Chapter 6 The Apprentice #2
Bloom hopped onto the counter, rustling with interest. It looked at the flowers, then at Flora, then back at the flowers. Its color flickered through a sequence that might have been I told you so.
"Do not," Flora said.
Bloom flickered again. Definitely I told you so.
Flora grabbed her coat and left the shop.
She found Clover at the edge of the village, sitting on a low stone wall, throwing pebbles at a fence post and missing every time. She looked up when Flora approached, and her expression shifted from surprise to hope to careful neutrality in the span of a second.
"The wildflowers," Flora said. "The ones you brought me. They are still fresh."
Clover frowned. "Is that bad?"
"It has been four hours. They should be wilting."
"I picked them this morning. They were fresh when I picked them." Clover shrugged. "They usually last a while when I pick them. I thought that was normal."
"It is not normal."
Clover's frown deepened. She looked at her hands, turning them over as if expecting to find something written on her palms. "What does that mean?"
Flora sat down on the wall beside her. The stone was cold through her trousers. "It means you have a gift. You are doing something to the flowers when you touch them. You are preserving them."
"I am not doing anything. I am just picking them."
"That is what makes it a gift." Flora looked at Clover's hands.
Young hands. Nervous hands. Hands that held flowers so tightly they crushed the stems but kept the petals fresh.
"I came to tell you that I will teach you.
I do not know how long I am staying. But while I am here, I will show you what I know. "
Clover was quiet for a long moment. Then she smiled. It was not a big smile. It was a small one, tentative and fragile and real. "Okay."
They walked back to the shop together. The sun was low, casting long shadows across the village green, and the air was cold enough that Flora could see her breath.
Clover talked the whole way. She talked about the flowers she had grown up with, about her mother's garden, about the time she had tried to make a bouquet for her grandmother and it had fallen apart in her hands.
She talked like someone who had been saving up words for a long time and had finally found a person to spend them on.
Flora listened. She made sounds of acknowledgment at the right moments. She did not say much.
But when they reached the shop and Clover stopped talking to look at the faded sign above the door, Flora saw something in her expression that she recognized.
The same look she had seen in her own face, reflected in a greenhouse window nine years ago.
The look of someone who had found the thing they wanted to spend their life doing and was terrified they would not be good enough for it.
"Come inside," Flora said. "I will show you how to strip thorns off roses."
The first rose was a disaster. Clover was too careful, then too aggressive, then too careful again, and she pricked her finger twice before she had stripped three thorns. Blood welled up on her fingertip, bright red against the green stem.
"I am sorry," Clover said. "I am being clumsy."
"That is not clumsy. That is learning." Flora handed her a cloth. "My first time stripping roses, I bled on every stem in the bucket. The florist who taught me made me clean each one by hand. She said the blood was part of the learning."
"That is horrible."
"It was. But I never forgot how to strip a rose."
Clover laughed. It was a surprised laugh, bright and unguarded, and the sound of it filled the quiet shop like light.
Flora felt the corner of her mouth twitch. She pressed it down. She did not laugh. She almost did. She caught herself at the last moment, turning the laugh into a cough, looking away so Clover would not see.
Bloom saw. Bloom was on the counter, gold and steady, and its color flickered with something warm.
"You almost laughed," Clover said.
"I did not."
"Your face did the thing. The thing before a laugh. I saw it."
"You saw nothing."
Clover grinned. She had stopped looking nervous. She looked like someone who had just discovered something wonderful. "You almost laughed. I am going to make you actually laugh one day. That is my new goal."
Flora picked up another rose. She did not respond. But when she looked down at the stem in her hands, she was holding it more gently than she had before.
They worked until the light faded. Clover learned to strip thorns, then to cut stems at an angle, then to arrange a simple posy.
She was not good at it. She was clumsy and uncertain and forgot everything Flora told her within five minutes.
But she did not give up. She asked questions.
She tried again. She pricked herself three more times and laughed each time.
When Clover finally left, waving goodbye with a bandaged finger, the shop felt different. Fuller. Warmer. The dried flowers on the shelves seemed to lean toward the door she had walked through.
Flora stood alone in the quiet shop. The jar of wildflowers sat on the counter, still fresh, still bright. They had been cut and carried and left in water, and they had not wilted. They had decided to stay alive.
Bloom sat on the counter beside the jar. It was a deep, steady pink.
"I am not staying," Flora said.
Bloom rustled. Its pink did not change.
"I mean it."
Bloom tilted its head. Its color flickered to gold for just a moment, then back to pink.
Flora looked at the wildflowers. She looked at the workbench where Clover had left her first successful posy, imperfect and lopsided and full of heart. She looked at the cot in the back room, where she had slept four nights without planning her departure.
She did not know what to do with any of this.
She went to the windowsill. The moonpetal seed was still there, still buried in its small clay pot, still showing no sign of life. She touched the soil. It was damp. It was warm.
"Okay," she said. To the seed. To herself. To the shop that hummed around her like a secret. "I am still here."
She did not know if that was a promise or a confession. Maybe it was both.