it in her palms, and carried it to the bed of soil.
Sapphira wrapped her hands around the petals and folded them up into a ball. She gouged the soil with her fist and laid the blossom in the hole. “We’ll make a growth chamber right here. There ought to be enough magnetite bricks lying around.” Scooping dirt from around the blossom, she covered it up under a mound.
Acacia strolled into the museum, her arms crossed over her chest. “How do you know it will germinate? It can’t have seeds yet, can it?”
Sapphira looked up at her. “Do you remember hearing Merlin’s prophecy when the dragons transformed?”
“Remember!?” Acacia laughed. “You woke me up, screaming, ‘Look at the portal! Look at the portal!’ I was kind of groggy, but I remember watching.”
Sapphira got up and grabbed a scrap of parchment from a nearby shelf. “I wrote down the prophecy.” Pressing her finger on the parchment, she read the poem.
When hybrid meets the fallen seed
The virgin seedling flies;
An orphaned waif shall call to me
When blossom meets the skies.
Sapphira raised her eyebrows expectantly.
“Well,” Acacia said, “we’re all hybrids, virgins, and orphaned waifs.” She shrugged. “I guess it’s worth a try. Maybe that blossom will somehow sprout and touch the sky.”
Sapphira smiled. “Good rhyme, Acacia.”
Acacia smiled back at her and slid a scroll from one of the lower shelves. “Speaking of poetry,” she said, her mouth stretching into a yawn. “I think I’ll read some. It’s time for us all to get to bed.”
“Great,” Sapphira said. “I could use a good bedtime story.”
“Then you’ll join us?” Acacia asked.
Sapphira nodded. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
Acacia gave her a worried-mother look. “You okay?” she asked.
Tightening her lips, Sapphira nodded again. She leaned against the museum doorway as her twin oracle walked back to the girls, who had gathered in a circle around a small pile of scrolls near the portal. Although the museum had once housed thousands of documents, the modest heap represented a precious share of their diminishing fuel supply.
Acacia pointed at the pile and ignited it, then jumped back in mock alarm. The other girls laughed, and as Acacia squeezed in between Paili and Awven, she glanced back at Sapphira, smiling in a sad sort of way before unwinding the scroll and settling down to read.
Sapphira strolled back to the planter and lowered herself to her knees in front of the mound she had piled over the blossom. She gazed up into the dark reaches of the cavernous library. The portal at the museum’s upper crossbeams no longer worked. The orange portal where the girls gathered probably still led to the nest of vipers in the swamp. The whirlpool portal at the bottom of the chasm was now unapproachable. The magma had become so hot, it scalded their faces even as they stood on the ledge, warning them that a plunge into its current now meant certain death. And the portal down in the mining trench where the abyss used to be had fizzled soon after it was created.
Still, any untested doorway could lead somewhere worse than their present location. She couldn’t go to the dimension of dead dragons and risk destroying their new home. Dwelling in the land of the living was out of the question; the people would think she was a freak and put her on display. And showing up at Morgan’s castle would be the worst idea of all.
Sapphira sighed. She and Acacia would just have to be content watching the upper lands from afar, cut off from everything that really mattered from Elam and his dangerous task, from the dragons and their new adventure, and, worst of all, from Elohim and his loving embrace. They would have to consider, however, what to do with the other girls. Since they looked like normal humans, they could find homes up above, and they would be a lot more comfortable there, having access to beds and blankets and something better to eat than worm guts. Of course, getting them there safely would be the hard part. Maybe she could somehow reopen the trench portal. Since it likely led to the hill near the church of Michael, she could find homes for the girls and then go back to the lower realms.
She leaned over and smoothed out the dirt on top of the planter’s hopeful womb. She felt as though she had entombed herself, Sapphira Adi buried alive in a God-forsaken hole. The girl Elohim had used and thrown away had died, and