Read Online Garden Princess by Kristin Kladstrup - Free Book Online Page A

supper!”
    For a moment, Garth looked blissful. Then his face fell, and he gave a groan.
    “What is it?” asked Adela. Was Garth remembering something Hortensia had done? Something not right? Something . . . magic?
    “The thing is — I don’t know if she loves me! She wants me to be her gardener. That’s good, isn’t it?”
    She felt like shaking the sense back into him. Instead, she said, “Her gardener?”
    Garth pointed down the path, and Adela saw a painted white wheelbarrow. It looked more picturesque than practical, but it was filled with tools. “There’s a rake and a shovel and a hoe — even a pruning saw!” said Garth. “She wouldn’t ask me to be her gardener if she didn’t care for me. Right?”
    “You’re already a gardener for the king,” said Adela.
    “I love her so much, Miss Adela. I’d do anything to make her happy.”
    She couldn’t believe it: there were tears in Garth’s eyes!
    “Did I tell you she let me hold her hand?” he said.
    A word came into Adela’s mind then:
lovesick.
It was a word from the story she had thought of yesterday — the one about King Ival and the beautiful witch. The witch had enchanted Ival, turning him into a lovesick fool.
    “I will love Lady Hortensia until the day I die!” Garth declared, and with a prickling of dread, Adela thought of another word from the same story:
bewitched.

On the day after the party, Krazo was up with the sun, eager to arrange his new treasures. In his mind’s eye, he could see exactly what he wanted: the coral-bead necklace coiled up at the bottom of his nest like a carpet, the diamond earrings and the necklace with the blue stone dangling from the domed ceiling like chandeliers, the emerald brooch, the turquoise-and-silver bracelet, the pearl ring, and the belt buckle propped up around the edges like paintings on a wall.
    And yet, after working for more than an hour, after pushing this trinket here, that one there, Krazo found himself growing frustrated. Somehow, try as he might, he wasn’t any closer to achieving his vision than when he had started. He stood in the middle of his nest and contemplated the problem.
    Was it that his nest was too crowded? There were so many treasures now that Krazo couldn’t turn around without bumping into one of them. But he didn’t mind that. In fact, he liked being surrounded by so much wealth.
    The problem, Krazo realized at last, was that he simply could not see his treasures — at least not well enough to appreciate them. The domed roof of sticks and twigs that arched over his nest was keeping out the light.
    Why, he wondered, had this never bothered him before? Probably, he decided, because he had never been so rich before. Until today, when he had wanted to admire one of his treasures, he had dragged it into the light from an entrance. But now there were simply too many treasures for this to be practical.
    The solution to the problem was obvious: he must remove the roof from his nest. In fact, when Krazo thought about it, he really had no need for a roof. It was designed to keep out rain and wind and predators. But it never rained on top of Flower Mountain; Hortensia’s magic garden didn’t
need
rain. Nor were there ever more than the gentlest of breezes here. As for predators, Krazo had never seen a single one. Yes, he decided, he must remove the roof.
    Strangely, however, he made no move to do so. Instead he sat there in the dim light, clutching the coral beads with his claws. His mind was telling him something that he could not ignore.
    All magpies have roofs over their nests, said his mind.
    “Other birds have got nests without roofs,” Krazo muttered in response.
    But they aren’t magpies, his mind argued.
    “I want to see my treasures,” Krazo insisted.
    You’re a magpie!
    “I’m not!” Krazo croaked.
    This absurd pronouncement shocked him, and the argument he was having with himself came to a halt, leaving Krazo free to follow a line of thinking he had never