Chapter 8
In order to protect the sanctity and sanity of all, the Queen declared that, henceforth, no one would ever be allowed to chop wood ever again.
Grow a garden.
The words jolted me awake, sending shock waves through my shivering body. Damn, it was frigid in here.
I did not, in fact, have a dreamless sleep.
That would necessitate more than a few minutes of sleeping.
In between my sheets, freezing my arse off, my night had gone miserably.
I could feel my eyes drying up in my skull, awaiting my eyelids to give them the sweet reprieve of nothingness. Instead, I just kept staring upward.
Warty snored, Hesper snored. I wanted to jostle them both for rubbing it in my face that they could slumber while I sank so far into self-wallowing, I thought I may never see the light of day again.
But somewhere between snotting into my pillow in utter despair and experiencing out-of-body despondency, I got a hold of myself.
Either try and figure out what to do or rot in bed.
Gentle, kind words in my time of need, yes, that’s what I was known for.
Even so, the sentiment snapped me out of my hazy purgatory.
A task and a deadline had been dumped on me—two things that I thrived on (much to my chagrin at this particular moment).
Was it ruining my life? Yes. But would I fight tooth and nail to achieve the impossible? Also yes.
I blinked up at the ceiling waiting for any solution to come to me.
And then, one did.
A feeble hope at best, like starting a small fire in a rain-drenched wood. But the embers caught nonetheless, and a meager ray of hope took hold in my heart. Just enough to push away some of the fear and make room for this plan.
Could it work?
Well, it had to.
Ideas were a finite resource and there were no other means to make this quest successful.
I had one chance, and one chance only.
Grow a garden.
One month.
She did not say I must use garden magic to grow the garden in Dwindle, nor did she mention magic at all.
Thank Goddesses—that would have been impossible to work around.
Of course, any sensible, nonmagical gardener would know that growing anything in just a month is, frankly, unfeasible.
I would have needed to start those sowings at least six weeks ago.
Sure, there were the few token plants that might sprout up in no time: spinach, herbs, some radishes.
But that was barely a harvest, let alone a full-on garden.
The fact of the matter was that I needed magic.
And I had two weeks in Moss. The place where I did have some magic. If I could get my heart together, squeeze out any hope in me left, then my idea might just work.
I shot up out of bed, but I forgot that I’d drunk last night. A lot. A pounding headache and roiling nausea hit me as soon as I went vertical. No matter; I’d have to deal with it.
I needed to acquire seeds.
And find a new Town Gardener.
And avoid Rosie.
And avoid looking at myself in the mirror because I could feel dried slobber encrusted around my mouth and my hair sticking up at all angles.
A bath. I needed a hot bath and a cup of tea before I did anything.
My washbasin lived behind the house, right outside the kitchen window.
The perfect setup for carrying hot water from the hearth and dumping it through the window.
I’d also charmed a few morning glories to grow around the tub and around the garden gate.
They only bloomed when someone came to knock.
That way, I never ran the risk of being caught unawares and fully nude by an unexpected visitor.
If they didn’t knock, well, I supposed they’d see a very naked Town Gardener first thing in the morning.
Yet another reason to wake before anyone else in the town.
But now I had a Hesper downstairs who would inevitably be in my way. And the thought of getting fully nude anywhere around her made my insides curdle. Maybe she had the ability to sleep deeply, and I could have a semipeaceful morning before she woke up and ruined everything.
I made my way down the ladder, careful to avoid any of the creaky bits. My feet silently found the cold floor beneath.
Darkness coated everything still, the only light being the last moonbeams before daybreak.
I padded into the kitchen, dancing my way around the loose floorboards.
That’s when I remembered I had absolutely no firewood left.
And I didn’t have the time to waste cutting more.
I would just have to deal with a freezing bath this morn.
I then realized that Hesper was nowhere to be found.
The blanket I’d thrown down sat neatly folded and placed in the corner beside the hearth. The only sign she had been here at all was her cloak hanging on my kitchen chair.
A sharp thwack sounded outside my window.
Was that an axe?
Another thwack.
It was an axe.
I walked through the front door and turned left into the back garden.
