by Hadi Atallah
How could Rosemary be so mean-spirited, Aster wondered. He wore a fez wrapped in a white turban and the earth enjoyed its condition as a heat conductor, taking up all the heat out of the sun that was above it. Aster’s speech elicited many chants from the crowd, except for a drowsy man who sat in the front row with his head dangling heavily as if it had lost all support. On the other hand, Aster winced, then shook off a spasm of dread as an unpleasant thought regarding Rosemary crossed his mind.
He realized the effect he was having on the crowd and that sprouted up a tiny flower in his heart. But he knew that its petals would soon wilt and eventually decay because of a lack of permanent light. He hoped he would find some kind of solution, or Rosemary would come to her senses and come scurrying back to him.
He instinctively flicked his hand as if driving away an insect when another unpleasant thought crossed his mind. His mental pictures seemed to rise out of a sunken world in his head. His heavy chin protruded above the high stiff collar of his emerald green robe, and under his bushy eyebrows, his acid green eyes darted bright, discerning glances at everyone around him.
***
The unhurried scuffle of Aster’s slippers resonated in the castle’s dungeons as if it were the scraping of quality sandpaper on the stone floor. That was where he had been finding his solace away from everyone. His beard grew in a raw sienna color. Self-reproaches and worry had been tormenting him to the point that he did nothing but brood all day. He hypothesized on how he could avoid the harrowing circumstances of his daughter’s unwelcome absence, an absence whose causes he couldn’t determine or understand.
He was an individual of strong sense, unyielding conviction, and passionate devoutness, yet a tad broody and forbidding. How much ignominy should I feel, he wondered. Aster sobbed with heaves of his powerful chest, covering his eyes with his hands. Rosemary’s conspicuous disdain for his emotional excesses was overwhelming, knowing fully well that the lengthened periods of suffering would result in disturbing neurological effects.
Aster missed his daughter’s jade, deep-set eyes, eyes that always assured him that she was unquestionably responsible for some recent deviousness or mischief. He also missed his demure wife who had kept to herself most of the time, always wanting to uncover what was recondite. He gazed at Camellia’s valise, which he had hidden under his robe, and wondered why Rosemary had not taken it on her painful undertaking. Viscerally, he knew that it was time he assembled a team of his finest men and headed out from Pandemville in search of his beloved daughter. At the same time, he was certain that her whereabouts would be fluid and difficult to pinpoint as if a moving target.
Meanwhile in Butterwort …
“We’ve got a pile of work,” Gaillardia said. “All these new flowers should be sorted out on new charts. The existing charts aren’t enough, and besides that, some of my boys and girls said they detected other hives on the premises. A welldone job, sweetheart.”
“Thank you, Miss Marigold. It’s always a pleasure for me to help out,” Rosemary said, in the shade of a red maple mounting her horse with the help of the lodge’s maidservant.
“What did she do? What did I miss?” Clove asked. Coat over his shoulders, he descended the front porch carrying his baggage and both of their umbrellas.
“Just keep her away from the coca chewers, and don’t even head South from here,” Gaillardia said, as she took the second horse from the stable boy. “Plenty of wax palms and petunias are over there anyway.”
“Where were you all this time?” Rosemary asked Clove, grazing her horse’s mane with her fingers.
“I paid my old friends a visit. Heck some of them even invited me to sleep over. Couldn’t resist!” Clove replied, mounting his horse with the help of the stable boy. “I went to school here. The Free Tribe of The West gave me lessons in stonework a long time ago.”
“I bet you had a lot to catch up on,” Rosemary said, fixing her robe and guitar, while the stable boy organized Clove’s baggage.
“Resemblance back in Dona Hill is not necessarily verification of Butterwort’s impact,” Gaillardia said. “Keep building bridges, Mister Bonsai. It’s a very charitable thing to do and send my regards to Sorrel and Wisteria.”
“I sure will,” Clove said.
