“I don’t know,” Terlu said. “But I think so?” It occurred to her that this was the same as her own situation. Now that she knew the empire had fallen, shethoughtshe was safe, but would she ever truly know? She supposed it was close enough. To the best of her knowledge, the plants were safe. And to the best of her knowledge, she was safe too. Maybe that was all anyone ever got, a hope and a belief.Maybe that’s enough.
As she wound the string into a ball, she heard voices ahead. In response, the dragon on her head flapped its wings and crowed. The voices grew louder and more excited.
Light bounced off the walls, and Terlu heard her name being called:
“Terlu? Yarrow? Are you okay?”
“We’re here!” she called back.
They rounded the corner. Up ahead, she saw a crowd—Birch and Rowan in the lead, with Lotti riding on Rowan’s shoulder. Dendy was hopping beside them. She spotted Yarrow’s uncle Rodrick, as well as Rowan’s wife, Ambrel, behind them with the other plants. She heard Yarrow’s intake of breath, and she knew until that moment that he hadn’t believed they’d come to find him, even though years had passed since he was that little boy alone in the cave, even though everyone knew why they were here and what was at stake.
Rowan grinned when she saw them. “Hey, you’re not lost or dead! Yay!”
“Glad you’re happy about that,” Yarrow said.
“Of course I’m—wait, you’re happy. I think you’re happy. You’re actually smiling.” She twisted to look back at her wife. “Ambrel, is that a smile on my brother’s face?”
“Iamcapable of it,” Yarrow said.
“I wasn’t sure.”
Birch peered at the turtle shell with the ashes. “You found it?”
“And burned it,” Yarrow confirmed. “We’re going to throw the rest into the ocean.”
Birch exhaled heavily. “I was so willing to give up, and all along, the answer was under our feet. I’m sorry. I thought… I thought a lot of things that were wrong, but I should never have given up on our home—or on you.”
Thatwas a real apology.
Looking at Yarrow, Terlu could tell that he heard it too. Unlike Birch’s earlier attempts, this one sounded like it came from the heart—that he both wanted to fix things and understood why they’d broken.
Rowan rolled her eyes. “You seriously can’t blame yourself for that. I don’t think any of us would have ever have guessed… Hey, are those dragons? From the maze?”
Perched on Terlu, the three dragons chirped at Rowan.
She cooed at them. The dragon on Terlu’s left shoulder flew onto Rowan’s shoulder and immediately curled its talons in her braids, like a cat kneading a blanket. She laughed. “Ahh, that tickles!”
The other two dragons stayed on Terlu. One of them wrapped its tail around her neck, like a necklace of warm jewels. The other curled on the top of her head.
Following the string, they trooped out of the cave together. Hopping between their feet, Dendy reported on the progress that the plants had made with sealing the cracks and how they were preparing more ingredients in order to teach whichever humans wanted to learn.Lotti talked about how she’d visited Laiken’s ghost again and told him how they were searching for the ingredients. She thought he seemed happy about it, though it was admittedly difficult to tell, given how little of him there was left. The ghost’s breeze, the rose reported, smelled more like lavender, which was nicer than skunk cabbage.
When they emerged from the cave, the tide had inched closer. It licked at the pebbles a few feet from the opening of the cave. “We should dump the ashes off the dock,” Yarrow suggested. “It’s deeper there.”
“Throw,” Terlu said.
“Same thing, yes?”
“But it sounds more dramatic,” Terlu said. “Words matter.” The right words could heal shattered glass. And hearts. And families. And lives.
“That’s too bad, since I never find the right ones,” Yarrow said.
“You do, when it matters,” Terlu told him, with a smile. She looped her arm through his, and he handed the lantern to his father. He carried the turtle shell cradled in his other arm. They climbed up the slope into the trees and followed the mass of footprints through the snow to the road, and then their little parade continued to the dock.
Yarrow and Terlu walked alone to the end, while the others waited behind them.
“Do you want to do it?” Yarrow offered.
“It should be you. You’re the one the spell hurt the most.”
