Rootbound — The Winter Trowel, Page 8
By Suha · Published
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Transcript
Scene: Ida brushes the fern stamp near the trowel's tang. "He stamped that fern on everything he owned." and "Died heaping greens for the winter." Across the warm table with steam from a kettle, Fern asks "Why the apple tree?" Ida, soft: "It's how he courted. Under the blossom."
Image description
Ida tells Fern about Joss, her great-uncle: a quiet compost man who died young and stamped a fern on everything he owned.
About this chapter
While raking the Compost Yard at night, Fern hears a name in the steam. The ghost of Joss Millard, her great-uncle who died in the yard in the hard winter of 1963, waits for one unfinished errand: he never buried his mother's trowel under the old apple tree as he promised before the frost took him. Fern searches, finds the trowel nicked at the corner with a fern stamped near the tang, and learns through Ida why Joss still lingers. When she buries it, the old apple breaks into impossible blossom and Joss fades. In the root pit he reveals the trowel's buried secret, opening the next numbered-location mystery at the Rose Bed arches.