The Enchanted Greenhouse(18)

No family of gryphons peered out, nor did she see any hibernating bears. Terlu dared to venture in. Sunlight spilled through the windows so there were no dark corners, only layers of gray. By one corner was a bed, collapsed in the center where the netting had worn away. Another corner had a table that was coated in dust. She ran a sleeve over a corner to reveal painted flowers. The chimney was full of debris, leaves and twigs. It would have to be cleaned out before a fire could be attempted, and that was no small task. It looked very clogged.

She wondered if the kitchen sink pump still worked. Crossing to it, she tried it. It was stiff, but she managed to lift it up. No water came out, though.

The chimney she could fix, presumably—at least it was obvious how to fix it; just clean it out—but a water pump? As she’d told Yarrow, she didn’t have her sister’s skill with plumbing. Or anything, really, as her sister used to delight in pointing out. Still … I wish Cerri were here now. She’d be able to fix up one of these cottages in an afternoon. By day two, she’d have transformed it into a palace. Terlu, however, had no such skills.

She wished she’d written home when things had gotten difficult at the library. But Terlu hadn’t wanted her family to guess she was miserable. It wasn’t as if they could have done anything anyway, and all it would have done was make everyone feel bad—and she’d feel like even more of a failure. Still … she wished she’d reached out. Things might have turned out differently if she had.

Terlu tried the next cottage, which looked like a cake with frills carved out of wood instead of icing, but all its windows were cracked or outright broken and snow was strewn across the floor. As she trudged to the next cottage, she wondered who they’d all belonged to. It was clear that each home had once been loved very much. In the next one, Terlu found a child’s toys, a rocker carved like a bear and a doll that was missing an eye. Another had a framed sketch of a couple, their arms around each another, both of them smiling at the artist.

Why had the owners left? Where were they now? And why had Yarrow stayed behind? There was a peaceful kind of sadness to the row of abandoned cottages, but no answers.

After the cottage with the artwork, she found one that seemed like it could be livable, with a more reasonable amount of work: a blue cottage, its walls painted a pale noonday blue and its door and shutters a deep twilight blue. Cobwebs clung to the rafters, but she saw no inhabitants other than spiders. It had a hammock-like bed strung from the ceiling, though she wasn’t sure she’d trust it—she didn’t know how long it had been there—but she could pull in a proper cot from one of the other cottages. In fact, she could take her favorite pieces from each of them and assemble them here.

It could be nice.

Lovely, even. She imagined it clean and neat and full of flowers. She hoped Yarrow would let her pick blossoms to fill her cottage. My cottage. That had a nice sound to it, didn’t it?

Well, didn’t it?

I’m not a child anymore. I can handle living on my own. She’d had her own space in the library, and she’d been fine. She’d hated it, but she’d managed. Sort of. For a while. Until she’d been statue-ified.

Okay, she hadn’t been fine.

“You can make this work,” Terlu told herself out loud.

She could try to convince Emeral to stay with her, so she wouldn’t have to bear the silence and solitude. His purr was capable of curing any kind of sadness.

Crossing her arms, she tried to look at the cottage objectively. It wasn’t as nice and cute and sweet as Yarrow’s cottage. And the amount of work to make it as lovely … It was daunting enough that she wanted to pivot and race back to the comfort of his home. She’d have to clean the chimney and, well, everything. Plus there were a few holes here and there that could do with patching so the wind wouldn’t whip through on stormy days. She wondered if the roof leaked. She supposed she’d discover that the next time it rained. Craning her neck, she examined the ceiling—she didn’t see much water damage on the roof above the rafters, though there were stains on the wall beneath the windows.

Terlu tested the pump at the sink, and after a few hearty pumps, brown water spurted out. She kept pumping until it ran clean. That’s a plus, she thought.

Seeing the fresh, clean water, her heart felt lighter. She could see a little bit of a glimpse of a future here, if she worked at it, at least an immediate future if not a long-term, life-full-of-purpose kind of plan. She wasn’t afraid of work, which was a good thing since there was a lot to do before the cottage would be livable.

But what to do first?

Heat, definitely. She had to clean the chimney. She’d need … She wasn’t quite certain what she’d need. A brush? With a long handle and stiff bristles. And a broom to sweep all the soot out once she’d knocked it down. Perhaps a ladder so she could climb up onto the roof.

Oh dear. She’d never climbed up onto a roof in her life. She wondered how slippery it would be with all the snow and ice. She wondered if Yarrow expected her to fix any broken bones herself with the tools from the shed behind his cottage. And what if she couldn’t make it livable enough before nightfall? Would he let her return to his cottage? She wouldn’t take his bed again, of course, but she could curl up like Emeral by the hearth. Surely, he’d lend her a blanket. At least by his fire, she wouldn’t freeze to death.

Making to-do lists in her head, Terlu left the blue cottage. For thoroughness, she continued down the road, though she thought the blue cottage was likely the best she was going to find. She also loved that it was blue, which she knew was superficial of her, but it made her think of the sky on a summer day on Eano when the waves played at your feet and the dolphins swam just offshore. It felt like a good-luck color. Maybe she could make a home here, at least for as long as she was allowed to stay. Or for as long as she wanted to stay, whichever came first.