Excerpt: Yield Unfixéd Roots

One day, Danion and Æa were out in the southeast corner of the Garden, their breath white clouds of vapor in the air around their faces. Æa was turning the steaming compost pile with a pitchfork while Danion shoved stray bits of Garden refuse back toward the pile with a rake, its head teeth up and bar down. Suddenly, Æa stopped where she was. She stared at nothing for a moment. Then she turned to Danion.

“Come with me,” she ordered. “Say nothing and stay just behind me. Will you do this?”

Danion nodded, startled. She marched away, pitchfork in hand. He followed, lugging the rake.

“Leave that here,” she said, not looking around at him.

Danion dropped the rake and hurried behind her. She strode toward the rose hedges, head high and eyes blazing. She stopped a few yards away from the first hedge. Danion stood just behind her and a little to her left. Two men stood before them, surprised in the act of digging into the frosty earth beneath a rose bush with long-handled shovels.

“Do I want to know what you two fools are doing?” Æa asked the strangers.

“By the dark of the moon,” one man said, “who are you?”

The other man jabbed an elbow into his companion's side. “It's the Gardener, you lack wit.”

They turned back to Æa. “We are taking this shrub,” said the first man.

“No,” said Æa. “You are not.”

The second man laughed. It was a harsh caw. His teeth were crooked and brown. The first man jabbed at the ground again with his shovel. Æa pointed at him with her pitchfork. The shovel handle shattered in the man's hands. He jumped back with a cry, long splinters sticking out of his woolen gloves. The metal spade remained stuck fast in the earth.

Æa turned to the second man. "You may choose to tell me who sent you here," she said, "or you may choose to have the name wrested from your mind by force. Which option strikes your fancy?"

The man narrowed his eyes at her. "My uncle did say once that you was a witch," he snarled. "I'm startin' to believe him." He spat on the ground between them.

The first man was backing away, his hands held out and bristling with shards of wood. Æa pointed the pitchfork at him again. He cringed.

"Get out," Æa said to him.

He hesitated, glanced at his partner.

"Now." Her voice was the north wind hissing over ice.

He turned and ran for the Garden gate. Danion saw Æa's head turn as she watched his lumbering retreat. The second man seemed to think the Gardener was distracted by his partner's departure; he hefted the shovel up and lunged forward.

Danion gasped. He reached out for Æa.

She made no movement, no sound, but the man's feet sank into the earth and his shovel burst into flame. He fell forward, still clutching the burning shaft in his hands. Æa bent down and snatched the shovel away from him. She stood over him, pitchfork in one hand, the sharp tines pointed at the man's head, the stranger's blazing shovel in the other. His eyes bulged as he goggled up at her.

“So,” said Æa, “who sent you here?”

The man gasped, “It's only a shrub.”

Æa waited, silent.

“Gah. I won't tell you anything.”

“You have chosen,” said Æa. The fire leaped from the shovel to the man like a live thing. It spread over his body from collar to boots. His clothing began to smoke. The man gaped for a moment at his flaming coat sleeve, as though he couldn't believe his eyes. Then he shrieked and twisted, trying to smother the flames by rolling over. His feet were still sunk deep in the soil. He could only squirm and scream.

Danion stepped forward again, but Æa swung the pitchfork back to block his way. “Stand where you are,” she murmured. Danion stopped, trembling.

The flames vanished as abruptly as they had appeared. The man lay gasping, clouds of smoke rising from his body. There were black scorch marks on his coat and trousers, centered around a few soot-ringed holes. His greasy brown hair was singed. He seemed otherwise unharmed.

“I have the name,” said Æa. “Now leave.”

The earth crumbled away from the man's boots, freeing his feet. He scrambled to his hands and knees. “Witch!” he hissed.

Æa did not speak to him again. But the shovel she still held in her hand suddenly reignited. The man scrambled away and, once he managed to pull himself upright, he raced for the Garden gate.

Æa exhaled. The flame flashing along the shovel's length disappeared. Æa turned to Danion. Her face was a stony mask. She held the shovel out to him.

“Take this,” she said.

Danion looked at the shovel. No mark of fire was upon it. He stood, shaking, and did not move.

The Gardener spoke in a gentler tone. “Take it, Danion. You will come to no harm.”

Danion took the shovel. It was nearly half again as long as he was tall. He let the spade rest on the ground.

“Come,” said Æa. She stooped to pick of the first man's now shaftless spade. “We have our own tools for Garden work. These have no place here.” She gave the spade to him to carry as well.

Danion followed her to the gate. Peering out at the road, Danion saw the diminishing form of the second stranger jog beyond the first rise in the road toward Brixton. Danion was glad the man was moving away from the Garden and away from Treholden.

Æa bade him toss the shovels out onto the road where any passerby might claim them. Danion lobbed the lone spade, but dragged the full shovel out and dropped it in the dust at the side of the road. Æa nodded her approval and he returned to her.

She stood at the threshold of the Garden, gazing at him with deep unreadable eyes.

Danion stopped at her side, thinking. Then he said, “This was more than tricky fruit or flames in a bowl.”

“Yes,” said the Gardener.

“Did you ask the Garden to help you get rid of those men?”

“Yes.”

“You set him on fire,” Danion whispered.

Æa bent down to look him in the eye. “I did. Are you afraid of me now?”

Her eyes were blue and cold wild.

“No,” said Danion. “I am not afraid of you.”

Æa blinked. It was the first time Danion had seen her look surprised about anything.

“I...I am afraid you want to teach me how to ask the Garden for fire,” he said. “I don't think I want to know things like that.”

Æa studied his face for a long time. Then she stood up again. She touched his cheek with her long, cold fingers.

“The Garden never gives me fire,” she said. “And I will not teach you anything you are unwilling to learn.” She moved her hand away from him. “Does this comfort you, Danion?”

It did. A little. So Danion nodded. “But then, how is it that fire comes to you?” he asked.

“I told you once: I am very fond of fire.”

Danion was unsure if this was truly an answer to his question, but said no more about it because the Gardener pointed her pitchfork in the direction of the compost heap and told him it was time to put away their tools and wash up for tea. Sama would be arriving soon. Danion ran to the southeast corner of the Garden to retrieve the rake.