Bonbon Sweetwing's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Bonbon limped through the air with her heavy wing dragging her south. She could see the pink towers of the castle now, small in the distance, and past them the green edge of warmer country. She had the mineral. She had the seed. What she did not have was a place to put them. Soil alone was not enough. She needed a spot safe from feet and wind, where the seed could sit undisturbed for the hours it took roots to take. Every minute she spent searching was another crystal creeping down the shell. She checked the seed inside her pouch. The pink had climbed past the middle. She counted four fingers of clear sugar left at the base. Maybe less. She landed hard at the castle gate, one wing skidding in the gravel. Two guards stood at the doors in striped tunics, one blue and round, one white with rainbow stripes. She held up the seed. She held up the satchel of grit. She said she needed a garden bed, any bed, within the hour, or the seed would die. The blue guard frowned at her wing. The striped guard crouched to look at the seed. He said the royal gardens were closed for the frost. He said the public plots were half a day's walk. Then he pointed past her boot. A cat sat in the walkway, white with smears of pink and yellow and blue across its fur, tail curled around a cracked planter someone had dragged out and forgotten. The planter held dark soil and a dead rose stump. The cat blinked at Bonbon and did not move. Bonbon knelt by the planter. She scraped the dead stump out with her fingers. She poured the sour-sugar grit from her satchel into the soil and worked it in until the dirt fizzed against her knuckles. The cat watched. The guards watched. She set the seed in the center, pink side up, and pressed the soil around its base. Then came the hard part. She had to pollinate it. She stretched her good wing forward and brushed the tip against the clear sugar at the base of the shell. The candy went tacky at once. She dragged the sticky edge across the seed, coating it, and felt the seed shiver under her wing like something waking. A thin green thread pushed up from the soil beside her thumb. The pink crystals stopped climbing. They did not retreat, but they stopped. Bonbon sat back on her heels and breathed. The sprout was the width of a hair. The seed was still half stone. Her left wing was still welded stiff with sour grit, and now her right wing was glued to itself in a sticky curl. The cat stepped into the planter and sat down beside the sprout, as if it had decided the job was its now. One of the guards cleared his throat and asked what she planned to do next.