The Rose and the Thorn

by Kate Macdonald

  I know you would. I would do the same.

  “Tell me want you want, Rose.”

  I cannot.

  He sighs. Pain personified. “Do you want me to leave?”

  No, never.

  “Do you want to go home?”

  This is easy to answer, in this moment. “Yes.”

  But this is my home. My home is wherever you are.

  If Thorn exhales, he manages to control it. I hear the buzzing of the fairies, his footsteps slope away from my door. The others wait until they think they're out of ear shot.

  “You better not be doing what I think you're going to-”

  Thorn does not reply.

  Another two days pass. Thorn does not come back, neither do the others. I fill the days with silence, and I sit and watch the garden wilt. Leaves crumble from the trees in fists of burnt orange and red. I only open my door to let Bramble in and out. His is the only face I can stand.

  My dreams are fitful. I see Moya laughing. The shadows dance around the castle. I hear someone screaming, a woman. “No, no, please! Please, don't go! Stay!” Who is she talking to?

  I wake one morning to Ariel and Thorn are talking in the hallway. I pretend to be asleep. I do not want to be a part of anything.

  “Don't do this!” Ariel sounds frantic, even angry.

  “I must.”

  “Just give it more time-”

  “I've given it time enough. The garden is beginning to wilt. If I don't do it now, she may not get another chance-”

  “She can go back in five months. She will wait.”

  “She is not happy. You know that.”

  “You don't know the reason-”

  “Do you?”

  I sigh, push Bramble off me, and cross to the door.

  “Do you two mind?” I hiss. “I'm trying to sleep!”

  There is silence on the other side. Ariel, I think, has vanished.

  “Rose,” says Thorn, his voice serious. “Can you get dressed, and meet me in the foyer as soon as you are ready?”

  His voice sounds solemn. The closest I can compare it to is Nanny's voice, the day of mother's funeral, asking me to come downstairs. It is not a pleasant comparison.

  “Yes,” I say, just as seriously. “I'll be down soon.”

  I do not dress as quickly as I perhaps should. I am frightened of what Thorn has to show me. When I do meet him, his face is at taut as the skin of a drum. His clothes are crumpled, like he's been sleeping in them.

  “Are you ready?” he asks. His voice is sharp.

  “For what?”

  “Follow me.”

  When I do not, he comes back and grabs my wrist. He has never been so rough with me before. He is not hurting me, but... this is not like him.

  What is wrong?

  He marches me to the edge of the grounds then stops suddenly. He points at the meadow.

  “What? What is it?”

  He says nothing but gestures again.

  “It's just the meadow.”

  Still, he does not reply. I follow his hand passed the waving wheat, passed the stream-

  The stream. The stream is there. My stream. And beyond that, my fields, my woods, my home. It cannot be true. It's an illusion, crafted by wishful thinking. I've been wanting to escape so much recently, my mind is making it up.

  “The stream,” I say dumbly. “It's not... How is this even... It's... it's not possible.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  I tear my eyes away from the sight to look at his, assess the meaning behind the heaviness in his voice. But his eyes avoid me completely. A horrible, sinking feeling catapults inside.

  “You? You... you can open it?”

  “Yes.”

  I stare at him. It cannot be. He would not have done this to me. He would not have-

  “Ask the question, Rose.”

  “Have you... have you always known?”

  “That I could open it? Yes. The entire time you were here.”

  “No. No.”

  It's not true. It isn't possible. He... he saw how much I missed my family. He knew how much I wanted to return. He wouldn't have kept me here, he... he couldn't have... “I don't believe you,” I say stubbornly. “You've... you've just figured it out, or... or something-”

  “Why would I lie to help you hate me?”

  “I don't know!”

  He is lying. He has to be.

  “Ariel!” I scream. “Where are you?”

  “She won't come.”

  But she does.

  “Tell me,” I beg her. “Tell me he's lying. Tell me he hasn't known this whole time.”

  Ariel is silent. Her little form shrivels. “He has always known,” she says quietly.

