Delia Prance's Arc

Chapter 4 of 59

The field was hers now, but it was empty. Delia walked its cleared rows at dawn. The soil lay dark and turned, ready for roots. She had nothing to put in it. Her cottage held dried herbs and cut stems, no living seedlings. Without plants in the ground, the sanctuary garden was only a promise. Growing season would pass. She needed seedlings, and she needed them fast. She went to the market with her herb book under her arm. Sellers laughed at her purse of nothing. "No coin, no roots," one said, and turned away. Delia stood among the stalls, unsure. Then a hand touched her sleeve. "You want plants," said a wiry man in a patchwork coat. Tiny bronze locks hung from it and clinked as he moved. A ring sat on every finger. He grinned like he already knew her answer. "Bram Locket. I trade in what people need most." Delia had heard of him. Rynn, her friend from the palace, once warned her. Bram never lost a deal. Every lock on his coat was a bargain sealed and kept. "I have no money," she said. "I didn't ask for money." Bram pulled a folded paper from his coat. "I have a whole meadow. Flowers, herbs, roots. Enough to fill your field twice over." He let the words sit. "I want your book." Delia's hand tightened on the herb book. It was worn at the corners, thick with everything she knew. Every cure she made lived in its pages. "That book saved fifteen people," she said. "Then it's worth a meadow." Bram's voice went flat and final. "Plants die in a season. Knowledge you carry in your head. You wrote those pages. You can write them again." He held out the paper. "The meadow for the book. Say yes or say no." Delia looked at the empty field in her mind. She thought of travelers with cuts and fevers, coming to a garden with nothing growing. A book on a shelf healed no one. A field of living plants healed everyone who came. She knew every remedy by heart. The pages only held what her hands already knew. "Yes," she said, and gave him the book. Bram took it and slid a fresh lock onto his coat. "Deal's done." He led her past the stalls to a cart. Behind it lay the meadow he'd promised, dug up whole and bound in wet cloth. Poppies, chamomile, yarrow, a hundred colors tangled together. Enough to plant every row. By dusk the field was full. Green shoots stood in straight lines where bare dirt had been. Delia knelt and pressed soil around the last root. The sanctuary garden was alive at last. Then she opened her satchel for the book, out of habit. Her hand found only cloth. She had given away the one thing that named every plant she could not yet tell apart. Among the new roots grew leaves she did not know. Some healed. Some, like nightshade, killed.