“We don’t have any tools,” I said. “We won’t be able to do much. But I’m willing to do what I can.”
“You’ll find tools in each of the gardens, if you search the structures yet standing,” she said. “The collapse comes slowly and takes what’s oldest last of all. You’ll be able to do more than you think you can. Do we have an accord?”
I looked to Dean, then back to her. “I just want to be sure I understand exactly what I’m agreeing to,” I said.
She frowned, clearly impatient.
“We find the gardens that belonged to your siblings, and we take care of them with the tools that should be somewhere nearby, and we can harvest whatever grows there. You won’t give us shelter or help us, but you also won’t tell your father where we are or what we’re doing.”
She nodded. “If you’re caught, I’ll send you to the stable without hesitation. But if you stay away from the Riders and the ravens, you’ll be safe enough. Even the ravens can be bribed. They like a bit of fruit now and then, and Father can’t watch through all of them at once. If they happen to find you in the open, you can toss them a piece of something sweet and hope for the best. You might even get it.”
“Dean?” I leaned to see around her. “Is this all acceptable to you?”
He nodded, face pale and drawn. I looked back to Luna.
“We accept your bargain,” I said. “We won’t expect any more aid from you, and I hope that we won’t need it.”
“For your sakes, I’ll hope the same,” she said. She stepped fully clear of Dean, and I finally saw that his hands were bound with a loop of thorny briar. She waved her own hand airily; the briars dropped away, and he was free. “Both of you may go now. And don’t come here again. Father is very protective of me, and he won’t like it.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. Grabbing Dean’s hand, I yanked him along with me as I ran for the front of the garden. He didn’t have my gift for weaving between the rose briars; we had to slow down substantially while we pushed through them, and he had still been scratched several times before we emerged into open. I didn’t let go of his hand. The webbing made his grip seem odd, but he held on as tightly as I did. I broke back into a run as soon as we were clear of the roses, pulling Dean through the gate and across the road to the shelter of the trees.
Once we were there, he jerked his hand out of mine. “I didn’t need your help.”
“Um, what?” I turned to blink at him. “What did you say?”
“I said, I didn’t need your help. I could have talked my way out of that.”
“But you didn’t.”
“But I could have.”
“You know how to garden?”
He frowned at me, expression turning mulish. “No. But I was going to appeal to her better nature!”
“My mother is a rosebush who has to wear a bra, which seems like an unfair thing to do to a rosebush. That”—I gestured back toward the house—“is not my mother. It can’t be. She doesn’t know me, and while my mother may not like me very much, she loves me, and I have no doubt she would recognize me through any spell or enchantment. You can clone rosebushes by taking cuttings.”
“Clone?” asked Dean, blankly.
“Clone,” I repeated. “I think somehow, whatever brought Blind Michael back from the dead also let him get hold of a piece of my mother, and use it to grow himself a whole new daughter who doesn’t remember ever leaving this place. That doesn’t change who she essentially is, and please believe me when I tell you that you were never going to appeal to her better nature, because she doesn’t have one. Not the way you’re thinking. She has a core of self-interest as wide across as Kansas, but you were never going to convince her to let you go just because it was the right thing to do. Her mind doesn’t work that way.”
“Your family is fucked up,” said Dean, after a horrified pause.
I shrugged. “Your parents married Simon Torquill. My mom’s a plant, and my dad breaks things when he’s forced to spend any real amount of time by himself. But then, your stepdad is my dad’s brother, so that means my family is your family, and your family is also fucked up. We have some gardening to do, if we want to bring anything back to show Medley.”
Dean scowled. “I don’t like that you committed me to that.”
“And I don’t like your face. Come on. Let’s weed someone else’s tomato patch.”
I started walking back toward what I now knew was Ceres’s garden, listening for the sound of ravens. It never came.
The tools were in a long wooden box, remarkably unrotted, off to the side of the garden plot. I found us each a hoe and a pair of gloves, and we began taking care of the most superficial tasks. More detailed and demanding work would have to wait; for today, we were pulling the largest weeds, removing the most obvious debris, and hoeing up the biggest rocks. The garden seemed to appreciate our efforts. I never saw anything grow, but by the time we were finished, there were more tomatoes and beans ready for the harvest than there had been when we began, and when I bit into one of them, it was crisper and less mealy than the other vegetables I’d eaten here had been.
We stowed our tools carefully back in the box, filled our arms with produce, and started walking back toward Medley’s fire.
We were going to survive.
• • •
Dean and I had managed to collect almost as much food, just the two of us, as Medley and her entire group of children. We brought it back to the fire, and I felt oddly satisfied, like I had done something worthwhile for once in my life. Even the youngest of them willingly ate the substandard vegetables, tired enough not to argue, as we all relaxed around the fire.
“You two work it out?” asked Medley, gesturing to me and then Dean with a half-chewed carrot.
“I think so,” I said.
“I still don’t like her,” he said.
“But we can work together without fighting all the time, and I think we’re going to have to if we want to survive and feed this whole gang.”
Medley frowned. “Explain.”
“A group of Riders caught Dean while we were scavenging,” I said. “It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t do anything to attract their attention. We must have just missed a raven or something.”
“When they were taking me to Luna, one of them mentioned her setting them to watch the gardens,” he said. “If they’d been rounding up people all day, it makes sense that she’d have a watch posted. Blind Michael is very upset about what he assumes is one of his Riders making unsanctioned visits to the Summerlands and bringing back souvenirs. She wants him not to be upset, so she’s trying to find the answer on her own.”
“Unfortunately, there isn’t one,” I said dourly. “Which she’s not keen to believe, because we can’t be here if someone didn’t bring us here.”
“A Rider brought me here,” said Medley.
“You’re the only one,” said Scott, voice sour. “I’ve been talking to all the other kids—we’re all Undersea, we have a lot in common—and not one of us saw a Rider. We were all just here all of a sudden. Jia has her charger but not her phone, because she was holding it when she got dropped here. Half of us don’t have any shoes. We didn’t see any Riders.”