  Thorn's eyes drop away from mine.

  No.

  “Ever since your mother,” she continues.

  “My... what?”

  “Your mother was only here for a few weeks,” she says pointedly. “It was the day of her wedding, when she came here. Thorn felt so terrible that she was to be trapped here away from your father, that he began to look for a way to open the gate prematurely.”

  “How... how can he do that?”

  “A gift,” Thorn says hollowly. “From the fairy queen. I am a fey creature too, after all. I have a magic of my own."

  “It can't... it can't be as easy as that.”

  “It isn't,” Ariel interjects.

  “Ariel-” Thorn growls warningly.

  “A sacrifice of sorts needs to be made.”

  “What... what sort of sacrifice?” I eye Thorn, who still avoids my gaze. My first thought is that he will have to pay with his life, and that is why he hasn't let me go, because that is the only good reason he could possibly have... but then, he let my mother go, and he is still here.

  “The garden,” he says quietly. “I drained the life of it to open the gateway for her.”

  Flowers. A few flowers could have been spared to let me go home. He could have let me go the moment I-

  No, not the moment I came. The garden was lifeless then.

  “How... how long have you been able to send me home?”

  His eyes raise a little; he is surprised I have worked it out. Why did he want me to believe that he always had the power?

  “Since a little before it opened of its own accord,” he admits. “It did not seem to matter, then. You were going home anyway. I told myself that a few more weeks with you was worth the lie, was worth the garden...”

  “But then I lost my chance.”

  Seven weeks. He has kept my family waiting for seven weeks. Lied to me, all that time.

  “But... why?”

  “Because I was selfish,” Thorn says quietly. “Because I did not want to be alone again, and because I tried to convince myself that you wanted to stay.”

  Would you go home tomorrow, if you could?

  “Maybe I did want to!” I spit. “Maybe, if you'd just told me... I could have gone home, let my family know I was safe, and come back here! Maybe that's exactly what I wanted!” I throw up my arms. “Why does everyone here lie?”

  Ariel hovers closer. “Rose-”

  “Go back to the castle, Ariel.” Thorn barks.

  “There's more-”

  “Ariel. Return.”

  Ariel's little form shrivels, as if she cannot believe what he has just said. “Fine,” she snaps, and promptly disappears.

  “I don't want to hear the rest,” I whisper.

  “You... you would have stayed?” Thorn's voice is hoarse. “You would have come back?”

  “Maybe,” I say, knowing that that is exactly what I would have done. Gone home, let everyone know that I was safe and happy, and come back here. Because I was happy. Wondrously so. But can I ever be happy here again, knowing what I know now?

  “But... why?” Thorn's voice is desperate, but I do not care.

  “It doesn't matter now,” I say stonily. I turn to stare at the meadow. The stream trickles by. The fog is growing thicker. I do not
think we have much time.

  Stop me, I beg, as I take three very slow steps forward. Say something. Anything. Make me understand.

  Am I honestly going to do this, walk away in anger, never to see him again? Once this door is slammed, it may be slammed for good. But how can I stay, when he has lied to me? And I've been saying for days that I want to go, that I need to go, that this is the only way to survive.

  Why then, does walking through it seem like a death sentence?

  I cannot think of anything to say. All niceness is beyond me. Hurt dominants affection, betrayal triumphs over friendship. The mists call to me.

  “Goodbye, Thorn.” I whisper, and race off through the meadow, not looking back as the grass whips my skin, snatching at my clothes. I reach the stream and slide down the bank, tearing across the stones and up the other side, where I hit the ground with such force that I roll over, and stop, just for a second, catching my breath.

  A horrible, fearful howl hollows out the wind, and I glance back at nothingness.

  Was that him? No, it cannot be him. The sound is beyond that of any living creature, any man or beast. It is monstrous, unearthly, a spirit raked through stone. It clings to the air, splinters through my spine. My heart stills in my chest.

  I scream his name, but there is no reply. I am all alone.

