Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 95

by Caroline M. Yoachim

  You may be right to despise Tzigana. In life, she neglected most of what we hold dear. She let magic consume her and paid as little heed to the house as she did to history or the troubles of her country. Certainly she loved her roses more than the girls who were her charges. But she had used her wits to impose her austere order on the world. While hers was rarely a joyous place, no one there went hungry. No one took sick, thanks to the witch’s charms. The girls might complain, but they stayed until they were sent away. Each was treated equally so they might become their truest selves, away from the plans and strictures and desires of men. And of course Tzigana’s garden drew noble visitors. She left the world more beautiful than she found it. How many of us can say the same?

  The girls seemed to be managing without their mistress, although Julianja wasn’t fooled. The house was but two days’ walk from the town of Szeged and a few of the girls found work nearby, especially pretty Erzebet. But then boys started following them back to the house. Dorottya knew enough not to let the rascals in, but they would climb the chicken coop and call through the windows. They soon learned better than to try to cut through Julianja’s roses; she was merciless with her birch switch.

  By the time the roses bloomed, the garden was hers alone. The other girls were either too busy or too lazy to help Julianja tend it. Where once she had hung back while the witch had greeted the seekers who came to her garden, now she waited by herself at the gate to receive them. With Tzigana gone, however, only a few came.

  The frail bishop arrived swaddled in furs and bundled in a horsehair blanket and still he looked cold and blue, even in the heat of early summer. He staggered to a Damask rose, which presented in delicate sprays of semi-double flowers. Tzigana claimed that it came from stock which the Crusader King András himself had brought back from the Holy Land; it was red as blood of infidels. The bishop wheezed as he breathed in its scent, then pressed his usual denar into Julianja’s hand and left without another word. The boar prince spoke only German but indicated his preference for the pink cabbage rose by snuffling at it with his blunt snout. Afterwards he scrabbled back into his golden palanquin and was borne away by his four squires without leaving so much as a copper.

  In the past, there had been almost as many women as men visiting, but that year only the dowager Baroness came in her dusty carriage. She peered at Julianja over her glasses, the left lens of which was cracked down the middle.

  “Is she sick?”

  Julianja met her watery gaze boldly. “Dead.”

  “No.” The woman gasped and cupped hands to the sides of her head, as if she could not hear through her wimple. “Dead?”

  “It was Palm Sunday. We were at Mass.”

  “Did she say anything?”

  “She told Dorottya that her legs were cold. As she rose to receive the Sacrament, she collapsed.”

  “I mean about me.”

  Julianja shook her head.

  “She should have forseen this. Now who will take care of the roses?”

  “I will.” Julianja ground her bark sandal against the path, staking out her claim. “As you see.”

  The dowager gave an unhappy laugh. “You can try.” She gestured with her walking stick. “Take me there.” Her special mountain rose was a particular favorite of the bees. It was a climber, the flush of creamy blossoms carried high. Julianja went up on tiptoes and brushed the bees away with the back of her hand, then bent one of the stems toward her. The thorns of this rose were mere prickles and she had to worry at one until she had stabbed her forefinger deep enough to draw blood. She watched the bead grow before pointing at the closest bloom and blowing a spray of blood at the crown of yellow stamens.

  “Be quick about it,” commanded the dowager.

  Still holding the stem, Julianja twisted away to make room. She braced for a lash across the legs that did not come. Instead, the dowager brushed past her and buried her face in the charmed flower Her snuffling reminded Julianja of the boar. When her head lolled away, Julianja released the stem and it sprang into place.

  Tzigana had first used Julianja to create the rose charm three summers ago, after she had sent Vica away. Year after year the girl had watched as the highborn had been transported by the mingling of her blood and the perfume of the blossoms, and yet never understood how it happened or what they felt. She’d always wanted to know, but Tzigana had laughed whenever she asked. Or cursed her. But Tzigana was in her tomb.

  “What is it?” said Julianja. “Tell me.”

