Rosie Roo's Arc

Chapter 4 of 10

By morning the fog in the jar had done its work. Rosie tipped it over the spore, and pink threads pushed up through the soil. But the little mushroom trembled. Its cap sagged sideways, like it did not know how to grow. Rosie needed the strawberry fairies. They alone knew how to raise a spore this old. But their voices had grown faint, and each day fewer of them came to her garden. She carried the spore to the mossy greenhouse behind her cottage. Vines hung over its glass walls. Inside, the air stayed warm and still, safe from wind and cold. She set the spore on a shelf of ferns. "You'll wait here," she said. "I'll bring you the answer." But how? The fairies would not come. Rosie searched her grandmother's shelves and found a folded paper butterfly. Its wings held tiny runes that glowed when she breathed on them. A messenger. She whispered her question into its wings: What does a growing spore need next? Then she opened her hand. The butterfly lifted, circled once, and flew off toward the strawberry beds. She waited an hour. The butterfly did not return. Its wings had gone dark somewhere in the tall grass, its spell too weak to reach fairies who no longer listened. Rosie's throat tightened. She had no way to ask. So she went where questions were answered. She walked to the glowing mushroom market, where stalls sat under caps that shone blue and pink. Among the traders leaned a hunched woman in a patched purple robe. Rosie knew her. Noella. The old woman had sheltered her in the marsh and told her the hard truth about the jar. Her staff hummed with runes. "Two coins, one question," Noella said, not looking up. Rosie set the coins in her palm. "The strawberry fairies are forgetting. My spore is growing and I don't know what it needs. How do I ask them before their knowledge is gone?" Noella's eyes sharpened. She tapped her staff twice. "You don't ask the many. They fade. You ask the last one who remembers." She pointed a crooked finger toward the far marsh. "One old fairy still keeps the full lore. She nests where the strawberries grow wild past the water. But she trades knowledge for knowledge. She will want something you know." Rosie's stomach dropped. Another crossing. Another bargain. But now she had a name for her path. She walked home fast. The spore in the greenhouse had bent lower, its cap paling toward white. It would not wait long. Rosie pressed her hand to the glass. "One more journey," she whispered. "I know where to go now." She packed her bag before dark. The easy answers were gone. The fairies who once flocked to her garden could no longer help. Only one keeper remained, past the wild strawberries, and she would ask a price of her own.