She dug in her pocket and produced one of her acorns. With the tree-sprite’s power in her, she could feel the energy packed into the acorn as it lay in her palm, a blazing star of the raw stuff of life. She tossed it into the ice tree’s pot, where it fell into the water with a plop. There was no soil in there, only a tangle of roots and small rocks, and the acorn drifted down among them.

Touching the tree again, she willed its roots to find the acorn and break it open, absorbing the unexpected nourishment. Power thrilled through the tree. It wanted to grow, to shoot up like a weed, to drill its roots through the sides of its pot in a quest for more water. But Alice held it in check, directing all that energy into a single bud at the end of a long branch.

She closed her eyes and created the flower in her mind. It would be red, blue, and green, brilliantly colored instead of pale, and larger than anything she’d seen in the garden. The bud swelled, and she heard Helga’s breath hiss. Alice grinned to herself, hand twitching minutely as she directed the tree. The yard was silent, except for the howl of the wind, as the flower bloomed.

Alice felt the flower opening, but it seemed off, the tree itself protesting against what she was pushing it to do. No, she thought. Like this. Grow. She bore down harder, forcing the bud to spread. Something was wrong.

Then Helga began to laugh again.

“Is that it, Reader? Is that what all your power can do?”

Alice opened her eyes.

The flower was blue and red and green, but it was a far cry from the delicate, intricate mass of petals Helga had shown her. It was a mess, thick slabs of icy leaf interspersed with half-formed petals, most of them still rolled into tight tubes. As Alice watched, several petals cracked under their own weight and fell. Tentatively, she took a sniff, and nearly gagged at a scent like rotten meat.

“I . . .” Alice looked from the hideous flower to Helga’s elegant bloom and back. “I’d like to try again.”

“By all means.” Helga smiled her wolfish smile. “I would hate for it to be said that you put forward less than your best effort.”

Alice snapped the ruined flower off, letting it fall into the pot to dissolve in the water. She closed her eyes again, reaching back out to the tree. There was still power left from the acorn, the tree fairly quivered with it, but she was suddenly unsure of what to do.

What happened? The flower had been so clear in her mind. Why didn’t it grow right? She tried to picture it, concentrating—the colors, the petals—