Grampy Fernside's Arc

Chapter 13 of 16

By the fourth morning after the first sprout, the bed still showed one green hook and eighteen flat stones. Grampy stood barefoot at the edge and counted again. The toad blinked from its corner. The finch stayed quiet on the pipe. One in nineteen was not enough. If the rest were duds, the anniversary would come and go with a single leaf where a bouquet should be. He went inside. His wife was already at the kettle, pink and yellow flowers fresh in his beard from breakfast. He did not tell her why he wanted the old book. He said only that he needed the one with the seed notes from her mother. She set it on the table and poured him a cup without asking more. He read at the picnic table until his tea went cold. Near the back, in faded ink, her mother had written a line about stubborn seeds and eggshell water. Crush the shells fine. Steep with weak chamomile. Pour cool along the row. Wake them, the note said, do not drown them. Grampy limped to the shed. He ground shells in a mortar until the powder was flour-fine. He steeped a thin tea, let it cool, and mixed the two in a clear jug. The liquid caught the sun and threw pale color across the slate. He carried it to the bed with both hands. He knelt beside the painted stones. Pink for the outer rows, blue for the middle. He poured a slow thumb of tonic beside each marker, careful not to wet the one sprout's stem. The soil drank each pour without pooling. When the jug was empty he set it on the slate beside two small crystal towers his wife kept there, one clear, one pink, a wedding gift she liked near growing things. He did not know if they helped. He left them where she had put them. He checked at dusk. Nothing. He checked by lantern before bed. Nothing. He slept badly and came out before the finch woke. In the gray light he saw them. Beside the blue stone in the middle row, a green hook. Beside a pink stone at the near corner, another. He crawled the row on his knees and counted. Eleven new sprouts had broken through in the night. Seven stones still sat over bare soil. He pressed a thumb against one of those seven. The soil was warm and soft. He did not know if the seven were slow or gone. He sat back on the grass and rubbed his beard. Twelve of nineteen was a garden. Twelve was not the bouquet he had promised. He had one round of tonic left in the jug and a shrinking calendar. He would give the seven laggards until the next dawn. After that, he would have to decide whether to wait, or plan a gift built from twelve.