Senna began thinning the tightly packed rhizomes. They came out rather easily. The old woman must have loosened the soil earlier.
“These are my favorites,” she went on. “They’re tough and beautiful. Useful too, as each part is a key ingredient for one potion or another. But their great strength is also their weakness. The roots are so strong they often begin to choke out other plants—which I suppose makes the other plants hate them.”
Was this woman mad? Senna dug her hands deep in the dirt and came out with another root—one that looked like a pot-bellied little man. She tossed it into the rubbish bin. “I really should find the Composer.”
The woman went on as if Senna hadn’t spoken. “Eventually they even begin to choke themselves. The rot will begin in the middle until there’s an ugly hole. The rest of the plants will become sickly—there simply isn’t enough soil and water for all of them.” She dug out another root and held it up. “I imagine that’s not much consolation for this root, hmm? Why it and not one of the others?”
Senna’s breath hitched in her throat. “We’re not talking about flowers, are we?”
The woman tossed the root into a rubbish bin. “Truthfully, there is no answer. The gardener decides.”
Senna let out all of her breath in a rush. “You’re the Composer.”
The woman wiped a bead of sweat from her brow, leaving a streak of dirt across her forehead. “My name is Ellesh. And you’re Brusenna. Come for answers.”
Senna looked harder and saw what she’d missed before. Ellesh’s eyes were keen and sharp as a knife.
The Composer set down her trowel and brushed the dirt from her hands. “Listen and I will tell you the story of a woman who changed the course of history. Her name was Lilette.”
Senna had waited so long to hear the full story of what had happened that this didn’t feel real.
Ellesh arched her back with a grimace. “Her mother died far from home—a stranger who proved unknown and untraceable. A barren woman took Lilette and raised her. In her youth, the child discovered what she was. She came to Haven for learning, but what she found were women punishing a turnip for not being an apple.”
Senna shook her head. “I don’t—”
Ellesh’s eyes seemed to cut into her. “Some years the Heads were magnanimous women. Others they were downright tyrants, punishing the world and its people for not behaving as they thought they should. In Lilette’s day, they were tyrants.”
Senna looked out one of the windows at the darkening sky. She pictured it. Women who doled out their songs based on promises of money or power. “The world had its own rhythms, its own song to sing. I know because I’ve heard it.”
The Composer nodded. “Yes. But our voices alter those songs.”
Eager to see if Caldash’s story matched up with Haven’s, Senna leaned forward. “Why did Lilette leave?”
Ellesh sighed. “For many of the same reasons you did. One of the nations rose up against the Witches. Their rains were cut off as punishment. Lilette begged them to reconsider. They refused. So she took those who would follow her and left. She came to Calden. And Haven killed her for it.”
Senna mulled it over. “They say I am like her, and they feared me for it. Why? I’ve only ever wanted to save them.”
The Composer was silent for a time. “Because Lilette too saw the Creators.” She met Senna’s startled gaze. “And she too began to change.”
Heat flushed Senna’s skin. She stared at her hands. They were dirty from thinning the flowers and scarred from potion burns. Half-healed scabs from the jungle marred her pale skin. Though it wasn’t visible, there was blood on them, too. They weren’t the hands of some kind of hero.
Ellesh went on softly. “Lilette began to hear nature’s music. She grew more and more powerful by the day. Those in authority began to fear her strength, much as they now fear yours. She could have destroyed Haven, but she didn’t have the ruthlessness of a gardener. She couldn’t bear to thin them.”
Senna stared at the beautiful flowers, the naked roots sitting in a bucket to be ground up and used for some nameless potion.
The Composer went to a water basin and meticulously washed the dirt from her hands. “The Haven Witches were afraid of her, so they hurtled a hurricane across the ocean, regardless of ships and people in their path—people who had no experience dealing with such frightening storms, as the Witches’ songs had prevented hurricanes for centuries. Lightning bolts shot from the sky. Hail the size of large birds fell from the clouds, crushing everything in their path. Earth tremors rent deep chasms and raised high mountains.”