The Flowers

It took them the rest of that Tuesday to work it out properly.

Wren had looked up the six dates on her phone during lunch. Each one was different in obvious ways but they all had one thing in common that she found buried in an old local newspaper archive that she accessed through the school library website.

On every single one of those dates, someone had done something to the fountain.

Repainted it. Added a plaque. Replaced the stone on one side. Removed an old bench next to it. Added the flower bed. Each time something had been changed around the fountain, the loop had started. And each time, someone had eventually figured out that the change needed to be undone.

Return. Put things back the way they were.

"The flower bed," Bea said. They were sitting on the grass beside the fountain in the afternoon sun, school long since finished, the park quiet around them. "Someone planted flowers in the basin and now the fountain is stuck."

"Stuck repeating the day it was planted," Wren said. She checked her notes. "The flowers were planted eleven years ago. Which matches the most recent date carved on the base."

"So someone got stuck in a loop eleven years ago," Tomasz said. "Figured it out. Carved the date. Removed the flowers." He paused. "Then someone else came along and planted new flowers."

"And here we are," Bea said.

They all looked at the bright yellow flowers in the fountain basin.

"We have to dig them up," Bea said.

"We cannot just dig up the flowers in a public park," Tomasz said. "That is vandalism."

"It is a time loop," Bea said. "It is the opposite of vandalism. We are fixing something."

"I am not sure the council would see it that way," Tomasz said.

"The council," Bea said, "is not the one who has had this Tuesday four times."

Wren had already taken a small folding trowel from her bag, which raised several questions about what else Wren carried in her bag but this was not the moment.

"I always carry a trowel," Wren said, correctly reading the looks on their faces. "It is useful surprisingly often."

They dug up the flowers carefully, the three of them taking turns, trying to keep the roots intact. It took about twenty minutes. They piled the flowers on the grass beside the fountain basin and brushed the remaining soil out of the basin as best they could.

The basin was empty now, dry old stone, exactly as it had probably looked before anyone had the idea to plant flowers in it.

For a moment nothing happened.

Then the fountain made the sound again. The low hum, felt in the back teeth. But this time it was different. It did not stop and restart the day. It continued, getting slightly louder, and then it stopped completely.

The silence afterward felt different from ordinary silence. Cleaner somehow.

"Is it Tuesday?" Tomasz asked.

"It is still Tuesday," Bea said. "But it feels like the right Tuesday."

"How can you tell?" he asked.

"I cannot," she admitted. "I just can."

Wren was already crouching by the base of the fountain. She took a small sharp stone from the ground and very carefully added a seventh date to the line of dates carved there. Today's date, neat and precise.

"For the next person," she said.