Chapter 1 #2
“And the Crown Jewel Tulip, too. Don’t forget that, you silly girl!” She swayed her shoulders like she danced to music only she could hear. It made me want to gut her where she stood. Her blood would ruin the soil, though.
“I’m well aware.” I breathed deeply, willing patience into my body like I willed life into dying flowers. I failed miserably. My ability to control my anger was about as successful as my relationship with my magic—so, almost nonexistent. But I was trying.
“I just think what you do is so impressive. But it must be stressful for you. And you certainly have had a bit of an attitude these last few months. You are living up to your namesake, Clara Thorne.” She grinned up at me, her impossibly white teeth gleaming in the morning sun. I gave her a tight smile back.
As much as I wished otherwise, Helda—at least in the moment—was not wrong.
Being Moss’s Town Gardener and providing the majority of fruits, vegetables, and flowers for the townsfolk already strained my meager garden magic.
The Goddess Celebration was a whole other gauntlet.
Eldrene had only requested one vegetable this time, mercifully—carrots. And the usual abundance of tulips.
But the Crown Jewel Tulip, her most important requirement, was notoriously testy, requiring very specific preparation—two months of rest beneath the shade of an old oak tree in an enchanted wooden box filled with pine needles, individually plucked by hand, before being serenaded by magic to awaken the bloom.
Of course, I also had to handle special requests from the town’s bakers and cooks: courgettes, herbs of all kinds, flowers for filling up the shoppe windows.
My usual disposition ran grumpy, but prepping for the Goddess Celebration had me frenzied and grumpy. But maybe I could prove Helda wrong today. I could be sweet—or at least whatever was the opposite of grumpy.
“Helda, what do you want?” I forced my tight smile into a wider grin, certain it looked more like a grimace.
“I suppose you insist on staying up there, then?”
I plopped down on the window ledge as an answer.
“Fine then! I need to know the color of the Crown Jewel Tulip so that I can match my dress to it. And my hair. And my nails. And my jewelry, you know. The usual.” She whipped out a small piece of parchment and a travel quill.
“So, could you just tell me what the colors will be? I know it’s meant to be a secret, but I figured we were such good friends that you could give me a head start! ”
Such good friends? I stifled a scoff. Helda and I were many things—but friends we were not. Besides, she’d been to plenty of Goddess Celebrations at this point. How had she missed the pinnacle of the entire ceremony?
Be sweet, I told myself. Or be not grumpy, you can do it.
“The Crown Jewel Tulip only blooms when Eldrene herself touches it.” I attempted to say it kindly.
“But you have it now, don’t you?”
“Yes, I—”
“What’s the point of you having it if nothing happens until she touches it?”
“It’s not like the tulip is just sitting in the box, Helda. Magic is an intricate thing—sometimes it needs as much of a growing season as everything else.”
She quirked an eyebrow up at me as if in disbelief.
“Is the tulip in there?” She pointed to the plain wooden box sitting under the oak tree. I gave her a curt nod. She pursed her lips together before narrowing her eyes at me.
“Why can’t Eldrene just grow it herself? What makes you so special?” Her sickeningly sweet tone lingered on “special.”
Tight coils wound their way around my heart, and the tenuous hold on my patience ebbed. The only special thing about me was that I ever managed to grow anything at all. Magic and I worked together about as well as Helda and I did.
“The pine needed for the tulip’s rest cannot be found where Eldrene is confined in Moss Wood.
” Any warmth in my voice evaporated like the morning dew.
“As the Goddess Celebration Gardener, I am able to travel to the Idle Groves, retrieve the needles, and tend to the tulip bulb. She could have chosen anyone. I am not special—just in the right place at the right time.”
Any ole Town Gardener could serve as Celebration Gardener. All the job required was garden magic to tend the Crown Jewel Tulip. Before I showed up, the position of Celebration Gardener rotated around the realm. Folk dreaded the job—granted, it’s a massive undertaking.
I showed up here at thirteen, alone and scraggly clothed, on the same day the former Town Gardener had just announced his sudden resignation—right when it was Moss’s turn to serve as Celebration Gardener.
He was on his way to the Golden Isles, and thanks to a well-timed accident, I looked to have both garden magic and a desperate desire to be Town Gardener.
Some might call what happened that day Fate, but I called it my ability to keep a tight schedule.
And Moss’s magic, of course. But Helda needn’t know that. No one needed to know that.
“Something you do must be special,” Helda countered. “You take longer to harvest your crops than any other Town Gardener we’ve had. Yet Eldrene always requests you.”
“Some things take time,” I said as I rubbed at my temples, the coils around my heart growing tighter by the second.
“Is that not the benefit of having magic? It takes less time,” she quipped back.
“Perhaps,” I conceded.
“And you sing to your harvest; why? I’ve never heard of any other Town Gardener having to do that,” she said with a sickeningly sweet tone, twirling her hair around her fingers like a threat.
“That’s the only way—” to get my magic to work most days. “That’s just how I do it.”
“Couldn’t anyone with garden magic do your job?” she pressed, one perfectly sculpted eyebrow raised high.
“Yes, but—”
“Then why you?” she asked again.
“I—well—” I scrambled for words, for anything to gain purchase in this conversation.
The rosemary bush below my window began to yellow at the top—a telltale sign that my emotions were getting away from me.
Why was I letting Helda get to me this way?
There were plenty of things in this life that made me unsure of myself, but my work was not one of them.
My harvests were always on time—albeit never early.
But who likes being too early anyhow? Moss was well-fed, shoppes overflowed with my crops, and the Goddess Celebration had never seen tulips grown better than mine.
Magic did not make me special. But my life, my purpose, rested on my dedication to being Town Gardener.
