Old Kingdom 04: Across the Wall (33 page)

T
HIS IS THE STORY OF A GARDENER
who grew the most beautiful single rose the world had ever seen. It was a black rose, which was unlikely, and it bloomed the whole year round, which was impossible.

Hearing of this rose, the King decided to see it for himself. With his entourage, he rode for seven days to the gardener’s simple cottage. On the morning of the seventh day, he arrived and saw the rose. It was even more beautiful than the King had imagined, and he wanted it.

‘How did you come to grow such a beautiful rose?’ the King asked the gardener, who was standing silently by.

‘I planted that rose on the day my wife died,’ replied the gardener, looking only at the flower. ‘It is a true, deep black, the very color of her hair. The rose grew from my love of her.’

The King turned to his servants and said, ‘Uproot this rosebush and take it to the palace. It is too beautiful for anyone but me.’

But when the rosebush was transplanted to the palace, it lasted only a year before it withered and died. The King, who had gazed upon it every day, angrily decided that it was the gardener’s fault, and he set out at once to punish him.

But when he arrived at the gardener’s cottage, he was amazed to see a new rosebush growing there, with a single rose. But this rose was green, and even more beautiful than the black rose.

The King once again asked the gardener how he came to grow such a beautiful rose.

‘I planted this rose on the anniversary of my wife’s death,’ said the gardener, his eyes only on the rose. ‘It is the color of her eyes, which I looked into every morning. The rose grew from my love of her.’

‘Take it!’ commanded the King, and he turned away to ride the seven days back to his palace. Such a beautiful flower was not fit for a common man. The green rose bloomed for two years, and the King looked upon it every day, for it brought him great contentment. Then, one morning, it was dead, the bush withered, the petals fallen to the ground. The King picked up the petals and spoke to no one for two days. Then he said, as if to convince himself, ‘The gardener will have another rose.’

So once again he rode off with his entourage. This time, they took a spade and the palace jardinier.

Such was the King’s impatience that they rode for half the nights as well as days, but there were wrong turns and flooded bridges, and it still took seven days before he once again rode up to the gardener’s cottage. And there was a new rosebush, with a single rose. A red rose, so beautiful that the King’s men were struck silent and the King himself could only stare and gesture to the palace jardinier to take it away.

Even though the King didn’t ask, the gardener spoke before the spade broke the earth around the bush.

‘I planted this rose three years after the death of my wife,’ he said. ‘It is the color of her lips, which I first kissed under a harvest moon on the hottest of summer nights. This rose grew from my love of her.’

The King seemed not to hear but kept staring at the rose. Finally, he tore his gaze away and turned his horse for home.

The jardinier watched him go and stopped digging for a moment.

‘Your roses are the most beautiful I have ever seen,’ he said. ‘They could only grow from a great love. But why grow them only to have these memories taken from you?’

The gardener smiled and said, ‘I need nothing to remind me of my wife. When I walk alone under the night sky, I see the blackness of her hair. When the light catches the green glass of a bottle, I see her eyes. When the sun is setting all red against the hills and the wind touches my cheek, I feel her kiss.

‘I grew the first rose because I was afraid I might forget. When it was gone, I knew that I had lost nothing. No one can take the memory of my love.’ The jardinier frowned, and he began to cut again with his spade. Then he asked, ‘But why do you keep growing the roses?’

‘I grow them for the King,’ said the gardener. ‘He has no memories of his own, no love. And after all, they are only flowers.’

ENDINGS

INTRODUCTION TO ENDINGS

T
HIS IS ONE OF THOSE ODD STORIES
that come out of nowhere. It was written in one sitting and then revisited numerous times over several years as I tried to make it work. Finally, when I thought it did work, I wasn’t sure what I could do with it, as it was very short. Fortunately, a year or so after I felt it was done, an opportunity arose for it to be the final story in the anthology
Gothic!
, edited by Deborah Noyes. As a kind of coda for the whole collection, it found its place in the world.

I was particularly pleased (and surprised) that this story also then went on to be selected for the inaugural volume of
The Year’s Best Science Fiction
& Fantasy for Teens
, edited by Jane Yolen and Patrick Nielsen Hayden. It’ll be interesting to see if they put it at the end, as at the time of this writing I haven’t seen that book.

If they do put it at the end, as it is in this book, I can draw all the wrong conclusions (like a Hollywood studio looking at last summer’s hits) and will immediately begin work on a story called ‘Beginnings’ and another one called ‘Middlings,’ in order to maximise my chances of inclusion in future collections.

ENDINGS

I
HAVE TWO SWORDS
. O
NE IS NAMED
Sorrow and the other Joy. These are not their real names. I do not think there is anyone alive who knows even the letters that are etched into the blue-black blades.

