by Hadi Atallah
“It’s actually a camellia flower,” Bay replied. “Both our mothers were named after this flower.”
“Then we’ve got a winner!” Aster exclaimed. “Do you have the slightest idea where she might be right now?”
“I do,” Bay replied. “But I will only tell you if you promise to deliver something to her.”
“Anything,” Aster said. “I’ll deliver the entire camel caravan if you want me to.”
Bay pulled out a drawing from underneath his robe and handed it to Aster. “This is the flower she imagined, she calls it Stathalie.”
“Stathalie,” Aster repeated as he drew his breath and gazed with fascination at the sketch the little boy had made.
“This is amazing, little man,” Aster said.
“My name is Bay,” he said with obvious pride.
“Would you care to tell me where she might be right now?”
“Rosemary mentioned a place called Kunal. She told me that she and her friend would end up there.”
“A friend?” Aster asked.
“The assassin did tell you that she was accompanied by a big man,” Doctor Blossom whispered in Aster’s ear.
“What’s an assassin?” Bay asked. “Is he the reason why you’re all here in the first place?”
“I’m the one who’s supposed to be asking all the questions, Bay,” Aster replied. “But let’s just say that an assassin is a person who happens to be a bird lover.”
“What type of birds is he in love with exactly?” Bay asked mischievously.
“Ivory colored falcons with crimson red tails,” Aster replied, glowering at Bay.
Meanwhile somewhere near Dahlia …
Rosemary was surrounded with faces carved out of leather and bone. Dissonant shouts slammed into her ears, and she soon became aware that fatigue was wearing her down. Without any obvious reactions to seeing her and Clove, the people in the street reflexively stepped out of their way. Rosemary had her arm around Clove and was practically carrying him. Weightless and inaudible the people walked around her as she straightened up with difficulty and with aching knees.
But that only added to the need to stay away from Pandemville. In spite of all her miseries and sweat running in rivulets down her face and back, she could not repress a smile. Clove’s feet stung him like wasps attacking his flesh, and without his consent, his head sank down to the ground.
Their throats were as dry as a bone; Rosemary felt hers swelling up restricting the passage of air in her lungs. Howls with laughing voices and unintelligible clomping of feet rose from the chain stores, in combination with the scent of humidity. The harmless bantering exchanged by the people allowed Rosemary to put a brief half-smile on her lips.
“We’re almost there,” Rosemary said, panting for breath. “There’s our man.”
Clove was astonished at the great distance separating him from the coach, and could not understand at all how, given his weakness, he had covered the same distance a little while ago almost without realizing it. When they reached the coach, Rosemary unemotionally handed the driver her guitar as if she had known him for years.
“And you call yourself streetwise?” Clove whispered to Rosemary. She could not conceal a cautious smile.
The coach was filled with warm sunshine, and they set about directing their movement towards Dahlia.
***
“Look,” Rosemary said, pointing at a person perched on the stairs of his small-scale house. It was the first person that they had seen for several hours. He was a man in his senior years, smiling a sad toothless smile. His clothes were covered with filth and spots where the solution had in the fullness of time dried up. He had blue blisters all over his skin, and his eyes were as grey as ash.
She thought of hopping off the coach and making him some flowers just to brighten his day, but the uncivilized sight of his jaws constantly working annoyed her to the point that she could not come up with a little rhyme. Her mind could not automatically gather words in her mouth like water drops condensing to a cloud.
They carried on with their journey, and the buildings in due course improved—at least on the outside. The buildings had an elaborate half-timbered facade of old brick, with five-step stoops that led to the porch and main door. But the coach ultimately came to a stop alongside a remote farmhouse located in a blueberry grove in the city of Dahlia.
“We’re here,” Clove said lifelessly. Fatigue had extinguished his spirit and vibrancy.
Darkness was already starting to descend. People were milling about in the lobby, talking and bumping shoulders. Rosemary listened to a soft-spoken woman, slim like a daisy stem. She was tiny with enormous, childlike eyes, and they were wide opened now with memory.