  For the longest of times, I sit on the bank, watching the blank slab of grass on the other side where my home should be. No, the castle should be. This is my home. This is where I'm supposed to be.

  I didn't say goodbye to the fairies. I didn't even think of Bramble. I didn't stop to pack, to gather my books, my ribbons, my dried flowers... all the little things I'd planned to take with me. How could I have just left? How could I have just left him?

  “Rose,” the ghost of a voice calls to me. Tentative, awed, familiar. It's him. He's followed me through, he's...

  The voice is coming from behind me. I turn with both joy and dread.

  Freedom is standing there, hand clasped to his mouth, looking as if Mama herself has returned from the dead. He races towards me with such force that he stumbles getting to my level, and his arms spasm as if he's afraid to reach out and touch me.

  “I'm here,” I say quietly.

  Within seconds I am folded inside his embrace, and Freedom -who hasn't cried since the day of Mama's funeral- is choking sobs into my hair and shaking like a kite in a storm. It seems to go on for hours.

  When he eventually pulls back, his mouth is caught in a trembling smile. “Dear God, Rose, where have you been?”

  “I accidentally wandered into a fairy realm.” There is no other excuse I can come up with. “I'm back now.”

  Freedom laughs. “Of course you did.”

  “I did.” There is very little proof I can offer him, of course. I have nothing with me, and he will surely think any of my fantastic tales a product of my imagination, except-

  “I saw you, in one of the magic mirrors there,” I tell him. “Painting.”

  “The entire family knows I paint, Rose.”

  “You were painting me.”

  At last, I see some flicker of belief.

  “You were using lots of red,” I continue. “And I'm really not that pretty.”

  Freedom smiles, an exhausted, relieved, shocked kind of smile, and then he hugs me again.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Home is where the Heart Is

  We walk home slowly, arm in arm, saying very little. I feel numb, like my legs could barely carry me unless I was latched on to Freedom. I am a child again, a little girl with skimmed knees, being escorted home through the woods by her big brother.

  Some energy returns when our house pops into view, right on the edge of the village. It looks completely unchanged. There is washing on the line. I see Papa's jacket, and a dress that could be mine although it is probably Hope's. The beautiful smell of baking bread wafts from the kitchen window. I had forgotten the smell, living in the castle, separated from the scents of the kitchen.

  There is a cool, pleasant chill in the air today. A few rays of sun shimmer down on a fair-haired boy rocking back on forth on the swing under the apple tree, singing at the top of his lungs.

  “I'm swinging, I'm swinging, on a tree, tree, tree, yesiree, my tree, tree, tree-”

  His dark-haired companion tutters, looking up from the book in her lap. Neither one has seen me yet.

  “Beau, can't you sing something else?”

  “I could... but I don't want to,” he says matter-of-factly.

  I want to say something. I want to open my mouth, sing a song from childhood, say something smart and witty that will make them laugh. But no words come. I hover by the garden gate, just watching them.

  It is Beau who looks up first.

  There is tiny, unfathomably long moment when his eyes fall to my face with a frown, as if I were a stranger. Then his gaze widens, his mouth opens, and my name escapes his lips in a half-whisper, half-scream.

  “Rose?”

  Hope turns around gradually, as if it takes her a long time to process the word, but then she screams my name. Softly at first, and then louder and louder, and she is running towards me, Beau following, and I can't even move. When they reach me, we all sink to the ground, a mass of arms and hands and tears. There are no words, save my name, and a screaming for, “Papa! Papa!”

  Hope's voice is wretched and scratchy, almost like she's in pain, but she keeps screaming it as she clings to me and touches my face and Beau joins and paws me like a frantic puppy. There's a numbness in me, even though I am laughing and hugging them back. My flesh buzzes, overwhelmed, and the buzzing stretches to my temples.

  Somewhere, in the corner of my eye, I register another presence.

  Papa is standing in the doorway.

  He is older than I have ever seen him. Beau and Hope are taller and ganglier than I remember, but he looks as if he as aged ten years. He leans against the door frame, rooted to the spot. Unable to move.

