by Terah Edun
Backing away from it slowly she looked at it, waiting for another branch to move. Nothing happened. Then she went to grab her clipping shears and the earth around the Tree of Many Blooms swallowed them. That was it. She had had enough today. The rest of her tools, lying there in her satchel, were abandoned as she ran back to the garden’s entrance.
Grabbing at the letter in her pocket to make sure it was still there, while ignoring her disheveled appearance, she raced to the Head Gardener’s office. There was no way she didn’t deserve a new placement after all of this. Rushing into the building and over to his office she was met by a closed door. Putting her ear to the door she listened for voices. Then she knocked, and knocked again. No answer. Practically jumping around in anxiety she looked out of the small window to the left and there he was, bending over to tend to some very large, and vicious, snapdragons. You couldn’t go near those without thick gloves and a healthy dose of anti-venom. They were poisonous on top of being just plain mean. It was those types of plants that she was meant to work with. Not desiccated trees.
Once outside she edged forward until she was within hearing distance of the Head Gardener and well out of reach of the snapping plants. Glaring at the snapdragons as they hissed and lunged at him he muttered, “You’d think we didn’t feed you with all that snapping.”
To the rump dancing about in front of her, the owner’s head leaning down at the base of the plants, she said, “Sir…Sir may we speak?” He stood up slowly and turned around, adjusting his goggles on his head. Then he removed them to adjust his glasses underneath the goggles.
“Margaret?” he said conversationally, ‘Lovely day isn’t it?”
“Yes sir, it is,” she said while fidgeting with nervousness until she finally thrust the letter into his hands. He raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“My application. You explained in the weekly meeting that all those that wanted to apply to the greenhouse needed to submit a letter.”
“Hmm, so I did,” he said as he unfolded the letter. As he read he mumbled along, “Yes, yes, very good, very good.” Finally he looked up, “Well then Miss Margaret. You’re hired.”
Maggie couldn’t believe her ears. “Really?” she said in disbelief.
He nodded, “I’ve seen your progress with the Rose Gardens and had hoped you would apply. It’s a good opportunity for you to gain more skills by serving in the greenhouse.”
“Yes it is,” she said, faintly still dazed.
“Well then,” he said while handing back her letter, “Turn your tools in and we’ll get you set up in the greenhouse tomorrow.”
As she turned away she hesitated thinking back on the Rose Gardens. “Who will take care of them, Sir?”
“Them?”
“The Rose Gardens?”
“Ah, not to worry. We’ve got a new recruit that will prune it.”
She almost flinched at the word prune. The description was nowhere near apt. But she wasn’t going to argue. Today was her last day. But she needed her tools. The tools she’d left at the base of that blasted tree. The tree that had saved her life.
As she walked through the maze she noticed a curious thing. Rose blooms. White ones where there had been none before. They left a beautiful trail straight back to the Tree of Many Blooms.
When she got back to the tree it looked the same as it had before. Her clipping shears had magically appeared on the bench with the rest of the tools. And she suspected the orange rose bloom in the hidden hole was still up high. Walking forward she grabbed her satchel and her clipping shears. Then slowly dried leaves of the tree began to fall all around her. An invisible wind picked them up and they swirled softly around her – gently touching her skin in whispers of promises. Promises she couldn’t accept. Hefting up the bag she felt like saying something. She felt like wishing the spirit of the tree - the last holdout in a dying garden - well. But she knew that even that would be giving it false hope. The new recruit was coming and it was doubtful they could stop the advent of death on the horizon.
Perhaps being Sorry was enough on both of their parts. She walked out of the maze without another word.
3
Across The Arid Seas
She looked up at the sun and she smiled. It was blazing hot and unrelenting. No different than every other day in this desert that she now called home.
It hadn’t been that long ago that home was lush valleys and apple orchards.
Here and there were as different as night and day. The only thing that hadn’t changed was she, and even that claim was only limited to below the surface thoughts and ideals and dreams. Because outwardly she was as different as a caterpillar was from its newest incarnation—the butterfly. There was no other way to explain precisely how invigorated she felt. Reborn even. Gone was the staid woman who had chafed at the rules and restrictions of her society.
Instead here stood the butterfly that had spread its wings and taken flight towards its own destiny. That feeling of freedom was almost unreal. What was very real however was her clearly physical transformation from a girl who wore cloaks and fur-lined gloves half the year to ward off the sting of winter’s bitter grip, to a woman who donned light and airy linens that fluttered with the movements of the wind and made her feel as if she could fly from there to the farthest reaches of the earth. Almost.
Amazing how a change of clothes and a fresh atmosphere could make a person renew their very outlook, she thought with a self-satisfied smile as her fingers played with the pale peach linen fabric at her waist.
Her gaze took in the still-alien land around her. She hadn’t been here long enough to recognize one massive outcropping from another, let alone navigate too far from her home base, which was just as well. Most denizens of Algardis tended to avoid this part of the empire and with good reason. It could be deadly. It was nothing at all like the majority of the inhabited lands of the empire. She knew this first hand from having grown up on the other side of Algardis; the side of the empire that had lush blue forests, verdant valleys of orange and yellow flowers, rolling plains that seemed endless in their expanse, and rivers that swelled like a mighty ocean before softening with wistful laps on the banks of open lakes.
