Summer's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Summer knelt in her garden and stared at the unfamiliar stem pushing through the soil. She'd planted every cutting herself, catalogued every graft, but this one didn't match her records. The leaves were wrong — broader, with edges that caught the light differently. She pulled her notebook from her pocket and flipped through two seasons of failures. None of her grafts had taken root in this spot. She'd cleared it last week. The stem shouldn't exist at all. But here it was, thick and healthy, with a bud at the tip that shimmered faintly in the morning sun. Summer touched the bud with one finger. The petals felt cool and smooth, like nothing she'd grown before. She sat back on her heels. Three days until the festival, and something impossible was growing in her garden.