The Porter's Children
an excerpt

His fears were justified. They rounded four hills, and there was no sign of a house. Tim was getting more and more grumpy, out of hunger and tiredness. “I knew it,” he said fiercely when they had got over the fifth hill. “We never should have let him go away. Imagine leaving us like that!”
“Him?” said Flora. “Who?”
Tim stared at her. “Mr. Porter, of course,” he said. “The man we met just now. I know him from the island I come from.”
“Oh, yes,” she said vaguely. Tim was about to be angry with her, but remembered in time that she probably had amnesia. Maybe it made it hard to remember things that had just happened as well.
As they walked on, Tim’s stomach gave a loud rumble. Flora giggled. “What was that?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he grumbled, “just I’m starving.”
“You are? Then why don’t you eat something?”
“Like what? Grass?”
She made a face. “No, I don’t like grass at all. But you must be able to make all kinds of food.” She regarded him with an admiring look, which he rather enjoyed.
“Well,” he said, “not that much. I can make scrambled eggs. And grilled cheese. But sometimes I burn it.”
“Grilled cheese?” she said. “What’s that?”
Tim looked at her pityingly. “It’s the best kind of sandwich. You put butter on two pieces of bread and cheese in the middle, then you grill it till the cheese is melted. Didn’t your parents ever make you one?”
“I don’t think they knew how,” she said musingly. “It sounds very difficult. Can you make one now?”
“Now?” he laughed scornfully. “Of course not. You need a kitchen, and all the ingredients. If we had bread and cheese, I wouldn’t be hungry.”
“Hm,” said Flora. “I thought it sounded difficult. But what about fruit? Can you make fruit?”
Tim stared at her. Her head must be even more messed-up than he thought. “Of course I can’t. No one can. It just grows.”
Flora’s look of admiration changed to incredulity, then suspicion. “Well,” she said, “of course it grows. But what kinds can you make?”
Tim was becoming very impatient—no doubt partly because he was so hungry. “I can’t make any kinds of fruit. Don’t you know anything? You get fruit from grocery stores. And grocery stores get it from farmers. And farmers don’t make it, they just help it grow. They—hoe it and stuff. And prune the trees. And give them water and fertilizer and stuff. But it’s the ground that makes it really.” Tim stopped to think. It had never occurred to him to think how fruit actually grew or what it was made from. “Things from in the ground, I mean, nutrients and—and minerals.” Minerals in fruit? He wasn’t sure if that was right, but he went on. “And lots of water, and sunlight. And whatever it is in the seed, that tells it what kind of fruit to be.” Tim frowned. It seemed quite strange, now he came to think of it. How did one seed grow and multiply like that, into a whole plant, with flowers and fruit and leaves? He felt that he was not nearly so knowledgeable as he had imagined. Flora, evidently, was thinking the same thing, for she was now looking at him as if he was speaking gibberish. Finally she frowned and shook her head, as if giving up on him.
“Well,” she said, “the only thing I can make is strawberries. But I’m very good at them. Want some?”
Tim was still pondering what fruit was really made of, and only half-listening to her. “I like strawberries,” he said absently.
“Good!” said Flora. She plopped herself on the ground, crosslegged. “This looks like a good spot.”
A moment later Tim broke out of his thoughts to look at her. She was bent over and peering intently at the ground, her fair hair falling all around her head, and humming very softly to herself. Tim wondered for a moment if she was having some kind of fit—but then he looked at the ground in front of her and saw broad green leaves suddenly appearing on long stalks that had not been there a moment ago. He stared as vines twined out and put forth more leaves, which darkened as they grew. One shoot came out to just in front of his toes, and he jumped back with a shout.
“Hush!” said Flora, turning around and looking very offended. “Sorry,” Tim gulped, and Flora went back to her humming. There wasn’t any tune to it, it just sounded like the sort of thing you hummed when you were thinking of something else. The vines grew thicker and taller, and then from little yellow-green buds small white petals opened. Tim had once seen a time-lapse video of a flower blooming, and it was exactly like that: several days’ growth happening in several seconds. Then the petals withered and dropped off, and the little round part in the middle swelled out. First it was light green and spiky, then it got paler as it grew out, and all the spikes spread out and became seeds sunk into the white smooth flesh, and then the white blushed all over, and by the time Tim had fully realized what was happening, he was staring at a beautiful ripe strawberry.