Rosemary and Clove rode through the memorable countryside, making their way to the Guide Hope which loitered by the shore along with its crew. Once onboard, it wasn’t long before Rosemary became enchanted by the repetitive movements of the waves. Because of that, she was not all that focused on Clove’s orating, his jokes about their journey, Wisteria’s vision and Dona Hill.
What finally did catch her attention was when he shared some information on Clematis Amaranth, the person who was going to be their next host. Clove admired the fact that Amaranth’s faith and mission were perfectly well matched. He said that that was the secret to Amaranth’s certitude in life. He also spoke of Amaranth seeing a colossal theological significance in the simplicity and genuineness of a herb that Rosemary had never heard of. He stated that Amaranth recognized the herb as being a complement to nature, but many opposed his opinion back in Dona Hill.
“If the herb were put forth as a cure or a remedy, rather than just as a stimulant, then people would accept it better,” Rosemary said.
“He has been working on that for some time now, but it is a complicated and delicate task,” Clove said. “The rulings of religion and the principles of science are fused with one another, but he thinks he can straighten them out.”
Rosemary stayed silent and for a brief instant, the only sounds emitted were the water’s smack and gurgle. An island soon took shape on the horizon, and as Guide Hope came nearer Rosemary studied the lichen that gave the rocks an ancient look. Sea Holly was full of breath-taking out-ofthe-way beaches, but most of the hamlet’s coast was rocky and tyrannized by merciless seas. That natural barrier made Sea Holly a very burdensome place to land or from which to make a quick escape.
Guide Hope’s pinnace approached the land, while Rosemary could hear the sea rustling against the rocks. It was as if the waves were lashing at something to detach it off the boulders with sharp, sputtering sounds. Once on land, a green and magenta colored dragon fly moved quickly past Rosemary’s head, while Clove watched a group of shrieking children absorbed in their game of catch. Sea Holly’s placid sky did not match the neglected grounds where debris and weeds seemed to have overtaken almost everything else.
A solitary man hurried forward as if he had been expecting them. Rosemary examined his movement; he seemed to glide as if on wings. His eyes, a crystalline, glaucous grey with an unusual dash of green, conveyed intelligible acknowledgements under his dense Brillo-pad of pitch-dark hair. He was a glinting black man with an embarrassing taste for accessories made out of bone and leather and his eyebrows were shaped like a coal black cat flexing its body right after waking up from a deep, fulfilling sleep. He was tall and rail-thin, but his posture was straight like a tulip.
“Most things bubbling to the surface from your subconscious I can see in your eyes.” He spoke to Rosemary and Clove with a voice that would liquefy one’s heart. “I’m Clematis, shaman of The Tribe of Winged Men, and I welcome you to Sea Holly.” This he said with the deep, wholehearted voice of a waterfall pouring past enormous boulders. He gave the impression that, were one to spend their time listening to his words in full conversational flight, one would feel as if being anesthetized.
“Shaman Amaranth, we finally meet again,” Clove said.
Rosemary studied Clematis with the calm of someone rolling a cigarette.
As a smooth, sly smile unfurled across his face, he said: “Please, call me Clem.”
Rosemary became suspicious that Amaranth’s exemplary manners and mere association with the herb helped make it appear overpowering. He also had the habit of raising his arms while he spoke, and then rapidly letting them fall after every statement.
Rosemary and Clove explored the soiled streets as they followed Clemat
is to his home. The herb seemed to be a popular entity in Sea Holly. Rosemary watched several people exchanging scores of the greenish goods with grins and smiles. Some of the exchanges were as large as her palm.
“Faith in its essence leads us to the good times, but its shackles will always remind us of the troubles during the process,” Clematis said. “I will make sure, however, that both you will have a good time in Sea Holly, and that The Tribe of Winged Men will set your worries free.”
“Can you explain your intentions more clearly in words, Clem?” Clove asked.
Rosemary got the impression that Clove was trying to make Amaranth’s aim clearer because of her being amongst them.
