Page 5 of Earth-Bound

Broadmire scowled.

I tried to save my job. “It’s just that you said I could landscape the place and those trees are—”

“I said you could do what you wanted.”

“Yes.”

“So go ahead.”

I blinked at him. He just scowled back. Or maybe that was just his face.

Randall came to the rescue again.

“He actually does mean that,” he said to me.

“People don’t often give their gardeners permission to do what they want. They want a say in how it’s going to look.”

Randall moved closer to Broadmire and leaned his head against Broadmire’s shoulder. “Yeah, but Broadmire doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean. He said you could choose – he means you can choose.”

Broadmire added, “I said as long as you keep things growing.”

“Just… growing? That’s all you want?”

“Yes.”

“And I can landscape it myself? Move things around?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm.”

“What?”

“That’s great. I’ll get back to work.”

I figured I’d leave while I was ahead. No point in staying there to get told he was joking. As far as I was concerned, I could now do what I wanted with Broadmire’s land. And I was going to love it.

As soon as Broadmire and Randall were out of sight of the house, I went back inside. The sunshine was cut off by the thick brick and even the large windows didn’t seem to provide enough light in the corridors. I burst into the master bedroom and looked down at the apple tree outside, smiling to myself. No wonder it was looking better recently if Randall had been talking to it.

That was one thing the bullies had never been able to laugh out of me: the belief that things grew better if you talked to them.

“Now, my darlin’, I’ve got a treat for you. I’m going to take you downstairs and see if you don’t grow better there. Come along, you’ve got some new friends to meet.”

Chapter 4: Terrund

Ilooked forward to Randall’s visits each day. He was a friendly person and I enjoyed his company.

The fact that he didn’t know I was there may have made our friendship unconventional but I was still so weak that I didn’t want to leave my tree too often or go too far. I was happy just stepping out of my tree sometimes, feeling the earth under my feet and waiting for the animals to come to me.

Slowly, I was re-learning my territory. Slowly, I was gaining power.

I’d thought for a while that my senses had been blocked or I’d lost the ability to feel magic because all of the power that had simmered under Randall’s skin suddenly vanished. One day he came to talk to me, bursting with power, and the next he was empty.

It wasn’t me losing my ability to feel magic, though. It was Randall. He’d lost his magic.

There weren’t many ways to do that and I shuddered at the thought of what had happened to him to make him so powerless.At first, I thought it had been the troll’s fault, that he’d done something awful to Randall, but as I listened to Randall talking, I decided that couldn’t be it. He wouldn’t bring the troll along and smile up at him and chat so happily if he was the victim of a terrible crime.

Indeed, the more I watched and listened and felt for the magic, the more I felt the happiness radiate out from him.

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