“I should be the one to go,” Birch said.
Yarrow snorted. “No.”
“As your girlfriend has very recently pointed out, I owe it to you.”
“You owe it to me to tell the others if we don’t come back,” Yarrow said. “Send someone in after us if we don’t return by sunset. Do what I need, not what you think I need, for once.” He headed for their cottage, saying to Terlu, “We aren’t going without supplies. Water. Food.”
He did not, Terlu noticed, comment on the word “girlfriend.” It was, she decided, not the time to discuss it, but she held the word tight. “How about we bring string? So we can unspool it and find our way out?” She’d read a story once about a child who used a string to find his way home through a dark and twisty forest, filled with shadowy monsters. Now that she thought about it, it was an old Ginian folktale that she’d read when she first learned the language. It made sense they’d have stories about navigating mazes.
To his father, Yarrow said, “Can you find us a spool of string?”
“I can do that,” Birch said, clearly relieved to have been given a task.
As he trotted away, barely using his cane, Terlu and Yarrow let themselves into the cottage. Warmth and the lingering smell of baked honey cakes curled around them. Both of them unbuttoned their coats, and then he bustled to the kitchen counter.
“You don’t need to be the one to do this,” she said. “He’s right about that. It’s not like you know the caves better than other people. We could send your uncle Rorick. It would be appropriate.”
His lips quirked. “Tempting. But I need to see this through. As you said, these are my greenhouses.” Searching through a cabinet, he located a water bottle.
“Have you been in the caves since then?” Terlu asked. “Has anyone? Is there a map?” She hadn’t seen one in Laiken’s notes, but that could have been because he was paranoid enough to not want anyone to follow him to where he cast the spell. He most likely had known every inch of this island without needing any notes.If we do this… if it works… if I somehow have the time… I am making maps of every inch of this island.And she’d make notes about all of it too. Proper notes, not in code.
“No map. And I only returned once. I didn’t stay.” Yarrow filled the bottle with water and tucked it into a bag. “You don’t need to come with me.”
“Obviously I am. You keep thinking you need to do things alone, and you don’t. Anyway, I had an idea.” She crossed to the cabinets and the icebox and added several jars of honey and a pot of honey butter to Yarrow’s bag. “I think we should bring some dragons.”
He laughed. “What? Why?”
“They know mazes, and they know treasure.”
“You think they’d understand what we wanted?”
“I think they’d be happy to exchange treasure for honey, and I think they’d see shells hidden in a cave as treasure. I don’t know if they’ll want to leave their sunflowers, but we could ask.” You never knew who was willing to help if you didn’t ask.
“You always surprise me,” Yarrow said.
Basking in the praise, she grinned at him.
He grinned back.
“All right, it’s a plan,” Terlu said. “We’ll bring snacks, water, lanterns, string, and dragons. And we won’t stop until we’ve saved Belde.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Yarrow didn’t stride off to the caves on his own to prove that he needed no one but himself, which was a pleasant surprise. Instead, after accepting the spool of thread from his father with a grunt that resembled a thank-you, he followed Terlu to the sunflower maze.
He unlocked the puzzle door with ease. “After you.”
Stepping inside, Terlu held up the pot of honey butter. “Hello, little dragons?” she called.
Overhead, the false aurora rippled over the glass, while the tiny dragons flew like honeybees between the sunflowers. A shining red dragon chirped a greeting or an alert—she wasn’t sure which, but it sounded friendly enough.
Lifting the pot higher, she asked, “Want to come help us find a treasure?”
Yarrow began, “I don’t know that they can understand—”
Three dragons—the red one, a gold-and-black one, and an iridescent emerald one—darted toward her. Flapping their butterfly-like wings, they settled on her: one on each shoulder and the red one on her head, curled in her hair. “See?” Terlu said. “They want to come.”
With a touch of exasperation, Yarrow asked, “Doeseveryonelike you?”
