“You want a Winter Feast?”
“You don’t celebrate?” She supposed it wouldn’t make sense to, on his own. The solstice celebrations were all about coming together with loved ones, to rejoice in the light together. Also, there was lotsand lots of food. “The Great Library closes to outsiders for the Solstice Feasts, both Summer and Winter, but the Winter Feast was always my favorite. For the Winter Feast, all the librarians are invited to the head librarian’s office. She resides at the top of the tallest spire. Eighty-six steps from the top level of the stacks to her office, and each step would have a tray with a different delicacy on it. Each recipe was from a different island in the Crescent Islands Empire, selected by the librarian in charge of the food history section of the Great Library. There were crab puffs from Dault, stuffed figs from Tirza, marinated beef skewers with pearl onions from Blaye. You’d gather everything you wanted and, when you reached the head librarian’s office, she’d wish you light in the darkness.”
“Must have gotten crowded up there,” Lotti said.
“Oh no, that was the best part.” Terlu smiled, remembering it. “Each librarian would leave the office through the window, lowered in a gondola lit with twinkling lights—magical lights—all the way down to the canals. You could then feast with others by the water, if you wanted.” A few stayed, and they’d talked and laughed late into the night until all the solstice lights dimmed and were replaced by stars above. It was her favorite night of the entire year.
“Eighty-six delicacies?” Yarrow said.
“The tricky part was not dropping your plate while you were in the gondola.”
“Huh,” he grunted. Then: “You should put on your coat.”
There were two dead greenhouses to cross before they reached the door to the maze. These were absent of plants, either dead or alive, and Terlu wondered if Yarrow had been able to rescue them before the temperature plummeted. She hoped so.
At the end of the second greenhouse was a door that didn’t match any of the other doors she’d seen. It wasn’t wreathed in delicate ironwork. Instead it was made of interlocking plates. Halting, Yarrow stared at it and grunted again, a less happy grunt this time.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” Lotti asked.
Terlu noticed it didn’t have a handle or a knob. “It’s a puzzle.”
“You don’t need me for this,” Yarrow said. “I’m of more use tending to the gardens than playing with Laiken’s toys.”
“You know how to open it, though, don’t you?”
“You have to align the pieces.”
“How?” Lotti asked.
“Carefully,” Yarrow said.
If the rose had eyes to roll, she would have. “You don’t know, do you,” Lotti accused. “I thought you’d come here before.”
“Not in a while,” Yarrow said. “Self-sustaining ecosystem. It doesn’t need me, while plenty of other rooms do. Give me a minute—I’ll remember.” He crossed his arms and stared at the door.
Terlu studied the plates, some silver and some bronze, but all of them ovals. It reminded her of the scales of a fish. “Maybe they’re all supposed to point the same direction?” She began to rotate them. “Or silver in one direction and bronze in the other? No, that’s too simple.”
“Ooh, maybe they’re petals,” the rose said. “Make them into flowers!”
“A chrysanthemum,” Yarrow said suddenly. He pointed to the center of the door. “All the petals point out from the heart of the flower. Technically, chrysanthemums are a composite of many flowers—disk florets in the center of the bloom and ray florets on the perimeter—but the effect is one massive bloom with concentric circles of petals. See, I knew I’d remember.”
“Because I reminded you,” Lotti said. “I am obviously the brains of this operation.”
Stifling a laugh, Terlu didn’t point out that Yarrow had been about to leave. She rotated the “petals,” beginning in the center with a circle that pointed out and continued on. As she worked, the winged cat flew off her shoulders and up to perch in the rafters. He began to groom himself.
“White and yellow chrysanthemums can be brewed into a nice tea,” Yarrow said. “It’s best if you use closed buds and add honey.”
“One of my friends is a chrysanthemum,” Lotti said darkly.
“You can harvest the flowers without harming the plant.”
Three circles done. She started on the fourth. Some of the petals were easy to twist and others rotated so smoothly that they promptly flopped to point downward. She fixed the ones that had drooped and finished the fourth circle.
“I hope you ask permission first,” Lotti said.
“Always,” Yarrow said.
Terlu loved that he said that with complete sincerity. He probably did ask. While she squatted to finish the petals at the bottom of the door, he aligned the ones at the top.
