Shivering hard, Terlu hurried to beneath the rafter where Lotti was perched. “You need to come down! Lotti, please! You’ll freeze!”
“I can’t!” Lotti wailed. “It’s all iced up! I’ll fall! I’ll splat!”
The cold was beginning to hurt. It burned her throat as she breathed in. The temperature had to have plummeted far beneath freezing, beyond what any plant could survive. If Lotti stayed, she’d die.If I stay…She’d have frostbite if she lingered any longer. These weren’t normal winter temperatures. It was deeply, deadly cold.
“You can catch me!” Lotti said.
“No, don’t—” Terlu wasn’t good at catching. When she was a kid, a favorite beach game was tossing a cloth ball to your teammates, keeping it away from the other team, but she was routinely the last to be picked to play, due to the fact that she tended to close her eyes whenever anything flew at her.
But Lotti was already pushing herself off the edge. “Wheeeee!”
Terlu felt as if everything faded around her, the world narrowing to just her and the falling rose. She reached her arms up, and she felt as if she were moving slowly, so slowly, too slowly. Her hands felt too small—I’ll miss, and she’ll fall and splat, and it will be my fault…She scooted to the left.No, right. No, left—
Lotti landed in her palms.
Terlu breathed again.
She cradled the little plant to her and jogged out of the greenhouse. She burst into the next room, into the warmth, and fell onto her knees. Heat pressed into her, and her fingers and toes felt as if they were burning. “Yarrow?”
No answer.
He hadn’t joined them.
“Dendy?”
The philodendron wasn’t here either. Both had stayed in the deadly cold greenhouse. The windows were iced in flowerlike patterns that rendered them opaque.
She set Lotti on the ground, and the ivy, Risa, circled her, coiling snakelike, tight around the rose. “I’ll warm you,” Risa told Lotti.
The little rose shivered. “Thank you.”
Terlu forced herself to stand. She hadnotprepared properly for an emergency like this—a lifetime of studying languages and then a stint as a statue did not make one as physically fit as a full-time gardener, which was normally fine.
She plunged back into the frigid greenhouse.
Both Yarrow and Dendy were attempting to pull the flowering bush toward the door. She joined them, but as she grabbed for one of the branches, it snapped off. “It’s frozen,” she said gently. “Dendy, it’s over. We have to go.”
The philodendron was stiffening.
“Yarrow, you have to leave it.” She scooped Dendy’s root ball and leaves into her arms. “Come on. It’s subzero. You can’t stay in here.”
“Take him,” Yarrow said.
She hesitated.
“Go!”
Scooping up Dendy, she ran to the safety and warmth of the next greenhouse. The plant felt brittle in her arms. “Almost there,” she whispered. “Hang in there. You’ll be okay.”
She reached the doorway and half fell through it.
Joining the others, Terlu dropped to the ground. “Dendy, say something. Please.”
He was silent. And still.
“What do I do? He’s so cold.” She touched one of his leaves and then cried out as it broke off in her fingers. She felt tears well up in her eyes. Every bit of her hurt. She’d tried so hard. All of them had. And it wasn’t enough. “Dendy… Please, wake up.”
She felt hands on her shoulders.