  The dowager shivered as if awakening from a dream and then thrust her face close to Julianja’s. The crack in her glasses made her left eye seem to be doubled. “How old are you?”

  Julianja’s mother had sold her to Tzigana when she was but a child, and if the witch knew the day of her birth, she had never said. Julianja had started bleeding last summer, and Zsuzsanna said that meant she was sixteen, but Frici said no, she might be fourteen or even seventeen. Every girl had a different time. “Old enough,” she said.

  “Maybe you are.” The dowager pinched Julianja’s breast. “Have you been with a boy yet?”

  She slapped at the woman’s hand twice before she let go. Julianja would have slapped her face, but the woman thrust the knob of her walking stick at the girl to ward the blow off.

  “No matter. If the old woman is truly gone, then her garden must die.” She fumbled with the drawstrings of her purse and dropped a handful of denars into a patch of speedwell. “These roses don’t want you, peasant.”

  Julianja had been trying not to see this. While the rest of the garden bloomed as usual, the roses were failing. She’d been fighting brown canker since the canes had first come into bud, and she’d spent the last week stripping away leaves infected with the powdery mildew. The sulfur dust that Tzigana had left was nearly gone and there was no money to buy more. Only the humble dog rose, scrambling up the cherry tree, had been spared. Dorottya talked about pulling up the sick plants and giving the space over to paprika peppers. The girls could dry the chilies, grind them and sell the spice that fall at market. The idea made Julianja furious.

  As June gave way to July, she worked harder to save the roses. One hot day she was at the fence, pruning dead wood from a pink rambler that had once covered the rails in every direction. She wore only her shift against the heat; damp coils of hair matted against her forehead.

  “Hello bogárkám.” Nandor, the carpenter’s son, had big feet and a silly grin, which always got sillier whenever he saw Julianja.

  “I am not your little bug. Go away. None of the girls are home today.”

  “Except you.” He leaned across the fence.

  “That’s saxifrage you’re crushing, blockhead.”

  He clasped both hands to his chest. “And it’s my heart you’re crushing, dear girl.” His face was pale and as big as the moon.

  When she reached for her birch switch, Nandor danced backwards, laughing. “I will submit to your lash gladly,” he said, hands held high in the air, “if only you’ll submit to mine.”

  They both heard the creaking before they saw the cart. And they spotted the mule before they glimpsed the knotted man.

  “Be on your guard, Juli,” said Nandor in a low voice. “These beggars are everywhere. First they ask for what is not theirs, then they steal it.”

  The knotted man wore a homespun tunic over an undershirt; his dun breeches came to the knee and his lower legs were wrapped in linen. But what you would have noticed first about this traveler were the knots, some for show, some necessary. His tunic was held closed by strips of tied leather and was fringed with knotted wool. He wore a finely braided rope for a belt, and a silk scarf secured around his neck against the dust of the road. He had a boy’s face with only a scraggle of beard but his long black hair was tied in a topknot in the soldier’s style. They say that this makes the warlike seem fiercer, or at least taller. But the knotted man carried no weapons. For her part, Julianja was struck by the set of his jaw and the muscles of his cheeks, which s
eemed bunched in concentration, or perhaps pain. She did not think him a beggar, but neither did he appear to be a man of substance. The lone plodding mule and the cart with its solid wheels and its dusty wickerwork sides spoke of hard nights under the sky.

  As he climbed down to them, foolish Nandor challenged him without asking her permission. “Hold, stranger, and state your business here.” He squared his skinny shoulders. “These girls are under my protection.” He glanced back to gauge Julianja’s reaction.

  While he was thus distracted, the knotted man cuffed the boy. It was just a glancing blow, but Nandor collapsed as if his bones had turned to noodles. “My business is none of yours,” said the knotted man, “and my affairs are mine alone.”

  Nandor did not reply. His mouth was slack, eyes empty.

  “Go.” He hauled the boy upright and aimed him down the road. “This girl has no need of protection from me.” The boy weaved away as if he had been drinking his father’s pálinka.

