Petunia slowly set the full watering can on the ground and pinched her arm hard.
Before her, where just two days ago there had only been beds with tiny sprouts, tall, spreading green tops now swayed in the wind, interspersed with dill and parsley blossoms.
“Was that yesterday’s rain?” She tilted her head back and looked at the serene blue sky, the kind you rarely see in England.
After yesterday, when it seemed the floodgates of heaven had opened, today was practically summer outside.
“I’ve only heard of mushroom rain…” She looked back at her garden and, still not believing it, ran her hand over the leaves.
The leaves were cool and firm, their stems springy.
As if that weren’t enough, in the radish bed, if you pushed the dirt aside a little near the stem, you could see the root vegetable beginning to fill with color.
Petunia had never grown radishes before, of course, but from any normal person’s perspective, such rapid growth was definitely anomalous.
“You’re on a magic farm, Tuney.
This is probably normal around here,” she comforted herself and watered the beds, once again singing them the little children’s song about the garden and the berry.
It had stuck in her head and reminded itself every time Petunia approached the garden.
Nothing to be done about it — she had to sing.
When she finished watering, she was about to leave, but caught herself and turned back.
Crouching by the beds, she examined the damp soil around the roots with both hands and didn’t see a single hint of a weed; then she turned over the leaves and, with relief, found neither eggs nor voracious caterpillars.
Weeds and insects — the farmer’s eternal scourge!
Even wizards had to learn spells against pests, brew potions against weeds, and fertilize the soil to grow a crop of, say, mandrakes.
Petunia recalled the picture from the Herbology textbook showing a wizard with earplugs yanking an ugly, screaming baby from a flowerpot, and she shuddered.
Disgusting!
Long live the magic farm where you can happily grow the most ordinary plants!
Petunia clasped her hands in prayer and from the bottom of her heart thanked — she wasn’t sure who — for such a gift of fate.
The Lord, maybe, or Mr.
Cory.
Well, best case scenario, both at once.
Speaking of Mr.
Cory.
The flag on the mailbox was raised again.
Bright red and shiny, it was visible from far away.
Looking at it, Petunia felt anticipation for what she might find inside this time.
Predictably, there was another pouch in the mailbox.
But only two coins rolled out into her hand this time.
What coins, though!
Two large, shiny Galleons lay in Petunia’s palm, scattering sunbeams in every direction, and the dragons stamped on them looked especially fierce.
“Brilliant catch, Petunia!” the note read.
“I’d like to suggest that different places yield different fish.
If you catch anything else as remarkable, don’t forget about me.
Yours, M.K.” “I won’t forget,” she sang, admiring the shiny coins.
Every semester, Dad gave Lily two Galleons for pocket money.
It had always annoyed Petunia terribly.
Why, why did she need money at that magic school of hers?
They lived full board!
To buy sweets on the train?
Just ruin your teeth.
In third year, Dad signed permission for Lily to visit that — that magic village of theirs, and that was when Petunia got really upset.
She still remembered Lily dropping shiny coins into her little purse and looking forward to her shopping.
And now she had magic money in her hands too.
And not just handed to her, but earned through her own labor!
Petunia smiled triumphantly.
Yes, that’s who she was.
She put the coins with the rest she’d gotten for the plants, and tucked away the now-useless pouch — it might come in handy.
“Mr.
Cory paid me two Galleons for yesterday’s carp!” she boasted to the magic fire.
“And that wasn’t even a whole fish!
What if I catch something else?” Too bad she didn’t have time for fishing right now.
The laundry tub sitting in the middle of the room hinted with its whole appearance: wash me!
Petunia sighed, dragged the tub to the open door so she wouldn’t splash water inside the house, rolled up her sleeves, and got to work.
First she soaped the clothes with a big bar of laundry soap, then she scrubbed the soapy fabric against the washboard from the pantry.
She scrubbed, and scrubbed, and scrubbed…
Wiping sweat with her elbow, she raised her eyes to heaven and said: “Lord, bless the people who invented the washing machine!” She finished most of the laundry by noon, though really, how long should it take to wash a couple of T-shirts, a few pairs of socks and underwear?
Apparently, a while.
Petunia got to her feet and did some stretches to loosen her aching back.
The sight of the trees around her, decorated with items from her wardrobe, was pleasing to the eye.
But when she spotted a pair of panties fluttering merrily in the wind, she burst out laughing, and kept laughing until a stitch formed in her side.
“Good thing nobody can see this,” she said, wiping away the tears of laughter.
“How embarrassing that would be.
No, I definitely need a real dryer.
