Genius Loci

by Edited by Jaym Gates

  Spring sang as she walked, and the breezes stirred shrubs to accompany her voice with a rustling, whispered melody. Birds warbled their happiness, and squirrels chattered a chorus of delight. Spring smiled, and the world smiled back, for she loved it, and it loved her. Everyone was happy when Spring was near. Except for Winter.

  Winter was a strong and handsome man, dressed all in white, from cloak to belt to boots. He smiled and danced as he walked, and touched the land with the lightest of touches. All agreed that he was the most beautiful of all the seasons, pure and clean and so pretty that it gave you chills just to look at him. Yet, much as they admired him, people couldn’t wait for him to leave. They welcomed him and threw festivals when he came, but if he stayed for long, they grew dark and distant. For with Winter came snow and cold and ice, and while those are beautiful, some kinds of beauty are hard to bear.

  Over the years, Winter became sad, for he loved the land and the people, and he longed for them to love him back. He spent hours designing snowflakes one by one—each a miniature work of art, perfect but ephemeral. He taught the frost to spread in fancy patterns across roofs and walls and glass. He froze streams into playgrounds, and waterfalls into sculpture. The people oohed and aahed and praised him, but then they went back into their warm homes, and didn’t invite him in. When he had gone and another season wandered by, his art melted, and the ground warmed, and the people came out to rejoice. All the seasons had this warming effect, yet the people loved Spring the most, so that when Winter eventually lost his patience, it was Spring he was angry with. He determined to ask her why she destroyed his work, and why the people loved her but hated him.

  The world is large, and the seasons didn’t often meet. This was before the calendar was quite so rigid, and sometimes Summer would follow Spring, or Fall would follow Winter, depending on how they happened to wander. So when Winter went in search of Spring, he didn’t quite know where to look. Spring, for her part, knew nothing of his search, and wandered the land as the whim took her. As he searched longer and longer, Winter nurtured his hurt into a cold fury, so that he walked in a blizzard of wind and snow and hail, and the people avoided him even more than before.

  The village of Tomai was large, for a village, with a population of over a thousand men and women. It lay in a valley with a small stream at its heart, the simple houses held in by low hills crested by trees. High on the western hill, just below the forest, stood a lonely thorn bush. It grew on ground thick with stones, the remnants of a boulder shattered by years of cold and heat. The soil was thin, the rocks jagged, and little grew.

  The thorn bush did what it could. It spread its roots wide, and wrapped them around fragments of rock. It stretched its spindly branches to the sky, or spread them in a little fan to catch some leaves when Fall passed near and the wind was in its favor. Each leaf became a little bit of soil to cover its roots. The trees of the forest tried to send the leaves toward the bush, and little animals sometimes carried bits and pieces of forest debris to it. They felt sorry for the bush, because they all agreed that it was ugly. Where other bushes grew straight and tall, waving their leaves or needles like flags, or painting themselves with flowers, the thorn bush was black and gnarled and rough, its flowers small and grey and sparse. And it was covered with thorns.

  The bush wanted to be smooth and glossy, broad and green and inviting. But no matter how hard it tried to grow straight, its little trunk twisted round and round, and its fragile branches snapped and cracked in the wind. Where it tried to produce bright flowers and lush leaves, it mostly grew thorns—long, sharp weapons of dull black. The bush strove for peace and plenty, but it was built for war and dearth.

  The bush did best when Summer was nearby, for its sparse foliage and long thorns let it thrive when water was scarce. Yet the heat only accentuated its difference from the rest, and made it sad. While the bush liked Summer well enough, what it really loved was Spring. When the forest came to life, even the little bush felt it might be able to grow straight and green like the other plants. But no matter how it tried, it grew only longer, sharper spikes, until the birds stopped landing, and even the squirrels kept their distance. Nothing grew around the bush, and though it gradually accepted its lot, it was lonely.

