Terlu Perna broke the law because she was lonely.
Join us every Monday through July 7th for an extended preview of The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst, a standalone cozy fantasy set in the world of The Spellshop. The Enchanted Greenhouse publishes July 15th with Bramble. The Enchanted Greenhouse publishes July 15th with Bramble—find previous excerpts here.
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Terlu Perna broke the law because she was lonely. She cast a spell and created a magically sentient spider plant. As punishment, she was turned into a wooden statue and tucked away into an alcove in the North Reading Room of the Great Library of Alyssium.
This should have been the end of her story… Yet one day, Terlu wakes in the cold of winter on a nearly-deserted island full of hundreds of magical greenhouses. She’s starving and freezing, and the only other human on the island is a grumpy gardener. To her surprise, he offers Terlu a place to sleep, clean clothes, and freshly baked honey cakes—at least until she’s ready to sail home.
But Terlu doesn’t want to return home, and as she grows closer with the unwittingly charming gardener, Yarrow, she learns that the magic that sustains the greenhouses is failing—causing the death of everything within them. Terlu knows she must help, even if that means breaking the law again.
This time, though, she isn’t alone. Assisted by Yarrow and a sentient rose, Terlu must unravel the secrets of a long-dead sorcerer if she wants to save the island—and have a fresh chance at happiness and love.
Chapter Five
Terlu woke to sunshine and honey cake.
Daylight streamed through the windows, brightening the snow outside so it gleamed and sparkled with a thousand flashes of color. Sitting up, she stared out the window at the pine trees and the freshly fallen snow and the greenhouse while her brain caught up to her body, and she remembered where she was and that she was flesh again.
She looked around and saw that the cottage was not precisely as she’d left it: the soup pot no longer hung over the fire, the dishes she’d used and cleaned had been put away, and a plate with a thick slice of honey cake was sitting on the table next to a fork and a neatly folded napkin.
How nice!
Oh wait, this isn’t good.
The gardener had come home. And Terlu hadn’t woken. In fact, the entire night had passed and a slice of the morning, and she’d slept through it all. She glanced at the chair, and the winged cat was gone as well. What must the gardener have thought when he found her asleep in his bed? He’d said to rest, but all night? In his own bed? Yet he hadn’t woken her up. Where had he slept? Had he slept? He’d done plenty of chores. Including making me breakfast.
At least she assumed it was for her; she had no actual way to know that, unless he’d left a note, which it didn’t look like he had. She imagined what such a note would say: Dear stranger in my bed. Or Dear intruder. Or I liked you better as a statue. She got out of bed and ran her tongue over her teeth. Her mouth felt gummy, and she wished she had her brush and paste. Also, a privy.
“Um, hello? I’m awake now? Are you still home?” Of course he wasn’t.
She checked the narrow door by the kitchen sink and, happily, found the washroom, complete with a sink, toilet (with a pull-chain to flush!), and all the amenities. Fresh water was in a deep bowl next to a sponge and a towel that smelled like rosemary. Had he left this for her, as well as the honey cake? She wished he’d stayed for her to ask.
Guilt swirled inside her, also hunger. She loved honey cake, but she’d eaten his soup and slept in his bed the entire night, and to assume he was fine with her taking more… I am the worst houseguest ever. She could bake him a blueberry pie as thanks. Everyone liked pie. Of course he’d have to loan her the ingredients, which wouldn’t make it much of a thank you. She picked up the towel and noticed there were clothes beneath it—pants of the softest wool she’d ever felt and a knit top, as well as clean socks and undergarments, all of which looked her size—and that decided her. He’d left these for her to use, and he’d thought of everything. There was a wedge of soap, as well as jar of toothpaste.
Terlu washed, changed, and emerged, half expecting him to be in the cottage waiting for her, but he wasn’t. It was empty. She felt a little shiver. Just a cottage. Not a storage closet. And she wasn’t on a pedestal; she could walk outside whenever she wanted.
She glanced at the chair, wishing the cat had stayed.
It was quiet, except for the soft crackle of the fire in the hearth. It burned low, and she wondered if she should add another piece of firewood or if he preferred it low. She left it as it was and sat at the table to eat the honey cake in silence.
He’d left a syrup for the cake, which she poured on top, and the moist cake soaked it in. She took a bite—it was perfection: vanilla and honey and lightness. It tasted like sunrise, and all of a sudden she didn’t mind that she was alone. She didn’t feel alone anymore. She poured water from a pitcher by the sink, and she discovered it tasted like strawberries and mint, which was amazing in winter. She marveled at it. Perhaps there was another greenhouse room full of herbs and strawberries, miraculously ripe in the heart of winter.
Terlu cleaned after she finished and tried to think of how she could leave a thank-you, but she had nothing and didn’t want to use any of his paper without asking—she’d already eaten his food, slept in his bed, and used his toothpaste. I’ll simply have to find him, she resolved.
