“Oh yeah?” Mom asked. “What is it?”

I wanted to tell her everything, but I stopped myself. I was still trying to figure out what Circe was trying to communicate through her letters and understand what my immunity had to do with the work she’d mentioned. “A garden,” I said. “It’s overgrown and mostly dead, but I think I can fix it.”

“If anyone can do it, you can.” She sat back, her legs folded under her. “Do you like it here, baby? I know it’s not Brooklyn. It’s different. But I gotta be honest, if we could get a handle on these random people showing up and this dust, it might grow on me. I heard birds chirping this morning, baby. Birds. And not stank-ass pigeons either.”

“Pigeons don’t even chirp,” I said.

“No, they’re too busy stealing people’s food and shitting on everything to chirp. But that’s what I’m sayin’. This place has actual birds, and even though this pollen is tryna murder me, it’s beautiful up here. I think I love it.”

Mom was a city chick to the bone, a New Yorker, the queen of minding her own business. She didn’t believe jaywalking was a real thing and I didn’t think she could live without her favorite Cuban sandwich from the bodega down the block. I never thought she could be happy anywhere except Brooklyn, but here, she was less stressed than usual. She smiled wider and was giving me more freedom than I’d ever had before.

All of a sudden, my throat tightened up. It had been so long since we could worry about anything other than how we were going to pay our bills, and just the possibility of not having to do that anymore was enough to bring me to tears because I knew what it would mean to her, to all of us.

She stood and took my hands in hers. “Listen, I talked to Mo and she got me thinking. Maybe you can let your guard down while we’re out here.”

“What?” I said, surprised. I wasn’t expecting that from her at all.

“Maybe we should both relax a little. I get so worried about you and this power. All I ever wanna do is protect you. I love you so much.” She gently traced the lines on my palm, and tears welled in her eyes. “But you have this gift for a reason, right? So maybe keeping it bottled up isn’t the right move. Go explore, grow some plants. Find me something pretty to put in the window, okay?”

I buried my face in her shoulder. “It’s really nice to see you like this.”

She held me close. “Like what?”

“Happy. Not worrying so much and asking me to put flowers in the window.”

She traced the side of my face with her fingers. “I guess we’ve all been wound up, stressin’ ourselves to death. Now that we’ve got this place, maybe we can let some of that go. But we’ll see, baby. Let’s take it one day at a time.”

“I love you, Mom.”

She kissed the top of my head and squeezed me tight. “I love you more. Now get out in that garden and grow me some peonies. You know I love them.”

“Hang on.” I left the kitchen and went to the apothecary. I climbed the ladder, searching for a jar I’d seen when we first arrived—dried peony root. I fished out a chunk and took it back to the kitchen.

I gently set the root in her palm and cupped my hand over hers. I took a deep breath. A warm sensation flowed from my fingertips. A wave of dizziness washed over me, but I relaxed into it. I unclenched my jaw, set aside thoughts of this going wrong, and let the energy move through me.

The dizziness disappeared immediately. The root shifted. Mom inhaled sharply. A single green stalk pushed through my fingers and sprouted a foot high. A bud bloomed, revealing the blackest petals I’d ever seen, the seedy center as red as blood.

“It’s an onyx peony,” I said. “It’s the rarest kind of peony there is.” I was in awe of the unique plant, but I was also stunned that my own resistance to this power—worrying so much, trying to control it—seemed to be the thing that caused the dizziness and exhaustion I always felt after bringing flowers to bloom. There was none of that now. When I looked up at Mom, she was staring at me. “What is it?”

“You, baby.” She looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time. “You’re some kind of actual Black girl magic.”

She put the flower in a tall glass of water and as I went down the hall, her Bluetooth speaker chimed on. The familiar notes of Josephine Baker singing “Blue Skies” in her signature breezy way wafted through the house.

Mo poked her head out of the front room. “Is Mom playing that music?”

“Yeah. She said this place is growing on her.”

Mo’s mouth curved into an ecstatic grin. “Who’d have thought?” She went back to dusting the shelves and windowsills, humming along with the music.

I went upstairs and took out the map Circe had left me to study the checkerboard setup of the plots in the garden. They would grow better if I transferred the plants that shared the same soil needs into the same beds. The ones that needed more acidic soil would thrive in beds with similar plants instead of sectioning the individual plots off with wooden planks.

I laid a piece of blank paper I had stuck between the pages of my notebook on top of the map, thinking I might trace the positions of the beds and sketch out the way the plants should be reorganized. The bright white printer paper stuck up a full three inches above the top of the map. I ran my fingers over the rough edge. It looked like it had been cut with a pair of dull scissors.

I jumped up and grabbed my glasses with the built-in magnifier out of the small box I’d shoved all my research stuff into before we left home. I slipped them on and examined the ragged edge of the map. A piece was missing. And near the center, the tiniest bit of ink had bled down from whatever had once been above. There was something beyond the far wall of the Poison Garden.

I put my sneakers on and ran downstairs. Mom and Mo were occupied, so I left out the front door and went around to the hidden path. The curtain of vines pulled back as I approached, but this time, I didn’t worry about how the trees or grass might behave. The surrounding forest responded by creating a rolling wave of shrubbery, clearing the path of sticks and pebbles, making way for me. I gripped the map in my hand as I headed through the shadowy confines of the forest.

The trees bowed away, allowing me to unlock the gate. I quickly ducked inside, marching straight back to the moon gate. I’d been braver in the forest, but I didn’t know if I should be as confident in this part of the garden. A mistake now could be fatal.