  One day, a strange bird came by, and, knowing no better, came to land on the thorn bush. The bush was happy for company, and, with all its might, twisted its thin branches so that all the thorns pointed down. It hurt, and it felt its fibers tearing, but with a quiver in its voice, it said to the bird, “Welcome! Make yourself comfortable and tell me the news.” The thorn bush thought that if only it had some news, it might be able to attract others into conversation, and maybe friendship.

  The bird was a starling, and a little rude, for he was far from home and from his flock, which made him nervous. “Your branches are thin and shaky, bush, but I thank you for your welcome, whatever its shape. I am tired, for a wind blew me off course while I was collecting seeds. Now I must get my harvest back home to my children, for the wind was cold and hard, and Winter is on his way.”

  This made the bush unhappy, for all the world knew by now that Winter sought Spring, and that he was angry. “You must warn Spring,” the bush said. “She was here not long ago, just over those hills.” It pointed one small branch to the east, and when it unfurled, its thorns glinted cruelly in the evening light.

  “Thank you,” said the bird nervously. “For your kindness I will give you one of my seeds, but for your thorns I will leave you now and go on my way.” So saying, he spilled one small seed from his beak, and fluttered away to the east.

  The bush was sorry and hurt that the bird had been afraid, but it valued the news, and told everyone that would listen “Winter is coming. Grow your warmest fur and bark and prepare. Winter is coming.” Most of all, the bush treasured the bird’s little gift. With one of its thorns, it dug a little hole for the seed, and swept over it the best loam it could gather. Since winter was coming, it circled its branches round and round and made a little mound over the soil to keep off the snow, and to ward off the wind. It turned the thorns out so that whatever grew would not be harmed. The twisting hurt its branches, but the bush bore it quietly, and held them in place until they grew together into a dark, jagged shield.

  As Winter passed through the lands, he brought with him the storm of ice and cold that had become his habit. The snow fell thick and deep before him and behind, covering the land with a shining carpet of smooth, soft white. He asked everywhere for Spring, but no one answered him back, and he went on his way alone and angry. When he came at last to the village of Tomai and to the forest on the hill, he stopped, and spotting the thorn bush just above the snow, said to it, “Little bush, I see you are like me—sharp and beautiful and disregarded. Tell me, have you seen Spring? I would speak with her.”

  The bush might have blushed, if it could, for no one had ever called it beautiful, and Winter was handsome indeed. But it was sad that even Winter, who gave it compliments, also saw the thorns. Even worse, the bush was ashamed that this cruel and beautiful season saw its loneliness so clearly. It was proud and sad at once, but it loved Spring more than it loved Winter, and it gave no answer.

  Winter grew angry that even this lowly, spiky bush thought itself too good to speak to him. He stormed away, leaving behind a thick crust of snow and ice that covered the bush completely. Under the snow, the bush’s little mound of twisted, painful branches held against the snow, and warmth of its roots kept the patch of ground from freezing. Beneath the soil, the tiny seed began slowly to grow, sending out shoots and roots of its own to probe the dark ground.

  It happened that Spring came back through the village soon after. The snow melted before her, the birds sang, and the plants grew green. When she neared the forest, she saw the thorn bush, still strewn with snow. As she approached, the little bush shook itself so as to look its best, but the snow it shook off it tried to gather around its thorny mound, so that the little seed would hav
e plenty to drink in warmer weather. As it did, the seed itself sent up its tallest shoot, and with it a little white flower, for the seed was a snowdrop—one of the flowers that reacts the fastest to the approach of Spring.

  When Spring saw the little flower behind the shield of thorns, she felt sorry for it, for it looked as if it were trapped. She reached in to clear away the snow and give the snowdrop room to grow. Fearing to hurt her, the thorn bush twisted its thorns even further, so that they faced not toward the snowdrop, nor toward Spring, but outward and inward, in a rosette that pierced the bush’s own branches through and through. From their wounds, they dripped sweet moisture down upon the flower. The bush strained its fibers to the utmost to keep from harming flower or season, though the pain grew to torment and then to agony.