The side that had more people than you could shake a stick at.
The side that had been home. For the longest time. Home of wet and mist. Of fertile lands and dark, loamy forests.
No more. This was home now. It had shocked her to learn as she’d become accustomed to this new desert life…that she’d never felt like she belonged more anywhere else. This new land had earned her blood. Had claimed her sweat. Was given her tears.
Now it gave back to her in its own manner, with the gentle desert wind that riffled through her hair like a lover’s caress and the light of the moon that shone down to show her the correct path. With the soft sand that bunched between her toes as if it were reaching out and welcoming her home. With the beauty of the landscape that turned into a never-ending expanse no matter where she looked. “I love it here,” she said with no little irony as she rolled her shoulder muscles in a languid stretch, “More than I ever thought I would. More than my sisters certainly thought I would.”
It amused her greatly to think of her old family in this new home. They would find it as miserable as she did beautiful. But she couldn’t blame them. It was a home that the entire empire viewed as no more than a death trap of strong winds, relentless sun, and sparse vegetation. It was her chosen sanctuary. She loved it more than she had ever loved her birth home.
Swallowing a swig of water from the canteen she always carried by her side, Marian corked it with a cloth top and set it back securely on the sand underneath her. Then she slowly trailed her hand through the sand at her side, wishing she could feel the living fire of each individual grain like a mage could, like she used to be able to. For now, she accepted that she would have to settle for understanding the land around and beneath her as a normal human would. As a magic-less and power-less human would.
Some
times she missed the power that she had given up freely when she’d joined her husband’s clan.
Just in the small moments. Never anything more. She knew that if she just kept telling herself that, it would ring true…one day.
She hadn’t been that great a mage in the first place, more a hedgewitch than anything else. And if losing her small talents was what it took to leave the loamy forests for a place of her heart’s desire, then she would gladly give up those miniscule abilities and more.
Although if she had known then what she knew now, that once she had crossed the desert…the home the locals liked to refer to as the arid seas, she would face her greatest challenge yet, she might have insisted on keeping the powers and giving up something else instead.
Like a small bit of her health. Having a minor cough every other week seemed almost paltry a sacrifice to losing her magic. That is if the clan would have accepted such an offer. There was no guarantee that they would or wouldn’t have wanted some of the life-altering natural magic that came with a drain of the health from an individual’s body. They had preferences for what they took from each and every person, mage or mundane, who crossed the sands in the hopes of finding a new life. Their requests changed with the nature of the person and the clan’s needs at the time. The only constant rule was that to live among the clans, you were forced to give up something dear to yourself.
A boon of sorts.
She’d heard of many items and properties given up. From a young woman who lost her sense of sight to the third child who’d been given up for adoption to an unlucky clan of the arid seas that had refused to traffic in any other coin. Because they couldn’t. They’d lost too many of their own to the unforgiving desert and born too few souls to make up for the lack. As such they’d demanded the only price which would solve their dilemma. Children.
Marian shuddered delicately, thinking about it even now. She had been lucky, if you would call it that, to only give up something in her possession that she had used minimally…and some even said ineffectively at that. She had the gift of the magic too small to be of much use to her but great enough for the clans to accept it as a boon for one of their local collectives.
She’d given up that small magic with no little relief, thinking that nothing in the arid seas could be as alive as the dark forests of home she’d experienced. In doing so, she’d assumed that she would really be giving up nothing at all.
How could a mage with such a small magic regret its loss after all when such magic barely worked in the land of her birth, much less this new and barren wasteland. Oh, how wrong she was. She knew that now.
But hindsight was of no use to her in this instance. So instead of reaching out with her magic, she opened her physical senses instead. She was unsheltered in the blazing heat and she let her head lean back with a throaty sigh as she basked in the warmth of the sun like a lizard enjoying its midday nap. She was safe where she was. Secure as long as she stayed within her new clan’s local terrain. Leaning back until her arms spread wide behind her to brace her weight, she felt the edges of her dress slip just a bit from her shoulders. She delighted for a moment in letting her fingers wriggle through the warm shifting sand like worms. The grains felt at once as rough as the grit of the silt on a river’s swift bed and as smooth as fine sugar pouring across her digits at the start of a great day of baking. Her childhood had been filled with such wonders. She had left that all behind to become one with the desert. A woman of the heated sands, instead of a child of the fallow fields of old. This? This was her present.
She turned her head and her bright red hair, like a rooster’s crown, fell into her eyes. That red marked her as different from the rest of her husband’s family. It also marker her as a foreigner.
But that was alright with Marian. Because being a foreigner has its uses, she thought as she stood with dexterity and dusted off the thin dress she wore.
She began to walk down the dunes to her home. She had one task today. It was one that she was quite looking forward to. After all, how many people got to depose their new mother-in-law by force and get away with it? According to clan law she would be one of those erstwhile few. She smiled — today was going to be a good day.