I loved this town more than folk knew, and it seeped into the very soil that I worked in.
What’s more, I wanted to be Celebration Gardener—so I’ve had the job ever since.
“Because being the Goddess Celebration Gardener is about more than just magic,” I said proudly. The tightness around my heart loosened, the rosemary bush below grew green again. “It’s about—wait, how do you know I sing to my garden?”
“And what does the squirrel have to do with it?” Helda flung her arms up into the air, her singsong voice taking on a discordant edge.
“What are you—”
“Why does the squirrel get to touch the tulip before Eldrene? I don’t get to know the colors ahead of time, but some wood rat gets to poke around in the box?” She threw her parchment on the ground, stomping on more carrot tops in the process.
But her temper tantrum was the least of my worries. Because, for the second time today, Helda was not wrong. The box under the oak tree lay empty, and a squirrel with a tulip bulb in its mouth dashed for my garden gate.
My heart stopped.
“No!” I shouted, leaning too far forward from my place on the window ledge and falling into the rosemary bushes below.
I rolled my ankle in the process and yelled a slew of curses.
Helda stopped her protests and tried to assist me, but I threw her hand away as I struggled to get up. My shoe wedged deep into the roots, and after a few unsuccessful tugs, I unlaced my boot and left it behind, setting off in a mad half-limp, half-run dash after the squirrel.
He was already far ahead, but I could see his black-tufted tail on the horizon. A Shadow Woods Squirrel then. So he wouldn’t divert to any nearby woods. He’d head straight back to his native murky forest, which required going through Moss’s main street. My only chance to catch him would be there.
If he got to the forest, the Crown Jewel Tulip would be impossible to recover.
If I lost the Crown Jewel Tulip, the Goddess Celebration would be ruined.
If the Goddess Celebration was ruined, Eldrene, the protector of this realm, would wither away.
I picked up my pace, my legs burning and my ankle throbbing.
We crested the last hill that led into town and barreled down the sloping ridge.
My feet hit the cobblestones, and I was grateful that Moss still slept.
They usually awoke to Francis playing his lute, but today, more than likely, folks were startling awake from my bare feet slapping the stones.
The squirrel slowed slightly. The tulip bulb must have been heavier than he anticipated. A thrill of triumph went through me. My breath came in hot, sharp pants, but my pace only quickened. If I could just get my hands on the bastard…
The fiend darted into an alleyway filled with seller wagons.
I smiled. That alley was a dead-end, and he was dead meat.
A rip filled the air; my dress snagged on the jam lady’s cart, sending it teetering. I reached out to right it when the squirrel darted in between my feet and tripped me. I went sailing, the jam cart toppling and taking the ale and baker cart down along with it.
Broken glass scattered everywhere, and all sorts of reddish liquid now covered my dress. I let out an almighty shriek and scrambled back up again, ignoring the searing pain in my foot from stomping on the shards.
I was gaining on him now. He may be fast, but I knew these streets far too well to be bested by a squirrel. His claws pulled at the thatched roofs as he went along, raining hay down and blurring my vision.
We reached the last row of cottages just before the grassy clearing that led into Moss Wood.
My legs burned with white-hot fire, my twisted ankle screamed, and my bare foot profusely bled, but if I could get to the end of the street before he did, he’d have no choice but to land in my arms. The world would be right again, the tulip would be safe, and my nemesis would be in a stew by the evening.
He made it to the last cottage, readying for a jump, but I beat him to the chase.
Got you. The squirrel leapt into the air, his body mere centimeters away from my outstretched arms—
The world split in two.
My skull cracked in half.
The world went dark. I was probably a little dead. Or a lot.
A door. A Goddess-damned door had opened, and I’d run straight into it, falling back into a pile of steaming hot horse shite. At least it cushioned the back of my head from busting on the cobblestones.
“Are you all right?” a gravelly voice asked through the haze. Two rough hands tried to hoist me up.
“Get off me!” I pushed them away. They were shockingly difficult to move. “Where is it?” I asked frantically, straining to focus.
“Where’s what?” the stranger asked gently.
“The squirrel!” I sounded deranged, scanning the roofs for the beast. But hot tears blurred my vision, turning the world into watercolor slashes against the morning sky.
My heart began to crumple. No squirrel. No tulip.
Utter disaster. He had escaped, and I failed.
The stranger offered a hand again, and I swatted it away.
“Whoever you are, I don’t need your help. You’ve done enough.”
“I heard a commotion,” the voice replied. Bits of my vision started to come back, but all I could see was a swirling shadow in front of me. My head suddenly became too heavy to hold up and dropped to the side. Rough hands caught it immediately.
“I said”—I gritted my teeth—“I don’t need your help.” I tried to move, but flashes of pain seared through me, and I fell back to the ground again.
“We need to get you to a medic,” the voice said with finality. They hoisted me over their shoulder with ease.
“What are you doing?” I yelled, beating at the stranger’s back.
Then, I heard a squeak from high overhead.
From behind a chimney, a small silhouette emerged.
The squirrel surveyed me from his perch.
The bastard must have returned to the roof to watch my demise.
I arched my neck as much as I could from my place behind this fool who’d ruined everything.
Squirrels couldn’t smile; I knew they couldn’t, but even through my tears, I swore a devilish grin played across his face.
He held the Crown Jewel Tulip high in his grimy paws.
I helplessly pointed to the chimney looming over us.
“Please,” I bit out. “The squirrel, he has my”—my vision swirled, inky blackness creeping onto the edges—“He has my”—bile rose into my mouth, the salty tang on my tongue—“He has my tulip!” I finally cried.
Then I vomited all over the stranger’s back, my last bit of strength finally sputtering out as we made our way through awakening Moss.