The Enchanted Greenhouse(42)

“He was absent a lot,” Lotti said, still closed into a bud. “Busy. With the greenhouses.”

“He’d already begun to dismiss gardeners by then,” Yarrow spoke up. “My father said Belde was on its way to becoming home to a small village about fifty years ago, but Laiken didn’t want that. He refused to allow new people to settle here, and he began to require that gardeners leave if they wished to marry, rather than allow their spouses to settle here, which was a change from earlier years, when my father was a child. As time went on, the sorcerer did more and more himself and kept more and more to himself.”

“He forgot about me,” Lotti insisted. “It wasn’t deliberate. I refuse to believe that.”

“It could have been an accident with you,” Terlu agreed. Who was she to say? She hadn’t been there. The only insight she had was what the sorcerer had written down. Let the rose keep idolizing her creator, if she wanted to. She didn’t need to face her past or confront the truth or any of that if all it was going to do was hurt her—there was no point in unnecessary pain. None of them could change what happened; all they could do was shape what happened next. Terlu pointed to a spell. “Regardless, this is how he made the others sleep. It took him a number of years to perfect the spell, but eventually he did.”

Yarrow bent over her to look at the page. She felt his warm breath on her cheek. His breath smelled like sugary chocolate. “So, you’re saying they’re in an enchanted sleep?”

“Essentially, yes,” Terlu said. “I’ve identified the spell he used, and, I think, the counterspell, though he never tested it so I don’t know if—”

Lotti flapped her leaves in alarm. “You think? You don’t know? And what do you mean ‘he never tested it’？ Does that mean you’d be trying a new untested spell on my friends? What if you make it worse?”

She’d thought about that. “There isn’t much worse than the not-life they’re in.”

“How do you know what they’re—oh.” Lotti closed her petals into a bud, this time in embarrassment. “Sorry. I forgot. Your statue phase. It’s just … What if the spell goes wrong?”

Statue phase. What a way to describe her lost years.

“It’s a risk,” Terlu said. She looked at Yarrow, into his deep-as-the-sea eyes. He was so close that she felt like she could see every emotion within him: hope, fear, pity, pain, sorrow—but what won was hope. “I could try this, and the plants might die. Or transform. There are a thousand ways a spell can go wrong. It’s why the emperor made it illegal for anyone but a trained and approved sorcerer to work magic. But I’ve been studying this spell. I understand what the words are doing.” It was all about the language—the syllables conveyed the intent, and the sentences executed the command. That’s what magic was: words that brought thought to life. And Terlu was very, very good with words—or at least with words like this. She couldn’t guarantee that the right ones were going to come out of her mouth in a random conversation, but this … this she felt confident about. Mostly confident. Pretty confident.

“I trust you,” Yarrow said.

That was the most beautiful sentence she’d ever heard anyone utter.

Blushing magenta, Terlu turned back to the page. “It requires specific ingredients.” She showed him the list she’d made: an apple blossom bud, an acorn that hadn’t sprouted, pollen from a daffodil, as well as another half-dozen plant-based items that she was only half-certain she knew what they were, but one hundred percent certain that Yarrow did.

“Got it.”

For anyone else, anywhere else, it wouldn’t have been possible, especially in winter, but for Yarrow, in this place … She wondered if that was why the sorcerer had created the greenhouse in the first place, to have access to anything he’d need for his spells. I don’t think so. From his notes, he didn’t seem to have been amassing power for any other purpose than tending the plants, but if he’d wanted to … Perhaps that was what had made him so paranoid, knowledge of what other sorcerers could do with these resources if they had access to them. She wondered if the emperor had known what a jewel was hidden away here. Had Rijes Velk realized how valuable this place was when she decided to answer Yarrow’s letter? Or had she just seen a problem that required a solution?

So many wonderful spells could be cast with the plants on this island. Had Laiken ever paused to consider the good that he could have done if he’d opened his greenhouses to the world, instead of trying so hard to isolate them?

She supposed that was the question: How much did you trust people to do the right thing?

Yarrow trusts me.

She wasn’t going to let him down.

“I’ll have all of this within an hour,” Yarrow promised, taking the ingredient list. He nodded at the mug. “Drink your chocolate before it chills.”

* * *

Less than an hour later, the three of them met by the shelves of sleeping plants. Enchanted sleep, Terlu thought. It sounds kinder than statue-ified, but is it? She doubted it. She wondered if they dreamed and, if so, what plants dreamed about. She only remembered her dreams in fragments—each filled with all that she’d lost.

Yarrow set down a basket, and Lotti leaped into it. She began tossing ingredients over the side onto the walkway. “We’ll need enough to fix everyone,” she declared.