“If your soul learns to capture, then your mind learns to seize. Learn to let go and your mind shall learn to sense the extraordinary,” Clematis said. While Clove nodded in a cheerful manner, he still could not make out what Amaranth was actually planning.
Clematis seemed to bop up and down while the fire raged at his back. A covered shed surrounded his courtyard. Rosemary assumed that people would gather around and settle there to evade the radiant sun. Sea Holly’s sun would be ablaze even if it were the dead of winter.
The Tribe of Winged Men roasted a rat as a special treat. Clove flared up and tried to convince the tribe that the locals of Dona Hill were not supposed to eat rat because it had represented something extremely significant. But they carried on preparing dinner without seemingly taking any notice of Clove’s objections.
Rosemary’s stomach lurched at the sight of the rat being stretched out by its paws. Its scorched whiskers and its visible tail were mind numbing. She could not bear the thought of sinking her teeth into the blackened and swollen flesh.
In the meantime, Clematis cheerfully sermonized on the stable nature of fate, and Clove finally agreed to give up and accept his dinner, defeated against a background of hooting owls.
“If fate has the ability to guide us beyond infinity, then I am all up for fate,” Clove said, removing his slippers.
“What is beyond infinity?” Clematis asked.
“Clarity,” Clove replied. “And I consider it a blessing.”
Clematis smiled that half-toothless smile and then said: “I’ve been through things that I want to know more about—now that’s a blessing.”
There is always enough room for a tree to grow, and manifestly, there is always enough room for the unexpected. That belief was made real when a motley crowd of discontents and zealots with tousled haircuts spread through Amaranth’s courtyard almost instantly. Some were thin and lean like vine shoots while others had potbellies. The courtyard was soon filled with their voices. The chanting of the zealots gave Rosemary an intensely painful agitation.
Suddenly and without preamble, several of these men seized Clove.
“I’m innocent,” Clove said, remonstrating against being held. “Our visit here is innocuous.” He looked towarda Amaranth when he said this. But Amaranth made no response, simply making a chewing motion as if he was trying to eat his saliva. Clove became confused and upset. Infuriated, he rebuked Clematis. For his troubles, he received a blow to the stomach.
Rosemary became visibly agitated. She felt like the moon-misted Sea Holly was like a keg full of powder that had finally found a spark to set it off. Clove staggered angrily. Rosemary felt a pain in her heart and a darkening of her sky. The coming of more men and their little calls to one another created even more turmoil with Clove swinging on all sides in an attempt to escape his captors.
For Rosemary, the heavy shuffling of the men’s feet seemed to indicate that the whole world had gone insane. She was handling her own little fragment of stability in the midst of an earthquake. The men tied Clove’s hands with a piece of rope and thrust him towards the fire, while his bare feet stamped on the burning wood trying to push himself away.
“They say that upon his arrival someone from the tribe had gone missing,” Clematis said as if justifying what was taking place. He just stood there, his face undisturbed and his eyes frozen on Rosemary. “His presence is unpromising to all of them.”
Rosemary was crumbling under pressure and bereaved of everything pleasant, but she held onto the thought that she could still make something good come out of the situation. She wanted to float above all the chaos so she hollered with a raised fist and piercing eyes. She knew that the best way to get everyone’s attention was to be as insistent as they were.
Problems run
But we will run faster
We all shall live
Happily ever after
She hastily blurted her words, hardly knowing what she was saying while flashing Clematis a disagreeable look. The men’s attention narrowed as the beating of their hearts rose. Rosemary became even more alert with the sight of all the people looking vacantly at her supernatural ability. Their awed and exalted response reminded her of the strengthened wind next to the grand waterfall in the cedar forest back in Dona Hill. Everyone slowly pressed forward with their hands clasped in front of them as if attracted by an invisible and unabated force.
