The Enchanted Greenhouse(56)
A moment later, he tossed the shovel on the ground. Dropping to his knees, he began pawing at the dirt to free the roots. Terlu joined him, working her fingers between the roots to loosen them without breaking them. After they’d worked around the base, Yarrow jumped up and began pulling at the trunk. He freed it from the soil, and they carried the tree through the door into the next greenhouse. Its outer branches snapped as they yanked it through the doorframe, but there was no help for it. They hauled it to an empty stretch of walkway.
He didn’t speak as he rushed back into the dying room to dig up the next tree.
She helped the prickly pear, Hosha, and the orchid, Amina, maneuver another bush out the door. The morning glory hauled another pot out, while the delphinium and the fireweed worked together to unearth several clumps of lurid red flowers. In the adjacent greenhouse, the greenery was beginning to pile up. It was going to need to be replanted, and she wasn’t certain it would all survive the shock of being extracted from the earth. The rescuers were all being careful, but was that enough? Also, she didn’t know how they’d replicate the heat and humidity conditions of their original greenhouse.
But that was a worry for later, after they’d saved as much as they could. Taking a deep breath and rolling her shoulders, Terlu dove back in. With Lotti directing her, she cleared a bed, using the wheelbarrow to transport the smaller plants to safety.
Pausing to catch her breath, she scanned the greenhouse—it was still overflowing with green. If they were merely trying to hack it down, that alone would have taken hours, but to remove the plants carefully with roots intact … This was a project that could take days. I don’t think we have days. “Any guesses how much time we have?”
“Not enough,” Yarrow said grimly.
Terlu picked up her shovel again. If there were more gardeners on the island, maybe they’d have a chance of moving it all, but even with every single sentient plant helping … It’s not enough. They couldn’t work fast enough or hard enough. She pushed the shovel into the dirt again.
And she shivered.
She shouldn’t be cold. She was sweating so much, but the sweat chilled on her skin. She felt cold sink into her bones. Looking up, she saw frost lacing the cracked glass. “Yarrow!”
He raised his head, and his breath fogged in front of him. “Everyone, out!”
“Lotti, get down from there!” Terlu called. She scooped up her coat and pulled it on. The ivy was in the middle of hauling a banana tree. With stiffening hands, Terlu helped her load it into the wheelbarrow. She rolled it out of the greenhouse and then went back in.
Dendy was shoving his trowel beneath a plant with elephant-ear leaves and shiny yellow flowers that looked like trumpets. Its leaves were flopped over him, and the whole plant shook as his trowel hit against its roots.
“Temperature’s falling,” Terlu told him. “Your leaves will freeze.”
“Just a few more minutes.”
She joined him with her own trowel. It grew colder and colder, seeping through her coat. Her breath fogged in front of her. She saw frost begin to form on the tips of the philodendron’s leaves, and he began to shiver. “Okay, that’s it.”
Dendy wrapped his tendrils around the roots of the bush as its shiny yellow blossoms drooped and shriveled into brown husks. “I can’t leave them—”
“Yarrow!” Terlu called. She looked up and saw Lotti was clinging to one of the rafters. The little rose still hadn’t left yet either. “Lotti, you have to come down now!”
Yarrow ran to them.
As Dendy insisted that he wasn’t leaving until the plant was extracted, Yarrow began digging at the roots to the flowering elephant-ear-leaf bush. Lifting his trowel with his leaves again, Dendy dug too. Soil flew into the air as the temperature plummeted.
Shivering hard, Terlu hurried to beneath the rafter where Lotti was perched. “You need to come down! Lotti, please! You’ll freeze!”
“I can’t!” Lotti wailed. “It’s all iced up! I’ll fall! I’ll splat!”
The cold was beginning to hurt. It burned her throat as she breathed in. The temperature had to have plummeted far beneath freezing, beyond what any plant could survive. If Lotti stayed, she’d die. If I stay … She’d have frostbite if she lingered any longer. These weren’t normal winter temperatures. It was deeply, deadly cold.
“You can catch me!” Lotti said.
“No, don’t—” Terlu wasn’t good at catching. When she was a kid, a favorite beach game was tossing a cloth ball to your teammates, keeping it away from the other team, but she was routinely the last to be picked to play, due to the fact that she tended to close her eyes whenever anything flew at her.
But Lotti was already pushing herself off the edge. “Wheeeee!”
Terlu felt as if everything faded around her, the world narrowing to just her and the falling rose. She reached her arms up, and she felt as if she were moving slowly, so slowly, too slowly. Her hands felt too small—I’ll miss, and she’ll fall and splat, and it will be my fault … She scooted to the left. No, right. No, left—
Lotti landed in her palms.
Terlu breathed again.
She cradled the little plant to her and jogged out of the greenhouse. She burst into the next room, into the warmth, and fell onto her knees. Heat pressed into her, and her fingers and toes felt as if they were burning. “Yarrow?”