“Do you know her?” Rosemary asked Clove, as he and the lady continued eyeing one another.
“You’re asking me if I know that demoiselle with short wavy black hair that falls immaculately about her face and probing frosty blue eyes intent on bringing rigor to the world of skincare products?” Clove asked rhetorically. He also wanted to say that her skin was the color of chocolate, and its scent made it altogether brandied chocolate. “That favored demoiselle, my dear Rosemary, is guided by flashes of inspiration.”
“Wow,” Rosemary gasped.
“Her name is Jonquil Calla,” Clove said.
“Welcome to SKARE,” Jonquil said.
“Scare?” Rosemary asked.
“SKARE as in skin care,” Jonquil said, giggling. “We scare your wrinkles away,” she added as a curl of hair wiggled by her ears.
She invited them to a very small reception area with a couch and a little coffee table. Clove seated himself almost immediately and removed his slippers to ease his aching feet. The burns at the bottom of his feet had turned ugly and in need of treatment.
“Let me take a look at that,” Jonquil said.
She had an obvious affection for him as if the years of intimacy had worn away the sharp edges she most probably had.
“It isn’t that bad,” Jonquil said. “We’ll just have to use some of my chamomile oil.”
“Jonquil is in the throes of bringing together the ingredients to craft the best cream there is,” Clove told Rosemary. “She has introduced happiness to her products.”
“Happiness can be found in everything we already have, my dear Clove,” Jonquil said. “Skin cream inclination is another sense of happiness. We just have to be wise enough to accept it and better our lives.” She half-suppressed a laugh. “My products offer something that art, politics and religion do not.”
“And what can that be?” Clove asked.
“They offer an immediate and affordable means of transformation,” Jonquil replied, in a manner that indicated she’d made that speech many times before, to friends and family, to investors and clients, and to her colleagues. She was a handsome woman with a winning sense of humor. She was poised and confident, most of her dark hair held back with a headband. SKARE creams were, to Jonquil’s mind, the most nearly perfect of all the blueberry’s manifestations. They were unique and inexpensive, which meant that they had a firm lock on the mass market. Something that could be slipped into a woman’s purse and pass without notice.
“My cream’s special and unprecedented ability to remedy everyone’s wrinkling problems makes it the consensus option of ageing skin dermatology,” Jonquil said. “Anyway, I know that the both of you are tired and need some rest. Come this way.”
Rosemary was given a bed and Clove a mat. The next morning, Rosemary woke up to see Clove lying down and peering through the window with purposelessness and serene reflection. Both of his feet were wrapped in cloth. His eyes were set keenly on the window, and mercifully enough there was joy and self-possession to be acquired from the sight of the clear blue sky. All the windows were made blue by a sky that had become less luminous.
Jonquil arranged bacon braised cranberry beans with oregano, fried sage and rosemary. Clove bit into the meal warily, like a man who was not faint from hunger, but he swallowed the cha
momile tea with more pleasure than he had taken in eating. He drank the rest of the tea from the burning pot, parting his lips noisily and cursing The Tribe of Winged Men.
After a while, Clove only felt his listlessness and his still heavy heart. Rosemary noticed that his enthusiasm never overcame his exhaustion. He would have liked to talk, but he had nothing to say. With the exception of drowsiness, Clove felt fine, but he felt it was necessary to have some more sleep especially after quenching his thirst. The others exchanged sly glances; they were planning to head down to the lake with rowboats. Clove’s eyelids grew heavy, but he fought to keep them open. They eventually fluttered shut and waited for sleep.
Rosemary admired how someone could sleep so uncomfortably and yet peacefully. On their communicative faces could be read merely peace and a sort of confidence. Rosemary would sometimes see the words “will power” take form in Clove, just by a very small margin, for it disappeared bit by bit just like a dandelion losing its shape in the wind. That encouraged her to leave him in solitude. Maybe he would find calmness by spending some time alone, and she would escape to a place with natural simplicity and peacefulness.