The coat and scarf were where she’d left them, and she put them on. She was pleased to discover that her night’s sleep had cured her of the aches she’d felt when she’d transformed back into flesh. She hoped there wouldn’t be any lasting effects from her time as a statue. That would be nice. She wondered if there had ever been any studies done on the long-term effects of transformation spells. If she had access to the Great Library, she could check, but she had the sense that she was a very long way from the stacks she knew. She wondered how far. How had she come here? Had she been loaded onto a boat like a piece of lumber? Had she been shipped with supplies? Or had she been treated like a person as she traveled? Did whoever transported her know she’d once been a person? Why had she been sent anywhere? She’d been positioned on her pedestal for a purpose. Every new librarian received their training in the North Reading Room, and so they’d all been told her story, in whispers or as a lesson. They’d read the plaque beneath her and wonder: Why had she done it? Why had she risked so much? Sacrificed so much? It hadn’t been for the good of the empire, and it hadn’t been for her own wealth or personal gain—why would anyone want to cast a spell to create a sentient houseplant? She wondered if anyone knew the ignoble truth: it was because she didn’t think she could take one more hour in the stacks without anyone to talk to. She didn’t want to quit, and she didn’t want to leave—she loved the library, and she believed that she could be good at her job, if she could just solve this one little problem. Even more, she didn’t want to slink home and admit that she’d failed to make it in the capital city. Her family hadn’t wanted her to leave, and they hadn’t understood why she’d been so desperate to find a place where she felt she had purpose. Maybe it had been pride or some other personality flaw that had led her to casting the spell that created a self-aware spider plant named Caz, but she had truly thought that since she wasn’t doing any harm, as Rijes Velk herself had pointed out, no one would mind or even notice.
She’d been very, very wrong about that.
In retrospect, she supposed the sudden appearance of a talking plant had been rather difficult to ignore.
Anyway, that was the past, and now she had an unexpected present to face. It was clear what she had to do: find the gardener, thank him, and apologize. And then bombard him with as many questions as he’d answer before he ran away again, including how much time had passed since her trial. She couldn’t keep avoiding that question just because she was afraid she wouldn’t like the answer.
Outside, the day was crisp but beautiful. She inhaled deeply. Overhead, birds were singing to one another, cascading trills from high in the branches. She caught a glimpse of a red cardinal, bright scarlet against the white snow, green pine, and blue sky, as it flew over the top of the greenhouses.
The snow crunched under her feet as she let herself inside and then hung up the coat and scarf. “Gardener? Kitty? Good morning!”
Silence greeted her.
“Good morning, flowers,” she said to the plants.
None of them answered her either.
She walked between the lilies and lilacs, inhaling their heady perfume and listening for any hint of sound from any direction that would tell her where to go. She thought she heard a hum to her left. She followed that path.
Opening the door to the next greenhouse, she was greeted with music.
Smaller than the prior rooms, this greenhouse was an octagon filled with flowers both in pots and planted directly into the soil, all in full blossom: tulips, daffodils, lilies, roses, and orchids, as well as tulip trees, magnolia trees, and dogwood trees. Every flower on every plant and tree was singing wordlessly in perfect harmony.
No one had written this music. It flowed and evolved, notes tumbling over one another and then joining in chords more by happy accident than design. The harmonies melded and split and flowed around her, washing over her as gently as a stream over stones, and Terlu stood on the path and felt the tears flow down her cheeks. She wasn’t certain why she was crying—I’m alive. I slept, I washed, I ate. She had no reason to cry. Stop it, she told herself, but that had no effect.
If she hadn’t just been thinking about Caz, then it might not have hit her so hard, but she was thinking about him, the friend she’d made and lost, when she walked into the greenhouse of singing flowers.
She cried for the life she’d lost along with her new friend. Even if she hadn’t particularly liked that life, it had been hers. She’d earned that library position, though it hadn’t been what she’d dreamed it would be. She cried, too, for Caz himself. Was he happy? She hoped so. Was he safe? She wondered if she’d ever know. Did he know what had happened to her? Did he mourn when she was turned into a statue? Did he know she’d been saved? Did anyone? She thought of her family on Eano, her parents and her sister and her aunts, uncles, and cousins, and she wished they were here or she was there. If she could find a way to write to them… but what would she say? How would she explain? She didn’t even know if they knew what had happened to her, how badly she’d messed up. It was better if they didn’t know.
They could mourn the woman they’d hoped she’d be, rather than worry about the criminal she was.
The floral music flowed around her, soothing her and comforting her, and at last her tears stopped. She took a shaky breath and wasn’t sure if she felt better or just more damp. “You sound beautiful,” she said out loud. She wondered if any of them could hear her, and if they did, could they understand her? Were any of them like Caz was, fully awake and aware? “Hello? My name’s Terlu. Can any of you speak?”