  The knotted man stepped to the garden gate. “She is dead then,” he said. “Did many come to her garden after?”

  “Some. Fewer than before.”

  “Where is she buried?”

  “In a cave.”

  “Sealed?”

  “With a boulder.”

  “How big?”

  Julianja raised a hand over her head then spread her arms.

  The knotted man grunted. “I was told there was a dark-haired girl who made the roses breathe.”

  “Vica. She grew up and was sent away.”

  “And you are?”

  While Tzigana had shared precious little of her arts with her girls, she had impressed on them the charmed power of their true names. She was not about to give a stranger influence over her. “The rose girl,” she said.

  He seemed annoyed by her answer, but let it pass. “Already they are dying?” He reached out to snap one of the blackened twigs entwined in the fence. “Are there any left?”

  Julianja was tired of his questions. She had some of her own. “My affairs are mine alone.”

  “Just so.” His smile of acknowledgment was tight. “If you are the rose girl, then you can perform the charm. I’ve come from the castle of Kisvárda and crossed the Great Alföld to learn my future.”

  Julianja managed to conceal her excitement. No visitor had ever revealed his purpose before, at least, not to her. “I’ve never heard of this castle of yours, sir. Tzigana taught that entry here is a privilege.” She bowed as if to dismiss him. “A shame to have travelled this far in vain.”

  He gripped the top of the gate so tight that it complained on its hinges. “What is it you want, rose girl?”

  She paused to consider, for she couldn’t remember anyone ever asking her such a question. “Answers.”

  The knots on his knuckles relaxed. “If I have them, they’re yours.”

  She took his measure as she led him to the back of the garden. He was surely more than a boy but less than a man in full. He made a motley impression. His stride had resolve and confidence, and hard use had yet to stoop his shoulders. While his clothes were common, they were unusually clean for a traveler; there were no smears of mud on his leggings. He had the sweet scent of wood smoke about him, but not the stink of ancient sweat. Had he bathed and washed his clothes before arriving at the witch’s garden? And what to make of the rough cart and the bony mule? He may well have come from a castle, although not one that prospered. She sensed an odd tension to him, like a rope that has been twisted too tight, or a sapling bent for a twitch snare.

  They stopped by the cherry tree. “Only the dog rose is still blooming,” she said.

  “Good.” He gazed up at the wild climber with its profusion of simple pink-tinged blossoms. “This is the one.”

  “You have been here before?”

  “No. My father visited the year I was born. He’s dead now, like your witch.”

  “So the castle is yours now?”

  “I sleep beneath its walls.” He laughed bitterly. “So do our goats. Castle Kisvárda has been a ruin since the reign of Mátyás the Just.” Seeing her indignation at being misled, he held up a hand to beg patience. “It’s mine, but my sad birthright includes a curse. My father said I might consult the roses to find out if I am the one to lift it.”

  Julianja couldn’t decide if she should send him away or not. She’d never worked the charm on the dog rose because nobody had ever chosen it. Perhaps it waited for some eminence from even farther away than this pitiable traveler, someone who was even now on his way to her. “A curse?” she said.

  “He was a man who was never easy in the wide world with its getting and spending. He was honorable, for all that, and came here to discover if it was his fate to lift our curse. He never said what he learned, but he came home a disappointed man.”

  “And now here you are. What do you expect to find out?”

  “He called me to his deathbed, and told me that I should gather the family treasure and seek the fearsome witch Tzigana, as he had done in his time. He told me that I must convince her to let me pass into her garden, where a dark-haired girl would lead me to its humblest rose. There I must breathe its charmed breath. He told me what to expect after, although had he not been my own good father, I would have thought him mad. He claimed that in the instant he smelled this rose, all of his long life happened. He could see the inside of his mother’s womb, the coffin he would lie in and everything in between. Each day of his past he lived again as well as all the days of his future, only outside of time. All and all. Perfect memory, perfect foresight. And so, he claimed, it would be for me. But I ask you, how can you remember something that hasn’t yet happened? The Doctors of the Church teach that we have free will. How is that possible if our futures are already ordained?”