I know, but then I am not alive. Yet not dead. Something in between, hovering in the twilight, betwixt wakefulness and sleep, caught on the boundary, pinned to the board, unable to go back, unable to go forward.

I do rest, but it is not sleep and I do not dream. I simply remember, the memories tumbling over one another, mixing and joining and mingling till I do not know when or where or how or why, and by nightfall it is unbearable and I rise from my troubled bed to howl at the moon or pace the corridors …

Or sit beneath the swords in the old cane chair, waiting for the chance of a visitor, the chance of change, the chance …

I have two daughters. One is named Sorrow and the other Joy.

These are not their real names. I do not think even they remember what they were called in the far-distant days of their youth. Neither they nor I can recall their mother’s name, though sometimes in my daytime reveries I catch a glimpse of her face, the feel of her skin, the taste of her mouth, the swish of a sleeve as she leaves the room and my memory. They are hungrier than I, my daughters, and still have the thirst for blood.

This story has two endings. One is named Sorrow and the other Joy.

This is the first ending:

A great hero comes to my house without caution, as the sun falls. He is in the prime of life, tall and strong and arrogant. He meets my daughters in the garden, where they stand in the shade of the great oak. Two steps away lies the last sunlight, and he is clever enough to make use of that, and strong. There is pretended
amour
on both sides, and fangs strike true. Yet the hero is swifter with his silvered knife, and the sun is too close.

Silver poisons, and fire burns, and that is the finish of Sorrow and the end of Joy.

Weakened, the hero staggers on, intent on finishing the epic that will be written about him. He finds me in the cane chair, and above me Sorrow and Joy.

I give him the choice and tell him the names.

He chooses Sorrow, not realising that this is what he chooses for himself, and the blades are aptly named.

I do not feel sorrow for him, or for my daughters, but only for myself.

I do drink his blood. It has been a long time … and he was a hero.

This is the second ending:

A young man not yet old enough to be a hero, great or small, comes to my garden with the dawn. He watches me through the window, and though I delay, at last I must shuffle out of the cane chair, toward my bed.

There are bones at my feet, and a skull, the flesh long gone. I do not know whose bones they are. There are many skulls and bones about this house. The boy enters through the window, borne on a shaft of sunlight. I pause in the shadowed doorway to watch as he examines the swords. His lips move, puzzling out what is written there, or so I must suppose. Perhaps no alphabet or language is ever really lost, as long as some of it survives.

He will get no help from that ancient script, from that ancient life.

I call out the names I have given the swords, but he does not answer.

I do not see which weapon he chooses. Already memories rush at me, push at me, buffet and surround me. I do not know what has happened or will happen or might happen.

I am in my bed. The youth stands over me, the point of a sword pricking at my chest.

It is Joy and, I think, chosen through wisdom, not by luck. Who would have thought it of a boy not yet old enough to shave?

The steel is cold. Final. Yet only dust bubbles from the wound.

Then comes the second blow, to the dry bones of the neck.

I have been waiting a long time for this ending.

Waiting for someone to choose for me.

To give me Joy instead of Sorrow.

LIBRARIAN’S NOTE

This manuscript was either purchased or
donated at some time in the sixteen year
period when Seren daughter of Uile (Seren
IV) was Chief Librarian. Due to fire damage
sustained during the notorious ‘Orange
Book’ conflagration in the Seventh Twist-
Lefthand Store Five Back Up little of the
manuscript remains. As it had not been catalogued
at the time (the delay back then was
a mere seventeen years but it had not been
long in our possession), there is no index
record, so the exact time and nature of the
acquisition cannot be determined. It was
possibly bought from an itinerant book
trader and not one of our more regular
merchants of that time as later enquiries did
not discover any further information about
its origins. It is also possible that it was
donated by the Abhorsen Alliel or his immediate
successor.

Due to the nature of the manuscript it has
been bound with Marks of Warding, Deception
and Misdirection and chained with
silver. It is forbidden to all outsiders save the
Royal or Abhorsen families, and all Clayr
without the express permission of a Deputy
or the Chief Librarian.

AN EXTRACT OF THE JOURNAL OF IDRACH THE LESSER NECROMANCER

F
ROM THE COPY MADE SAFE , DECIPHERED
AND WRITTEN PLAIN BY
J
ALEREL
, F
IRST
ASSISTANT
L
IBRARIAN
OF THE
C
LAYR

… at last I have obtained something that is of real use! Korbid returned from his northern expedition last week. In addition to some small exotic fruits that I liked not the look of, he also brought me a great iron-bound chest of books and papers. He claimed to have found it in a cave in which he took shelter from a great storm of dust, but knowing him as I do, I doubt it. There were bloodstains on the chest and they were not long faded. Sand had been rubbed in to obscure them, but had only spread the stain.