Lumina Opalknight's Arc

Chapter 9 of 11

The new seeds sat in their rows, still dark and closed. Lumina knelt in the wet soil at dawn and watched the four bloomed plants from before. Their petals drooped. Their glow had dimmed to a weak gray. She pressed one leaf and felt no warmth in it. The old blossoms were wilting, and she had traded away the harp that first woke them. The seeds she'd bought would sleep for weeks. Below, the torchlit line waited for a cure she could no longer make. Kofer hopped through the rows and nosed a fading petal. "They're dying," the rabbit said. "You need a song. You don't have a harp." "I have the chimes," Lumina said. She lifted the crystal chimes from their hook. But the dwarf's song filled her head, and she remembered the harp's music had done something the chimes never had. It had reached the sleeping seed, not just the bud. She stared at the dark rows. Maybe the chimes could do the same. Thorin came from the willow's shade, leaning on his stick. The old gardener had guided her through blooming before, and grief still sat in his eyes. "You gave the witch your harp," he said. "Now you want the chimes to wake raw seed?" He shook his silver head. "I never made seed jump like that. Only buds." "Then teach me the song again," Lumina said. "All of it. Slower." Thorin sat beside her. Note by note, he hummed "Melancholy Willow." Lumina struck the chimes to match. The true notes rang clear across the wilting plants. She aimed each one at the closed rows, not the fading blossoms. Her arms ached. The rabbit sat still as stone. Nothing moved. Thorin's shoulders fell. "Seed is not a bud," he murmured. "It cannot hear." Lumina did not stop. She played the last verse harder, the way she once played the harp in her first desperate night. A single note hung in the cold air. Then, in the third row, a seed split. A green thread pushed up through the dew-soil. Another cracked beside it. Six sprouts rose, then a dozen, curling toward the fading moon. Thorin gripped her wrist. "Thirty years," he whispered. "I never once did that." But the old bloomed plants still hung gray and spent between the new sprouts. The chimes woke the seed. They could not save the dying flowers. Lumina looked at the tender green shoots. Days, not weeks, now stood between her and a full garden. Yet not one plant could heal a single villager tonight. She stood and brushed soil from her knees. "The garden will grow," she said. "But the line below can't wait for it." Kofer's ears drooped. Lumina wrapped the chimes in cloth. She had traded her harp and won the seeds, and now she had no cure to give the sick who waited in the dark.