  Fascinated as she was by this story, Julianja could not resist interrupting the knotted man. “You bring not only a curse, sir, but also a treasure?”

  He shook his head. “A treasure in the same way that Kisvárda is a castle. It is of value only to my family.” He waved towards the gate. “In my cart. I will show it to you after, if you like.”

  She tried to square this tale with the reactions of other visitors she had observed. The dowager and the bishop and the boar had come many times to the garden, and had never once seemed awed by their experience. Had they become jaded by the roses? “Aren’t you afraid to know the future?”

  “I am.” The knotted man hooked the rope cinched around his waist and rolled it between thumb and forefinger. “But my father assured me that when time started for him again, the vision passed. Tzigana told him that no man’s mind can hold his entire life at once, so he must ask himself one question while under the charm. The answer would be all that he clearly remembered. And so I will ask what I must do with the treasure.”

  “I thought you wanted to lift the curse.”

  “The treasure and the curse are one and the same.” He noticed himself teasing the rope and let it fall. “So, I have given you the few answers I have, rose girl. Will you help me?”

  You have very little understanding of the life of a girl at that time and in that place. You do not wake at the first hint of dawn or take to your bed at dusk because it is too dark to do anything else. You have never tried to eke a day’s nourishment from an onion and some rotting parsnips or squatted over a cesspit. Julianja’s life with Tzigana had presented her with precious few choices and all of those were predictable and circumscribed. She’d not even had the power to decide which chore to do first, whether to spend a dreary day sweeping dirt floors or scavenging firewood. Never had she had power over another—and a man, at that. His helplessness intoxicated her in a way she did not fully understand. Of course, she might have dismissed his plea. But then he would go and she would still be where she had always been and no longer wanted to be.

  She reached for a stem and pinched it, impaling her forefinger. She blew her own red blood onto a blossom and nodded for him to approach.

  The muscles
of his jaw worked as he emptied his lungs, then he closed his eyes and pushed himself forward. He inhaled. Instantly his shoulders stiffened and his hands curled into fists and, with a shout, he was thrown backwards, arms windmilling. He sprawled at her feet, gibbering, and she dropped to her knees beside him. His eyes had rolled up. She grasped his tunic and rocked him from side to side, because he was too big for her to lift.

  “Look at me, you. Look here.”

  He blinked. Groaned.

  “Did you see your future?”

  He stared at her.

  “Do you remember any of it?”

  He shivered.

  “Did you ask the question?”

  His mouth fell open and he tapped two fingers to his lower lip. Drink.

  She fetched the bucket from the well. Soon he was sitting up. Although he could not speak, he would nod or shake his head in response to questions. She thought he might have been struck dumb, although she had never witnessed such a severe reaction to the charm. Did this mean that he was unworthy to smell the rose? Had she violated some magical law by giving him access to the charm? Perhaps the witch would rise from the tomb to exact a revenge. At that moment, all she wanted was to get him out of the garden and back on the road. For want of anything better, she brought him a cup of cold porridge to help him regain his strength.

  She offered the ladle and he swallowed the gluey mess. His tongue flicked. “It’s you.”

  “What is?”

  “My future. The curse. The treasure. You.”

  Although she was certain he was wrong, the thought of escaping her life intrigued her. She wanted to know more, so when he was able to stand, she led him to his cart.

  The mule grazed in the burdock at the side of the road. There was a mound of something in the cart, covered by hemp canvas treated with rosin against the weather. With eyes fixed on her, he pulled it aside. She caught her breath but did not otherwise react. Bones, so many bones, some the color of mushrooms, others gray as ash. Long femurs and delicate finger bones. Curved ribs, the bowl of a pelvis. A scatter of vertebrae and jaws with ragged arrays of teeth. She did not have to see the skulls to know that these were human remains. She counted two. Was that a third at the bottom of the pile?