The Enchanted Greenhouse(95)

“We can test it. I can light a fire. I have a starter with me.”

“Good idea.” She loved that he came so prepared.

He crossed the walkway to retrieve dried grasses from the pots of dead plants. After collecting a few handfuls from within the bubble, he reached for a wad of grass just beyond—and his hand stopped with a thump. “Huh. It’s solid.”

He laid his palm flat on the bubble and pushed, and it didn’t pass through.

She hurried to his side. They’d walked through greenhouse after greenhouse, passing through the invisible barrier in the doorways, and it had never been a problem. This bubble spell was modeled after that. It was supposed to act as insulation, not as a wall.

Terlu knocked with her fist on the bubble. It rippled but didn’t dissipate. “Okay, maybe it’s not perfect yet. We’ll have to try again.” She told herself she shouldn’t be disappointed. Of course it hadn’t worked right away. She wondered which line she needed to tweak to make it passable without being permeable—

He pushed harder at the bubble. It bowed out but didn’t break. “Huh.”

Terlu leaned against it with her shoulder, expecting to pop out the other side—but instead she bounced back. A wiggle of worry wormed itself into her throat. It was just a bubble. They couldn’t be trapped. Could they?

He drew out his clippers and tried to slice into it. The bubble bent around the blade. “I think we’re trapped,” Yarrow said grimly.

“That’s … not good.” Don’t panic. It’s just a bubble. It’ll pop.

While Yarrow bashed his clippers against the bubble, Terlu hurried back to the spell. She read through the words. It didn’t say— Oh. She saw the line that specified the durability of the bubble. It was required to ensure that the bubble was capable of keeping in the levels of heat and humidity, but it didn’t include a line to allow everything else to pass through. Perhaps it was supposed to call back to a line in a different part of the original spell?

At the perimeter of the bubble, Yarrow was now ramming his shoulder into the bubble, putting all of his strength and weight into it. He was beginning to utter oaths under his breath. Each hit reverberated with a thud that was then swallowed by the bubble, rippling like an innocent rainbow around them.

What if he couldn’t break it? What if they were truly stuck?

“Someone will find us,” Terlu said in the most soothing-librarian voice she could manage. She told herself that she had to focus on solving the problem, not on the what-ifs.

“Unlikely,” Yarrow said.

“Eventually, Lotti will wonder where we are.”

“And what will anyone do when they come? It’s impenetrable.”

“Working together…” If enough force were placed on it from the outside, that could break it, couldn’t it? Granted, the spells on the greenhouses had lasted for decades, perhaps centuries, despite all the wind, snow, and rain that the sky could throw at them. They only burst when the magic decayed enough to fail. What if she’d created a spell that was that solid? “Okay, maybe we need a better plan than wait for rescue.”

“What’s its weakness?” Yarrow asked.

“I’m not sure,” Terlu said, studying the spell. Concerned about the fragility of the bubbles in her prior attempts, she’d been more focused on its strength. Did I take it too far? What have I done? She couldn’t have just trapped them here for decades, without food, without water, without … “Oh. Oh no.”

“What?”

“I didn’t want it to rupture, shatter the glass, and kill all the plants. So, I made it as strong as I could.” She’d dialed up that section of the text, using a word that would amplify its abilities. It had made sense at the time. “It’s holding in air.”

“And us.”

“But air, Yarrow. It’s not letting air in or out.”

Yarrow stopped shoving at the bubble. “You mean to say that if we don’t break out, we are going to run out of air?”

Terlu nodded. She felt tears prick her eyes. She knew she shouldn’t have messed with magic. These spells … It had just been ego to think she could understand them, and now …

“Don’t,” Yarrow said.

She gulped back the tears that were about to spill out. “I’m sorry.”

“Look at your notes and figure out how to break it,” Yarrow said, calm and confident and just as soothing as her librarian voice. He didn’t sound angry or fearful. He should, though, she thought. He should be angry at me. But he wasn’t. “You can do this.”

Terlu shook her head. “I shouldn’t have—”

“Later, you can do the should-have, shouldn’t-have. Right now…” Crossing to her, he knelt next to her. “Terlu Perna, look at me. It’s not your fault.”

She almost smiled. “It’s absolutely my fault.”

“Well, yes, but you’re trying to pull off a miracle. You weren’t really expecting it to work right away, were you?” Gone was the Yarrow who had been throwing himself at the iridescent wall like a furious bear. Now his voice was soft, his eyes understanding, and his hands on her shoulders gentle.

“I wasn’t expecting it to be deadly right away! It’s a bubble. Not…” She shook her head. Wallowing in guilt wasn’t going to help. “Okay, how to break a spell. You broke the spell on me. I broke the sleep spell on the plants.” In both cases, though, they’d used an additional spell to reverse the effects of the initial one. She didn’t have a counterspell on hand that she could cast on the bubble that would break it. Maybe there was one, but she didn’t know it. If she had access to the full library of Laiken’s notebooks … But all she had were the spells she’d brought with her, the ones that she thought were relevant. Perhaps the clue was in them somewhere. Spreading her notes out in front of her, she studied them.