Daisy Duke's Arc

Chapter 23 of 26

Daisy's cornflowers rooted, but they grew too slow. She planted every petal on the sill. Only three new blooms opened all week. Each tangled dreamer needed one flower to split their knot. The line outside grew faster than the plants. By Thursday she had four blooms and eleven waiting. She cut all four, baked four cakes, and sent seven people away. They would not come back forever. She needed a whole crop, and she needed it now. She knelt at the meltwater fall and called for Lyra. The blunt mermaid who had given her the grotto flowers had gone down to find a lost star. Daisy did not expect an answer. The water stayed dark. Then it stirred, and Lyra rose, dimmer than before, scales barely glinting. "You again," Lyra said. "The cornflowers grow too slow," Daisy said. "I run out every day. I'll lose the line." Lyra looked tired. "I can't help. I'm going back down." She started to sink. "Please. Is there more of them? A field, anything?" Lyra paused. "Not mine to give." Then the water below her churned. Something huge moved in the dark. A crown of black spikes broke the surface, then a face with onyx eyes. Teal skin. Dark tentacles coiling under the water. This was the queen of the deep, the one Lyra answered to. "You want the untangling flower," the queen said. She did not ask. Her voice was flat and hard. "They grow in my grotto. A whole field." She lifted one tentacle from the water. In its grip hung stalks that caught the light like cut glass, seed heads glinting purple and gold. "Crystal grain. It grows fast. Plant it beside your flower and it feeds the roots. One season's crop in a night." Daisy reached for it. The queen pulled back. "Nothing free," the queen said. "A collector stole my song. Locked it in a box on the surface. My waters went still without it." She fixed Daisy with the onyx eyes. "You bake dreams. Bake mine back. The taste of my song. Bind it to something that stays, so it reaches the box and breaks it open." Daisy's chest tightened. She did not know the queen's song. But she knew the Void Chef tasted every flavor there was. "I can't taste your song," she said. "But I know who can find it. Give me the grain. I'll owe you the song." The queen studied her a long moment. "Owe me," she said, "and I'll hold you to it." She dropped the crystal grain on the wet stone. Daisy carried the glittering stalks home. She planted them among her cornflowers and anchored their roots to the queen's stubbornness, the refusal to let a still sea rot. By dawn the sill overflowed with blue blooms, more than the line could ever drain. She would never run short again. But now she owed a debt she did not yet know how to pay.