Birdie's Book - Andrea Burden [22]
One beautiful day the Agminium heard a loud crash. They looked up from beneath the water to see that a shimmering stone had hit the rocks and broken in two: One half fell to the ground, and the other half dropped to the edge of their pond. A walking human shadow picked up the stone from the ground and disappeared. Then the flowers hid their heads as a flying shadow dove from the sky. The shadow snatched the broken piece from the shallow water and disappeared into the sky. Ever since that day, the special tree of Aventurine has been slowly dying. The land near the tree is dark, and the plants near it are dying as the shadow spreads. The fairies do not know how or when it is to be stopped, for they cannot change something that has a human beginning. They can only wait, as do the Agminium.
I pulled the Singing Stone from my pocket. It hummed in my hand. “Was this one half of the stone you saw?” I asked, holding it out for the flowers to see.
“Yes,” they chorused. “We recognize its song and its light.”
“Do you know where the other half is?” I asked.
They sadly shook their pink heads. “It is gone, taken by the flying shadow.”
“I think the other half is still here in Aventurine,” I told them. “This half was kept safe in my world.”
Kerka nudged me. “The fairies? Remember?”
“Oh, right!” I said. Then I asked the flowers as politely as I could, in Latin, how to find the fairies.
The flowers swayed. “There is an apple tree that way,” they said, their pink petals dipping in one direction. Kerka and I turned to see where they were pointing. “Start there, and go through the Orchards of Allfruit. Just past there is the Lilac Wall that protects the home of the Willowood Fairies.”
“Thank you,” I said. “But what is allfruit? How will we know the orchard?”
“An orchard is an orchard and allfruit is allfruit,” the flowers added, ducking back under the water one by one. The pond sparkled and blurred where the flowers had gone down.
“Come on, let’s get to the apple tree and find the orchard and the fairies,” said Kerka.
The maidens had put Kerka’s pack and stick on the rocks, so she was all set to go. I wanted to stop and think about what the flowers had said, but Kerka just wasn’t made that way, so off we went at a quick pace. It took us all of two minutes to find the apple tree, whose branches were full of shiny red apples. I picked two of them while Kerka was looking around.
“Here, Kerka,” I said, tossing her an apple.
It didn’t surprise me one bit when she caught it easily in one hand.
“Oh, cool!” I said, taking a crunchy bite. Sweet juice dripped down my chin. “Do you see that, Kerka?” I pointed to the marigolds and garlic that grew in neat circles around the apple tree.
“I see flowers and some other plant,” Kerka replied, eating her apple. “What’s the big deal?”
“It’s called companion planting. The flowers are marigolds, and they keep away beetles. The other plant is garlic, which keeps disease from the tree. My dad taught me that in our garden in Califa. He’s a bit of a botanist, too, like my granny Mo.”
“Neat,” said Kerka. “Hey, Birdie, doesn’t your mom teach you anything?”
I sighed. This girl was not going to let go of the mom thing. “Well, my mom isn’t the Mother Earth type. She’s all about business. Making money. Working long hours, you know? I guess she could teach me about that if I was interested.” I thought I’d turn the conversation over to her. “I’m really sorry about your mom,” I said gently. “Was she a gardener?”
Kerka shot me a weird look. “You really don’t like her, do you, Birdie? Your mom, I mean.”
Obviously, neither of us wanted to talk about her mother, so I changed the subject altogether. “So, where’re these Orchards of Allfruit, do you think?” I asked.
“That way,” Kerka said, pointing across the grassy field that was beyond the apple tree we were under.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “I see it, I think.” There were definitely trees, and they seemed to be laid out in rows, so Kerka was probably right.
“Let’s go!” said