Grampy Fernside's Arc

Chapter 19 of 22

Grampy came back from the pond with the fern paper tucked in his satchel and the cane digging harder into the path than it had that morning. His back throbbed. His hands shook when he lifted the cloth off the secret bed. Eighteen sprouts stood in their rows. Green. Only green. Two mornings left, and no way to tell if a single one would open pink before his wife walked to the pavilion. He sat on the toadstool seat by the bed and pressed his palms to his knees. He had built a watering pipe, moved a fox, traded seeds, framed a keepsake. He could not force a bud open with a cane and a sore back. If they bloomed white, or yellow, or stayed shut, the promise broke. He thought of his mother then. She had taught him a summoning charm when he was small, braided from clover and whispered over. She had used it once to call help for a sick apple tree. He had never tried it himself. He did not know if it still worked. He did not have another idea. He gathered pink clover from the edge of the lawn and sat on the step. His fingers were stiff, but they remembered the weave. He braided the stems, threaded in a few silver seed beads from his workshop drawer, tied off the ends with jade chips his granddaughter had left on the sill. He spoke his mother's words over the loop. He asked, plainly, for someone kind to help eighteen sprouts bloom pink by the second morning. He laid the charm on the soil between the marker stones and covered the bed. Then he went inside to sleep. Before moonrise, two small figures found the charm. She landed first, a pink-haired sprite in a petal dress, her wings catching the last light. Her brother followed, leaf-cloaked, green-eyed, arms folded as he read the bed like a page. She lifted the clover loop and held it to her cheek. "Forty years," she whispered. "He asked so nicely." "Then we work," her brother said. He knelt at the first sprout and set his hand on the stem. The green shot up under his palm, unfurling leaves, opening a tight bud at the crown. He moved down the row. Eighteen stems rose to full height before the owl called twice. Then his sister stepped in. She touched each bud in turn. Petals loosened, curled back, flushed pink from center to edge. Sixteen. Seventeen. The eighteenth bud resisted. She pressed her fingertip to it, then her palm. The petals opened. They came up blue. Sky blue, clean and stubborn, refusing her color. She tried once more. The bloom stayed blue. Her brother touched her shoulder. "Leave it. He asked for help. He didn't ask for perfect." They rose together and slipped over the hedge. On the bed, eighteen zinnias stood tall in the dark. Seventeen pink. One blue.