It was tradition for the new wife of the clan chief’s son to assume the role of class mistress in any way she could. She could choose assassination or she could choose subversion. Either way would accomplish what Marian wanted, the death of her mother-in-law’s standing in the eyes of the clan. She would no longer be clan mistress after today, not if Marian had anything to say about it.
Shaman, in this case was the best word for the occupation of clan mistress. It worked well enough for Marian as well but she like the ‘ring’ of clan and mistress together. She would be shaman to the clan and head of the clan council as well with her new role. The clan mistress had many duties including running the physical aspects of the encampment, charting the clan’s new course from their ancestral grazing fields and back to their winter encampment, but also using the magic of the clan’s people—surrendered for the good of all—to protect its own.
Council, Marian thought with a mocking snort as she walked through the sand, her feet sinking with every step. She refused to don the sandals she held in her right hand along with her newly hiked-up skirt. More like a group of old biddies too far gone into self-reflection to realize that their entire way of life is under threat, she thought. Or too stupid to care, she sniffed as she finished her internal musings.
With a sigh, Marian looked ahead at the land that most resembled ‘verdant’ in a dry climate where barely anything to its name could be called green. The oasis was on the encampment’s edge. Upon seeing it she slapped her sandals down in the sand, thrust her feet into the wedges with a wrinkle of her nose, straightened up, and set off to her task.
As she dodged nimbly around the pens holding the desert water beasts, she took a moment to snap her fingers briskly in front of the eyes of one that was looking a little too ornery for her tastes. The beasts were known for their temper and their knack for striking opponents first and ask questions later. Better for it to confront her now than a child that knew too little to stay far enough away and out of its angry reach. This one had looked like it was ready to take a bite out of her shoulder. Best to let it know who was boss right then and there, and that boss was her.
It backed away with flattened ears and she turned away confidently with one last warning look. She knew the tethers that anchored it by magic to the sand rocks near their pen were taut enough to not give the beast the slack it needed to charge at her retreating back.
She didn’t have very long to enjoy the superior feeling of her encounter. She spotted the traders slinking on the edge of the encampment a moment later. With a grimace, Marian looked around for her family. She almost burned with fury as her eyes slid over the interlopers with a practiced nonchalance.
Those traders were laughing now with their feet up and their smug attitudes but they wouldn’t be laughing for long. Not after she took control of the clan and therefore of negotiations as well. Let them have their merriment for now. She knew that they did, much to her regret, have the upper hand…and weren’t losing anything in the process either. One more reason she had to wipe those grins off their faces.
After all, by kicking the Sherinsin off their land, they gained something much more valuable to them. Not gold – there was nothing worth mining here for miles. Not land – the dessert was as barren as a dry teat if you wanted fertile prospects. Not people – no one else lived here except for her husband’s people.
No what they gained was respect. The respect of her people back home. The respect of other traders looking for an easy score and the business partners to do it with. The respect of the imperial family. The rulers of this very empire that openly sneered at her husband’s people and considered the Sherinsin a pesky nuisance in their side.
A beautiful nuisance but a nuisance nonetheless, Marian thought with a bit of a dry smile as she spotted her h
usband walking toward her with a ground-eating stride. She took a moment to appreciate his fine form. He wore a leather vest that left a deep ‘v’ of skin from his throat down to his chest visible along with the clearly-tanned skin of his heavily muscled forearms. Set off by a thick head of black curls that fell to his shoulders, he was a sight to behold.
She wished she could do more than revel in his nearness, but the presence of the traders felt like an unrelenting spike in her side. One that grew and twisted with a malignant hook the longer they stood on clan lands.
The thing that irked Marian to no-end, besides the fact that they wanted to remove the Sherinsin clan from their ancestral home, was the fact that it took the traders so little effort to accomplish such a thing. They’d already done it with two other clans…and this one was just another notch on their belt. Offer the stupid desert dwellers enough wine and gold and pretty trade goods and they would go off to another encampment as happy as children with new treats at the campfire.
The very thought of the disrespectful treatment and the quite frankly un-tradesmen like bartering scheme made Marian’s very blood boil. Land for trinkets, she thought in disgust as she shook her head in irritation and tried to school her face into a passive countenance. She didn’t think it worked too well but the traders looked none the wiser to her scheming thoughts so perhaps it worked well enough.
Her mother-in-law didn’t understand her fury. To be fair neither did the majority of her inherited clan. They didn’t see the harm in entertaining the trader’s whims. After all, every desert dweller knew that the foreigners never stayed for very long.
They would sell them land on the hopes that they would reclaim it four or five years hence once the stupid foreigners realized that they couldn’t do anything with the land. It was the kind of gamble that the clan peoples lived for. And one they would have problem won, if the land had been occupied by any other approaching group. After all, it was too barren and too harsh a landscape to use for production, its very dryness precluded the establishment of successful and settled communities, and to top it off there was very little natural magic present in its bones.