The flowers didn’t stop singing.
Not like Caz then.
Terlu walked through the greenhouse, counting the singing plants and trees. Sixty-three—no, wait, there was a little bluebell in a bright pink pot that was singing high soprano, beneath a dogwood tree that crooned in baritone. Sixty-four, an extraordinary number. She knelt next to the bluebell and admired how its petals widened with each crystal-clear note.
This was a chorus that an emperor would envy.
Who had enchanted them all to sing like this? This required a lot of spellwork, very advanced spellwork too. Could the gardener have done it? He’d woken her, but he’d claimed he wasn’t a sorcerer. Had he lied? Why would he lie? It wasn’t illegal for sorcerers to cast spells. If he was a sorcerer, it would be safer for him to tell the truth. So she supposed it wasn’t him? But if he wasn’t responsible for this chorus, then who was? Who else was here?
She left the singing greenhouse through a door painted with musical notes.
One of the other miraculous things about this place, in addition to the wealth of plants and the harmony of the flowers, was the way the doorways truly separated each room. Heat, moisture, cold—none of it leaked into the next greenhouse, even when the door itself was open. It has to be a spell, a very complex and advanced one. Like with the singing flowers, but more practical. Terlu stepped across the threshold and noted that, once again, this climate was entirely different from the prior one. It was hot and dry and far quieter, with paths and garden beds that were filled with sand. Cacti grew here: tall ones with arms that reached toward the ceiling, as well as short, spiky nobs that poked through the ground. A few had starlike yellow flowers clustered between their leaves and one had a cascade of trumpetlike pink flowers. She spotted a rabbit-size gryphon on top of one of the larger cacti. It let out a little leonine roar before it flew up to the rafters. She wondered if it was friends with the winged cat.
She found the next greenhouse quickly and walked into a pleasantly warm room full of potted trees. Fruit trees? Ooh, were any of them orange trees? Imagine a fresh orange only a few weeks from the winter solstice! Her home island boasted fantastic groves of orange trees, but they were never ripe in winter. Her favorite Winter Feast treat had been candied orange covered in chocolate. Her first Winter Solstice in Alyssium she’d scoured the city for a confectioner who’d sell candied chocolate orange. She’d found one that sold an orange-liqueur chocolate, but it hadn’t been the same.
Terlu opened the next door, wondering what wonders she’d find. But instead of a display of glorious green or a false sun or an unexpected chorus or a random gryphon, she walked into a plant graveyard. It was such a shocking contrast that she gasped out loud. Her breath hung in the air, a cloud of mist, and she hugged her arms as she walked farther in.
Above her, the glass was splintered, with a few panes that were fully shattered. Snow had drifted inside and was sprinkled across the beds of brittle and withered plants and broken glass. The brown skeletons of shriveled vines clung to the pillars, and the remnants of sprouts sat curled in pots of dry dirt.
What in the world had happened here?
All the other rooms she’d seen had been brimming with life, but this greenhouse was silent and cold. Her footsteps crunched as she walked to the door on the opposite side. She hurried through into another just-shy-of-freezing room full of desiccated plants.
Why had this happened? How had the gardener allowed it?
She continued through dead greenhouse after dead greenhouse, shivering, until at last she’d had enough and reversed directions. If she’d known how many had been abandoned, she would have borrowed that coat again.
Her shoes crunched on the gravel, the only sound as she walked back through the silent greenhouses. They were shrouded in their silence. She’d seen a total of five abandoned rooms, but who knew how many more there were? She walked quickly, not merely because of the cold—it felt like she’d infiltrated a graveyard. As a living being, she didn’t belong. She felt her heart beat faster, her breath shorten.
She was halfway across the first dead greenhouse, almost back to the living, when she saw the gardener hurrying toward her.
Smiling in relief, Terlu opened her mouth to greet him.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he snapped.
Friendly as always. She’d hoped that the honey cake and the clothes had been a peace offering, an apology for waking her in the cold and then dismissing her yesterday, but she supposed not. “Sorry. I didn’t know—”
“Come where it’s safe.” He herded her through the door back into the desert room with the cacti and the air that felt as warm as a sweater. She felt the heat soak into her skin as the winged cat wound around her ankles.
She knelt to pet him.
“He yowled at the door until I came,” the gardener said.
“You did?” Terlu asked the cat. “Thank you for worrying about me. You didn’t need to, though. I was on my way back.” Spreading his wings for balance, the winged cat clambered up her skirt. She cradled him as she stood up.
“You shouldn’t have gone in there,” the gardener said. “Those rooms are not structurally sound. In a few of the lost greenhouses, the ceilings have collapsed.” He scowled at the door as if it were at fault for letting her in.
Terlu shivered at the thought of the glass ceiling collapsing on top of her. Squirming out of her arms, the winged cat climbed onto her shoulders and flopped around her neck. “You should put up a sign. Or keep it locked.”
