Pendour had been spending much of her time in space with other people. That was okay. She was glad to show people the true root and meaning of their powers, that they could be building their homes instead of fighting and dying in Destiny City. She liked learning, too, what other people’s worlds were like, what magic was hiding in the stones that floated through the galaxy. Still, she had promises to keep, to her plants and to her ancestor.
The plants were the easy part. She’d known what she wanted to put in the ground since just after the first time she’d set food on her wonder, and now that it was nearing summer again and the garden centers were starting to put out their perennials, it was the perfect time to make her purchases and see how the plants liked the soil on Neptune.
She was starting with something strong and simple, but a perfect match for her wonder, in all the symbolic ways. The little paper tag with the instructions about light and water requirements called it a heuchera, but Sadie preferred the everyday, nursery-rhyme name: coral bells. It seemed fitting for a place that was so tied up in music and the sea. The flowers were pale as the stone that lined her cove, and the leaves were scalloped like seashells.
She spent a long time in the garden center leaning over the plastic containers, looking for the plants with the healthiest leaves and the color that she thought would fit in the best. Coral bells came in all kinds of shades, from a bright yellow-green that never dulled from its spring brilliance to softer yellows, oranges, and even true pinks. In the end, Sadie went with a cooler maroon that edged towards violet, thinking that it would go well with the whites and cool tones of her wonder.
It wasn’t more than five minutes after checking out that Sadie and her new basket of plants found an alleyway, and she transformed, murmured her oath, and found herself under the crumbling arches of Pendour.
Irving was nowhere in sight, at least not yet, and although she had promised to speak with him, that could wait. She carried her basket over to the garden plot, and took a look down at where her spinach had been growing. Well, where it was still growing. It wasn’t in the picture of health. It fact, it was looking a bit pale and a bit stringy, like it was reaching up tall to look for light that wasn’t quite there. Still, it was alive, and in better shape than she would have thought it would be, for seeds that were stuck in the soil of a planet at the edge of a solar system and left to do what they would. She reached down and snapped off a leaf, and after she spent a few long moments running her fingers across its soft edges, she tasted it.
It was mild, for spinach, which might not have been the best sign of health, but it didn’t dissipate under her teeth. It was real.
The smile that was stuck on Pendour’s face for the rest of her garden chores was bright as bright. It stayed that way as she tucked the coral bells across the back edge of the garden bed, as she harvested the rest of the spinach and tucked it into her basket as a replacement. It would be enough for a salad or an omelette or even mixed up with pasta. She would have a fresh meal tonight, and all because of a garden up in space! It was tempting just to leave then, to whisper a farewell to her plants and to stare at her harvest from the safety of her apartment, but she knew that it would not be the kind thing to do. She had promised to speak to Irving, too.
So she walked slowly up the main staircase, her soiled gloves left by the garden and the knees of her tights smudged with soil. Her cheeks went hot, a little, as she wondered when he would show himself, what he would say. He’d been being a little nicer, lately, and her scars weren’t as angry-red as they’d been back when he’d first seen them, anyway, but she was sure that there were other small ways that she could disappoint him.
There was no voice at her back this time as she climbed the main staircase, or even as she found her way up to the stage. She climbed that, too, and waited for about a minute in silence. Then, she set down her garden basket and summoned her ocarina, thinking about what Irving had said to her the first time she’d made her way up here, that she’d needed more practice. Well, she’d practiced a lot since then. The little instrument felt at home in her palm now, and when she lifted it to her lips, she knew a whole list of songs from memory.
She’d worked her way up from Hot Cross Buns to Ode to Joy, and from there, she’d moved on to some tunes from video games, which seemed to be popular among ocarina players, and then from movies.
She closed her eyes, then, and did not open them again for nearly fifteen minutes while she worked her way through everything she knew, her fingers now easily finding the notes. The sound quality here was lovely, with the open air and just the slightest of echoes from the dome above. It let her really get lost in the music.
It was a surprise when her eyelids fluttered open again and she saw Irving watching her from the audience. It was more of a surprise when he smiled. “You’re getting better,” he said. “There’s something I can teach you, now.”
It was innocent enough, the way he said it, but Pendour’s thoughts still flashed to the bones downstairs and for a second, her blood went all cold and tingly. Irving smile went wider, then, in a way that didn’t quite make Pendour feel better, that just made her feel like he was trying to hide something, but that she wasn’t sharp enough to see past his eyes and know what.
“It doesn’t have to do with the past,” he said, quickly, and something happened in his hands, then. Pendour had to squint, as her brain wasn’t always as accurate about knowing what small items were since her vision loss, but as he began to walk up the stairs, the shape in his hands grew very familiar. He had an ocarina of his own. “It’s the magic granted to all knights of Pendour.”
There was magic beyond coming here and summoning her ocarina? It wasn’t something that Pendour had heard of, somehow, despite the amount of full knights and eternal senshi that she’d talked too. Irving was walking past her now, towards the back of the stage. He looked over his shoulder and waved her forwards. She spent a moment holding her own ocarina close to her chest, but in the end, she followed.
He was looking at the wall behind the stage, which was covered in a complicated and lovely abstract mosaic. “Our magic is a calming music,” said Irving. “It can soothe your friends and lower the guard of your enemies.” He looked over at her, not apologetic, but not harsh, either. Pendour kept her gaze on the mosaic, instead. There were no animals here, like on the mosaics downstairs, but there was still something about the shapes that looked oddly familiar.
Oh! Of course. It was ocarina tabs.
“Is this the song?” she asked, and for once, she actually smiled at him. She had been bringing things from the city up to her wonder, but now there was something from her wonder that she could bring down to the city, something that she could use to help people.
“Yes,” he said. “I was thinking I could play along with you until you’re comfortable with the tempo. Here. Let me show you.”
Then, they played. Pendour did so with a little stumbling at first. It was true that she had been practicing, but she did not have the breath control like the experts did, like Irving did. Still, the music was lovely in its own right, soft and soothing to the soul, and she did her best to get it right. They stayed there for the better part of an hour, until she knew the notes well enough to squeeze her eyes shut once again and get lost in the gentle echoes of the cove.
Something shifted then, and not just in her mind, although she was sure as sure that she could feel the calming effect of the music. It was her clothes that were changing. She felt the dirty tights dissolve from around her legs, and something grew heavier at the back of her dress. The beads that held her hair in place vanished, letting her curls tumble freely down her back. The ocarina shifted, too. It was bigger, and a different shape.
Pendour opened her eyes to investigate further, and found she had become a squire.
