by Garth Nix
A sailor went to sea sea sea to see what he could see see see But all that he could see see see
Was the bottom of the deep blue sea sea sea
The meaning of this prophecy was immediately clear to the Wise. They knew that somewhere in the Lower Kingdoms a boy would be born, a sailor who would use the power of the sea to defeat the Overlord. A boy with eyes as black as the bottom of the deep blue sea. A boy who might even have vestigial gills and some scales or maybe a sort of fin along his back.
But the Wise also knew that the Overlord would know the prophecy too, for his spies were everywhere, particularly among the waiters at the Wise Club. They knew that he knew that they knew that he knew.
They all knew that the Wise must find the boy with the power of the sea at his command first, and take him somewhere where he could grow up with no knowledge of his powers or his destiny. They must find him before the Overlord did, for he would try to turn the boy to the powers of darkness.
But who was the boy? Where was the boy? Was there a second salad bowl, a second verse to the prophecy, long lost to the Wise but known to an aged crone in the forest of Hazchyllen-boken-woken, close by the sea, where a small boy with eyes the color of dark mud swam with the dolphins?
Yes, there was.
INTRODUCTION TO THREE ROSES
I wrote this story the day before I needed to read something at an event in Melbourne in late 1997. The occasion was the annual celebration organized by Australian children’s literature champion Agnes Nieuwenhuizen for librarians, teachers, and book aficionados, and this one was entitled “An Enchanted Evening.” Half a dozen authors were to speak, each reading or telling a story about love or in some way related to love.
I don’t know why I wrote a story about a dead wife, since at that time I was single, I had never been married, nor had I ever had a significant partner die. I also don’t know why it came out as a fable or fairy tale. Part of it was written on a plane, and part in a hotel room. It wasn’t even typed when I read it for the first time at “An Enchanted Evening.”
But it surely was a tale of love, and the evening was indeed enchanted, as I met my future wife, Anna, there. So perhaps it is the most important story I have ever written, for the greatest reward.
THREE ROSES
this 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.”
INTRODUCTION TO ENDINGS
This 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 maximize my chances of inclusion in future collections.
ENDINGS
i have two swords. One 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 realizing 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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Garth nix grew up in Canberra, Australia. Besides being a full-time writer, he has worked as a sales rep, publicist, editor, marketing communications consultant, and part-time literary agent. He is the author of SABRIEL, LIRAEL, and ABHORSEN, the books in The Abhorsen Trilogy, as well as SHADE’S CHILDREN and THE RAGWITCH. He now lives in Sydney, a five-minute walk from Coogee Beach, with his wife, Anna, his sons, Thomas and Edward, and lots of books.
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ALSO BY GARTH NIX
Sabriel
Lirael
Abhorsen
Shade’s Children
The Ragwitch
CREDITS
Jacket art © 2005 by Leo and Diane Dillon
Jacket design by Rob Hult
Jacket © 2005 by HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
Copyright
Across the Wall: A Tale of the Abhorsen and other stories
Copyright © 2005 by Garth Nix
“Nicholas Sayre and the Creature in the Case”: Copyright © 2005 by Garth Nix. First published for World Book Day 2005 by HarperCollins Publishers, UK.
“Under the Lake”: Copyright © 2001 by Garth Nix. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (USA), February 2001, USA.
“Charlie Rabbit”: Copyright © 2005 by Garth Nix. First published in Kids’ Night In, collected for War Child, HarperCollins Publishers, UK and Australia.
“From the Lighthouse”: Copyright © 1996 by Garth Nix. Published in Fantastic Worlds, edited by Paul Collins, HarperCollins Publishers, Australia, 1998.
“The Hill”: Copyright © 2001 by Garth Nix. First published in X-Changes: Stories for a New Century, Allen & Unwin, Australia.
“Lightning Bringer”: Copyright © 2001 by Garth Nix. First published in Love & Sex, edited by Michael Cart, Simon & Schuster, USA, and on Salon.com.
“Down to the Scum Quarter”: Copyright © 1987 by Garth Nix. First published in the magazines Myths and Legends (1987) and Breakout! (1988).
“Heart’s Desire”: Copyright © 2002 by Garth Nix. First published in The Road to Camelot, edited by Sophie Masson, Random House, Australia, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January 2004, USA.
“Hansel’s Eyes”: Copyright © 2000 by Garth Nix. First published in A Wolf at the Door, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, Simon & Schuster, 2000, USA.
“Hope Chest”: Copyright © 2003 by Garth Nix. First published in Fire birds, edited by Sharyn November, Penguin 2003, USA.
“My New Really Epic Fantasy Series”: Copyright © 1999 by Garth Nix.
“Three Roses”: Copyright © 2000 by Garth Nix. First published in Eidolon, Autumn 2000, Australia.
“Endings”: Copyright © 2004 by Garth Nix. First published in Gothic! Ten Original Dark Tales, edited by Deborah Noyes, Candlewick Press, USA.
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EPub © Edition JUNE 2005 ISBN: 9780061975110
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nix, Garth.
Across the Wall: A tale of the Abhorsen and other stories / Garth Nix. —1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: A collection of fantasy short stories plus a novella that is set in the world of the Abhorsen trilogy.
ISBN-10: 0-06-074713-7—ISBN-10: 0-06-074714-5 (lib. bdg.)
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-074713-8—ISBN-13: 978-0-06-074714-5 (lib. bdg.)
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*Hardened cynics may order the alternative, realistic, nonromantic ending (involving several hunchbacks, gruesome deeds, tragedy, and despair) by sending $2.00 to the author.
