Rosie Roo's Arc

Chapter 9 of 10

Rosie opened the door. The old fairy stood on the step, small and bent, her wings dull with marsh dust. She looked past Rosie to the fox sleeping in its fur nest, and her eyes filled with want. "You took what was mine," she said. But her gaze slid to the spore beside the fox. The pink cap glowed bright and firm. The fairy went still. "It lives," she whispered. "You kept it warm. You spoke to it." She stepped inside without asking. Rosie let her. She needed answers more than she needed pride. "It's alive," Rosie said, "but it won't flower. I've done everything. Warmth. Words. Every day. It grows and grows and stops. What does it need to bloom?" The old fairy circled the pot. She touched the cap with one thin finger. "Warmth and words keep it living," she said. "They cannot make it flower. For that, a spore must return to sacred ground. There is an altar in the high mountains, carved with runes, crowded with old fungus. The last shrine to the pink mushroom. Plant your spore there under moonlight, and it will open." Rosie's heart raced. "Then I'll take it there." But the fairy raised a hand. "The altar sleeps. Its stone is cold. It will not wake for a spore alone." She reached into her robe and drew out a smooth pink egg. It glowed with soft light, like dawn caught in a shell. "This woke the altar once, long ago. A fairy egg holds the first spark of new life. Set it on the stone, and the altar remembers what it is for." Rosie stared at the glowing egg. "You'd give me that?" The fairy's fingers tightened around it. Then she looked again at the fox, warm and content in its nest. "Trade," she said. "The egg for the beast. It belongs in the wild, not here." Rosie's stomach dropped. Without the fox's endless warmth, the spore would freeze the moment she carried it from the cottage. A thin light flickered near the window. Rosie turned. Four tiny shapes hovered there, dim as fading coals. The strawberry fairies. Their glitter wings barely stirred the air. She could just hear them. "The deer," they breathed. "Carry warmth... the rosy deer walks the high paths..." Then they winked out. Rosie understood. She thought of the fairy deer that grazed near her garden, petals woven through its coat, its steps gentle and glowing. Its warmth could shield the spore on the climb. She looked the old fairy in the eye. "Take the fox. I have another way to keep it warm." They traded. The fairy lifted the fox in her arms and left without a word. Rosie held the pink egg to her chest. The spore leaned toward her, alive and waiting. She knew where to go now. The mountaintop altar. She would climb, and it would flower there.