Birdie's Book - Andrea Burden [23]
Boy, could that girl march along! It was as if she were going to battle, or maybe going to kick a ball really hard. I had a great time not marching but flitting about like a butterfly as I saw interesting little wildflowers hidden all the way across the field. Even the Agminium flowers’ words about things not being as they seemed didn’t matter here. After all, there were a lot of things in my life that weren’t as they seemed, right? Mo seemed kooky, but she was totally sane—obviously fairies and dream worlds were real. And my mom seemed sane to anyone but me, and I knew she was crazy. See what I mean?
Anyway, we reached the orchard (it was definitely an orchard up close). “More apple trees!” I exclaimed. “I guess the allfruit must be farther in.” I peered into the orchard; it went on and on as far as I could see. I was standing there just goggling at what appeared to be miles of trees when Kerka walked past me.
“What are you waiting for, Birdie?” she called back to me. “We’ve got places to go, fairies to see! Are you always this slow?”
“I am always this slow!” I told Kerka when I had caught up with her. “At least when there are lots of plants around. Are you always this fast?”
“Yes,” she answered as we began walking together, or rather, she strode and I kind of skipped. “At least when there’s somewhere to go. I guess I don’t like sitting still that much.”
“And I love sitting, well, not sitting, but not marching all around like you,” I said. “Gardening is like being in action but all in one place. Unless you have to carry a lot of soil from one spot to another.”
We kept chatting as we walked through the apple trees. Until I noticed that they weren’t apple trees anymore but pear trees. I pointed to a ripe pear. “The apple orchard just became a pear orchard,” I said.
“At least we won’t go hungry,” said Kerka, picking a pear.
I picked one, too. It was as delicious as the apple had been.
The pear trees became peach trees, and a little bell went off in my head. “I bet this is what the Agminium meant by allfruit!” I said. “So the trees will be all different kinds of fruit. Cool!” I looked along the row of peach trees where we were walking, then back to where we had just been. I couldn’t see the field any longer, only fruit trees. “I wonder how many kinds of fruit there are,” I said.
“If you wonder too long, all the fairies will be asleep and in their beds,” said Kerka. “Come on!”
“Just so you know,” I added, “all these kinds of fruit trees together? Not normal.”
Kerka rolled her eyes, but she smiled. We ate our way through peaches, apricots, oranges, mangoes, bananas, and olives. The sun was well past the midpoint, and my feet were starting to ache from walking when I smelled a sweet scent wafting toward us through the olive trees.
“I smell flowers,” said Kerka, sounding surprised. (I guess she’s not one to stop and smell the roses too often! Ha-ha.)
“That’s lilac,” I told her.
“So we must be coming to the Lilac Wall,” said Kerka.
We continued through the olive trees, the lilac scent growing stronger every moment. Finally, we came out of the Orchards of Allfruit. Right in front of us was a wall. It was the strangest wall I’d ever seen. It was eight or nine feet tall and looked like it was made of handblown glass—you know, the kind that’s not completely clear, with bubbles going through it? Right through the glass, we could see lilacs on the other side. So I guess that made it the Lilac Wall, right?
Kerka and I both touched the wall. It was cool and smooth. Kerka rapped on the wall with her knuckle. It sounded hard. I rapped on it, too: totally solid.
“Hmm,” I said. “How are we going to get through that?”
“Not through,” said Kerka. “Over.”
We turned back to the little olive trees. Kerka measured them with her eyes.
“No way,” I said. “They aren’t close enough to the wall, plus they aren’t strong enough at the top even if we found one that was close to the wall.”
“Then we just have to walk around the wall until we find a gate or something,” said Kerka.
I groaned. “Can’t we take a break, pleeeeease?