“How’s it going?” she asked.
“Poorly,” said Verity, giving her most cheerful smile. It felt false. “I don’t know what half these plants even are since some are surely local to Pucklechurch and some were presumably brought from Kiromo. I have no idea which is which, and I somewhat doubt that you do either.” She pointed at the big pot. “The mint and chives have taken over, and I’ll need to trim them back, but I’m not sure what you would want to go in their place.”
“Huh,” said Mizuki. “You know, I kind of forgot that this was here.”
“You don’t use herbs in your cooking?” asked Verity.
“Oh, I do, of course,” said Mizuki. “But mostly I buy them. I guess it just didn’t occur to me that they’d kept growing.”
“But you must walk by them almost every day, right?” asked Verity, feeling a bit helpless.
Mizuki shrugged. “I don’t go out the back that much. My mom used to bake a braided chive bread in the spring. I should go ask Hannah if she could make something like that.”
“Well, what do you use, then?” asked Verity. “I’m willing to spend a few rings replacing things that have died, though late spring is probably a worse time for it than early spring.” She was used to buying seeds with her mother from one of the heritage shops, then sprouting them herself. This late into the spring, that wouldn’t do, and she would have to buy the actual plants, which would come with its own risks, given how much the roots would be moved around.
“Um, garlic?” asked Mizuki. “Or ginger.”
“Those are both roots,” said Verity, wondering if this was a thing she needed to explain.
“Yes, but you could plant them, right?” asked Mizuki.
“Garlic you plant at the start of winter, a week or two after the first killing frost,” said Verity. In Dondrian, killing frost was later, but from her time in Pucklechurch, she knew that it must come early. “Ginger… I’m less sure about. But it would take some time to grow, and it’s not an herb like chives or mint are.”
“Well, you figure out an herb, I’ll figure out how to use it,” said Mizuki. “An herb’s job is to bring a fresh, light, green flavor to a dish, so… anything that can do that. Sorrel, flat-leaf parsley, rosemary, sage? Any of those would be good. I guess there are also a bunch of things native to Kiromo, but,” she rubbed the back of her neck, “first, me saying their names probably wouldn’t help you because you’d have no idea what geshi is, and second, you’d have no way to actually get any of them if they’re not right here in this garden. There were four other, big Kiromo families, but they all moved back with Grandpa, and I doubt their gardens, if they had any, survived.”
“We could still probably get seeds somehow,” said Verity. “I wouldn’t trust them to do nicely with these two killers, but if we had seeds, we could get something growing in a pot indoors, then transplant it next year.” She faltered as she said that though, because next year was quite far away, and there was no guarantee that their party was going to survive into next week, let alone through the winter. The thought made Verity anxious and a bit sad.
“I could send a letter to my parents,” said Mizuki. “It takes a long time for the post to go that distance, if it makes it there at all, but they might be able to send seeds that way.”
“I think that would be nice,” said Verity. “Is there anything else you’d like?”
Mizuki frowned, then reached out and plucked a piece of mint and put it in her mouth, chewing it and thinking. “There was a sauce that my mom made using these,” said Mizuki. “Some kind of sweet thing that I’d have to go to some trouble to re-create, and I’m not even sure this is the right mint. Sogri? Sogi? Something like that.”
“And for the rest of it?” asked Verity. She looked out at the wide garden. “If you know the names of any of the trees, or what plants were supposed to be here, I think it would be helpful.”
“Come,” said Mizuki, holding out an arm, which Verity took. “Let me take you on a tour of this horrible jungle of a backyard.”
The tour took quite some time, and Verity was introduced to so many Kiro words for plants that she felt she’d be lucky if she remembered one in ten. For someone who didn’t know much about the garden or gardening, Mizuki seemed to have quite a bit of knowledge about what grew there. She had been letting the place grow wild, harvesting less and less with every passing year until eventually she just didn’t go there anymore. It filled Verity with something that wasn’t quite sadness. Loneliness, maybe. It felt like there was a song in there somewhere.
“I know there’s lots of work to do,” said Mizuki. “And I don’t blame you if you don’t want to do it. I’m willing to budget some rings for either tools and things, or seeds, or whatever else you need, but if you don’t want to do it, just say so. This was your idea.”
“It will be a good project,” said Verity, looking at the overgrown garden. The worst of the dead plants had been removed, and it was a bit easier to see the shape of things, especially with the tour having been concluded. What Verity really needed to make was a garden map, which she’d have to do with Mizuki’s help, in part to know what was what.
There was something poetic about it, Verity decided. It was a glorious garden, fallen from grace, and she was going to rehabilitate it. Perhaps it would be something grand and ornate, especially if she had Isra’s help, but perhaps it would simply be a garden. The parallels to her own life were, perhaps, a stretch, but she felt there was a song there, one that deserved a little bit more time than one simply made up on the spot. A garden of Kiromon delights, left to slowly deteriorate, but with new life breathed into it… Verity smiled and thought about the lyrics, her two great passions melding in her mind.
Chapter 17 — The Blacksmith’s Apprentice
When they were leaving to go shop, Mizuki debated how much money to take. She had a small crock that she kept some spare rings in, but this was three thousand rings, high denominations that would only be used for larger purchases.
“I don’t like having this much money,” said Mizuki. “I feel like there’s a target on my back.”
“You’re a sorc,” said Hannah. “Seems to me the money is safer with you.”
Mizuki gave an uncomfortable shrug, meant as a ‘yes, but all the same’, and Hannah didn’t press her on it.
They walked together, and Mizuki was happy to have someone to talk to, even if the conversation dipped toward religion a bit too often for her tastes.
“It’s maybe one in ten who feel some attraction to their own gender,” said Hannah. “Half that again who think of it as somethin’ core to them, a fact about themselves rather than just a thing they do. And half that again if it’s only their own gender.”
“Those numbers come from… the census?” asked Mizuki.
Hannah laughed. “No, just some guesses by the church,” she said. “That sort of thing, the numbers, aren’t available at any level of governance, as the Editors didn’t see fit to include it. But you can see, of course, how there’d be problems bein’ in the minority like that, and part of what the Church of Garos does is to help with that. We’ve got a role in the community more than most of the clerics of other gods, ways that we help a specific sort of person. Especially in a place like this, you grow up havin’ these feelin’s that your parents never had, that your friends likely don’t have, and the Church of Garos is there to help you make sense of them and, on occasion, to play matchmaker, if that’s what’s needed.”