Sage winterwood's Arc

Chapter 28 of 29

Inside the greenhouse, every plant had its climate. Cold held the frostberry corner. Warmth wrapped the lilac bloom. Sage carried a young frostberry sprout to the door and looked at her outdoor rows. The soil ran flat and even. One weather covered all of it. She set the sprout in the open dirt and knelt to watch. Within an hour its icy leaves drooped. The frost melted off. By dusk the little bush hung brown and limp. She pulled it up and held it against her chest. She knelt there until the ground turned dark and cold. She did not hear Terros come. The earth god stopped at the fence rail. He had split ridges and woken dead stone for her before, always stern, always slow to help. Now he studied her wet face and the dead sprout in her hands. "You do not weep over a single bush," he said. "I can grow anything under glass now," Sage said. "But my garden has one sky. The frostberries need frozen ground. The others need warmth. I cannot give both to one field." She wiped her eyes. "I have carried seeds across mountains for nothing." Terros crouched beside her. He reached into his robe and drew out a smooth stone. It shimmered with shifting colors across its surface, like an opal turned in light. He pressed it into her hand. "Hold it and be still." The stone warmed against her palm. Colors rose inside it. Sage saw herself in them. She saw her hands raise the pump water. She saw her light pour into dying grass. She saw her fingers draw energy up from earth and stream into failing plants. Every hard task she had done moved across the stone. "The greenhouse only gives each plant a start," Terros said. "The power to keep it alive is already in you. You channel earth and water through your hands. You feed plants with your own light. You do not need one sky for the whole field." He tapped the dirt. "Wake each plot to fit its plant. Cold here. Warmth there. Not with weather. With yourself." Sage looked at the flat rows. "One plot at a time." "One plant at a time," he said. "Learn what each one wants. Then give it." She planted a second frostberry sprout in the corner row. She spread her hands over the soil and drew up the deep cold trapped below the ground. She fed it into the dirt around the roots. Frost crept across the small patch. The sprout stood firm. Its leaves held their pale color. She moved to the next row, laid her palms down, and pulled warmth up instead. By moonrise two plots held two climates, side by side, made by her own hands. The dead sprout still lay in the grass. But the living one shivered green in the frost. Sage sat back. The field was long. Each row would take days of her care. But now she knew the way.