“I’m the only one here,” he said, with an unspoken And I know better. He added, “Well, the only one aside from Emeral, but he can’t open doors.”
“Emeral?” She knew there had to be someone else here. How else could those flowers be singing? She hoped this Emeral would be able to explain what had happened and why she was here and what she was supposed to do. “Is Emeral the sorcerer?”
“Emeral is the cat.” He pointed to the winged cat, who purred in her ear.
Okay, fine, not an unknown helpful sorcerer. “Hello, Emeral. I’m Terlu Perna.” Looking up at the gardener, she waited for him to introduce himself. When he didn’t, she asked, “What’s your name?”
He looked surprised she wanted to know. “Yarrow. Yarrow Verdane.”
That felt like progress, at least a little. “Nice to meet you, Yarrow. Thank you for saving my life. Also for the soup, the honey cake, the clothes, and use of your bed last night.”
Yarrow shrugged. He picked up a tote bag with gardening tools—he was going to walk away again, but this time he wasn’t going to catch her by surprise. She kept pace with him.
“What happened to those greenhouses?” she asked.
“The magic failed.”
“Why?”
“It just failed.”
“What has been done to try to fix it?”
He stopped walking. “You. You were supposed to fix it.”
She halted too. “Me?” That made no sense. She knew nothing about fixing greenhouses. She didn’t think she’d ever even been in one before, unless a florist shop counted, but she didn’t think it did, or at least it wasn’t the same scale. “Why me?”
Yarrow shrugged again. “I appealed to the capital—asked them to send a sorcerer to help restore the spells that enchant the greenhouses. For nearly a year, I got no answer. And then… they sent you. But there appears to have been a mistake because you say you’re not a sorcerer.”
A mistake. The word hurt. Once again, she wasn’t wanted. She thought of the day she’d decided to leave home, how she’d felt when she’d realized she had no place there anymore, no future that she wanted and no future that wanted her… This wasn’t the same, of course, and she knew it was silly to feel that way—he wasn’t saying anything about her personally, just that he needed a sorcerer to fix whatever spell kept the greenhouses intact and warm and hospitable.
She supposed it was appropriate. Her whole life had been a series of mistakes, one after another: a mistake to leave Eano for a hazy dream of a future with purpose, a mistake to think she could make it at the Great Library, a mistake to create Caz.
The magic wasn’t a mistake. Getting caught was the mistake.
She took a breath and asked the question she should have asked the moment she woke, the one she knew would have an answer she wouldn’t like: “Could you tell me… That is, I need to know… What year is it?”
Yarrow gave her a curious look. “Imperial year 857.”
She’d half expected it. All that time on the pedestal… All the days that drifted into more days, the darkness that melted into the next night… She knew it had been more than a year. She’d guessed three, four at most.
Six, though. Six was a blow.
Terlu felt herself start to shake. Six years. She supposed she hadn’t aged while she’d been made of wood. But her family… Everyone she knew… A lot could happen in six years. Was Rijes Velk still the head librarian? Were any of the librarians she knew still there? What had changed in the world since she’d been absent from it? Was her family well? What had she missed?
“Are you all right?” Yarrow asked, his voice gentle for the first time.
Keep it together. Squeezing her hands into fists until she felt her fingernails digging into her palms, Terlu forced herself to smile. “Yes, of course.”
He studied her as if he didn’t believe her.
She changed the subject as dramatically as she could. “What happened to the sorcerer who created all this?” Terlu swept her arms open to encompass the entirety of the greenhouse complex, and Emeral squawked in objection. She scratched his cheek, and he leaned into her fingers and settled down again. His feathers tickled her neck.
“He died,” Yarrow said.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
He shrugged in response.
Kneeling by one of the cacti beds, he stuck his finger into the sand. He pulled it out and then poked another area. Belatedly realizing she was staring at him, he explained, “Checking moisture levels. It’s fine.”
“Ahh. All the plants in the dead greenhouses…”
“It happened too fast, too widespread. It froze so quickly…” She heard the pain in his voice. “I saved as many as I could. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.”
Terlu knew what that felt like, failure. She tried to think of something to ask or say and all she could think of was to repeat, “I’m sorry for your loss.” She hoped it came through in her voice how much she truly meant it.
This time, he looked up at her. “Thank you.”
She was also sorry she didn’t know how to help. She wished she were a sorcerer or at least knew something about gardening beyond the basics. “How many—”
“Half. More. Out of three hundred sixty-five greenhouses, one hundred ninety-one have failed. With some, when they failed, I was able to save the plants. But too many others… I need a sorcerer to recast the spells that keep the greenhouses whole and protected. I can’t do that myself.”
Terlu could hear how much he wished he could, and she wanted to reach out to him and take his hands—she didn’t know him well enough for that, though. She only knew his name. And she didn’t know if it would help him to be touched. Some people needed it; some people fell apart if you did. “If there’s anything I—”
“You were my hope,” he said.
