Tuesday set Baxterr down on the walkway and spun around happily.
“Race you,” she said to him, and he didn’t need to be asked twice.
Tuesday sprinted up the walkway with Baxterr right beside her, his short legs a blur of golden-brown fur. They reached the glass door at precisely the same moment.
“You wait until you see all this, doggo,” Tuesday told him. “You won’t believe where we’re going to live.”
Baxterr tilted his head, perplexed.
“Ruff?”
“Yes, here,” Tuesday said. “You see, I have to be the Gardener. Someone has to take care of the worlds, doggo.”
The glass door opened, and Baxterr, taking in the extraordinary sky above him, gave a little growl.
“Ruff, ruff, ruff,” he said quickly, as a bright yellow-and-green world swooped low over their heads.
“North?” came Garnet’s voice from the primrose-colored couch.
He sat upright, and it seemed to Tuesday that he had grown even older while he slept. His gray hair had transformed to a snowy white, and his eyes had clouded over.
He struggled to his feet.
“Where is she?” he cried. “I heard her! I heard her barking. She’s come back! North Wind! Where are you, my girl?”
The Gardener, looking wildly about him, caught sight of Tuesday and Baxterr and took a few staggering steps toward them. Tuesday, seeing that he was about to fall, rushed to catch him. The moment she reached him, he collapsed—almost weightless—against her. She steadied him with an arm about his waist.
“North? Is that you?”
“It isn’t her,” Tuesday said as gently as she could. “It’s my dog. He’s come.”
“It isn’t? It’s not? I’m sure I heard…,” he said.
Tuesday felt his knees buckle again.
“I think you should lie down,” Tuesday said, and with Baxterr following closely at her feet, she helped the Gardener back to his couch. She straightened the pillows all about him and pulled the comforter up to his chest.
“It really wasn’t her?” he asked sadly.
“I’m sorry,” Tuesday said.
Baxterr put his paws up, ever so gently, on the couch beside the old man, who peered back at him critically.
“This is your dog, Ms. Gardener?” he asked. “I must say, you keep him very small. He’s almost a bonsai, isn’t he? I always kept North Wind bigger than that. About the size of a decent wolfhound. That was more my style. But you know, whatever suits.”
“Garnet. This is…” She paused for a moment. She almost said “doggo,” but then decided to risk it. “This is Baxterr.”
Garnet reached out a gnarled hand to pat Baxterr on the head.
“Baxterr, eh?”
“With a double r,” Tuesday added. “It’s for his growl, you know.”
“Growl,” the old man sighed. “Yes, a growl can be a useful thing.”
Garnet closed his eyes, and Tuesday worried that he would never open them again. But after a moment, he did.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said, addressing Baxterr. “And now that you are, I think I’ll be off. Remember, it’s a fine and noble thing to be the Gardener’s dog. Like the Gardener’s life, the life of the Gardener’s dog can be difficult at times, and lonely. But friends are never so very far away. Not if one uses one’s nose … hmm?”
He slowly tapped the side of his nose with a wizened finger, then took a breath that Tuesday heard as a rattle in his chest.
“It has been an extraordinary life,” he said in barely a whisper. “We were far apart, my love and me, and yet we were together in purpose every day.”
Garnet stared up at the sky swimming with worlds.
“Look at that, will you, Ms. Gardener. Just look up at that! Do you see? Over there, a new one.”
High in the sky, something flashed, platinum white against the indigo. It was small, but growing.
“What is it?” Tuesday asked.
“It’s a world, being born,” Garnet said. “You know what that means, don’t you?”
Tuesday did. It meant that someone, somewhere, had put pen to paper. Or fingertips to keyboard, or chalk to a blackboard, or sharpened stick to a sandy beach. And they had done it in a way that had made magic.
“You know, I only ever made one world that I was truly happy with. A very special bit of gardening that. I hid it. So precious.”
“Which one is it?” Tuesday said. “Can’t you tell me?”
Garnet gave a barely perceptible chuckle. “Good-bye, Ms. Gardener. Thank you for coming in my hour of need. Take care of the worlds for me, won’t you? And, Baxterr, remember the nose.”
With that, the old man closed his eyes and sighed the longest of sighs. When at last it stopped, he did not take another breath. He began to shimmer and then to vanish. A moment later, the comforter collapsed onto the couch, suddenly empty of his form.
“Good-bye, Garnet,” Tuesday said.
Shimmering in the air before her, Tuesday saw a pale golden dust. Mesmerized, she reached out. At her touch, it vanished altogether. As Tuesday drew her hand back, she saw something strange. Baxterr gave a little whine of concern. Tuesday got up and went over to the workbench to examine her hand in a better light. It wasn’t her imagination. Her fingernails had changed. Where there would normally be a curve of paler pink, they had changed to faint shade of green. Tuesday glanced back to the vacant couch, and then again at her fingers.
“I really have become the Gardener,” Tuesday whispered. “Is that all right?”
Baxterr licked her hand as if to say that everything was all right, so long as the two of them were together.
“I don’t even know if it’s good or bad, if it’s wrong or right, but this is the story I’ve written.”
They sat together, then, on the blue rug, Tuesday with her knees drawn up to her chin, and Baxterr with his small body leaned up against her legs. Together, girl and dog peered up into the sky full of worlds. There were so many of them.