  Meantime, Winter had not gone far. He had stopped in the next valley over to sit sullenly and sulk. “Even a thorn bush,” he said, “disdains me,” and thought that he should have covered it with ice as well as snow. Or instead of snow—just a thin coating of ice along all of its branches and thorns. It would make a striking pattern, for the bush was graceful in its own desolate, poignant way. It had been so determined, on ground so bleak, so forlorn and alone, despite its graceful, delicate thorns.

  At last, Winter said to himself, “If even the thorn bush that no one loves, and that grows in such rough terrain, can find the heart to love Spring, can I do less?” If everyone loved Spring, but did not love him the same way, that was perhaps not her fault. Perhaps it was simply the result of her nature, just as his was to be quiet and lonely. He felt better for letting go of his anger, but he also felt a little ashamed of himself and his actions. He realized, too, that he had been cruel to the thorn bush, a creature as lonely as himself, and he turned slowly back to apologize. He thought to layer it with a pattern in his thinnest, finest frost—a small tribute to the bush’s unusual beauty. As he thought this, the blizzard around him gradually calmed, until he walked in a paradise of white and silver.

  He walked back through the forest, branches thick with snow, and he smiled at their beauty as he went. As he drew closer to the top of the hill, he saw icicles developing as the snow slowly melted with Spring’s proximity, and refroze with his. He stopped to admire them. Together, he realized, he and Spring could create a beauty different than either could create alone.

  When Winter at last came down to the edge of the forest, he saw Spring kneeling before the thorn bush, and he rushed forward to speak to to apologize for his anger and jealousy. But as he neared, he saw her shoveling aside the snow he had created, and that would help the bush survive drier times. Seeing this, he grew angry again, and the cold wind chilled the flower’s fragile new stem so that it began to droop.

  “What are you doing?” he cried.

  “I am saving this flower,” Spring said without looking up. She took hold of the thorny rosette that had shielded the snowdrop, and broke it apart into sharp segments. The thorn bush jerked as Spring broke its spindly branches, and one of its thorns pricked her finger.

  “You are hurting this bush,” cried Winter, for he loved it now as a kindred spirit.

  Blood from Spring’s finger slowly dripped onto the snowdrop, streaking its wintry white with patches of scarlet. It’s warmth thawed the flower a little, and it turned toward the bush for comfort. As she watched, Spring saw the bush do its limited best to form a shelter with the little stubs of its branches. She turned to Winter, and saw his anger and his pain and his love for the little bush.

  “I am ashamed,” she said. He saw the sorrow in her eyes, and took her hand to wash it with clean snow. When the bleeding stopped, he drew her away to the hilltop, and they talked long and deeply.

  #

  The villagers still avoid Winter, but he still decorates the land for them. People say that Spring defeats Winter, but in fact, the two seasons are the closest of friends, and they arrange to meet every year to celebrate their love for each other and the land. Their natures are so different that they cannot be together long, but when they are, they make a special kind of art. Each year Spring brings strength to the thorn bushes to show Winter that she remembers how they met, and Winter gives Spring snowdrops to show that he knows how deeply she cares for even the smallest life.

  In Tomai, the villagers wear little red and white pins to honor Spring’s rescue of the flower. They don’t know the full story, and still blame the thorn bush for harming Spring. The thorn bush bears the abuse silently, and the thorns protect it from serious violence. Often, there are snowdrops nearby, and the children ask their parents to let the bush be. When the villagers are gone, the bush relaxes and unwinds its branches, and prepares the snowdrops’ beds for Spring’s next visit. For, misunderstood as they may be, the soft flower and the spiny bush are the closest of friends, and you will often see them together at the edge of the forest, twined together under a blanket of snow.