Now where to get one…” She sat back down by the tub and plunged her hands into the cold soapy water.
The trousers, she remembered, had gotten dirtiest at the knees when she fell during fishing.
Her skinned knees were still stinging, actually, but the scrapes had already formed a thin scab and promised to heal soon.
Petunia just had to be careful not to bump them.
While washing the trousers, she suddenly felt something extra in them.
Checking the pockets, she found a small copper key in one and pulled a grimy little ring with a stone out of the other.
“This is that thing I found in the fish yesterday, isn’t it?” Petunia turned the ring over in her hands and set it aside.
The key seemed unfamiliar until she remembered finding it while cleaning up the greenhouse ruins.
When she finished the laundry, she hung the trousers to dry, then carefully carried the tub down the porch steps and tipped it over, pouring the water into the nearest bushes.
“Alright, now I just need to clean up,” Petunia wiped her wet hands on herself and looked around, searching for where she’d cleaned the fish yesterday.
She found the general area — it had been dark, after all, easy to misjudge — but no matter how she looked, she found nothing.
No innards, no scales.
Like a cow had licked it all clean.
The warning about not walking around the farm at night came to mind inopportunely, and she shuddered, trying to shake off the chill that ran down her spine.
Come on, that’s all nonsense.
Maybe some nocturnal creature ate it out of hunger.
Don’t go making up tall tales, Tuney.
And she forcefully pushed away the memory of the ghost driving something away the day before yesterday.
After returning the tub to its place in the pantry, Petunia poured herself some rosehip tea from the thermos, took a soft cloth, and began cleaning the ring.
Among her things, she found some baking soda — every housewife has baking soda — and gradually, from beneath the grime, a band of dull yellow metal emerged, and the stone in its setting turned out to be a beautiful milky green, as if glowing from within.
Unable to resist, Petunia quickly tried the ring on, and it fit perfectly on her middle finger.
Holding her hand out, she turned it this way and that, admiring how the sunlight from the window and the firelight from the hearth played across the setting and the surface of the stone.
When she’d had her fun, she took the ring off and was about to set it aside to examine the key when her eye caught something on the inner surface of the band.
Bringing the ring to the light, she saw the finest lines of engraving, forming some kind of symbols.
They looked like the letters of a foreign language, like the ones in her book.
Petunia squinted, studying the letters.
The first reminded her of a lowercase “i,” especially since there was a slanted stroke above it.
She called the second one a “fishhook,” and the third looked exactly like the letter “p,” only with a slanted stroke on top.
She examined the last letter this way and that until she realized it was a capital “T,” just written in Gothic script!
“I-hook-pt?” she tried to “read” it and laughed.
Then she thought about it.
How should the “fishhook” letter be read?
As “r” or as “k”?
Or maybe “rk”?
“Irykpt!
What do you think?” she asked her only conversational partner — the flame in the hearth.
She brought the ring close and showed it the inscription.
The fire suddenly hummed excitedly, and its tongues shot up so high that Petunia felt the heat on her face.
She recoiled, dropping the ring, and it fell onto the edge of the hearth, where the flames were just barely touching it.
Petunia hesitated, pressing her hand warily to her chest.
She felt sorry for the ring, but she was afraid of getting burned.
The ring had fallen so that the inscription inside was perfectly visible to her.
And when it heated up — very quickly — the engraved letters began to glow.
Petunia suddenly cried out and clutched her head.
Pain, sharp as a red-hot needle, pierced her brain from her left temple to her right, and before her inner eye appeared those same letters.
And she heard: “Estel…” Petunia whispered, following the stranger’s voice in her memory, and she was suddenly filled with a deep, utterly baseless certainty that everything would be alright.
Filled with this feeling, she reached out, snatched the ring, and jumped back.
The ring was barely warm.
It lay in her palm, not burning, just slightly warming her.
And the letters, as they cooled, gradually dimmed until, finally, they went out completely.
“Estel,” Petunia repeated, feeling the fresh taste of sweet mint linger on her tongue from the word.
“Estel…” She had the feeling that she’d guessed the meaning of the word.
But plain “hope” somehow seemed insufficient to describe the feeling she’d experienced.
She hadn’t hoped.
She’d simply known she wouldn’t get burned.
That was all.
She put the ring on, and it settled onto her finger as if it had always been there.
“It was worth fishing all day yesterday to find you,” she said, admiring the ring.
Then she shook her head.
“I need to distract myself.
While it’s still light, I’ll go look for some more edible plants.” Grabbing her trusty bag, she waved at the fire.
“Well, I’m off,” and she walked out the door.
The copper key remained lying on the table.