The Enchanted Greenhouse(57)

No answer.

He hadn’t joined them.

“Dendy?”

The philodendron wasn’t here either. Both had stayed in the deadly cold greenhouse. The windows were iced in flowerlike patterns that rendered them opaque.

She set Lotti on the ground, and the ivy, Risa, circled her, coiling snakelike, tight around the rose. “I’ll warm you,” Risa told Lotti.

The little rose shivered. “Thank you.”

Terlu forced herself to stand. She had not prepared properly for an emergency like this—a lifetime of studying languages and then a stint as a statue did not make one as physically fit as a full-time gardener, which was normally fine.

She plunged back into the frigid greenhouse.

Both Yarrow and Dendy were attempting to pull the flowering bush toward the door. She joined them, but as she grabbed for one of the branches, it snapped off. “It’s frozen,” she said gently. “Dendy, it’s over. We have to go.”

The philodendron was stiffening.

“Yarrow, you have to leave it.” She scooped Dendy’s root ball and leaves into her arms. “Come on. It’s subzero. You can’t stay in here.”

“Take him,” Yarrow said.

She hesitated.

“Go!”

Scooping up Dendy, she ran to the safety and warmth of the next greenhouse. The plant felt brittle in her arms. “Almost there,” she whispered. “Hang in there. You’ll be okay.”

She reached the doorway and half fell through it.

Joining the others, Terlu dropped to the ground. “Dendy, say something. Please.”

He was silent. And still.

“What do I do? He’s so cold.” She touched one of his leaves and then cried out as it broke off in her fingers. She felt tears well up in her eyes. Every bit of her hurt. She’d tried so hard. All of them had. And it wasn’t enough. “Dendy … Please, wake up.”

She felt hands on her shoulders.

“He needs warm water,” Yarrow said behind her. “Bring him by the stove.”

She got to her feet and carried the philodendron, his tendrils of frostbitten leaves trailing behind them. He felt so thin and brittle in her arms. His root ball barely had any soil, as if his roots were no longer able to hold dirt together. Some of his leaves had blackened.

“I’ll find a pot,” Yarrow said.

He met her by the stove with a pot that was already three-quarters full of warm, soft soil. Gently, she placed Dendy in it. He should have burrowed his roots into the fresh soil by himself, but he didn’t, and so she cupped dirt in her hands and buried his roots in the soil.

Yarrow began to snip off the dead leaves. “He’ll grow back. Philodendrons are hardy.”

“The flowering bush?”

He shook his head.

“And the rest of the plants?”

“I need to replant the ones we rescued as quickly as possible,” he said, not answering her question—which was its own answer. His golden skin was speckled with sweat and dirt, and his eyes looked haunted. “Stay with Dendy. He … shouldn’t be alone when he wakes.”

She nodded, and he stood and walked away.

Cradling Dendy’s pot closer to her, she soaked in the warmth from the stove. She told herself she’d help Yarrow as soon as Dendy woke. She felt a pressure on her shoe and looked down. Lotti had climbed onto her foot and was attempting to crawl up her sock. Reaching down, Terlu scooped up the little rose and set her on her lap.

“I tried to help,” Lotti said.

“Me too.”

“It wasn’t enough.”

There wasn’t anything that Terlu could say to that. She cuddled both the resurrection rose and the silent philodendron closer to her. After a bit, the winged cat flew to settle next to the stove. He curled up beside her, and with her free hand, she petted him as well. Nearby, the diamond dragonflies perched on branches and flowers and vines. They no longer danced.

Through the doorway, in the failing greenhouse, the tropical plants froze and then burned as the enchantments flared and then died.

She cried silently for the loss of all those innocent plants, for Yarrow, for feeling helpless, and for Dendy, who still had not spoken or moved, despite the warmth of the stove, the fresh soil, and the pruning.

At last, the tears stopped.

She took a breath.

She felt as if she could move again. “I should help Yarrow.”

“I’ll help toooo,” Dendy said and stretched out his remaining leaves.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

By nightfall, Yarrow had found buckets and pots for most of the plants, with the help of Terlu and the sentient plants. They’d need to find permanent homes for them inside the greenhouses with the most appropriate temperature and humidity levels. It wouldn’t be ideal, especially since so many of the still-surviving greenhouses were overcrowded already, but the vast majority of the ones they’d rescued would live, he said.

He insisted on walking through the newly dead greenhouse, once the temperature had stabilized. It was still cold, but only as cold as the outside wintery forest. Not the kind of cold that chilled flesh in seconds, like before. The vast majority of the plants they’d had to leave behind hadn’t survived the extreme fluctuation, but he returned with a few that he thought might be hardy enough to coax back to life.