“He’s a lizard with wings,” Calisa said. “He totally does.”
“You’re going to give him a complex, making him think he’s something he’s not.”
“Or it’ll give him ambition.”
Jack handed her clippers. He took a pair of shears withlong handles and held them over his shoulder. “I just think he doesn’t look like a Draco.”
“What do you think he looks like?”
He thought for a moment. “He looks like a Steve.”
She laughed. “Okay. Bye, Steve. Let us know if you need more worms.”
With the gardening tools and gloves, Calisa headed out of the greenhouse and walked with Jack through the tall grasses and weeds around to the front of the bed-and-breakfast. The gravel driveway led out of the pine forest and curled up to the front door. It had once been lined with rosebushes and hydrangea bushes and probably countless flowers. Now it was all overrun with weeds. Vines crept over everything, especially the bushes in front of the porch. She could see why Jack had just given up on it. It was overwhelming, and this was just the front yard. Calisa tried to make out the intended shape of the yard, but it was all far too overrun.
“How do I tell what’s weed and what isn’t?” she asked.
Standing next to her, Jack was surveying the disaster too. “A weed is just any plant that’s growing where you don’t want it to grow.”
Fair enough. She continued to contemplate the vast expanse of bushes, brambles, and vines. How on earth had it gotten this bad? What had Jack been doing with his time? And his dad? He was supposedly the groundskeeper. Why wasn’t anyone keeping the grounds?
Nearby, the statue of the stone lady stood in between grapevine-covered rosebushes with her hands clasped in frontof her. Calisa wondered if it had been moved again or if she was just misremembering. She opened her mouth to ask, but before she could, Steve the lizard waddled out of the grass and plopped himself at her feet as if the journey had been utterly exhausting and he resented every inch of it. “Oh. Hey, Steve. Are you going to help?”
Angling himself so his back faced the sun, he sprawled on one of the walkways, which couldn’t have been a more clearnoif he’d spoken.
“Guess we have an audience.” Calisa turned back to the B&B and put her hands on her hips. “How about we start on the left side of the porch? And then we can work out from there?” That should make it feel like less of a Herculean task.
“Sure,” Jack said.
Steve gave a contented snort and rolled onto his side.
Together they attacked the bushes. Calisa yanked vines away, while Jack clipped them free. She winced as branches scratched her arms and thought she should have worn long sleeves, but after a while she started to sweat and was glad for the short sleeves and shorts.
Leaves showered down on her as she tugged on a knot of vines, and she leaned backward for leverage. With snaps and pops and creaks and groans, vines separated from the porch in one massive kraken-like tumbleweed. She staggered backward, then caught her balance. Jack joined her, and together they dragged the debris to the edge of the forest and left it in a tangled pile.
They waded back through the weeds to the porch.
As they began to yank down the next wad of vines, which were wrapped around the sides of the porch and clumped on top of the shrubbery, the front door of the inn flew open, and a girl a few years older than Calisa, possibly early twenties, raced outside. Very pretty. Very angry. Her hair was dyed hues of brilliant green. Her face was furious. She wore a flowery dress that flowed behind her as she ran down the steps, across the gravel driveway, and into the midst of the bushes and brambles.
Halting, she shrieked at the yard, the sky, and the forest,“Why do you scream?”
Calisa glanced at Jack. She hadn’t heard any—
The stranger spun in a circle. Her skirt flared around her, along with her bright green hair, and then she stopped and leveled a finger directly at Calisa. “You!”
“Me? Um, what? Hi. I wasn’t…”
Head down bull-like, she charged across the lawn toward Calisa and Jack. The brambles bowed on either side of her as she marched through them. Out of the corner of her eye, Calisa noticed that the statue was reaching out a hand as if to slow the girl. She had just enough time to think,Weren’t her hands clasped?before the green-haired girl, her fists clenched and her shoulders shaking, reached Calisa.
Dropping his clippers, Jack jumped in front of Calisa. In a pleasant the-customer-is-always-right voice, as if the strange girl weren’t rushing toward them as if she wanted to tackle them, he said, “Melidor, can I help you with something?”
“Yes!” Melidor tried to dodge him to reach Calisa, but he moved with her.
Holding a bunch of just-pulled weeds in front of her like they were a shield, Calisa retreated toward the corner of the porch. “Hi. Hey, hi. What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“How can we help?” Jack asked.
Melidor spotted the clippers that Jack had dropped, and she let out another high-pitched shriek. Her cheeks flushed with an oddly greenish tinge. “You’re hurting them!”
