Amanita Sporewell's Arc

Chapter 13 of 14

By the third morning, the path to Amanita's gate was worn flat by strangers. A badger came first, then two field mice, then a hedgehog who only wanted to look. Word had traveled. The red-and-white ring around her fern was the talk of the hollow, and every creature within a day's walk wanted to see it for themselves. Amanita stood at the gate with a cup of tea and watched them come. She was tired. She was also, for the first time, happy. The sprites kept order along the ring. They tapped the noses of anyone who leaned too close and led the polite ones in a slow circle around the fern. Grizak had built a low rope fence at the edge of the loam. She sat on a stump beside it and counted visitors on her fingers until she ran out of fingers. A little before noon, a shimmer settled on the gatepost. The fairy from the willow grove. The one who had taken the etched bottle and never given it back. She folded her wings and looked at the garden the way a jeweler looks at a stone. "You did it," the fairy said. "They said you couldn't and you did." Amanita set her cup down. "You are not taking anything." "I'm not here for taking." The fairy touched the pouch at her hip and drew out a small brass tag on a chain. "The shop sent me. They want to sell your caps. Cuttings, spores, whole plants. They'll split the coin with you and send buyers straight to your gate." Amanita looked past her, down the path, toward the flower shop she knew well. Petals on the eaves. Vines around the sign. She had traded there for yarrow, for pepper root, for the fern that saved her. She had never sold anything back. "How many buyers?" "As many as you can feed." The fairy smiled. "Starting tomorrow." Amanita walked the ring once, slowly. Forty caps. Small and perfect. Half of every crop already promised to the sprites. She stopped at the fern and put her hand on the loam. "I'll sell cuttings," she said. "Not the ring. The ring stays whole." The fairy tied the brass tag to the gatepost. "Then it's yours. They'll come at first light." She lifted off and was gone before Amanita could change her mind. Grizak came over and read the tag. "That's a shop mark. That means real coin." "It means real mouths," Amanita said. She looked at the ring and did the math the way her aunt had taught her. Forty caps. Nine sprites. One fern. A shop's worth of buyers by sunrise. She had wanted attention. She had it now. She would have to grow faster than she ever had, or the garden that finally looked like hers would be picked bare by the end of the week.