Nolin Sometimes grinned. ‘As you may know, I am also a botanist.’
‘Um?’ said Willow.
Oswin blinked. ‘I tol’ yew ’e’s off his rocker,’ he said.
Nolin Sometimes’s passion for botany explained the strange plants dotted around the stilt house and how they’d come to find him in the magical forest of Wisperia, but not, Willow couldn’t help thinking, how it might help them understand who had taken the missing Tuesday.
Sometimes sighed dramatically, shaking his head. ‘The study of botany, along with the art of forgotten telling, have long been entwined. The early oubliers were able to grow certain plants that helped them in telling larger portions of the past. The roots of these plants connect beneath the ground, creating a large network of memory, and if we can access the right ones, we can find out what really happened. Do you understand?’ he said rather excitedly.
Willow, Oswin and Feathering all shook their heads.
Sometimes sighed again. ‘Plants are not just pretty things that grow waiting for our fingers to pluck at them, you know? They are smarter than we realise and many are able to warn each other in times of danger. Some are always listening to what we have to say, and, if you get the right one, you can find out anything you wish to know.’
Willow’s mouth plopped open in shock. ‘Really?’
Nolin Sometimes nodded.
Willow would never think of plants the same way again.
‘Can all forgotten tellers find out the secrets of plants?’ she asked.
Sometimes’s face drooped, and he took a sip of his now stone-cold tea, his blue eyes sad. ‘Not any more. It’s a bit hard to keep up with gardening while you’re running for your life,’ he said with a rueful grin. ‘Only a few of us have got the old skills. I’m one of the lucky ones; my grandfather taught me all he knew. And on his deathbed he gave me a small box that contained the seeds of one of the most special plants ever grown – the memory flower. This flower will reveal one secret under the light of the moon before it dies.’
Willow and Feathering quickly looked up at the darkening sky, where they could see a crescent moon peeking out through the clouds.
‘That’s right,’ continued Sometimes. ‘It will bloom soon.’
At nightfall, using a set of stairs along the side of the swaying stilt house, Willow followed Sometimes. She had left Oswin behind in the house with Harold, much to the kobold’s annoyance. ‘I can’t carry you to the roof,’ she’d said to his orange back. ‘You know you could just walk with us?’ she’d added. But there had been a disgruntled sniff and he’d shot her a look of disbelief over his shoulder, then went back to sulking, paws crossed over his chest. Clearly staying inside, even if it was with a dog, was preferable to having to go outside or leave the comfort of the hairy carpetbag.
Up and up they continued to climb, towards the roof of the house.
‘Don’t worry, she’s as sturdy as a rock,’ said Sometimes as the house gave a rather terrifying jolt to the side and then righted itself.
Willow’s hands shook, but she managed somehow to get to the top, where she found herself in a very unusual garden. Perched among the clouds it was laid out in various patterns of concentric circles. Eagerly Willow darted forward to have a look at the sorts of plants that would go into a ‘moon garden’. Rather disappointingly, though, they were all the same rather dull brown shade, with leaves that drooped on to the ground. They looked pretty dead really.
‘It’s interesting,’ she managed as a response to Sometimes’s rather expectant look.
Sometimes laughed. ‘It doesn’t look like much now – but just wait. Unlike normal daytime plants these ones only show their glory during the light of the moon,’ he explained.
‘It’s hard to imagine these having any glory,’ said Feathering, joining them, his massive feathered bulk swaying in the clouds.
Sometimes shook his head, a smile playing about his lips. ‘You’ll see.’
It didn’t take long. As the moonlight stretched across the garden the plants began to transform. They grew larger, their leaves changing shape – some with vivid stripes and others with splotches of paint-like drips on their leaves – and magnificent flowers in shades of super-bright white, sunshine, topaz and electric pinks, blues and purples sprouted in the glowing moonlight.
‘They’re amazing!’ Willow said as she reached out to touch the soft, furry petals of one at her feet. She gasped when the plant reached out to touch her back.
‘The scent,’ said Feathering, closing his large golden eye in apparent bliss. ‘Like a fresh, juicy deer on a clear mountain path after the storm.’
Willow closed her eyes and breathed in. ‘I smell hot chocolate with cinnamon and marshmallows!’
Sometimes grinned. ‘That’s a bliss flower; it produces the scent of what you most enjoy!’
Feathering hovered above the clouds, his powerful wings beating the air, making Willow’s hair blow back. ‘So one of these will tell us who took the missing Tuesday?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Sometimes. ‘This one,’ he said, coming to a stop in the centre of the garden, where a tall palegreen plant surrounded by a circle of white pebbles was slowly beginning to transform.
It was bigger than the others, but less colourful. While they watched the green leaves began to open very slowly and a tall, thin stem appeared. Translucent like glass, the stem unfurled and a large pure-white flower emerged, its tiny fronds covered in what looked like gold dust. Its petals opened and it shifted ever so slightly towards Nolin Sometimes and bowed its petal head.
An expectant hush descended. Sometimes touched it, then asked, ‘Tell us, Memory Flower, who took last Tuesday?’
Willow held her breath.
The flower began to shift, its petals unfurling outwards, twisting and growing, and changing before their eyes into the shape of a young man. His form was made of airy lace-like petals. There were holes where his eyes should have been, and his hair was made of the same golden thread that had covered the fronds of the memory flower. He was wearing a long robe with what looked like golden arrows in the centre.
The plant boy looked at them with eyes that weren’t there and said in a voice like wind rattling a doorframe, ‘The boy called Silas cast the spell hidden within the fortress.’
‘A fortress?’ cried Willow. ‘Which fortress? Which spell? How can we get it back?’
The plant boy shook his head, and before their eyes he began to disappear, turning back into a flower once more. Then each of the flower’s petals scattered to the wind.
Sometimes sighed. ‘Like I said, you only get the one question.’ He turned to look at Willow. ‘At least we know who to look for now.’
Willow nodded. Someone called Silas. ‘And that it was a spell.’
‘Which means that you won’t be able to summon the lost day,’ said Sometimes.
‘Why not?’ asked Willow.
‘The magic of the spell might react to your own when you summon it; it could do what Moreg feared and split apart the universe,’ explained Sometimes.
Willow blinked, put aside the part of her mind that was panicking in Oswin’s voice, and going ‘Oh noooo,’ and thought hard. ‘What if I tried to summon the spell?’