The Shepherd of Weeds (38 page)

The twining roots of Underwood pulsed with life, small green shoots sprouting from larger, more substantial stalks, unfurling new tender leaves. Underwood marked the beginning of her adventures, and the place where she had met her mother. The first time Ivy had seen the immense room, it was brown and dormant—or worse, dying. But new life flowed now into the roots from the trees above, and everywhere it felt like spring.

The room was illuminated by some unknown source, as if the light was filtered through woven leaves of a shady canopy, and this conspired to make everything appear to be a more brilliant version of itself. The greens were newer, brighter. The wildflowers ridiculously attractive. But nothing compared to the beauty of the four ladies Ivy saw standing before her.

They were timeless, these figures from a childhood dream, and their attire bewildered the eye. Yet each bore a strangely familiar presence, as if Ivy had met them before—and indeed Ivy felt she might place them at any moment.

It was with the last of them, a woman in a gown as white and weightless as spun sugar, where Shoo was to be found. He sat, perched upon her shoulder, as he had in the tapestry that imprisoned them both. Ivy opened her mouth to call for her crow, but stopped.

“The lady from the tapestry!” she gasped. Babette was the great mystery of the Verdigris tapestries; Shoo had been imprisoned
upon her shoulder when Cecil spoke the potent words that made the tapestries come alive and then recede. And here she was—in the flesh. But where were the familiar tapestries? Searching the room, she saw not one. Instead, among the flourishing plant life, she saw her uncle. “Uncle Cecil! How did you—”

But her uncle, indeed the entire gathering before her, fell into a deep bow, and Ivy stopped, confused. She felt the color rise in her cheeks.

“King Verdigris,” Ivy mumbled, lowering herself into a formal curtsy.

The ancient king beside her lifted her chin, touched her crown, and in turn a few new violets bloomed.

“My child,” he said, his voice deep and kind. “They bow for you, too.”

The Four Sisters had moved away from their informal line, revealing an empty olive wood loom and a small table with a silver tea service set upon it. The ornate teapot exhaled a thin line of steam from its spout.

“Ah, I see we have not missed tea?” the King asked, a sparkle in his eyes. “You’re in for a real treat, Ivy.” He turned to her.

“Your Highness.” Babette smiled, arranging the small dainty cups upon their saucers.

Tea was poured and served, but strangely, not to Ivy.

And even stranger, it was not drunk. For the Four Sisters
each inspected their cups carefully, sloshing the contents about severely and then dashing the tea leaves to the ground between them. They leaned in eagerly to divine.

Ivy blinked.

Could it be?

Could these ladies before her be the ruined, moldy sisters from the Eath?

Ah, life’s rich tapestry.

y dear sisters,” Lola began. “The tea leaves do not lie.”

“Indeed.” Gigi nodded thoughtfully. “It is merely a matter of precise interpretation.”

“After you.” Lola gestured magnanimously.

Gigi’s eyes sparkled.

As the sisters prepared themselves, Ivy felt suddenly crowded. It was as if the room were host to spectators—not just herself, Cecil, and the King. Slowly, she became aware of a ghostly audience, vague people cloaked in dusk. Her skin tingled.

Cecil had found Ivy and held her by the hand, his solid arm alive with warmth. Together, her uncle’s great form and her small one pooled on the floor as their shadows mixed.

“They have come to glimpse you before they go.” Cecil indicated the crowd.

“Go?”

But the reading was commencing, and Ivy was shushed. A pile of spent tea leaves sat on the floor.

Gigi daintily cleared her throat. “How very strange.” She coughed slightly into a gloved hand.

“Yes, extremely
particular.
” Lola nodded. “I can’t seem to make heads or tails of it.”

Gigi moved her hands in vague circles over the tea-leaf dregs, concentrating.

Ivy looked down beside her and saw a white boar, and she reached to stroke her old friend’s ear. It felt of wool, as if woven of filament, and her hand came away with a frayed thread.

“Poppy,” she sighed, as the boar nuzzled her.

Still more shadowless people drifted in, some with their faces hidden, but others were known to Ivy. There was a low murmur as these new arrivals greeted each other. Hollow Bettle regulars, many whose lives were cut short under the Deadly Nightshades, mingled together. A few in the gathering were clothed in attire from an earlier time in Caux’s history, and still others were like drifting smoke—faces formed of air and shifting in the wind, insubstantial, mercurial.

Ivy was pleased to notice a figure beside the King and Shoo.

Princess Violet, Ivy realized. King Verdigris’s beloved daughter. The King smiled at Ivy then, and a great, indescribable feeling of relief washed over her. Everything was going to be all right.

Gigi cast a sharp look at her sister Lola.

“Just a minute, and it will come to me,” Gigi muttered. “It’s so … so … irritatingly
obscure.
”

Together, the pair peered in closer.