***
As she and Jonquil sauntered through the many choice trees along grassy trails, Rosemary looked on intently, watching the blueberry cultivators spiff up the shrubs. Her path was shaded by cypress and pine trees that were preparing for their annual fight with Autumn, soon to arrive. Rosemary looked out at the first dry leaves of the coming season. Some of the foliage was off the deciduous trees now while the conifers seemed wrapped up in themselves. The blue sky was about to become more visible and the sun brighter. Rosemary knew that light would lose its warmth in the coming days. She marveled at how the days passed so quickly. Maybe they did so because we grew impatient, she thought.
“I hate to see Clove in this state,” Rosemary said, as they marched through Dahlia’s pastures that were divided by hawthorn hedges.
“Trust me, I know a person by the name of William Vineyard and he’s in a more sorry state than Clove,” Jonquil said. “The last time I talked to him it seemed like he was talking in his sleep, processing dreams that descended into his mouth like a bloody waterfall, a physical reflection of his injured mental state.”
“Who’s William Vineyard?” Rosemary asked, while observing the mushrooms multiplying along the trail.
“He’s the owner of The Berry Ferry, or at least he was,” Jonquil replied. “He had built his company into a berry-trading leviathan. At one time, he was the only supplier for blueberries.”
“What happened?”
“He was found guilty of fraud and the company collapsed into bankruptcy,” Jonquil replied. “To sum it all up, The Berry Ferry’s credit rating was demoted. Banks became reluctant to lend The Berry Ferry the funds it needed to continue business. Within a few months, the company had filed for bankruptcy because everything Vineyard once owned had been turned over to finance his former shareholders. Leaving nothing for the rest of us who relied on him.”
Rosemary sensed that Jonquil’s relationship with William was flawed by conflict and the notion she had been tricked. Vineyard’s settlement agreement was far from satisfactory for Jonquil.
“The people of Dahlia all know who William Vineyard is,” Jonquil said, as the lake finally appeared from among the trees. “Any local child would actually describe him as a man whose hair is straight and parted on the left, a man who has become resigned to his fate.”
She invited Rosemary to sit at a picnic table on the banks of the lake.
“His face had a natural coolness and a noble hauteur. He had a very charismatic, high-spirited and perky quality that kept me from guessing as to how seriously that wolf took himself.”
“So you use blueberries for your skin creams, is that right?” Rosemary asked.
“They’re the main ingredient to my secret potion,” Jonquil replied. “With The Berry Ferry out of the game, I don’t know what to do. Certainly, my little garden of blueberries back in the farm house isn’t going to be enough. Besides Autumn is coming and we’re way behind with our harvest.”
“I’m sure you have a plan in your mind,” Rosemary said. “Do you?”
“I’ve been focusing on my interns,” Jonquil replied. “I have led them through a series of intensive research projects to make them sense the diverse amount of information that the trade reveals.”
“It sounds like a lot of work.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t stop there. The beginners have to pick a suitable target market and that becomes their own responsibility. It is very time consuming especially because a lot of group meetings are held.”
Jonquil seems to be very serious about her work, Rosemary thought. After only having conversed with her for a short time, Rosemary quickly came to understand that each of these beginners was drawn to Jonquil. Nothing was hidden from them, which contributed to a feeling of genuineness in her business. As well, Jonquil had assembled a nexus between her industry and head of influencers in a vigorous attempt to unite them for national missions to promote happiness and understanding. Making these attempts International remained the absolute wish of all.
Her present situation, as Jonquil had put it, was utterly unexpected, and that was why the hurt was so bad. Despite everything, she rejoiced at the fact that every ageing woman could use her products; scare her wrinkles away and end up anywhere in the world with her unpunctual Prince Charming.
“Who would ever guess that youth came out of a bottle?” Jonquil said in a sonorous voice. “By eliminating the cost of supplying the blueberries, we can make a fair amount of money, especially when we have an upward trend in the market.”
