Tucking the pouch of seeds alongside the letter, Marin grinned. “I’ll tell you someday. Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll make up a few fabulous stories, and you can decide which one is true. Everyone always expects sailors to have incredible adventures to faraway lands… And yes. Yes, we do.”
Terlu opened her mouth to ask more.
Marin held up a finger. “Another time. I’ve only so much daylight to ride the wind and a lot of islands in my path. I’ll deliver yourgardener’s letter. And then someday I want to hear aboutthatstory, how you befriended the Reclusive Gardener of Belde. I will be disappointed if there isn’t at least one passionate kiss involved.”
Terlu sputtered.
Laughing, Marin untied the sailboat from the dock. “Come on, new deckhand. The waves wait for no man, woman, or shrubbery.”
Ree scurried onto the boat. “Tell the others I’ll be back with stories too!”
Still laughing, Marin shoved off the dock with her foot. She pulled on a line until the sail caught the wind. Crossing to the mast, Ree wrapped his branches around it and climbed.
“Happy sailing! And thank you!” Terlu called after them.
Marin waved and then she tilted her head back and sang a cascade of notes. Out toward the open sea, an iridescent serpent leaped out of the waves, trumpeting the notes back to her.
On the dock, Terlu watched until the sailor, the shrub, and the serpent disappeared from view.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
After two weeks of research, with the frequent assistance of Dendy, Terlu had amassed a stack of spells that she didn’t think would cause anyone or anything to blow up or transform unpleasantly. She was sorting through them when Yarrow poked his head into the sorcerer’s workroom. “Lunch?” he offered.
He was carrying a plate covered with a tea towel. She smelled the herbs as soon as he stepped inside. “That smells amazing,” she said. “What it is?”
“Carrot and zucchini bread. My own recipe.” He looked sheepish as he said it, as if it were of lower quality because he’d invented it. “It tastes better than it sounds. Inspired by my aunt Rin’s carrot muffin recipe.”
“It sounds wonderful.” She wondered if Aunt Rin was one of his relatives in Alyssium. After she’d told him Marin’s news about the revolution, his face had squinched up in a worried kind of way, but he, of course, hadn’t wanted to talk about it. He had, though, started baking more recipes that he said were theirs, so she knew he was thinking about them.
She cleared a spot on the worktable, and he set down the plate. The aroma of baked bread wafted up. It smelled like a fall harvest. Or like a farmer’s market when the sun has been shining and the rain’s been falling and everything has grown so tremendously wellthat no one will be hungry all winter. “When did you have time to bake this?” He, with Lotti and the other sentient plants, had been working to replant the rescued plants from the dead tropical greenhouse. They had managed to save more than Yarrow would have been able to transplant on his own, but it was still only a fraction of what the sun-drenched room had held.
Yarrow shrugged. “Finished with the emergencies. Now it’s up to the plants themselves to root. There’s nothing I can do to help them do that.” Removing the tea towel, he revealed the loaf: golden-brown, with a beautiful split through the length of the top crust. He sliced the loaf with a knife he’d brought and passed her a wedge on a napkin.
“Thank you.” Inside, the bread was flecked with herbs, as well as curls of carrot and zucchini. It was as moist as a cake and smelled of cinnamon, nutmeg, and hints of sweet spiciness. She wondered whether it would be rude or flattering if she shoved the entire slice in her mouth.
“Wait.” He withdrew a small pot from one of his pockets, as well as a spoon. “It tastes better with honey butter.”
She smeared on a pat of honey butter and took a bite. It tasted light, sweet, and full of herbs that she couldn’t name but knew she’d want to eat again and again. Closing her eyes, she savored the next bite. When she opened them again, she saw Yarrow was watching her. He looked away quickly and cut another slice. “If you ever want a second career,” Terlu said, “you’d make an incredible chef.”
He shrugged. “It’s just bread. Glad you like it.”
It wasn’t just bread. It was the fact that he’d thought of her while he baked it, had carried it through the snow with a pot of honey butter in his pocket, and worried about whether she’d like it. If she hadn’t, she was certain he’d have disappeared and returned with another even more delicious concoction that he’d describe as “just bread” or “just a snack” or “just breakfast” when it was a perfectly laminated almond croissant served inside a squash carved to look like a swan, or something equally exquisite—she wondered if a squashcouldbe carved to look like a swan. Maybe a duck?
She spent a bit of time imagining what kind of animals could be created out of a squash before she turned back to her notes. “I think I found a few spells that could work.”
He quit chewing. “Why didn’t you say that when I first came in?”
“You brought bread.”
“This is more important than bread.”
“How could anything be more important than bread, especially with honey butter?”
“Terlu.”
“Sorry. It’s just that the key phrase is ‘could work.’ You see, Laiken liked to experiment, and while he kept meticulous notes about the ingredients he used in each experiment, he was less meticulous about recording the results. Most of the time I’ve been drawing conclusions based on what he tweaked for his next iteration. Anyway, IthinkI found the final version of his spell for the greenhouses—it’s a complex, multistage spell with interwoven effects that simultaneously fortifies the glass and insulates it to allow for the stabilization of the temperature and humidity within the structure, though”—she spread out the papers—“I question his use ofrwyr-entin line three… Anyway, the point is: to proceed any further, I need to experiment.”
He picked up the nearest spell and looked at it.
