Rootbound — The January Rose of Number Two, Page 12
By Suha · Published
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Transcript
Page 12. Ida Thorpe: Fern. This one has your name. Fern Ashby: Fern Ashby, the numbered spring.
Image description
Back inside the seed vault in the first grey light, Ida notices one unnumbered envelope lying on the oak desk; Fern picks it up and reads her own name written on it.
About this chapter
Following the amber door from the Spine Corridor, Fern steps into a forgotten seed vault under Main Aisle 40, a counting room of numbered tin seed boxes and one long oak ledger. One box is empty: bed two, the January rose, its ledger entry underlined and marked unfinished. In the storm of 1917 the nursery girl Cecily Morrow died carrying that single seed to the Rose Bed for her sick mother, and the promise was buried with her. With Ida at her side, Fern takes the old watering can and trowel and sows the seed in the frost-lit Rose Bed; before sunrise a pale winter rose opens in the furrow, and the released ghost fades with the dawn, dropping a small tin number tag. Back in the vault Fern finds one unnumbered envelope waiting with her own name. Cliffhanger: three slow knocks sound from deep within the wall, and the amber door eases shut by itself.