Rosemary arched an eyebrow. From the economic perspective, the approach made perfect sense. However, it did not seem fair from the moral perspective. Other blueberry suppliers would have rushed to make a deal with Jonquil. The blueberry farmers would also feel declassed. Rosemary thought she was supposed to have some kind of moral justification.
The deal must be with some licensed and authorized supplier, but making herself the righteous supplier was a different rationale. It was simply about efficiency. She either had to be true to her promise, which she had broken three times till now or fix the problem. She could not do both. Half her brain was all in, whereas her other half noted down ethical principles.
“Love is peace and enthusiasm, whereas Feel is thought and expression,” Rosemary said. Bay’s statement had carved a little something in her heart and mind.
“How sublime,” Jonquil said with twinkling eyes. “Thought and expression admire the tenacity of love—for if love perseveres in setting you free then your thought and expression involuntarily adhere to write, sing, preach, sculpt or paint about it.”
“Love, love, love,” Rosemary sighed with relief, while the wind rustled in the trees. “Why is love so important?”
“Life’s panacea is love, darling,” Jonquil replied, an almost imperceptible grimace crossing her face. The wind strengthened and howled, certain signs of approaching rain.
“All I can say is that Sorrel Lupine was as a solution to all my difficulties,” Rosemary said.
“Sorrel cultivated himself to bring tranquility to others,” Jonquil said. “But he did not love our rites. Rites are means to put his righteousness into effect. If the rites are not practiced for years they will most certainly wither away. So did the people; like old crops they just disappeared.”
Rosemary figured that essential things, like rites, good faith, justness and tolerance, buffeted leadership. Rites permitted the rulers to preserve the social customs of their society and gave them the chance to speak and act in support of their rites. Good faith from the people sprouted up duties and tasks. Justness evoked satisfaction, whereas tolerance invigorated welcoming everyone regardless of his or her affiliations.
“Was that the reason you left Dona Hill?” Rosemary asked.
“No, Sorrel liked to have his finger in every pie,” Jonquil replied. “So
I decided to move on and live solo, but I don’t dislike him. He lives by the word reciprocity, meaning that he did not inflict on others what he himself would not wish to be done to him. So we decided to move on and go our separate ways.”
“My mother always said that if one cannot tolerate trivial circumstances, then one can disturb imperative ideas,” Rosemary said. “It seems that all of you chose a virtuous path of one kind or another.”
“I knew your mother,” Jonquil said. Then, seeming to consider what she had just uttered, she added: “She was so great in spite of all her imperfections, it wasn’t possible that Aster was infatuated by her.”
“My father always described her as a perfect woman,” Rosemary said. “And I know a perfect woman. As a matter of fact, we met not so long ago.”
“Who’s she?” Jonquil asked.
“Wisteria,” Rosemary replied. “She’s so gorgeous. She also has supernatural powers just like me.”
“Sorrel’s sister?” Jonquil said. “Her powers are limited to family members and maybe a few close friends.”
Rosemary blew out her cheeks and resumed her silence. The crackling stones sounded random, as the wind whistled into them in an effort to turn them to sand. Within Rosemary and Jonquil’s breathing and complete quietness, the night was soaked up. The vast reaches of the humid night sky liberated tens of stars for them to see among the possible hundreds of thousands. The soft evening lake was easily seen and the sky became more unclouded, as the nightfall was rapidly descending from one end of the horizon to the other. What’s more, blue ghost fireflies started to make an appearance. They zigzagged through Dahlia’s forest and Rosemary saw them gleaming with phosphorescence.
“Success is so close yet so far away, just like the sound of your guitar, Rosemary,” Jonquil said.
“You’ll eventually learn to tune in,” Rosemary said.
“We are always tuned in. I know that because, when the reality of things is clearer than crystal, their philosophy becomes invisible.”
“It’s unfortunate that you have all this wisdom, yet success never pointed you out,” Rosemary said.
