LITMIR.BIZ

       A weed is just a flower growing in the wrong place.

      They’re not my words, they’re my granddad’s.

      He sees the beauty in everything, or perhaps it’s more that he thinks things that are unconventional and out of place are more beautiful than anything else. I see this trait in him every day: favouring the old farmhouse instead of the modernised gatehouse, brewing coffee in the ancient cast-iron pot over the open flames of the Aga instead of using the gleaming new espresso machine Mum bought him three birthdays ago that sits untouched, gathering dust, on the countertop. It’s not that he’s afraid of progress – in fact he is the first person to fight for change – but he likes authenticity, everything in its truest form. Including weeds: he admires their audacity, growing in places they haven’t been planted. It is this trait of his that has drawn me to him in my time of need and why he is putting his own safety on the line to harbour me.

      Harbour.

      That’s the word the Guild has used: Anybody who is aiding or harbouring Celestine North will face severe punishment. They don’t state the punishment, but the Guild’s reputation allows us to imagine. The danger of keeping me on his land doesn’t appear to scare Granddad; it makes him even more convinced of his duty to protect me.

      “A weed is simply a plant that wants to grow where people want something else,” he adds now, stooping low to pluck the intruder from the soil with his thick, strong hands.

      He has fighting hands, big and thick like shovels, but then in contradiction to that, they’re nurturing hands too. They’ve sown and grown, from his own land, and held and protected his own daughter and grandchildren. These hands that could choke

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