  I shake off Hope and Beau, and gingerly make my way towards him.

  “Papa,” I say, and that it the only word I can manage, before we both dissolve into tears, and sob right there on the kitchen step.

  Before long, I am seated in the kitchen, a bowl of porridge forced into my lap, and the questions start.

  I tell them the truth, mainly. I want them to know that I have been safe the whole time I've been away. So I tell them about the fairy realm, about being trapped until the doorway opened again, that it was a beautiful place, and that I wasn't alone. I even tell them a little about Thorn, although I leave out the part where it turns out he was the one trapping me there. I still can't process that.

  I expect some resistance, particularly from Papa, but he just nods throughout. When I get to the part about mother's portrait, I understand why. She has told him this story, at least in part. Nanny similarly does not take much convincing, and I wager she has heard the story first hand before as well. Beau and Hope are, oddly, my biggest sceptics, and I am only half-sure Beau believes me when I reach the end of my tale. He keeps saying, “that's impossible!” over and over. Hope is quiet, impossible to read. I wonder how Honour will react, when I see her.

  “We'll bring her over first thing tomorrow,” they witter.

  “Why can't we just go over there now-”

  “No!” say all the adults at once. I blink at them.

  “You should just rest today,” Nanny says. “Let's not rush things.”

  “And we wouldn't want to shock your sister. Freedom will go over and break the news to her slowly.”

  This is a trifle odd to me, as everyone is bound to be shocked, but perhaps they are trying to avoid taking me through the town, and all the prying questions. Or, perhaps they don't want me to leave the house just yet... which is understandable, giving what happened the last time I left it.

  Nevertheless, I long to see her. My heart is swollen with joy to see everyone else, but I am already craving the silence of my sister's knowing mind. There are things I
need to talk to her about, things I've been unable to tell anyone else.

  Nanny makes dinner, but we all abandon it, too excited and overwhelmed and exhausted to eat. At first, we share stories -what has happened to everyone in the time that we've been gone- but then the conversation shimmers down. Beau shows me something he's drawn while Hope gushes about her new favourite text. Nanny busies herself with tidying up, her face quietly streaming with tears. Papa sits in his chair by the hearth, smoking his pipe, his gaze tight on me. It hasn't moved since we met at the doorstep. There is a greyness in the rest of his skin, a dullness in his eyes. He looks almost ill. Yes, I tell myself. You had to come home. You had to.

  Beau puts his head in my lap and fastens his arms around me. His fingers tangle into my clothes, and I wonder if he ever plans on letting go.

  “I'm so glad you're home,” he whispers.

  I kiss his hair, inhaling the smell of sunflowers and peppermint.

  “Me too, dearheart.”

  I am home, I am home, I am home.

  The next morning, I awake to the weak, warm light squirming through the flimsy curtains. The threadbare coverlet is twisted around me, bunched up around Hope, who is sleeping soundlessly beside me, her arm still wrapped around my middle as if she was afraid I'd vanish in the night. I lean down and kiss her cheek as I wriggle carefully out of the bed.

  I pull back the curtains, just a crack, slip into my slippers, and lower myself into my reading spot.

  My slippers! I put them on automatically, and there they were- right where I had left them. I stare, marvelling the ratty old things.

  The room of my childhood is utterly unchanged in the months I've been away. Perhaps Hope has different clothes strewn over the chair in the corner, and perhaps that is a new vase of dried flowers, but nothing else is different. My old books are piled up exactly how I left them. They are weather-worn, and the paper smells unfamiliar. I thumb through the first one. A classic tale of mystery and adventure, a journey of self-discovery and impossible places. I set it quickly aside; the book is the same, but it doesn't provoke any wanderlust. Perhaps I have seen enough of wonder, these past few months.

  Downstairs, Nanny gasps when she sees me, and Beau runs over to squeeze my middle, as though he was afraid I was a dream of yesterday. I pull him up and spin him round, which is no easy task. He is so much bigger than he was.