She felt pierced through the heart. “I—”
Yarrow held up his hand. “It’s not your fault.”
Pressing closer to her cheek, Emeral purred harder, as if he sensed she was upset. She took a deep breath. She knew it wasn’t her fault—she hadn’t caused the greenhouses to fail, nor did she ever claim to be a sorcerer—but still…
“There’s no regular boat that comes to Belde,” Yarrow said, “but if I put up a flag, there’s a sailor who runs a regular supply ship that will stop by. I’ll pay her fee, enough to transport you home or wherever you want to go.”
Terlu didn’t know what to say to that. If someone had given her that offer on the day she’d been sentenced, she would have taken it. She would have happily gone anywhere to escape her fate, especially if she could’ve taken Caz with her. But now that she was free… Six years, she thought.
In a small voice, she said, “I don’t have anywhere to go.”
Chapter Six
With the winged cat acting as her scarf, Terlu followed Yarrow through the greenhouses. He didn’t speak as he led. Just a gruff “Follow me” and then a few “hmms” and grunts as he paused to examine plants and flowers along the way. He took a different route than she had before, choosing a left fork in the rose room instead of going straight, and Terlu craned her neck to see the new greenhouses.
There was one devoted to miniature trees. Beneath the branches, she glimpsed tiny woodland creatures living beneath them: three-inch-tall deer, tiny rabbits, minuscule chipmunks.
Another greenhouse was dedicated entirely to moss and filled with iridescent butterflies.
A third was full of vegetables: tomatoes that had been coaxed to grow like trees, cucumbers and squashes that were suspended from a latticework near the ceiling, beds of carrots and lettuces in neat rows. It had the same kind of neatness and precision that she’d seen in Yarrow’s cottage, and she was certain he’d designed and planted everything in here. She wanted to ask him about it, as well as the tiny woodland animals, but he was already in the next room.
He waited for her by a door to the outside. It wasn’t the same door as the one closest to his cottage, of course, but it looked similar and also had a row of coat hooks beside it. He handed her a red coat. He was wearing a beige one, and she couldn’t help noticing again how handsome he was, in an utterly-unaware-of-his-own-handsomeness way. It wasn’t a classic nobleman kind of beauty, with everything as chiseled and combed and coiffed as a resplendent peacock; it was the kind of beauty of a perfectly symmetrical tree. Terlu imagined telling him he was as handsome as a tree—a tree with golden bark, black-and-gold leaves, and emerald-green flowers?—and decided she should never become a poet. She accepted the coat, and Emeral flew from her shoulders as she pulled it on. She was pleased that it fit her better than the other coat, and she wondered if he’d chosen it for her or if it was just chance. It must be chance. Why would he spend any time thinking about her coat size? Still, this wasn’t a coat that would ever fit over his broad shoulders. She found herself studying his shoulders, blushed, and looked up toward Emeral instead.
Settling on one of the rafters, the winged cat began licking his hind leg.
“You’re staying here?” she asked the cat.
“He comes and goes as he pleases,” Yarrow said.
Of course he did—feathery wings or not, he was a cat—but she still wished he’d come with her. She let him be, though, and followed Yarrow.
Outside, the sun had crossed to touch the tips of the pine trees. Her breath instantly fogged in front of her, and the snow crunched under her feet. It smelled sweet, a mix of sea salt and pine, chilled. Yarrow led her between two pine trees onto what could have been a road, if it weren’t buried in snow and completely impassable to anyone not on foot or sled or skis. Wide and winding, it cut through the woods. Their footprints were the first to break the smooth white.
“Mine is the last cottage to the east, but there are more along the road to the west, toward the dock.” He pointed as he spoke. “Choose whichever one you want, and it’s yours, but you’ll have to fix it up yourself. I can’t spare the time from the plants.”
“But—”
“You’re welcome to whatever supplies you need.”
She looked between the trees toward the first cottage. From here she could see its roof had caved in. “My sister Cerri can fix anything. Once, the sink pump in my family’s kitchen stopped working, and she took apart all the plumbing. By the time she was done, we not only had a functional sink, but she’d built a shower, complete with a contraption that you’d fill with embers from the fire that warmed the water before you cleaned yourself. Unfortunately I don’t have the same kind of skill.”
He shrugged. “Then pick a cottage that already has working plumbing.”
She also didn’t know how to fix roofs, windows, or chimneys. “But I don’t—”
“Tools are in the shed behind my cottage. Return them when you’re done.”
Without waiting for her to reply, he tromped away through the snow, back toward the greenhouse. He kept leaving her speechless, and not in a good way. She ran through the conversation in her head, wondering if she’d said the wrong thing or just said too many things.