There I saw Hesper, her muscular back facing me, chopping my firewood.
She’d changed out of her leathers and into a black, long-sleeved tunic that only went down to her midthigh.
I tried to avert my gaze away from her brawny legs, but I couldn’t stop staring.
How does she have that much muscle? She looked more harrowing than the tree trunks she expertly halved.
I audibly gulped before I tried to run back inside, but Hesper heard me.
She turned around, sweat glistening on her brow, and smiled. “Morning, princess.”
My heart leapt into my throat. Her voice was husky in the early morning, a fact I did not need to note but that was going to live in my head, coin-free, for the rest of my life.
I crossed my arms tightly over my chest. “Mm-hmm” was all I managed to say.
“Thought you might like”—she split an entire stump in two—“hot water for a bath this morning.” Her tunic sleeves were rolled up. Why, why did she have to do that? I noticed a thin, black band tattooed around her left forearm. Then she swung her axe again, and I forgot about the world.
Much to my utter dismay, my mouth hung wide open. A fly, a bird, hells a whole turkey leg could have fit inside my gaping at Hesper’s brute strength.
She’s your enemy. You hate her.
I do?
Yes, you hate her.
Why?
Because. She is part of this quest that ruined your life. She almost jeopardized the entire Celebration and let the squirrel get away. And also, she calls you “princess,” so yes, you hate her.
Of course, yes. But was it really her fault? She had a job to do, after all. As for the squirrel… let’s be honest with ourselves—I only maybe would have caught it if she hadn’t opened the door when she did. Maybe I had been too harsh on her before.
Yes, of course you were. Even so, she is here on Eldrene’s orders, and her orders only. Nothing more.
Yes, nothing more.
“Do I look so terrible that you just had to draw me a bath?” I asked, attempting to joke.
“Not at all.” She moved the huge halved stumps out of the way, grunting as she did so. My heart leapt again—traitorous thing. “What does look terrible are your rosemary bushes underneath your bedroom window. Did a disease or pest get to them?”
“No.” I didn’t even have to look at the massacre to know what had happened. “Nothing of that sort.” Do I tell her? Not the whole truth, never the whole truth. But some explanation should be given. “Sometimes that happens,” I said tightly.
“Sometimes your rosemary bushes look like someone torched them overnight?”
“My magic—it, uh—” I kicked at the dirt, the irony of my magic coming out of my mouth curdled my stomach. “Well, sometimes that happens.”
“Is that so?” Hesper stopped her swinging, looking up at me with a curious gleam in her eyes. “Hmm.” Then she got back to work.
She knows something isn’t right.
If she could scent a squirrel, I’m sure she could sense just how weak of a vessel I was.
“I noticed your washbasin sparkled, so I assumed you must wash every day.” She reset a new stump, bigger than the last, and with her arms up high in the air, she murmured, “What a shame.”
“Why?” I asked, blinking dumbly as I watched her back muscles bunch for another hit.
Thwack.
The stump cleaved in two like butter.
She turned toward me, wiping a smear of sweat from her upper lip with the back of her hand. “I like the smell.”
With that, she stuck the axe into the cutting wood with one hand and went back inside the cottage as if nothing happened. As if what she’d said was absolutely normal. As if she did not just jolt my entire body with her words, her dark eyes, her scarred, wet upper lip.
I took a freezing cold bath.
“And how many seeds will you be needing?” Farmer Gristle asked, his bristly white mustache fluttering with each word. “Your usual amount?”
“Uh, no,” I replied.
“Oh, right. Excuse me.” He put a hand over his heart in apology.
“No, no, it’s all right. Nothing to be excused for,” I said, trying to muster a warm smile. “A small pack is all I need. Please put whatever you think would be good for travel in the mix.”
Farmer Gristle gave me a kind nod and set to curating the seed pack.
I had been coming to his tiny farm shoppe ever since I became Moss’s Town Gardener.
The shoppe was basically a wooden shack, but the walls were covered in vessels that held all sorts of seeds.
Everyone thought his shoppe to be minimal and lackluster.
To me, an entire world lived in here, just waiting to be sung to life.