The Enchanted Greenhouse(22)

Yarrow didn’t reenter the sorcerer’s tower. Instead he merely locked it with the key and replaced it on the hook, which did make her wonder why he locked it at all—perhaps the door didn’t latch firmly enough without the lock? Or it’s to discourage people like me from letting themselves inside. He trotted down the path toward her, away from the resurrection rose, and she felt like she could breathe again. She flashed him a smile that she didn’t feel and began to chatter about the various cottages: which ones she liked, which one had a flock of feral gryphons, and what work she’d need to do to make one livable.

“I have a chimney brush,” he said, “and a ladder.”

“Great!” She hurried toward the little blue cottage. “This is the one. What do you think?” She looked back at him in time to see his face fall. He recovered quickly, reverting to his unreadable stoic face that he wore so often. “You don’t like it?”

“It’s fine,” he said. “It’s perfect.”

“I can choose another one.”

“It’s yours.” He turned and began to stomp off, and she was going to let him this time. She had to return to Lotti, as well as work on the cottage.

Terlu glanced up at the sky. The sun had dipped behind the tips of the pine trees, and the snow was layered with shadows. She was never going to get the chimney cleaned out and the hearth prepared for a fire before it was fully dark. She should ask Yarrow for a lantern. “Yarrow…”

“Aren’t you coming?”

“I … What? Where?” He wasn’t just walking away again?

“You can’t stay there tonight,” Yarrow said over his shoulder. “It’ll take a few days of work before the place is livable. Maybe weeks, if there are any leaks in the roof, unless you’re good with roofs?”

She’d never fixed a roof in her life. Catching up to him, she said, “I can try.”

He grunted.

Terlu realized after a few minutes of walking in silence that they were headed back to his cottage. She ran through the questions in her head and settled on the most recent: “Whose cottage was that, the blue one?”

“My sister’s,” Yarrow said.

“Oh. Is she…”

“Gone.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. “She’s not … I mean, she left, with the others. She used to send letters … She’s fine.” Reaching his own cottage, he opened the door and held it for Terlu as she went inside.

She halted just inside the doorway and gawked. It was immediately obvious what was different. He’d moved in a second bed, wedged it in between the first bed and his desk, and piled it high with blankets and pillows. Curled in the center of the new bed was the winged cat, his emerald-green wings tucked around him. He opened one eye as they entered and then tucked his head closer, his nose under his paw.

Behind her, Yarrow closed the door and was hanging his coat on the hook. “I know it isn’t luxurious, but the bedding is clean. Or it was, before Emeral shed fur and feathers all over it.”

He sounded embarrassed, but she was amazed. Despite brushing her off before, he’d taken the time to haul in a new bed and made it so inviting that Emeral had already settled in. She’d thought Yarrow only wanted her off this island and out of his （gloriously streaked-with-gold） hair, or at least as far from him as possible, but this … This was kindness. She swallowed hard. It had been a while since someone was kind to her, she realized, even before the whole statue debacle. She’d tried so hard for so long to be friendly, to make friends, to be useful, to please, and she’d been told so often: Stop trying so hard. You try too hard. Just … relax. Be yourself. It was advice that she could never seem to take. Most recently, or recently six years ago, there’d been a librarian, a woman about her age on the third floor, who had agreed to meet her for tea once. Eilia. She’d had white-and-purple hair and a fondness for ginger cookies. But Terlu had pushed too hard to be friends and had ended up pushing her away. You’re a lot, Eilia had told her, after she’d asked to meet up for the third time in the same week and baked her a tray of ginger cookies with orange zest. It’s nothing personal, Eilia had said, but at this point in my life, I don’t have the time and energy for a lot. It had felt quite personal. Shortly after, Terlu had stumbled across the spell to create an alive and aware plant … Anyway, this was nice. “Thank you.”

He shrugged and looked away. “If you aren’t comfortable, I can also stay in the greenhouse. I’ve done that before. It wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Oh no! I’d never kick you out of your cottage.”

“I know I’m a stranger.”

Cheerfully, she said, “A stranger is just a friend you haven’t yet met.” And then she winced. Had those words actually come out of her mouth? That was the kind of saying you said to four-year-olds, not to grown men who you’d be sleeping next to.

Wait. Sleeping next to?

With this configuration, she really would be sleeping inches away from him. She felt heat rising into her cheeks. “In winter when I was a kid, all the children in my home village used to sleep in a big pile in the same room around the stove. I thought it was so we could be together, but in retrospect, I think it was so the adults only had to feed a few fires instead of heating lots of separate houses. Those nights are some of my best memories.”