Ivy noticed that somehow a large warhorse had joined the proceedings. The animal stomped, silver bells upon his saddle tinkling. He greeted Ivy with a nod, and Ivy returned it, smiling. And when Clothilde stepped forward from the animal’s broad side, her dress was as pristine and as white as the day Ivy had first met her back in the Southern Wood. Ivy was happy to see how well she looked. Her mother was finally at peace.

Meanwhile, the sisters were enduring an awkward silence. Their reading was not going as planned, and it was Fifi’s turn.

Fifi, once stricken with a bulbous fungus upon her face and skin, was now clad in a gown like the rising sun. She was the most petite of the foursome and the youngest. She was also an uneasy fortune-teller, and the sisters held little hope for Fifi’s interpretation.

But Fifi was staring at the tea leaves before her, transfixed.

She held her hands out above the sodden pile of spent tea as if warming them upon a fire. She swayed slightly, her wondrous gown floating like a bell. Suddenly, from somewhere
deep within her corseted waist, an unlikely baritone emerged.

And, turning to Ivy, Fifi spoke.

“Poison and deceit are vanquished,” Fifi’s voice boomed throughout Underwood. “The King has returned to Caux, with his shepherd. A new day dawns. And while his chapter comes to a close, a new one begins. Long live the Shepherd of Weeds!”

The ghostly gallery murmured their approval.

Ivy frowned, looking sharply at her uncle, then the King himself.
A new chapter begins?

“Life is a pleasant mix of contradictions. Ivy will have to make her way herself. It is not for even us to say if hers is a tale of success—or failure. Sisters, the tea leaves are imperfect—they have limitations. Plants have much to say, much to teach, if you are willing to listen—but that is a talent beyond most. Ivy speaks the true Language of Flowers. The future of Caux now rests with her—the last of Verdigris’s noble and magical line.”

There was a profound silence.

“One thing
is
for certain,” Fifi continued. “Her magic will someday exceed even the King’s, and our looms stand ready to weave her tale.”

The feeling of people pressing in, interest renewed.

“But it will not be easy,” Fifi continued. “Her enemies await, biding their time, for they are not all vanquished. Scourge bracken has found a new mistress.”

A few aghast cries from the ghostly gallery.

“When it senses a weakness, it will emerge—for it is the destructive weed’s nature. The next battlefield is not on the green grass of Caux, but
within
the Child. Hers is the decision as to whether the world outside our door is lush and green, or black and barren.”

There was dead silence. Babette, Lola, and Gigi wore a look of utter astonishment.

Fifi raised her eyes from the tea leaves unsteadily, blinking once. “And one last thing. She will remember the moment that’s just to come with great heartache.”

Fifi shuddered and closed her eyes. When, an instant later, they again fluttered open, she frowned prettily and shrugged. In a flurry of adulation, the sisters rushed to congratulate her on her accomplished reading.

Together, they walked off, Ivy forgotten.

Ivy was left beside her uncle, and Underwood felt suddenly vast and dreary to her; the sunny feelings she just possessed were dashed and trampled. All eyes had turned from her to what hung on a far wall—the sisters’ newest masterpiece.

A tapestry of clouds.

person is capable of a great many emotions, and it is generally agreed that those Ivy was currently experiencing were some of the worst. A heady feeling of shame and failure settled in on the girl, and she battled to hold back tears.

All of this, she thought bitterly. And for what? I am forever tainted with scourge bracken. I have failed the King.

“You have not failed, Ivy Manx.” The King spoke to her from somewhere nearby. “In fact, it is just the opposite.”

“I am too late!” Ivy mumbled, heartsick.

“For me—yes.” The King smiled. “But you will see that there are many others that need you still—if not me.”

“You cannot cure the dead,” Ivy stated miserably, looking across the cavernous hall to Poppy—she had been too late for her, too. Indeed, the entire gathering was proof of the finality of poison.

“No, you cannot. Not in this life, anyway.”

“So what’s the use?” Tears were rolling down her cheeks now. On her shoulder, Shoo paced, agitated.

“Think of the acorn, Ivy. It is all how you look at it. If life and death are really one and the same—perhaps you need to change how you feel about death.”

“But—you were meant to return to Caux—” Ivy cried out.

The Good King placed a hand beneath her chin.

“My dear Ivy,” he said softly. “I already have.” King Verdigris gestured around the vast room of the underground retreat, a world built with his hands from the twining roots of the great trees of Southern Wood.

“Your Highness,” Babette called to King Verdigris. “Your new kingdom awaits.”

The King turned, and Ivy walked hesitantly beside him and Cecil, her feet scraping the soft floor, Shoo a comforting presence at her shoulder. Midway, they came to Clothilde, and her mother bowed low. King Verdigris placed both hands upon her mother’s face, closing his eyes. After a moment, Clothilde rose, and the two embraced, great tears rolling down her mother’s pale cheeks.

Ivy’s mother turned to her. Her white dress, her hair—she positively glowed. She leaned down, gazing intently into Ivy’s eyes.

“As a mother, I have had, perhaps, some failings,” Clothilde said with some difficulty. “But I hope that in the end, you will see that everything I did, I did for you.”