Leda found the seed inside a cracked teapot.
It was bigger than her thumb, green at one end and brown at the other. Three drops of water clung to its shell. Everything else in the old house had dried to dust.
She tipped it into her cup.
“Don’t,” said someone behind the teapot.
A little man climbed onto the handle. Leaves grew along his shoulders. One had turned yellow. He was holding a wooden spoon as if it were a sword.
“My brother needs food,” Leda said.
“So does a seed.”
“You can have the spoon.”
“I live in the pot. It’s already mine.”
His name was Brin. He was a woodland fae, though Leda could see no woodland from the broken window. Beyond the house lay a dry plain, her settlement’s six low roofs, and the white line of an old road.
Brin followed her gaze.
“There used to be trees.”
“There used to be a shop, too. I can’t eat either of them now.”
She put a little drinking water in the cup. The seed’s shell opened just enough to take it. Then the crack closed.
Brin sat down very suddenly.
“Now it belongs in the garden.”
“Now it’s watered.”
“It keeps water while it sleeps. That’s why those drops were still there. But wake it in good earth and it will send roots to the other roots. They can share what water you give them.”
“Make more?”
“Keep what they have. Move it where it’s needed. It cannot fill an empty cup.”
Leda looked at the water she’d given it. Her brother would miss that water tonight. They had a sack of dry meal at home, enough for a few weeks, but no fresh food since the last trader left.
“Will it grow food?”
“If there are food plants near it. If you water them. If you wait.”
“You ask a lot for something that fits in a teapot.”
Brin touched the yellow leaf on his shoulder. “So do you.”
Leda packed the cup in a cloth. Brin jumped down and caught her bag’s strap.
“The keepers won’t let it root anywhere else.”
“What keepers?”
“Four of them. They guard the old garden. The seed only wakes where their four roots meet. The beans we grow beside it can make ordinary seeds for your homes.”
She had seen that garden from the road. A stone wall surrounded it. Nothing rose above the wall except a broken vane that once turned in the wind.
Her brother, Niko, was waiting under the house’s sagging porch. He had brought the wheelbarrow in case she found anything useful.
Brin saw him and pulled harder at the strap.
The bag slipped from Leda’s shoulder. The cup fell onto the porch and rolled down the steps. Water ran from its rim.
Brin darted after it. Leda caught his coat, nearly tearing a leaf from his shoulder.
They both stopped.
Inside the cup, the seed still shone with water. The sleeping shell had kept what it had already swallowed. The spilled water had been the little left outside it.
“You could have broken it,” Leda said.
“You could have taken it.”
Niko set the wheelbarrow handles down.
“Where does it go?” he asked.
Brin pointed at the stone wall.
“Then let’s see,” Niko said.
The garden gate had fallen inward. Beyond it, four narrow beds met around a dry round pool. Each bed ended at a wooden figure no taller than Leda’s knee. Behind the broken vane, a rusted pipe ran into a low mound.
A woman with stone hands stood in the earth bed. A fish-shaped figure leaned above an empty channel. A man with a wide wooden mouth faced the broken vane. At the far end, a small red bird stood under a fallen shade screen.
Brin bowed to all four. Leda kept hold of her cup.
The stone-handed woman opened her eyes.
“Roots?” she asked.
“One seed,” Brin said.
“Earth first.”
Brin handed her the spoon. “It’s better at this than fighting.”
Leda knelt. The bed was hard, but beneath its crust she found darker soil threaded with dead roots. She used the spoon to loosen a small space. Niko brought leaf dust from a corner where it had piled against the wall.
The keeper pressed her stone fingers into the loosened patch.
“Here,” she said.
The seed opened a hairline crack. A pale root showed through it.
Leda almost put it in the earth.
“Water,” said the fish.
“I gave it water.”
“For a seed. Not for a garden.”
The fish turned its wooden head toward a channel under the broken vane. Leda followed the channel to a low metal lid. Beside it, a pipe vanished beneath the wall.
Niko struck the lid with the spoon. The sound rang hollow. From underneath came a slosh.
“There’s a tank,” he said.
They worked the lid loose. A dark pool waited below, sealed away from the dry air for all those years. Leda thought of the buckets under their own roof, all empty.
A second channel led away from the tank, through the gate and into a dry gutter pointing toward the settlement. If she opened it, the stored water would run toward the settlement.
Brin stood on the edge of her cup.
“You said you’d come and see.”
“I have seen. There are people who need this.”
“There are roots that need it.”
“They’re dead.”
The stone keeper lifted one finger. Under it lay a root no thicker than a hair. Its cut end was pale green.
Niko crouched beside Leda.
“If we take the water home, how long will it last?”
She could not count the dark tank’s depth. She could count the six roofs. She knew how quickly the buckets went empty.
The wooden wind keeper spoke through his wide mouth.
“Open the roof. Close the wind.”
Leda looked up. The fallen screen covered the planting beds, keeping sunlight out. A gap in the wall would let wind blow straight across any young shoots.
Niko set the wheelbarrow against the wall’s gap. It was not a wall, but it stopped some of the wind. They pulled the screen upright and leaned it beside the barrow. Sunlight reached the loosened earth.
The red bird spread its wooden wings.
“Warm enough,” it said.
Leda opened the tank’s little garden outlet. A thin stream ran along the channel. The fish settled its tail across the wider outlet toward the gate, blocking it.
“This way first,” it said.
Leda held the seed over the patch.
“I need food,” she told Brin. “I can’t leave everything here and hope.”
“There were beans by the south wall.”
They found four shriveled bean pods caught in an old vine. Some of the beans inside were sound. Niko planted them near the green-brown seed.
“If they grow,” Leda said, “we take some home.”
“Leave some to make more,” Brin said.
She pressed the seed into the earth.
The soil darkened where the little stream reached it.
Leda felt foolish for having expected more.
Then the pale root came out of the shell. It bent, slowly, toward the living root under the keeper’s finger. When they touched, a small green line lit the earth between them.
Brin’s yellow shoulder leaf lifted.
He stayed in the garden that night. Leda and Niko went home with one filled bucket. The fish had allowed them that much from the tank after the planting bed was wet.
They returned with other people, repaired the gap, and carried soil. Brin kept his spoon at the garden gate, where whoever came to work could find it. Between visits, Leda and Niko went on selling scrap metal for meal. It took weeks for the beans to climb the old supports. It took longer for the first pods to fill.
When Leda brought one pod home, Niko held it beside the chipped cup.
“All that work for this?”
“You carried half the wall,” she said. “You tell me.”
He broke the pod open. They ate two beans each and saved the rest.
The next morning, Brin was waiting at their door with the wooden spoon.
“Your turn at the water channel,” he said.
Leda took the spoon and gave him the empty pod for the garden.
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