Nyx foxglove's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

The grass around the old well still held when Nyx left it. She swam and walked the long way home, dragging one last coil of glass pipe. The spring flowed. The island could green. But the sailors' knocking followed her the whole way, faint and steady in her ears. She had taken their water and left them below. Her greenhouse rose from the black sand, a dark glass pyramid with a half-moon door. Inside, water threaded through her glass lines, deep green swirled with black glitter. Nyx set down her pipe and looked at the beds she had cleared for new plants. She meant to fill them today. She had carried seeds and cuttings back with her for weeks. She knelt at the far wall, where the glass framed the dark palms and dripping vines. She pressed a black aloe into fresh soil. Its thick leaves glinted with tiny points of light, like grit caught in water. She had grown it to close wounds. She patted the soil down and moved to the next bed. There she planted a flytrap, its dark mouths open and waiting. Then a row of near-black foxgloves, careful with her bare hands. One brush of their gold dust could stop a heart. She worked in silence and tried to think only of roots and soil. But the knocking would not leave. Every time she pressed a seed down, she heard it. She grew things to save the island. Below the spring, men were dying in the dark, and she had walked away with their water. The two truths sat side by side and would not fit. Nyx stopped. She looked at the black aloe, at its healing shimmer. She looked at the foxglove that killed. Both grew from the same spring water. The same water she now sent across the island. If that water could raise a plant that mended flesh, maybe it could do more than green sand. She stood and wiped her hands. The greenhouse was finished for today. The beds were full. She had done what she came home to do. But planting had not quieted her. It had done the opposite. Every root she set reminded her of the men she had not freed. She walked to the half-moon door and looked back at the spring's direction. She could not keep growing gardens on top of a grave. The water fed her plants and drowned those sailors at once. She would not choose one over the other any longer. Nyx sealed the door behind her. She had come home to plant, and she had. Now she knew the planting was not the end. Tomorrow she would return to the cave. Not to take more water. To find a way to let the sailors out.