Page 6 of A Fae’s Guide to Tactical Botany

The cacti were much less crowded in front of him; he leaned the masonite panels against a big barrel cactus and proceeded uphill, watching his step and twisting his upper body as needed to avoid scratches. If he had measured the photos correctly, the anomalies had started about fifty yards up the hill. He ducked under the arms of a saguaro, gave a wide berth to a huge cholla, sidestepped a few low bushes and…

Holy fuck.

It was a good thing he wasn’t carrying anything in his hands anymore, because they went limp with shock at the sight before him. It wasn’t unusual for saguaro blooms to linger into early June, or the occasional prickly pear. He’d seen a few scattered along his route here. But he had never seen anything like the vista of color before him, not even in the botanical gardens where they carefully nurtured and coaxed desert plants to bloom as much and as showily as possible.

There were saguaro wearing crowns of blossoms—but not just the expected white and yellow. These were crimson, violet, even blue. Prickly pears, their paddles brilliant green and purple, were edged with ruffles of blooms in every color of the rainbow. Barrel cacti bore their own froths of color, cholla were studded with flowers, and scattered ironwood and mesquite trees sagged under the weight of dripping blossoms. Among the larger plants were scatterings of wildflowers—poppies gold and red, desert lupine and owl’s clover, fairy dusters and desert mallows and honeysuckle. The air was filled with a haze of drifting pollen. Brightly colored hummingbirds zipped from plant to plant while honeybees buzzed more slowly on their own nectar-gathering missions.

It was impossible. It was not possible. Not for all of these plants to be blooming at once, not for them to show the colors before him. He knew of no chemical or mineral or environmental factor that could produce even one of the effects he was seeing, let alone all of them at once. He was amazed, he was astounded, he was—

Ethan barely restrained a whoop of victory.

He was going to be fucking famous! Tenure was his!

At least once he figured out what the hell was going on.

He took a deep breath and calmed himself. He’d seen the wonder. He’d marveled at it and let his soul lift from the sight. But now it was time to get down to business. He rolled his backpack to the ground and started to record his observations, starting with the nearest cactus. Photographs and sketches—bad ones, as he’d never been a good draftsman, but they helped him notice things. Soil samples. A blossom, carefully plucked and pressed to show off its features. A very tiny piece of the cactus flesh, a few needles, carefully bagged and dated and tucked in their own container. He finished that one, moved on to the next, and the next, forcing himself to take regular drinks of water from his canteen, angle himself away from the sun as it rose higher.

And then he ducked past a cholla, and…

There she is.

The thought rushed through him like a freight train before his conscious mind could even comprehend what he was looking at, but when it had run its course, leaving him quivering, he took in the sight before him.

A woman, asleep on the sandy ground beside the blooming cacti. She was nestled into the earth, almost as if she had been lying there for years, sinking deeper and deeper until she was a part of the landscape. Her hair was a rich loamy brown, long wavy strands spread about her shoulders and upon the ground, the brown fading at the tips to a pale green. She had golden brown skin, and though she was wearing some sort of flowing nightgown, it draped lush curves, covering her body from neck to ankle, leaving her arms and her feet bare. Her exposed skin was lightly dusted with sand. A spotted cloak of cream and green and brown spread along the sand behind her, its edges dagged like the sleeves of a houppelande or a butterfly's wings. The woman's shoulders rose and fell with slow breaths, and as he watched, she rubbed her cheek deeper into the sand and sighed.

There she is, he thought again, the words echoing strangely in his head. But who is she?

“Hello,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Hello? Are you all right?” He moved closer, circling, and dropped to his knees a few feet away from her. He was suddenly very aware of his size, the sweat wicking into his undershirt and soaking his hair where he’d bound it into a ponytail, the fact that he was wearing plastic-armor-plated particolored legpieces, hip armor, and groin protection over his jeans. In an SCA context, the alternating red and black had looked damn fine, but it wasn’t the sort of thing people normally wore in this century. He probably looked like a Viking clown who’d lost his way. Terrifying. “I don’t want to frighten you, but… Did you fall? Are you hurt?”

The woman shuddered abruptly awake and sat up, staring at him, her breath accelerating like a Formula One race car.

Her eyes were green. Not the usual kind of eyes-green, either, muted and sagey and warm. They were the green of lime popsicles, the green of spring leaves, the green of his beat-up Jeep, and the green-ness loosened his tongue again. It was a movie line, he realized as he said it. Howl’s Moving Castle. One of the DVDs that had ended up in his boxes, not on Sarah’s shelves. He was quoting a fucking movie. But it still felt right.

“There you are.”

Chapter four

Reconnaissance

There you are.

The words echoed in Mara’s mind, like she’d said them herself, and her mind stuttered as she tried to comprehend what she was seeing.

That man was kneeling a few feet in front of her, smelling of sweat and dirt and aloe and, mystifyingly, flowers. The sun was behind her, high enough that the shadows of her plants did not touch him; he was fully in sunlight, though his face was shadowed by the brim of his white hat. His shirt had probably been white once, too, though it was now streaked with desert sand, and below the waist he seemed to be a jumble of red and black—but she didn’t look more closely because she was caught by his face, his square jaw frosted with pale stubble, pale skin patched with red. His wide gray-blue eyes were focused on her, though as she stared they crinkled into a smile. And oh, he was so large. His size felt wrong to her, his size and his shape and his everything and he was here. He was here in front of her, so close he seemed to loom like a monolith, and why was he here? How had he gotten past her barrier? How—

“I’m sorry,” he said, his smile fading. His hands went up as if he were warding off a wild beast. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“I… I’m…” Dreaming? Or having a nightmare? But no, it couldn’t be a dream. The sand beneath her thrummed with reality. She had slept long past the dawn—her labors must have exhausted her more than she’d realized—and in the meantime, the borders of her memorial garden had been breached.

“Do you need some water?” The man turned away, fumbling in a brown leather backpack that sat in the sand beside him. “Don’t worry, I didn’t drink from this one yet. You’re lucky I found you on day one, or I’d only have my canteen.” He proffered a plastic bottle. The clear water inside caught the sunlight, the shine almost hypnotic.

Mara didn’t reach for it. “Who are you?” She couldn’t look away from his face. His expression shifted again to something like compassion.

He stretched out and set the water bottle in the sand between them. “It’s okay. I wouldn’t trust me, either.” He frowned behind him and moved backward on his knees a few more feet. “I’m Ethan. Ethan Jacobson.” He gestured at the bottle in the sand. “Don’t worry. It’s sealed.”

I don’t need water, she tried to say, but words wouldn’t come out.

“I have sisters. I get why you wouldn’t want to—”