by Mark Jacobs
*****
The gardener’s eyes were crusted shut like tree sap dried and turned to amber, but his eyelashes fluttered in recognition when the sound of someone scraping along the path reached his ears. “Pence? Is that you? Oh, lad, haven’t you left yet?” His voice was less than a whisper, like wind blown through the hollows of an old tree.
The Queen gasped in pain before she could speak–the Prince had jabbed the butt of his axe down in the center of her back, slamming her belly-down on the neatly raked dirt and clay. “No! It is I, your indelible Prince, come on errand to your garden. Tell me… do you fear my voice?”
The gardener did not move or breathe, let alone answer his uninvited guest. It was but one day since he had given up the white seed and already his left arm was little more than a scraggly root. His right arm was blistered wood to the shoulder and beyond. His chest, throat, and chin were ashen gray where the two afflictions had come to clash in contrast.
“You are the same boy, lived on after I killed your mortal heart?” the Prince quietly asked him. “You are the same old man, of whom the many stories tell?”
The gardener did not respond.
The Queen desperately tried to roll over or wrestle free, but the Prince leaned all his weight onto the axe, pinning her to the ground like a dead butterfly to cork.
“Well then,” the Prince said hotly, ill-conditioned to being ignored, “I thought my sister played the poor host, but you’ve got her trumped, here.” He looked around at the garden; he could see the well easily from where he stood. “That can’t be it? Why, it’s little more than a wormhole and a ring of skipping stones stacked about like baby blocks. And you are no Guardian,” he spat at the gardener. “Were all the many stories a lie?” He picked up his axe, replacing it with the heel of his boot dug into the Queen’s spine, but for one breathless instant she was able to speak.
“Pence!” is all she could hoarsely cough.
Thin trickles of earth ran down from the corners of the gardener’s eyes, snaking over his wrinkles one by one. “Have I died at last, and dreamt of you?” came his voice, one and the same with the wind rustling the leaves.
“Awake now? Gooood,” said the Prince, grinding his heel down sadistically. “Pay attention.” He set the blade of his axe on the Queen’s left wrist. She clenched her teeth as the steel bit a line of blood free.
The gardener’s nostrils flared in anger.
“You see this?” the Prince bellowed. “Tell me the secret of the garden or I’ll cut it off! She will bleed to her last sweet drop at your feet.”
“There are no secrets here,” said the gardener. “Please, let her go and leave us be.”
“No secrets? Let her go? Please? Har!” the Prince barked. “This whole place is a secret! It is hidden better than the Land of Lost Legends. It teems with power!”
“If it is a secret, then where have all the many stories come from?” The voice of the wind was calm. “If it is hidden, then who is outside the fence? And if you think there is such power to unleash, then why don’t you leave before it bites off your big nose?”
“Enough!” screamed the Prince, digging the dragonhead deeper into the Queen’s wrist. Her blood fell to the path where it was welcomed by the earth as water to a dry tongue. “What will happen if I cut off her hand?” he asked menacingly, though his voice betrayed a glimmer of uncertainty.
“I think you know what will happen,” said the gardener.
The Prince eyeballed the gardener with baited breath. A stalactite of whale poop coalesced under the tip of his nose as he waited for the old man to spell out the answer clearly.
“Symmetry,” the gardener supplied at length, “but you knew that.”
The Prince cackled madly, mirth watering in his eyes. “Oh, sister, did you hear that? How rich! How suiting! So you’ll not defend her?” he needled the old man. “You’ll not command the air to leave my lungs? Have no roots drag me underground, no flowers make me sneeze and drop my axe?”
The gardener did not move.
“There are three of us, here met,” said the Prince. “The only way to bring symmetry is to chop one of you in half! Har!”
With the Prince’s toe on the nape of her neck, pushing her chin into the dirt, the Queen still could not speak. Then the browned tips of her hair transformed color to shine white again before the Prince’s astounded eyes.
“What is this? What are you doing?” the Prince demanded of the gardener. “This is the power of the garden! This is what I want! Life returns to her–how do you do it? Tell me how or I’ll chop her to pieces a bird could swallow!”
The Queen tensed her muscles, testing the Prince’s control over her. His boot slipped. He reaffirmed the pressure quickly, his leg in violent tremors as though he was pedaling up a straight wall. He delved the axe deeper into her wrist but she did not wince anymore.
“Tell me!” the Prince shrieked, panicking as he lost leverage by the moment. “The White Tree, the flower, the bird, that ill-bred boy’s heart… how are they connected? What is the power that binds them?”
“If you truly seek the wisdom of the garden…” said the old man, pausing to turn his head and give a last sly wink.
“Yes…?” coaxed the Prince, sensing how close he was after a century of search.
“…listen to the stump.”
