Terlu handed one of the shovels to Risa, who wrapped their vines around the handle. With one end, Risa secured themself around a pillar and used that as support to dig into the soil. Dirt flew into the air, landing on their leaves, the ground, and the walkway. They didn’t slow.
As the others presented themselves, Terlu handled out trowels. Most were large enough to grasp them with their leaves or vines or, in one instance, roots. All the plants except Lotti.
“I want to help!” Lotti cried, her petals quivering. “Terlu! Terlu, I don’t know how to help. Please help me help.” She was dwarfed by the massive jungle plants in this greenhouse, too small to drag any pots and too small to hold a shovel or even the tiniest trowel. “Terlu, please. I can’t just watch. Never again. I won’t be just decorative.”
Terlu considered the tiny rose. “Can you climb?”
“Yes. Why—”
There was no way to know how quickly the spells would fail or when they’d run out of time. They had to move as many plants as possible before the greenhouse became uninhabitable, which meant starting with the easiest to remove. “We need someone who can see the full picture to tell us where to dig and which plants to rescue first. You’re in charge of triage. Identify which flora is fastest to save and shout to whoever is nearest and able.”
“Yes! I can do that!” She scampered up the nearest pillar like a flowery squirrel. From the rafters above, she began barking orders. “Dendy, three rows to the left, there’s an alocasia that hasn’t spread—yes, there! Nif, help Hosha with the potted fern in the third bed on the left. Ree, the grasses! Yes, those! Zyndia, help Ree!”
Claiming a shovel for herself, Terlu began to dig around the base of a small palm tree. She hoped the edge of the shovel wasn’t cutting through too many of the roots. The tropical trees and bushes had been growing for many years, and they’d spread their roots deep and wide into the soil. She didn’t know if they’d survive transport, but she knew they wouldn’t survive staying where they were.
The talking plants worked as hard and fast as they could, for their size and strength. As soon as one chunk of flora was unearthed, a slew of sentient plants clustered around it to haul it to safety. Lotti perched above it all, directing them to the next rescue, calling out whenever one of the sentient plants or Yarrow or Terlu needed assistance. Shouts would go up whenever a tree, bush, or plant was ready to be moved, and everyone would swarm.
Terlu’s arms ached, and she felt blisters forming on her palms from the shovel handle. Her shoulders ached too, and she was drenchedin sweat. Freeing the palm tree, she dragged it into the other room and then returned. She picked the next tree to uproot.
A few yards away, Yarrow was focused on digging, digging, digging—his shovel didn’t stop. Dirt flew, covering him and filling the walkway behind him. He barely paused to wipe the sweat and dirt out of his eyes.
A moment later, he tossed the shovel on the ground. Dropping to his knees, he began pawing at the dirt to free the roots. Terlu joined him, working her fingers between the roots to loosen them without breaking them. After they’d worked around the base, Yarrow jumped up and began pulling at the trunk. He freed it from the soil, and they carried the tree through the door into the next greenhouse. Its outer branches snapped as they yanked it through the doorframe, but there was no help for it. They hauled it to an empty stretch of walkway.
He didn’t speak as he rushed back into the dying room to dig up the next tree.
She helped the prickly pear, Hosha, and the orchid, Amina, maneuver another bush out the door. The morning glory hauled another pot out, while the delphinium and the fireweed worked together to unearth several clumps of lurid red flowers. In the adjacent greenhouse, the greenery was beginning to pile up. It was going to need to be replanted, and she wasn’t certain it would all survive the shock of being extracted from the earth. The rescuers were all being careful, but was that enough? Also, she didn’t know how they’d replicate the heat and humidity conditions of their original greenhouse.
But that was a worry for later, after they’d saved as much as they could. Taking a deep breath and rolling her shoulders, Terlu dove back in. With Lotti directing her, she cleared a bed, using the wheelbarrow to transport the smaller plants to safety.
Pausing to catch her breath, she scanned the greenhouse—it was still overflowing with green. If they were merely trying to hack it down, that alone would have taken hours, but to remove the plants carefully with roots intact… This was a project that could takedays.I don’t think we have days.“Any guesses how much time we have?”
“Not enough,” Yarrow said grimly.
Terlu picked up her shovel again. If there were more gardeners on the island, maybe they’d have a chance of moving it all, but even with every single sentient plant helping…It’s not enough.They couldn’t work fast enough or hard enough. She pushed the shovel into the dirt again.
And she shivered.
She shouldn’t becold. She was sweating so much, but the sweat chilled on her skin. She felt cold sink into her bones. Looking up, she saw frost lacing the cracked glass. “Yarrow!”
He raised his head, and his breath fogged in front of him. “Everyone, out!”
“Lotti, get down from there!” Terlu called. She scooped up her coat and pulled it on. The ivy was in the middle of hauling a banana tree. With stiffening hands, Terlu helped her load it into the wheelbarrow. She rolled it out of the greenhouse and then went back in.
Dendy was shoving his trowel beneath a plant with elephant-ear leaves and shiny yellow flowers that looked like trumpets. Its leaves were flopped over him, and the whole plant shook as his trowel hit against its roots.
“Temperature’s falling,” Terlu told him. “Your leaves will freeze.”
“Just a few more minutes.”
She joined him with her own trowel. It grew colder and colder, seeping through her coat. Her breath fogged in front of her. She saw frost begin to form on the tips of the philodendron’s leaves, and he began to shiver. “Okay, that’s it.”
Dendy wrapped his tendrils around the roots of the bush as its shiny yellow blossoms drooped and shriveled into brown husks. “I can’t leave them—”
“Yarrow!” Terlu called. She looked up and saw Lotti was clinging to one of the rafters. The little rose still hadn’t left yet either. “Lotti, you have to come downnow!”
Yarrow ran to them.
As Dendy insisted that he wasn’t leaving until the plant was extracted, Yarrow began digging at the roots to the flowering elephant-ear-leaf bush. Lifting his trowel with his leaves again, Dendy dug too. Soil flew into the air as the temperature plummeted.
