The Enchanted Greenhouse(53)
“I haaave seen curious humans beeefore,” Dendy said as he waddled across the worktable. “They typicallyyy end up married.”
Okay, now Terlu found herself blushing. “He isn’t like what I thought he was at first.”
Dendy began to look through the notebooks, using his leaves as if they were hands to grasp, pick up, and examine each volume. “Whaaat did you think he waaas like at first?”
“Unfriendly.”
“And nowww?”
“I think he has a great heart,” Terlu said. “He just doesn’t know how to show it to anyone who isn’t full of chlorophyll. Lack of practice, I think. Or maybe it’s caution?”
“If your gaaardener was here with Laiken at the end, caaan you blame him? Heeee had to learn to guard his heart.” He held up a faded green notebook with a frayed spine. “Tryyy this one. Laiken spent a lot of time with this noteboook, I belieeeeve.”
Sitting on a stool, Terlu took the notebook, opened the codebook next to it, and began to read as she translated. She barely needed to consult the codebook anymore. She’d internalized much of how Laiken manipulated the language, and besides which, he slipped into standard for about half the jotted notes. It was only the spells themselves that he was careful to obscure. “Do you know what happened to the sorcerer? What made him turn away from everyone?”
“Aaah. Thaaat. Yes, I waaas there when it begaaan.” He pulled out a second volume, a thick red notebook with a ribbon. “Hmm, I believe I remember seeing him with thisss one, though I think he used it to traaack supplies that aaarrived from other islands.”
Terlu flipped through it. It was lists, and it wasn’t in code, with the exception of one half page near the end. She read through the final half page. “There’s one bit of a spell—I think it’s incomplete. Did he experiment with spells?”
“All the time. He alwayyys wrote his own, or tweaked existing ones tooo his needs.”
Wow, the librarians in Alyssium would have loved to have access to this treasure trove. So few sorcerers created their own spells, and here were hundreds. The trick was going to be identifying which spells actually worked and which were failed experiments, and that had to happen after she figured out their intended purposes.
She felt the weight of what she’d taken on, hovering over her like a boulder about to fall. It was an enormous undertaking, the work of multiple scholars over lifetimes. Terlu took a deep breath and tried to ignore the butterflies somersaulting in her stomach—Yarrow had looked at her with such hope. I only said I’d try. Perhaps if she understood the sorcerer better, it would be a less impossible task? “Why did Laiken create the Greenhouse of Belde?”
“I wasn’t there thaaat earlyyy.”
She supposed he wouldn’t have been. Creating sentient plants was a rare advanced magic. Laiken wouldn’t have begun his work with that spell. Unlike me, who skipped over all the basics.
“But I doooo know the answer,” Dendy said. “He haaad a daughter, Ria. Sweeeet girl. Liked flowers. Got sooo sad when they wilted. Heee built the first greenhouse as a present to her, I waaas told. When I waaas created, she must have been aaabout sixteen, but even beforrre that, she waaas looking beyond the island—she waaanted to see other places, experience other things. Ria’s dream waaas to see everyyy flower in the world. We were maaade in part to be her companions. Distraaactions, really.”
“He didn’t want her to leave,” Terlu guessed.
“Heee had good reason. She waaas sick.”
“Oh.” She could picture it: a lonely little girl with big dreams and a worried father. When you were young, the world seemed gloriously huge and life infinite, and you were unaware of your own limitations and the barriers the world could erect in front of you. Terlu remembered she’d looked beyond the horizon and dreamed of what life would be like out there. So many possibilities! She hadn’t understood that you couldn’t have everything, and every door you walked through meant other doors you closed. There was a cost to leaving, and she’d paid without a second’s thought, with no guarantee of what she’d find out in the world beyond. She’d thought it would be easy to find her place.
“He maaade the greenhouse for her,” Dendy said. “In the beginning there waaas only a single structure, but he aaadded more and more greenhouses, collecting seeds and plaaant samples from all over. A steady supply of boats would bring them, and she seemed happyyy. He didn’t know that Ria had been taaalking to the sailors, and he didn’t know she bribed them toooo let her on one of their ships, when sheee felt readyyy.”
So far, not a single notebook had mentioned a daughter, but then they didn’t dwell on people at all. It was all about the plants and the structures. Terlu wondered if Ria had loved the greenhouses and if she’d ever intended to come back, or had she planned to fly free? Like me, when I left home.
“I waaas there the day she left. So waaas Lotti. It waaas the first time Laiken left Lotti without water—he blaaamed her for not telling him about his daughter’s plaaans. He blaaamed the gardeners for not stopping her. He blaaamed the sailors for taking her.”
“Let me guess: he never blamed himself for keeping her here when she didn’t want to stay.” She’d met people like that, always convinced everything was the fault of someone else. They never looked at their own choices.