Princess Mira knew every single plant in the royal greenhouse by name. She knew which ferns liked their feet damp and which roses preferred to stay dry. She knew exactly when the moonblossoms woke up — and she knew, the moment she pushed open the glass door that night, that something was very wrong. The moonblossoms were drooping. Every single one, pale and limp, their silver petals pointing sadly at the soil. And the soap-bubble fountain — the old magical one in the center, the one that filled the whole greenhouse with floating, shimmering mist — was completely, utterly still. Click, click, click, went Mira's boots on the stone path as she walked toward it.
She pressed her hand to the fountain's basin. Not even a wobble. Not one bubble. The moonblossoms needed that bubble-mist to stay bright, and if the fountain stayed silent past midnight, they would sleep for a whole week. Mira picked up her small lantern and got to work. Click, click, click — down the first row. She checked every stem. She checked the water pipes that ran along the wall, cool and smooth under her fingertips. She checked the little copper valves that smelled of old rain. Everything looked perfectly fine, which was the most suspicious thing of all.
Click, click, click — down the second row. She held her lantern up close to the moonblossoms, and one droopy petal brushed her cheek, cold as a coin. She checked the long pipe that ran from the fountain's base — the heart-pipe, the oldest one. She crouched down and peered inside. Two tiny legs waved back at her.
Mira leaned in closer. There, wedged deep inside the heart-pipe, was a small glass beetle. He was no bigger than her thumbnail, perfectly round and shiny, and he was clicking his six legs in what could only be described as extreme embarrassment. He had thought the pipe was a tunnel. It was, in fact, not a tunnel. Mira tried a thin stick first. Too thick — it bumped right against the beetle's shell. She tried her littlest finger next. Too wide — she couldn't even fit it past the first bend. She sat back on her heels and looked around the greenhouse, chewing her lip. Then she spotted a big curled leaf on the potting bench — one of the elephant-ear leaves she'd trimmed that morning. She rolled it into a narrow ramp, tight as a scroll, and eased it gently into the heart-pipe, just beside the beetle. It curved into a perfect little slide.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then there was the tiniest scritch-scritch-scritch of glass legs on leaf, and the beetle popped out and landed neatly in Mira's palm, blinking his round eyes in the lantern light. He clicked his legs once, very fast, which sounded exactly like an apology. The fountain hiccupped. It made a sound like a big soap bubble popping in reverse, and then — whoooosh — bubbles came surging up from the basin, dozens of them, then hundreds, each one catching the lantern light and turning faintly gold and pink as they rose toward the glass ceiling high above. The moonblossoms heard it. One lifted its head. Then another. Then the whole row, slowly, like children waking from a nap, their silver petals opening and beginning to glow — soft and steady as a nightlight.
The beetle marched purposefully off into the ferns without looking back, which seemed very much like something he had planned all along. Mira settled onto the little wooden bench beside the fountain, her boots finally still, and watched the bubbles float up and up until they were just tiny gleams against the glass, and the whole greenhouse hummed quietly around her, silver and full of light.
