The Sixty-First Petal

About this book

Lioren Vask has spent her life drawing Corolla, the city grown upon a mountain-sized flower whose bloom is said to last one human age. As official petal-cartographer, she measures nectar rivers, pollen seasons, and the slow creasing of inner petals, her knuckles stained with ink, one eye paled by years of ridgeline sighting. Now the Council demands a definitive atlas, and every number she writes will decide which wards the city keeps and which it lets go dark. But Lioren's maps have been drifting outward for eleven years — a mercy, she tells herself, so the city can turn toward the light. When the census comes calling, she must decide what her careful lines are truly for. At the ringing of the dew-bells, on the terrace of the Sixty-First Petal, she begins to explain herself. She may never finish.