Chapter 14: Free Soil

In the morning Rennie carried Leaf’s pot down the back steps and set it in the strip of sun along the fence. Rosy came down behind her on its own two feet, which it liked to be seen doing. Then Rennie stepped back, because this part had to be done right.

Leaf had one leaf lying over the rim, angled at the blue pot, the way it did when it thought nobody was watching. Rennie watched. She didn’t say anything about it.

“Okay,” she said. “Everybody says their name and one thing about themselves.”

Rosy went first, which nobody had asked it to do. “Rosy,” it said. “Earth sprite. Leaf’s.” Then it turned its whole body around toward Rennie, so she’d be looking when it got to the part about Leaf.

“Leaf,” Leaf said, out of its pot. “I went away so that one would have to learn something on its own.”

“I was coming back,” Rosy said.

“You were on a clearance table with a price written on your side.”

“That was later.”

“Did you leave on purpose?” Vermilion said.

“It had a mountain under it and it wouldn’t grow,” Leaf said.

“I grew.”

“Slowly.”

Rosy turned to Vermilion and told the rest of it, the way Rosy told things, like a favor it was doing you. “Somebody found me asleep and fired me in a kiln. Which you don’t do to a person. Then I sat on a table being a pot until Mom paid for me and carried me out to the car, and Leaf was already here when I got home, and I’ve been on that windowsill ever since.” It looked at Rennie, to check that Rennie had all of it. “And starting today I don’t have to sit still for anybody. I’m on the couch for the show. With Rennie. Out loud.”

“You can practice,” Leaf said.

“After the show,” Rosy said.

Rennie turned to the new one. “Your turn.”

Vermilion had stayed by the fence the whole time and hadn’t come any closer on its own. It was three feet tall, with small dark flowers held up on top of it. “Vermilion,” it said.

“You said you were a cinnabar berry,” Rosy said.

“It’s the same thing. One of them is a name.”

“Where from?”

“A long way.”

Turnip was on the bottom step with its chin on its paws and hadn’t said anything. Rennie said its name for it.

“Ives’s,” Turnip said. “Before.” It rolled the little stone ball from one paw to the other. “They put a hotel on me. I got over it.”

Nobody said anything to that.

Vermilion stood where it was a second longer. Then all of its leaves came down at once, and it looked smaller than it had.

“I thought I would be the strange one here,” it said.

“I got fired in a kiln,” Rosy said. “Turnip had a hotel put on top of it. You’re fine.”

Rennie walked over and stood beside Vermilion, and after a second it moved up next to her, and that was as close as it was going to get.

She went and got the empty pot off the stack by the greenhouse wall and set it down in the yard where the sun stayed longest, and stepped back. That was the last one anybody needed a place for.

Vermilion thanked her and started for the fence, where the dirt was.

“Hold on,” Rosy said.

It came off the step and got in front of Rennie first and stopped there, and waited until Rennie looked down at it. Then it turned around, slow, as if it had only just thought of something.

“I don’t mind the look of you,” Rosy said to Vermilion. “So I’ll do you a favor. I’ll give you some of mine.”

“Really?”

“I have plenty. It’s nothing.”

Vermilion crossed the yard in a hurry and stopped right at the pot.

Rosy set its feet apart and thought about it.

The blue pot began to shake in short jumps. “Mmh,” Rosy said. “Mmh—mmh—“

Dirt came up over Rosy’s rim in one slow curl and went over the side into the new pot. Rosy made the sound again, longer, and more dirt followed, and it went on like that for a while, and none of it was any kind of dignified. Rennie laughed all the way through it, and when there was enough dirt in the new pot she clapped.

“Wow,” she said. “Rosy, you’re so good at that.”

Rosy sat down on the step with its feet out, used up.

Vermilion hadn’t moved. Its roots had come up a little way out of the grass and gone stiff, and every leaf it had was standing straight up.

Turnip rolled the stone ball under one paw. “You’ve never been anywhere,” it said. “Have you.”

Vermilion didn’t answer it.

Vermilion climbed into the new pot and put itself down in Rosy’s dirt, and after that it didn’t move.

Mom came in through the kitchen door with her sleeves pushed up the way they got in the greenhouse. Rennie went and stood in the doorway and kept her voice down, because the yard was right there and the plant in it was asleep.

“There’s a plant out back,” Rennie said. “It came last night while you were gone. It wants a tonic so it can fruit, and when it fruits it says it will pay two berries.”

“How far did it come?”

“It won’t say.”

“What does a berry like that brew into?”

“It wouldn’t say that either.”

Mom stood at the window over the sink and looked out at the pot.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll make it the tonic.”

“It says it’s the plant that cures everything,” Rennie said.

“Everything.”

“That’s what it said.”

Mom looked a while longer. Rennie waited.

“Wick says it can’t stay past the season without a permit,” Rennie said. “He says he doesn’t give those out.”

“Then it’s got the season,” Mom said. “After that, we’ll see.”

She went back out to the greenhouse.

Rosy had moved over next to the new pot and was sitting where it could be seen doing something for somebody.

“Okay,” Rennie said, to the pot. “Now you know everybody.”

She went in and pulled the kitchen door shut with both hands so it wouldn’t bang, and the yard went quiet behind her.