The Spare Sun

I sold the spare sun for six months off my apprenticeship. In my defense, it was in the compost corner.

Our customer was a woman named Vale who owned a small winter. She arrived towing it in a covered cart. Frost furred the spokes; a child’s red mitten lay frozen into the axle. She had bought the winter cheaply and now regretted it. There were three houses inside and none of their occupants would pay rent until she provided a dawn.

“One modest sun,” she said. “Nothing that needs polishing.”

Master Hobb was at the exchange, selling the summer varieties. He had left me with the usual instructions: sweep, water, admit no customers. But Vale had come twelve days over the dark flats. Her winter was getting heavy. She showed me the wheel ruts, which ran upward behind her cart like scars.

The little sun had sprouted between two broken pots. It made a dull copper light and had no label. I had asked Hobb about it the previous week. He had said, “A volunteer. I’ll root it out.”

I told Vale she could have it if she bought out part of my contract. Hobb valued labor above almost everything, especially when somebody else had to do it.

She examined the sun through the smoked glass I provided. “Will it grow?”

“It has already grown.”

“That’s not quite an answer.”

It wasn’t. I was nineteen and had another seven years of answers like that to sweep up behind Hobb. I reduced my price to four months. Vale offered three, and we shook hands. She would return at dawn with a cradle to carry the sun.

I dug around its roots before bed. They ran under the compost bin, fine as pale hair. I did not pull them free. Suns sulk if transplanted at night. Hobb’s instruction book said that on the first page, along with Do not breathe on a blue one.

At midnight, something hit the greenhouse roof.

I went out with the smoked lantern. All along the eastern rows, dormant suns had unfolded their leaves. One had grown high enough to crack a pane. They were supposed to sleep until their shipping date. Each had been coaxed into a season, carefully watered and kept in shade. Now their labels curled in the heat.

Hobb came down in his nightshirt. He smelled of exchange smoke and the expensive soap he kept for journeys.

“What have you fed them?”

“Nothing.”

He repeated the question as if changing its volume would change the answer. I told him about the sale, then about the trench I had dug around the volunteer.

He put his face close to mine.

“You sold my stock?”

“You said you were going to root it out.”

“That does not make it yours.”

I had no good reply. We both knew that, and for a moment we stood enjoying different parts of it.

He took the long shears off their hook. At the compost corner, the little sun had drawn its leaves tightly around itself. Hobb raised the blades. Before he closed them, the glasshouse gave a loud, dry crack.

We looked back. A red giant had pushed its head through the broken roof. Its scheduled buyer wanted a gentle autumn. It was producing July with considerable enthusiasm.

Hobb lowered the shears and went for the shade cloths.

We spent the rest of the night tying cloth over the rows. I burned a hole through one glove. Hobb lost an eyebrow. By first light the nursery looked like a laundry yard after a storm, with sheets hung everywhere and small fires beneath them.

Vale arrived with her cradle. She looked at Hobb’s face, then at mine.

“A difficulty?”

“An unauthorized transaction,” Hobb said.

She brought out the receipt I had written. Hobb read it, keeping the scorched side of his face away from her.

“The boy had no authority.”

“Then he shouldn’t have been left in the shop.”

“He wasn’t left in the shop. He was left in the nursery.”

Vale looked around at the pots, benches, price slate and bell. “A distinction you should paint somewhere.”

The volunteer’s leaves had begun to open. The shade cloths stopped shaking. I noticed this because I was holding one end of a rope and suddenly had nothing to brace against.

“Wait,” I said.

Hobb said we had waited long enough.

I pushed the soil back into the trench. As I covered the exposed roots, the nearest large sun lowered its head. Its glow fell to the soft yellow of stored butter. Vale watched me fill the rest. By the time I stood, the broken greenhouse pane had gone dark.

We kept still. Beneath the soil, the small sun’s roots lay tangled with the older ones. Above it, their leaves closed one by one.

“You planted it,” I said to Hobb.

“No.”

I fetched the propagation book. Its early pages were in the hand of Hobb’s mother, who had run the nursery before him. On the compost-corner sketch, a copper circle had been drawn between two pots. Beside it: Nurse. Do not shift while stock is dormant.

Hobb took the book. He turned two pages forward, two back.

“That’s old practice.”

“It’s still doing it.”

He looked toward the broken pane. Vale asked whether the nurse could be divided. The book contained a method, underlined twice, and a warning that division required a full season without dormant stock attached. Everything in the glasshouse was attached. We had orders enough to fill the next three seasons.

Vale put her receipt on the bench.

“I need my dawn.”

Hobb offered her a discount on an autumn variety. It cost more than her winter. He offered to buy back the receipt. She asked whether she should carry the winter home through twelve more nights and tell the people inside it about their refund.

I went to the western row. My own practice sun stood there in a clay bowl. Every apprentice grew one, starting with a cold seed and tending it until it could hold a day. Mine was nearly ready. I had planned to take it with me when my contract ended and start a small holding. It had a crooked stem because I had once fallen asleep with the shade open.

“That one,” I said.

Hobb shook his head. “It hasn’t had its trial.”

“We could trial it now.”

Vale opened the cart. Cold came out, carrying the sound of a pump and someone chopping wood. We placed my sun in the cradle at the winter’s edge. It trembled. Through the cart’s opening I saw three roofs become visible, a line of washing, a dog turning around twice before lying down.

The dawn was uneven. One house got light before the others. Vale tilted the cradle, then shifted a support under its foot. The sun steadied.

“It will do,” she said.

She wanted a guarantee. Hobb and I argued over that while she stood with her pencil ready. He would not guarantee work he had not approved. I could not guarantee weather I had not tested. In the end he agreed to a season of adjustments, paid from the money he owed for my night work. That last sum took the longest to establish. We calculated it on the back of Vale’s receipt, where she could see.

Hobb signed the buyout on Vale’s receipt. My practice sun had been grown from my seed and my allowance; he could deny the sale, but he could not sell it a second time. She left with it, and I kept the three months. I had six years and nine months still to serve, no seedling to start with and one unusable glove. Hobb told me that next time I sold stock without permission, the loss would come out of my wages.

“Write the wages down first,” I said.

He took a clean page from the propagation book’s pocket. We made a rate for ordinary hours and another for emergencies. He wrote mine lower than I wanted. I crossed it out. We were still there when the first delivery cart rang the gate bell.

The customer wanted six autumns by midday. Hobb sent me to explain the delay. I told her about the broken glass. Through the gate I could see Vale’s cart crossing the flats, its covering bright along the seams. In the nursery behind me, the little copper sun held the entire eastern row asleep.