The Pillars Of The World

planting them too close together. They can’t grow that way.”
    Dianna glanced at Ari, then looked away to hide her rising temper. How dare the girl chastise her— her !
    —when she was willing to help? So a few wouldn’t grow. What difference— If she goes hungry this winter because I’m playing with her survival, will I still say “what difference?‘’
    “I’m sorry,” Dianna said. And she was sorry. But she wasn’t sure if it was because she had been careless in the planting or because she cared about what could happen to Ari because of it. She unearthed the peas, then sat back on her heels. ‘“My mind wandered, and I stopped paying attention to what I was doing.”
    “It’s easy enough to do that,” Ari said with a smile. “I do a fair amount of dreaming when I’m working in the garden.” She hesitated. “You could do that row over. No harm’s done.”
    Dianna shifted until she was sitting more comfortably. She shook her head. “I’ll just keep you company for a while.”
    Watching Ari for a few minutes was soothing. She didn’t hurry through the planting, but she had a rhythm to her movements that allowed her to accomplish more than Dianna would have thought possible in a short amount of time.
     
    When soothing changed to boring, Dianna shifted restlessly. She was reluctant to help again because she didn’t want to feel responsible if the harvest was poor, but she didn’t want to just sit there. She should leave, and would have left already if she’d gotten the information she’d come for. Besides, she wanted the novelty of planting something.
    “Would you like to plant the flowers?” Ari asked.
    “Flowers?” Boredom vanished. Flowers were just prettiness, weren’t they? They wouldn’t be important.
    She could plant them, and it wouldn’t make any difference if some of them didn’t grow.
    “I plant flowers around the cottage, but I won’t be able to do that until the vegetable garden is in.”
    Dianna hesitated. “If some of them don’t grow, it won’t make the winter harder, will it?”
    Ari shook her head and smiled. “I use some of them to dye my wool, but there’s always plenty. Come on, I’ll show you.”
    Dianna followed Ari out of the garden gate to the readied ground that formed a border around the cottage. At the front corner, she could see plants already growing.
    “Those are perennials,” Ari said. “They come back year after year. On this side of the cottage, I plant new every year.”
    “Why?”
    Ari shrugged, looking a little embarrassed. “The perennials represent continuity and the pleasure of seeing the familiar renew itself. This bed represents the excitement and potential of the new and unknown.” She picked up a small basket next to the flower bed and brushed a finger over the bundles of cloth inside. “
    These are the different seeds I collected last fall. You take a bundle and scatter the seeds over the flower bed. Some years I scatter them in clusters so that there are distinct areas that are all one flower, and other years I scatter them throughout the bed so everything is mixed together.”
    “Which way should I do it?” Dianna asked.
    “Whichever way pleases you. There are three exceptions.”
    Naturally , Dianna thought a little sourly. It couldn’t just be easy and fun .
    Ari held up one bundle. “The marigolds need to be planted in the front because they’re short.” Dropping that bundle back in the basket, she picked up two more. One was tied with white thread, the other yellow. “These need to be planted in the back of the bed because they need to climb. It’s easier if you plant them first.”
    Dianna looked at the trellis that ran across the whole side of the cottage. “What are they?” she asked, taking the bundles.
    “Moonflowers and morning glories.” Ari hesitated, then mumbled, “I plant the moonflowers to honor the Lady of the Moon.”
    “Really?” Delighted, Dianna studied the bundle with more interest. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen them.”
    She glanced slyly at Ari, and teased, “If the moonflowers are for the Lady, are the morning glories for the Lightbringer?”
    Oh, how Ari blushed over that question. She stammered out the instructions for how deep and far apart to plant, then bolted back to the vegetable garden.
    Amused by Ari’s reaction, Dianna turned her attention to the important business of planting her moonflowers.
    After several minutes of debating with herself about whether to