Zera and the Green Man by Sandra Knauf Read Free Book Online Page A

terrarium. “I wonder how much it’s worth.”
    “I remember it,” The Toad said. “It used to sit in Nonny’s, my Nonny’s, conservatory.” He picked up the Venus flytrap and turned it around in his hand, examining it from all angles. “Nice-looking plant. You know, Zera, plants are fascinating . . . everything that eats, everything that’s alive, depends on plants to stay alive, in one way or another.”
    “Yeah,” Zera said as she kept an eye on Tiffany, “we studied that in school. They supply food and oxygen for the planet. But I knew all that anyway.” 
    “It doesn’t look that fabulous to me,” Tiffany said, “considering it was supposedly a gift from a queen . I’ll never understand your family’s attraction to plants. To me, they’re just something you have to take care of — water, feed, dust — and they bring dirt into the house. Silk plants are far superior, and they’ve been around for ages, too.” She tossed her mane, as if the fuss they made over the terrarium was a little too much for her to bear.
    “I’ll take it upstairs for you, Zera,” The Toad said. “It’s pretty heavy.”
    Clutching her plant and book close to her, Zera followed him up the stairs to her room.
     
    * * *
     
    Zera studied the plant. It’s lovely, she thought, so tiny, so perfect. Such a pretty green color, and the reddish traps look so delicate!  
    After a quick shower, she changed into pajama bottoms and a badly faded rock group T-shirt that had belonged to her father. Curled up on her bed, she began reading Plant Oddities and Their Care . It was weird to have a real book in her hands again; she hadn’t been around books very much since she left home. The Toad felt computer libraries were superior to real ones because all you had to do was ask a question, and the answer would almost instantly appear, or the computers would talk and tell you the answers, or take you on a video journey showing you the answer, if you preferred that. Zera loved paper books, their smell, and their weight in her hands. She liked flipping through pages, making discoveries. 
    In this book, full of delightfully bizarre and attractive illustrations, Zera found that the scientific, or Latin, species name for her Venus flytrap was Dionea muscipula . Zera read that the flytrap’s ancestors were discovered in the United States in 1760. At that time they were called “Fly Trap Sensitive.” The Latin name translated into “Aphrodite’s Mouse-trap” but they were commonly called “Venus Flytrap.” So, Zera mused, the name comes from both Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, and Venus, the Roman goddess of love. How cool! She thought about how fun it would be to have a collection of plants in her room, how it would make Tiffany’s flamingo-colored decor of frills and ruffles more bearable. Inspired by a quote she remembered, tacked to the bulletin board in her father’s music studio, “Love is Nature’s second sun,” she chose to name her flytrap “Sunny.” 
    “Zera, your uncle’s going to walk me home now!” Tiffany’s voice rang from downstairs. “Lights out time! And be careful that you don’t make a mess with that plant. I do not want any water on the furniture!”
    And a goodnight, happy birthday to you too, Tiff . Zera turned off the light and said goodnight to Sunny, whose pot sat in the terrarium, on her night table. Zera fell asleep thinking about her grandmother.
    In the dark, sphagnum moss-filled terrarium, Sunny shut and opened all fifteen of her traps in quick succession. It was her way of paying homage to Zera’s fifteenth birthday, and saying goodnight to her new friend.                                             .

Chapter Five
    Monday, June 2
     
     
     
    Water everywhere! Flying, rushing, torrents! Surrounding! Enclosing . . . Struggle. Blackness. Nothing.
    Zera fought to wake up. Sobs forced themselves through her constricted throat.
    A honeyed voice