At least he didn’t tell me I had to leave right now. She could stay until she… Terlu didn’t know how to finish that thought. Until she was ready? Until she had a plan for her life? Until she’d outstayed her welcome? Instead of dwelling on it, she turned her attention to the practical.
Any cottage she wanted? Well, not the one with the caved-in roof. She could look for one that hadn’t yet collapsed. She envisioned herself huddling in a fallen-down hut with a hibernating bear, then told herself to try to think more positively. One of the cottages could be perfectly fine.
Hugging her coat around her, Terlu stomped through the snow along the road, toward the west. The sun filtered through the pine trees and spread over the snow, making it twinkle. Blue sky was overhead, so blue that it looked like a painting.
The next cottage had a bulbous roof that overhung wide windows. Everything was round from the door to the windows to the chimney, which made it resemble a toadstool, especially with the red paint and white trim. It looked charming, but more importantly, it looked structurally intact.
I could live here. Couldn’t I?
By myself?
Just me?
Terlu shuddered and then told herself firmly not to be ridiculous. Lots of people lived on their own and were fine. She waded through the snow to the front door. Hoping it was unlocked, she squeezed the handle and pushed. It swung open with a creak, and she poked her head inside—and the bright eyes of many, many formerly sleeping gryphons blinked at her. Each was about the size of a large raccoon, with the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a mountain lion. From the state of the cottage and the pile of rodent bones scattered over the floor, it was clear that this flock was feral. She wondered if they were related to the gryphon she’d seen in the cacti room.
One of the gryphons hissed.
Terlu shut the door and backed away, quickly.
Or not just me.
Next cottage then.
She hurried down the snowy road. The next cottage was tucked between two pine trees with branches that shielded the roof from much of the snow. Between the clumps of snow, she could see pink coral tile peeking out. Short and squat, this cottage had been painted in sunrise colors: yellows and pinks and roses. The paint was chipped and peeling, but it still looked cheerful. One window was broken in the front, but it looked otherwise intact. All right, attempt number two. She opened the lemon-yellow door more slowly this time and peered inside.
No family of gryphons peered out, nor did she see any hibernating bears. Terlu dared to venture in. Sunlight spilled through the windows so there were no dark corners, only layers of gray. By one corner was a bed, collapsed in the center where the netting had worn away. Another corner had a table that was coated in dust. She ran a sleeve over a corner to reveal painted flowers. The chimney was full of debris, leaves and twigs. It would have to be cleaned out before a fire could be attempted, and that was no small task. It looked very clogged.
She wondered if the kitchen sink pump still worked. Crossing to it, she tried it. It was stiff, but she managed to lift it up. No water came out, though.
The chimney she could fix, presumably—at least it was obvious how to fix it; just clean it out—but a water pump? As she’d told Yarrow, she didn’t have her sister’s skill with plumbing. Or anything, really, as her sister used to delight in pointing out. Still… I wish Cerri were here now. She’d be able to fix up one of these cottages in an afternoon. By day two, she’d have transformed it into a palace. Terlu, however, had no such skills.
She wished she’d written home when things had gotten difficult at the library. But Terlu hadn’t wanted her family to guess she was miserable. It wasn’t as if they could have done anything anyway, and all it would have done was make everyone feel bad—and she’d feel like even more of a failure. Still… she wished she’d reached out. Things might have turned out differently if she had.
Terlu tried the next cottage, which looked like a cake with frills carved out of wood instead of icing, but all its windows were cracked or outright broken and snow was strewn across the floor. As she trudged to the next cottage, she wondered who they’d all belonged to. It was clear that each home had once been loved very much. In the next one, Terlu found a child’s toys, a rocker carved like a bear and a doll that was missing an eye. Another had a framed sketch of a couple, their arms around each another, both of them smiling at the artist.
Why had the owners left? Where were they now? And why had Yarrow stayed behind? There was a peaceful kind of sadness to the row of abandoned cottages, but no answers.
After the cottage with the artwork, she found one that seemed like it could be livable, with a more reasonable amount of work: a blue cottage, its walls painted a pale noonday blue and its door and shutters a deep twilight blue. Cobwebs clung to the rafters, but she saw no inhabitants other than spiders. It had a hammock-like bed strung from the ceiling, though she wasn’t sure she’d trust it—she didn’t know how long it had been there—but she could pull in a proper cot from one of the other cottages. In fact, she could take her favorite pieces from each of them and assemble them here.
It could be nice.
Lovely, even. She imagined it clean and neat and full of flowers. She hoped Yarrow would let her pick blossoms to fill her cottage. My cottage. That had a nice sound to it, didn’t it?
Well, didn’t it?
I’m not a child anymore. I can handle living on my own. She’d had her own space in the library, and she’d been fine. She’d hated it, but she’d managed. Sort of. For a while. Until she’d been statue-ified.
Okay, she hadn’t been fine.
“You can make this work,” Terlu told herself out loud.