  THE FORGETTING FIELD

  Caroline Ratajski

  In the Regency and Victorian Eras, flowers were assigned meanings, which could turn a bouquet into an elaborate message. Many flowers were assigned multiple and sometimes contradictory meanings, so if you were trying to communicate with a lover through the language of flowers, you had best hope that you were both consulting the same flower dictionary. The more common flowers were defined in fairly standard terms. For example, a red rose meant romantic love, as it still does today, while the mimosa represented chastity because its leaves close at night and when touched.

  Prior to the Victorian Era, floriography was used in art, literature, and common culture all around the world. In the 1600's, Turkish people used flowers to convey meaning much like the Victorians did two centuries later. The Bible makes frequent use of flower symbolism. In Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, Ophelia famously recites flower meanings: "Here's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember. And there's pansies, that's for thoughts."

  In 1818, Louisa Cortambert (using the pen name Madame Charlotte de la Tour) wrote Le Languge de Fleurs, the first flower dictionary, which kicked off the Victorian craze. Artists made use of the symbolism of flowers to enhance their art, and lovers made use of it to declare their feelings.

  In this story by Caroline Ratajski, flowers have meanings, and hungers, and desires that humans cannot begin to imagine. These flowers have made their own dictionary.

  ***

  Chrysanthemum, for loss.

  We flowers eat what we are hungry for.

  The two-leg stoops, takes a knife to the blossom base. The blade is dull and it tears rather than slices, but we have no hole for screaming.

  This one’s guilt comes to us when it presses our childmaker to its mouth. It had pollinated with more than one, and loss followed. We have never understood the two-leg fixation on pollination.

  But this flower does not hunger for lost love. We have eaten much of the darker feelings, the ones that turn inward and slice with sharper stone than this two-leg carried. It took a petal between its teeth and tears it from us, disappearing it into the body.

  And with a small taste, we remember, and for one last time, it remembers too. More than remembers. It relives.

  We see the memory it wants gone almost immediately. It is slightly aged and sitting just at the top, rubbed smooth like a stone in the river. It has reviewed the memory often. But that is not what we are hungry for.

  Too long we have gorged ourselves on the two-legs’ bitterness, taking their pain into this field, our act of mercy. We fed so fully it has faded us. Our blossoms are not so vibrant as they once were, purple and red faded to grey and brown. Other animals do not come to us anymore, and we wither.

  This one has a sadness for another two-leg, but also a great happiness, buried beneath. We feed on that instead, pulling this one through the happiness of a bright spring day when it was fresh and new and the world was full of possibility. Laughter and long hair and cool water on bare toes. It asked for forever and the other agreed, and in
that bright day forever was real.

  And when we are finished, the memory has vanished.

  Now all the two-leg has is a notion that it once had happiness, but the light inside is gone. It cries out, one hand clutching the flower to its chest, the other digging fingers into the dirt and wrapping them around cool damp roots. Sharp grit digs under its nails, tearing at the soft flesh of its hand, leaking its red water against our roots.

  We drink, the warm iron as sweet to us as honeysuckle to the two-legs.

  It eats another petal, and we feed more on its past joy.

  It is so desperate to forget the pain it eats another petal, and another, until the flower is gone, and all that remains is its grief.

  Then it sinks into us and wraps its not-legs around us, and it weeps.

  Eventually, we will devour this one’s flesh as well.

  #

  Harebell, for grief.

  The first to eat did not know what we could do. We did not know it ourselves. It stumbled into us, weeping, broken, mad with hunger, and it ate of us for the simple sake of having nothing else.

  Its pain was deep, a cavern hollowed out inside. This one had seen too much, lost too much, and its soul curled into itself, a flower wilted from too much dark. Its sorrow came over us like an early frost. Our feeling was one of sympathy, of a desire to console. To take the pain away.

  And so we did. We sucked it free from that one like the serpent’s venom from flesh. It cried in anguish, a thing we only wished to spare it, and it tore at us. But once we had eaten our fill, that one’s pain was gone. All that remained was a memory of pain, like a knotted scar in treeflesh, growing over what had been clawed away.