Tales from the Greenhouse - Hot!

Just before the bell tolled Gilvi came into the room. "Susan," he said, tuning to her. "You know how to get into the greenhouse, and you know how to talk to Tom. Would you mind running an errand for me?"
"I'll be pleased to," Susan said, remembering her former adventures with the taciturn Tom in the wondrous greenhouse.

The windows of the greenhouse were moist with water, and Susan could se blurry figures moving inside. She went to the door and knocked. She waited. Finally Tom opened the door.
"Yes?" he said.
And Susan stated her errand. "Gilvi sent me here. He needs a fig."
"A fig?" Tom said in an enquiring tone.
"Yes," Susan said. "Gilvi told me that you had told him that the figs were ripe, and he has need of one."
"Ahh!" Tom said. "Follow me!" and with Tom leading the way, they entered the greenhouse.
The heat hit Susan like a wave, rolling over her, and making sweat instantly spring from her skin. It was almost intolerable. "Why is it so hot in here?" Susan asked.
""It's not." Tom said, then he looked at the big thermometers on the wall showing the temperature in Celsius, Fahrenheit and Kelvin. "It is!" he said, looking worried. "The glacial blooms ..." he began to move quickly between the beds. "Come help me!"
Susan followed him. They stopped at the tiny cubicle where Tom slept, ate and lived, Behind the cubicle was a hatch in the floor, Tom opened it and climbed down the steaming, black hole Susan felt the heat rising from the open hatch and was afraid she was going to melt like a snowman if she got any hotter. Tom looked at her. "Use the spell, Susan!" he said.
'The spell' Susan thought to herself. She knew many spells. Ah of course, the fire-protecting one from the Easter fire. It would protect her from the heat of the furnace here as well. Quickly she drew her wand and cast the spell. In a second she felt wonderfully cool, comfortable even. She heard Tom's urgent voice raising in an inarticulate yell from the black maw and ran. She climbed down the steep ladder, thankful that the bottom was hidden in the mists below. When she reached the bottom, she ducked through a small arch and stopped.

There Tom stood, and in front of him was a nest full of creatures. Susan saw tails, claws, tiny and not so tiny maws spewing forth flames, golden bellies with orange and red splotches. Then it all fell into place. Fire-salamanders! Tom had been using fire-salamanders to heat the greenhouse, and had left them alone for too long. Given their romantic tendencies they had of course multiplied. And Tom, under the fire-proofing spell had not discovered until now.
He must be one mighty wizard, Susan realized. she could now, after long practise, barely keep up that spell for half an hour. Weeks, if not months must have passed for the salamanders to become that many. Tom grasped a bunch of the smaller salamanders and Susan did the same. They clawed and snapped after her fingers, but as their true defence was their fiery breath, they were quite harmless.
"Where do we put them?" Susan asked.
"Tom grasped a sack from a nearby peg. "Fill up this one. It's fireproofed. But as I'm not dogmatic in my readings, I'm rather nebulous as to the wherewithal of salamanders." Tom spoke.
Susan knew that when he spoke like this, in long sentences with fancy words, he felt at his depth. Susan felt the same. "What do they eat?" she asked, a ghost of a plan forming in her brain.
"They eat fire, and grow. If you feed them gum from the gum trees they shrink .. YES! That's it! That was the question to pose! Let's cut the problem down to size."
Susan and Tom hurriedly filled the sac with the smaller salamanders, leaving only the original two in the furnace.
"I'll bring your kids somewhere safe!" Tom said to the large Salamanders.  And with Susan trailing after him, he climbed the steep ladder with the squirming, smoking bag on his back. Susan hurried to the gum tree as soon as she was up again, and picked the oozing gum from the stem.
Tom sat on a boulder and using the gum blobs as fodder, he shrank all the salamanders down to normal lizard size.
"Normally I deplore harming these wondrous creatures," he said. "But the welfare of my plants must take priority." He had totally forgotten his normally taciturn behaviour. Tom tied the sac and proceeded to open the windows near a bed of greenish plants. Susan offered her help, but Tom waved her off. "Now you go and pick that fig, the tree is in the Southwest corner of the greenhouse. I'll go for a little trip to Vesuvius with those small ones now that they are shrunk to a more manageable size."
Susan saw all the thermometers sinking to normal temperature, and as her spell dropped, she wondered how Tom could have stood that heat for so long.

***

 Tom was a formidable gardener and naturalist, but he was reticent in the extreme, and this aroused their curiosity. He always ate alone, as did the Nisser and a few other of the more exotic teachers on the Unicorn Farm. Yet he was not hoity-toity or easily insulted like the Nisser or the fauns. He did not have an overlarge ego either, like some of the human teachers. In short he was a bit of a riddle, and Heidi, My, Rósa, and Susan took it upon themselves to spy on Tom.
The first thing they did was to go to the kitchen and find Katla, the nice, youngish Icelandic Nisselady whom they had befriended during the Christmas party last year.
First Rósa asked for some kleinur, she was a great fan, which the other three thought a bit strange, as kleinur for them was something eaten only at Christmas time. While eating the kleinur Rósa and My as planned, began talking about their lessons in botany and the gardener, Tom. They stayed and talked, while  Katla prepared the trays for the beings not coming to the Barn for lunch. They noticed that each of the trays held a glass and a carafe of some beverage, ale, juice, water or wine, only Tom's tray held nothing drinkable.
Some days later Rósa went alone down there to beg more kleinur, as she did not want to do it every day. Still Tom's tray held nothing to drink, and furthermore no soup. Rósa went spying for more days, not every day, but nw and then, and this only confirmed the missing wet substances on Tom's tray.
Heidi and My went past the Greenhouse every morning, and Heidi and Susan every day on their way home.
They never saw Tom drinking, and he was very careful when watering the plants.
Susan sought out a reason for visiting Tom in the greenhouse, she asked for help with a written essay on the magical properties on some fruits. After this visit she met with My, Rósa and Heidi in Heidi's room.
Lis cane in while they were discussing, and after listening to them for only a short while, she turned to them: "I dare bet he's an efreet!" she said. "That is the only way a combination of all this is meaningful."
"Of course," Rósa said. "His name even gives him off. Tom is not his real name, as you sure know. He is Reynir-Röskvi Raudslogason. That means something like 'lively rowan, son of red flame'. Son of red flame? clearly an efreet! Now what?"
"Do we have to do anything about it?" Susan asked. "I mean except for not pouring water over him or similar pranks. Are we obliged to tell on him? What with Nisser in the kitchen and a Kelpie in the lake, I do not think that a son of an efreet is that bad."
That's because you're not wizard-born," Lis said. "We're taught that efreets want nothing more than to burn down all human habitations, and this is why we're not allowed to play with matches and such. So as not to inadvertently call an efreet to our house."
"We - that is non-wizards - are also discouraged from playing with matches," Susan said. "Only we're told stories about how a single match burned down a whole town. Maybe these stories are only to keep children and young ones from playing with fire?"
"You might be right," Lis said, which was a big thing coming from her lips. "And he has done nothing fiery in the years we have been here, and he really is a nice person, reticent and shy, maybe, but not a bad sort."