failing. Can you help us stop it?”

The windows rattled.

“Wind or ghost?” Terlu whispered.

“Wind,” Birch said, arms crossed. He was scowling hard, more bearlike than Yarrow had ever been. “He doesn’t care.”

Another whoosh, and the sheets on the bed shifted.

Lifting his voice, Birch said, “Isn’t that right, Laiken? You don’t care about anyone or anything. You don’t care about the gardens—you just made them because of how powerful they made you feel. You didn’t care about your daughter—you just wanted to control her.”

He knew the daughter, Terlu guessed. Dendy had said she’d died before Yarrow was born, but Birch and the other older gardeners may have known her personally. They’d watched the tragedy unfold, and they’d seen Laiken become more and more paranoid and been unable to stop any of it. They’d been there when he forced the plants to sleep—and then when he forced all of his dedicated gardeners to leave their jobs and their homes.