Dahlia Bleu's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Dahlia set the wrapped cutting on the potting bench and unrolled the cloth. The stem was firm, the leaves still bright. She had maybe three days before the cells starved. A rose cutting could root on its own if coaxed, but she did not need roots. She needed the pigment pathway inside a dahlia. That meant a graft, and a graft needed a rootstock that would accept it. She walked the length of her greenhouse and read every tag. Not one of her plants shared enough tissue kinship with a rose to hold the union. She sat down on the bench and stared at the cutting until the light changed. A knock. Dahlia Noir stood in the doorway with her gloves off, which Dahlia had never seen before. Noir looked at the cutting, then at the empty tags. "You cannot graft rose to dahlia," she said. "Different families." "I know," Dahlia said. "Then you need a bridge. A plant kin to both." "There isn't one." Noir did not answer at once. She pulled a folded square from her coat and set it on the bench beside the cutting. A pressed leaf, dark, thick, veined like a hand. "From the king's dahlia bed," she said. "The bed he kept crossed with old stock. Some of that stock came from Azura's grandmother. Ask her." Dahlia did not ask how Noir had kept a leaf from that bed, or why she carried it now. Noir left before the door swung shut. Dahlia wrapped the cutting again and went back to the bell tower. Azura was on her knees at the base of the bush, cutting spent canes. She stood when she saw the wrapped bundle. "I need a rootstock that will take it," Dahlia said. "Noir says your grandmother crossed something into the king's bed. Something between." Azura's hands went still. "She did. One plant. I keep it because I could not throw it out." She led Dahlia around the tower to a clay pot half hidden in weeds. The plant inside was low, woody at the base, with dahlia-shaped leaves and a stem the thickness of a rose cane. "It never blooms," Azura said. "It only holds." "That is what I need." Azura lifted the pot and put it in Dahlia's arms. "Then take it. I am done keeping things that only hold." Dahlia carried the pot home before dusk. She cut the woody stem at a slant, split it, and seated the rose cutting into the cleft. She wrapped the union in wax cloth and set the pot under glass. By lamplight she watched the leaves. They did not wilt. The graft would live. The pathway now had a body. But the plant Azura had given her was the last of its kind, and Azura had said, done keeping. Whatever debt Dahlia had inherited had just been called.