The entire mob surging forward seemed like a single species unable to look away. Rosemary, on the other hand, felt like a virtuoso who had used her baton and prevented an inharmonious band from sinking into a bottomless abyss under the lurid night sky. It even got Amaranth’s attention and he watched with amazement as the little jungle of tropical evergreen plants bearing fruits marched through his courtyard.
Clematis studied the silence. He was right to feel that the more it lengthened, the less capable he was to break it. Everyone except Clove looked at ease. Rosemary understood why once she noticed that her strands were out of her hair, actively untying Clove’s hands with their accustomed glow.
“Isn’t it this what you are all really after?” Rosemary said with a voice that was calm and authoritative. “Isn’t it this what you are speaking very highly of, Shaman Amaranth?”
“Avocados?” Clematis said in a tone that was conspicuously soft compared with the zealots’ previous shouting.
Everyone laughed incredulously, while the man, who had originally gone missing, began to cough dully behind his hand with a wild look in his eyes. The avocado trees that Rosemary magically grew were a spectacular sight.
“Everything in the garden is rosy,” Clematis said with a voice that reverberated.
Rosemary felt like he was trying to introduce some irony into the situation as a way to defuse it.
“This ruthlessness and dastardliness need not govern us, and this miracle should be embedded in the fabric of our day-to-day life,” Clematis said hearing himself dissolve into laughter. He hoped truthfulness might retrieve his nobleness.
Clove, on the other hand, looked at Rosemary in a way that made it evident that he appreciated how self-controlled she had been to save his life, in spite of the fact that she had plainly misinterpreted what the herb really was. He contemplated on the concept that she assumed the role of the rooster that was able to manage the situation.
Clematis fastened a pearl spray brooch to Rosemary’s spirit robe.
“I am obligated with all my love to give this to you,” he said before striking Clove’s back in a manner not meant to harm him. Rosemary examined her new breast pin and adjusted her guitar, while Clove gnashed his teeth slowly.
“Engage with the present and your potential will be focused on the step you’ll be taking rather than the entire journey,” Clematis said gently patting Rosemary on the back. The contact sent a cold shiver through her. “Your subconscious knows you best. Become aware of it and you will have found an elemental key to your self-awareness.”
Both Clove and Rosemary hoped these would be the last words Clematis uttered. Relieved, they watched him withdraw and Rosemary sympathetically held Clove’s hand.
“We’re definitely primed to leave this place,” Rosemary suggested.
“Whether it’s times of glory or times of humility, the world will look you in the eyes and say—your fate awaits, let’s
march on,” Clove muttered, but for all his power he could not help but look whipped. “Let’s start out for Dahlia tonight.”
WISDOM
“Aster, look over there,” Jarred Blossom whispered while standing amid a group of soldiers. “There is no way this flower can survive out here.”
The extremes of the Peyote Desert’s climate could not take their toll on the exquisite properties the camellia flower had possessed. It was placed in a clay pot on top of a burial mound.
“It looks so real,” Aster said, examining it. “I wonder who this eccentric horticulturist may be.”
“There’s a boy heading this way, Aster,” one of the soldiers said.
“Alright then,” Aster said, adjusting his sapphire-colored robe. “Let’s all be nice.”
“Good morning,” Bay said, pulling out a stack of cards. “Pick one,” he told the group of men.
“Let’s play another game,” Aster said with a wolfish grin lighting up his listless face. “Have you seen my daughter around here? Her name is Rosemary, and she is a healthy smiling kid with character.”
“I might have,” Bay replied and he was met with a collective “Oh!” It sounded like water gushing down over enormous boulders after the rains.
“You mean to say that there is a possibility you two have met?” Aster asked, plucking excitedly at his beard.
“We also imagined a flower together,” Bay replied and he was met with another collective “Oh!” This time it sounded distraught.
“It goes against the grain for Rosemary to imagine,” Aster said. “Did she mention me at all?”
“No,” Bay replied. “And she left me all alone with this flower she grew.”
“The chrysanthemum?!” Doctor Blossom cried out.
