Rootbound — The Winter Trowel, Page 9
By Suha · Published
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Transcript
Scene: moonlight and steam; Fern kneels under the old leafless apple at the yard's edge and digs a tidy hole with the trowel itself. A caption reads: "Debts of the living." She sets the trowel in the hole and presses soil over it as the translucent Joss kneels opposite, watching with soft relief. A caption reads: "Paid in full."
Image description
Fern returns to the yard at night and buries the trowel deep under the old apple tree while Joss watches with soft relief.
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.