* Authors : Tanya Aydelott, M.K. Hutchins and Lindsey Godfrey Eccles * Narrators : Kaitlyn Zivanovich, Sofía Barker and Karen Menzel (née Bovenmyer) * Host : Matt Dovey * Audio Producer : Devin Martin * Discuss on Forums “The Greenhouse Bargain” was previously published by Flash Fiction Online, September 2022 “Shattered Petals of Celadon” was previously published by Daily Science Fiction “War Doesn’t Know What It Wants” is a PodCastle Original! “The Greenhouse Bargain” has a content warning for death. “War Doesn’t Know What it Wants” has a content warning for death, death of a child, loss of a spouse “The Greenhouse Bargain” is rated PG “Shattered Pearls of Celadon” is rated PG “War Doesn’t Know What It Wants” is rated PG-13 The Greenhouse Bargain by Tanya Aydelott He sent my mother’s ghost to deliver the terms of the bargain. I accepted; there was no choice. When I asked what to expect, she said, Ten good years. The Whipstitch Man had visited me twice, once to take my sister and once to collect my mother. The second time, he caught me tucking my fingers into the cold pocket of his patched-metal coat. His pinch-hold on my mother’s elbow tightened as he gave me a choice: I could keep the silver I’d tried to steal, but I would also have to keep my mother’s ghost. She would never journey to the underworld. And when I, too, passed, we would stay and watch all the sunsets and sunrises together, forgotten and scavenged by whatever horrors lived in the night. Or I could trade places with him. He would steal time from my human life, and then he would give me eternity. Either I damned my mother and myself, or I damned myself to become a thing of metal and darkness — how was I supposed to choose? But the Whipstitch Man had no patience for my begging. The dead cannot survive in the world of the living and my mother’s ghost was already beginning to sag. I shrieked that I would trade with him; I would take his place when my time came. Three nights, his rusted-nail voice said. In three nights you will learn the final terms. When my mother’s ghost came to the door, frail and already so unlike my mother, I wept. And when she told me I would have ten good years, I felt each of those tears as a needle through my skin. I squandered the first year, and the second. The third I spent away from home, trying to outrun my nightmares. In the fourth year, too many scents reminded me of my mother’s house and I returned, chastened. Her gardens were in shambles and it took me months to repair the arbors, patch the hedges, and replace the glass in the greenhouse. Curious neighbors came, bearing gifts of plants and mulch, until finally my mother’s roses bloomed and the fig tree burst into fruit. The stories started that year, too, the townspeople crowding into my greenhouse to report what they’d seen. How the Whipstitch Man came to collect a boy from the baker’s house, but paused at the doorway to sniff a bouquet of my hydrangeas.