She could try to convince Emeral to stay with her, so she wouldn’t have to bear the silence and solitude. His purr was capable of curing any kind of sadness.
Crossing her arms, she tried to look at the cottage objectively. It wasn’t as nice and cute and sweet as Yarrow’s cottage. And the amount of work to make it as lovely… It was daunting enough that she wanted to pivot and race back to the comfort of his home. She’d have to clean the chimney and, well, everything. Plus there were a few holes here and there that could do with patching so the wind wouldn’t whip through on stormy days. She wondered if the roof leaked. She supposed she’d discover that the next time it rained. Craning her neck, she examined the ceiling—she didn’t see much water damage on the roof above the rafters, though there were stains on the wall beneath the windows.
Terlu tested the pump at the sink, and after a few hearty pumps, brown water spurted out. She kept pumping until it ran clean. That’s a plus, she thought.
Seeing the fresh, clean water, her heart felt lighter. She could see a little bit of a glimpse of a future here, if she worked at it, at least an immediate future if not a long-term, life-full-of-purpose kind of plan. She wasn’t afraid of work, which was a good thing since there was a lot to do before the cottage would be livable.
But what to do first?
Heat, definitely. She had to clean the chimney. She’d need… She wasn’t quite certain what she’d need. A brush? With a long handle and stiff bristles. And a broom to sweep all the soot out once she’d knocked it down. Perhaps a ladder so she could climb up onto the roof.
Oh dear. She’d never climbed up onto a roof in her life. She wondered how slippery it would be with all the snow and ice. She wondered if Yarrow expected her to fix any broken bones herself with the tools from the shed behind his cottage. And what if she couldn’t make it livable enough before nightfall? Would he let her return to his cottage? She wouldn’t take his bed again, of course, but she could curl up like Emeral by the hearth. Surely, he’d lend her a blanket. At least by his fire, she wouldn’t freeze to death.
Making to-do lists in her head, Terlu left the blue cottage. For thoroughness, she continued down the road, though she thought the blue cottage was likely the best she was going to find. She also loved that it was blue, which she knew was superficial of her, but it made her think of the sky on a summer day on Eano when the waves played at your feet and the dolphins swam just offshore. It felt like a good-luck color. Maybe she could make a home here, at least for as long as she was allowed to stay. Or for as long as she wanted to stay, whichever came first.
Terlu followed the road to where it ended, on the western edge of—what had Yarrow called this place? The island of Belde. Stopping, she wrapped her coat tighter and looked out at the sea. On Alyssium, you rarely had an uninterrupted view of water—there were other islands and tons of ships, both sailing and cargo ships, going to and fro. On her home island of Eano, you’d see fisherfolk out in their canoes, sometimes a dolphin or two frolicking in the waves. But here, there was only the blue sea. There was no sandy beach, only rocks, and the waves crashed against them, white froth billowing up with each crash. In the distance, she saw the shadows of what could be other islands, smudges of a grayer blue, but they could also have been clouds.
A dock led out into the water, but no boats were tied to it. Just a dock with an empty flagpole at the end, with a box beside it, secured to the deck. She thought of Yarrow’s offer to summon a ship to take her away. I could do it right now. Walk out to the end of the dock, raise a flag, and summon a stranger to come and take her wherever she wanted to go, but where would that be?
Home? In disgrace? She couldn’t do that to her family. It wasn’t just that they’d be disappointed in her or that she’d be embarrassed to admit she’d failed to thrive, though that was all true—it was the fact that reaching out to them could endanger them. She was still a convicted criminal. Her parents, her sister… She wished she could tell them she was alive, but without knowing whether or not she’d been pardoned, how could she risk it?
She still had no clear idea why she was here. Why had someone sent her here in response to Yarrow’s request for a sorcerer? The plaque on her pedestal had been very clear she’d been a librarian. Sending her had to have been a mistake. And if so, the second that soon-to-be-in-trouble official discovered the truth, she’d be shipped back to the Great Library and reinstalled in the North Reading Room. No, she couldn’t ask her family to harbor a convicted criminal.
It was better if no one knew she was here, and it was smarter to stay until she knew who had made this mistake and why—and what she wanted to do about it.
She’d never had any real vision for what she wanted to do with her life. Becoming a librarian had been a suggestion of one of her professors, and it fit her skills, but it had never been her passion, the way sailing was for her cousin Mer or carving for her aunt Siva or fixing things for her sister Cerri. She’d wanted, when she left her family and her home, to find some kind of life goal. That’s what she’d be missing on Eano: a passion and a purpose. That’s why she’d felt she had to leave. She knew she had no future there, and she was tired of being the one in the family who hadn’t yet found her path.
She just wasn’t sure where she did have a future or what her destiny was supposed to be.
Staying here for a bit might be good for me. Terlu could think about what she wanted and what her life should be, now that she had a second chance.
