Chapter 1

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Afternoon sunlight heated Rosa's back right through her loose t-shirt and made sweat trickle down her temples and chest. "What brilliant mind decided we should weed the kitchen garden in mid-afternoon?" she grumbled.

Chuck sat back on his heels and pretended to ponder the matter. "As I recall, it was our supervisor's idea. Are you planning to lodge a complaint?" The stocky dwarf appeared unaffected by the heat, which was just plain unfair.

"She hasn't got the nerve," said Tasha, his wife, from two rows away.

"You wound me." Rosa pulled her shirt away from her skin to improve airflow and wrinkled her nose at her friends. "I'm braver than you think. Besides, the supervisor is a pushover."

"Really? Let me check." Chuck stood up, walked over, and shoved Rosa's shoulder. She batted his hand away, looking fierce. "Nope," he said with a grin. "She's solid rock through and through. No mercy." He took a long swig of water from his bottle, then pulled off his hat and dumped the last of it over his head.

Tasha chuckled. "Don't tell the slave-driver, but I'm taking five." The cheery dwarf straightened to her full height of three-foot-nothing, reached one arm over her head and bent to the side with a little groan, then stretched to the other side.

Chuck and Tasha were the youngest of the adult dwarfs currently living at Faraway Castle. Both were gifted gardeners and indefatigable workers, both had thick, curly hair, and Chuck wore a short beard to match. Like all the dwarfs on staff, they wore a glamour to make them appear human to unmagical resort guests, but Rosa saw them as they really were.

"Our boss may be scary, but I hear she's much kinder than her predecessor," Rosa quipped, giving Chuck a sly glance.

He laughed. "Yeah, that guy was obsessed."

"Motivated, anyway," Tasha added. "Obsessed with finding someone suitable to take over his job. He's mellowed a lot since you replaced him, Rosa." Her dimples deepened when she grinned. "You've brought this garden to life."

"Literally," Chuck added, glancing over his shoulder with a mock-hunted expression. "Whew! No tiger lily stalking me. I had to pull one of those little monsters off a bird-of-paradise plant the other day."

Rosa grimaced. "Oops. Maybe it won't work, having tiger lilies in the public gardens. They're gorgeous, but the last thing we need is flowers terrorizing resort guests."

He chuckled. "Does seem like your plants sometimes forget they're plants."

Chuck had been the resort's head gardener when Rosa arrived three years earlier, barely fifteen years old, and begged for a job. Madame Genevieve would have sent her packing if Chuck hadn't convinced the formidable resort director to give her a chance. Over the course of that first summer he had handed over leadership, first of garden design and plant propagation, and then of the gardening staff. Not even the director could find reason to object to Rosa's work or disparage her ability.

By the following summer Rosa officially owned the top position, much to Chuck's satisfaction. Although he thoroughly enjoyed gardening, he had hated being in charge every summer when dozens of human teens—all possessing at least some magic talent and all needing close supervision—supplemented the full-time resort staff. He and Tasha enjoying planting and tending flowerbeds and shrubs—not so much the organizational and artistic-design parts of the job.

But with Rosa in command, Chuck and Tasha in charge of daily upkeep, and Ben Weatherby, another full-time human staff member, to oversee the summer workers, the vast gardens of Faraway Castle flourished along with the rest of the resort.

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