Yes, that’s what this is: a second chance. And maybe the solitude will be nice for figuring all of it out. It could even be essential.
Or she’d miss the sound of voices so much that she’d start talking to the trees.
She turned back from the sea and noticed one more building that she hadn’t explored. Set back from the shoreline, it was more of a squat tower than a cottage. Made of stone, it was two stories tall with a conical roof that was blanketed in snow. A lighthouse? Except it didn’t have a light on top. A grain silo? She trudged across the snow toward the tower.
A key was dangling from a hook beside the door. She plucked it off and tried it in the lock. It opened easily, and she poked her head inside. “Hello?”
She was getting a bit tired of saying that, especially given how infrequently her greeting was returned, but still, she wasn’t going to barge into a previously locked whatever-this-was.
What was this place?
Sunlight filtered in through murky windows and lit dust that floated in the air. It sparkled like flecks of gold above the sturdy worktable that stretched the length of the room. She walked inside. Every wall was filled with shelves that were overloaded by books, journals, and papers in haphazard stacks, to the dismay of her librarian heart. Gardening gloves and pots of various sizes were heaped in one corner. A desk piled precariously high with papers sat beside one of the filthy windows, facing the dock and the sea beyond.
It was very much the opposite of Yarrow’s warm and tidy cottage. It looked more like a laboratory. Or a workroom of some kind? Not a living space. In one corner, she spotted a narrow set of stairs—perhaps they led to the owner’s living quarters? She doubted that anyone lived here now. It was draped in the kind of undisturbed dust that only can accumulate in the absence of anyone. A cold stove sat in one corner of the room. Cobwebs clung to it, and Terlu shivered. It was clear that this place hadn’t been used in years.
She touched one of the papers on the nearest shelf. It was stiff but not brittle to the point of dissolving into dust. Definitely a workroom, she decided. All the notes, the random garden supplies that looked more like unfinished experiments, and the overflowing desk… Terlu examined the desk. In the center of all the papers was a pot with a dried-up ball of leaves. The leaves had curled in on themselves as if hugging their core of desiccated soil.
She picked up the pot. “Oh, you poor thing.”
Tucking it under her arm, Terlu prowled through the rest of the workroom, examining everything like a detective searching for clues. A pile of mostly burnt papers lay next to the stove. She knelt to look at them.
Why would any scholar burn their own work?
Studying the few words that were still legible, she realized she recognized them: this was written in the First Language, the extinct tongue of sorcerers—the language of spells.
Ah, it’s a sorcerer’s workroom.
This could have been the workroom of the sorcerer who’d made the greenhouse. It seemed likely. She wondered if there was a clue in this tower as to who the sorcerer was and why they’d done all of this. “Or I could be just jumping to conclusions,” she said to the dead plant in the pot.
She wished that Yarrow wouldn’t keep wandering off so quickly. She still had a hundred questions bubbling inside of her, and each minute she spent on this island seemed to generate more.
What had happened to the sorcerer? Why was this place abandoned? Why had the people left, abandoning their homes? Why had Yarrow stayed? Why had no one else come to fix the greenhouses? And why was she the one who’d been sent, when at last Yarrow’s request had been answered?
Clearing a space, Terlu set the pot on the worktable and studied it. There had to be something special about this shriveled bit of plant to be the only one on the sorcerer’s desk. His last experiment? His legacy? She wondered if she could determine what kind of plant it had been. Perhaps that would give her some insight into this place and its sorcerer. She reached into the pot and touched one of the brown curled-up leaves. Crisp, it felt like an autumn leaf. It looked fernlike, with a brittle, lacelike quality to the leaves, but it was difficult to tell, as shriveled as it was. If she added some water, would that plump it up more? If so, it could make it easier to see the shape of it. “What are you?” she whispered to it. “Tell me your secrets.”
She went to the sink and pumped the pump a few times until water flooded out of the spout. Finding a glass, she rinsed it and then filled it with water. She supposed this was a silly idea. Even if the water did loosen up the leaves enough to examine the plant, the odds of her being able to identify it were low. She wasn’t a plant expert. Still, though… it could be another question she could ask the gardener, the next time he popped up. He’d probably respond better to a plant question than an existential why-am-I-here-and-what’s-the-purpose-of-my-life query.
Terlu poured the water over the knob of plant matter. She waited a minute for the moisture to sink into the leaves, and then she poked it to see if it had softened enough to unfurl.
The plant yawned, stretching out its leaves to reveal a deep purple bud.
“Ooh,” Terlu said.
The bud unfolded to reveal purple petals. It looked a bit like a rose. She studied it before reaching in to touch one of the petals.
And then it spoke. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”
Terlu felt her jaw drop open as she, wordless, stared at the impossible rose.
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The Enchanted Greenhouse
Excerpted from The Enchanted Greenhouse, copyright © 2025 by Sarah Beth Durst.
