by Geoff Ryman
“Don’t listen to him, daughter,” she said. “He lies and lies and lies. Don’t trust him. Do nothing he wishes.”
Finally the Flower stood completely revealed. A hush fell on the garden. Everything basked in its light, as if in relief, as if all things were in their proper place again.
“Is it not the most beautiful thing?” wheedled the Serpent, in a reedy voice, writhing as though trying to escape from himself. “Is it not the most delightful thing? Doesn’t it shine? Doesn’t it warm and shelter and preserve and encourage and inspire? Doesn’t it love? Doesn’t it love even me, the Serpent, the thing that crawls on the ground and wishes it gone, wishes it destroyed, that hates it? Why should it love me? Warrior?” Hawwah moved her hands from her face, and remembering perhaps old love, held out her hands to him and sobbed.
“Oh, quiet, woman!” the Serpent shouted in his tormented rage.
Cara’s face turned away from the light, though it pierced her cheeks, though she could see the Flower just as clearly as before through the flesh of her eyelids. She had a choice. She could leave the Flower here, refute it, wreak havoc on the Serpent’s plans. For one moment her heart hardened with determination to do that, leave the Flower. But then the Galu, the other Rose, would spread, destroying humankind. She had to choose. She, Cara, daughter of a farming village of reeds and stone. She felt the whole universe turning, she felt the weight of it, and she was the pivot.
“I cannot make this choice. I can’t decide this!” her soul protested to itself, over and over. Ah, but her wiser self responded, if you cannot make such a choice, you should not have come here at all. Did you think to meet the Serpent and to escape unscathed? The Death of Humankind, Cara, or the Death of the Flower. You have to choose. There is no escape. Which is it to be?
Her people spoke of God sometimes, but over the dying generations they had forgotten, and worshipped a pantheon of Gods, gods for each hearth and fire, spirits for every river and tree. How could she know what God would most desire? If she took the Flower she would be the merest dupe of Hadam’s rage, and if she did not, if she did not, was there any hope at all? She searched with all her new, harsh knowledge, that ached in her breast, for another way. There was none.
“Oh, horse,” she said, and patted its neck. “Both of us have been sorely used. What should I do now, horse, Ama, and how can I believe what you tell me?”
The white horse said simply, “Look for the Secret Rose.”
Every action has another action at its heart, bad spells do good. The Flower as clear as a lake at dawn still glowed. It was the last piece of God left to the universe and to humankind, one of God’s many flowers, the last one left. The others, it was said, were the stars. Cara looked at it and felt peace returning to her. “If I choose wrongly,” she said, “the blame will fall on me, and it does not matter what happens to me. I must not fear blame. I must only choose correctly.” She looked at the Flower, and knew that, whatever else it was, it was not there to be preserved at the cost of the final death of humanity. As long as Hadam’s children lived, however briefly before he took them, there was hope. The Flower, she realised, had given her an answer.
She tapped the side of the white horse with her heels, and clucked her tongue, and the horse started forward, with a slight jump of something that was not surprise. As they passed the Serpent’s head, it turned with them. “Are you sure, daughter?” he asked, in a voice that was utterly human.
She nodded. “Do you fear for me, or for yourself?” she asked him
“For both,” he replied.
The horse rode up and over his coils, lurching, its hooves slipping on the scales as if they were wet stone, its head turned away in shame for the Flower. Cara felt all her nerves dancing, her heart and lungs racing with the speed of hummingbird wings, and she reached up for the Flower, the structure of her hand revealed. She touched it, as warm as another human being, and plucked it from the air. The Serpent threw back his head and howled. It was a cry of loss.
Cara’s eyes seemed to go clear, clearer than they had ever been before. Each cell on the farthest blade of grass was clear to her, like padding on a quilt; she could see each grain of soil and each seething morsel of life reaching upward on it; finer even than that, the threading particles of energy that really made them up, interweaving in regular patterns like lace, were revealed to her, as though the garden was the most detailed embroidery, with every stitching of its manufacture revealed. She felt a surge of hope and joy, wild and riotous and completely without fear of any kind. She had made the right choice. She held the Flower aloft, like a blazon, and began to ride from the garden, down the steps of the Serpent. She did not bother to look at him as they passed.
“Disruption!” the Serpent shrieked, after her. “You bring disruption. You are the Serpent too.”
Cara felt the universe change all around her, topple over in one direction, never to rise. The garden burst into its last wild spring all about her. Leaves and buds and blossoms and fruit erupting into life, scampering after Cara, rising towards the light, a great froth of greenery. Great whirring clouds of butterflies were released, their colours winking on and off with the motion of their wings. Orchids opened like arms, great trees creaked forward, grass wound itself around the horse’s hooves with the speed of its flourishing.
As Cara passed them, and the light was withdrawn, they withered again, wrinkling, crispening, crackling, breaking, going from brown to grey. Cara neared the island’s edge, the horse stepped onto the sea, and she passed out of the island—there was a sense of passing, but no gate—and suddenly all colour was drained from the island. Its life went black, obsidian, like glass. A booming wind smashed into it, shattering it, scattering the black glass, driving the splinters into the stone. The tree of knowledge was broken, spreading over the ground in a thousand cutting pieces. The Serpent clung to his bare rock, eyes closed against the wind, and Hawwah rocked, weeping, as she would weep forever more, for the garden, for her life.
Wherever Cara rode, however, there was light and colour. The white horse swam across a blue sea. Dolphins leapt up out of the water, saluting them. A white wave carried them on to the shore, and everywhere that Cara carried the Flower, the Land of the Dead bloomed, like a desert after rain. There was a revival in the ground. Not grass, but prickled flowers with horny leaves sprang up, a dusty green with pinkish, thorned fruit.
Wherever Cara rode, the Dead she passed gave a groaning cry, and turned and followed her, open-mouthed, their hands outstretched. A great caravan of the Dead followed her, shuffling, silent, hollow-cheeked, but ruddy, leaving off their endless repetitions. Some of them held hands.
The Serpent, in fear and loss and bitterness and victory, unfurled himself as a flag across the sky, waving in great folds, his tail rooted somewhere over the horizon. “Change!” he rejoiced. “Anarchy and change! Growth and breakage!”
He sprouted, thousand-headed in fields He waved in the wind, like wheat. “I am in all of you! All of my children!” he revelled. He leapt out of the eyes of the Dead, and poured out of their mouths onto the ground, to show all the places he could hide. When Cara rode again to the base of the Wensenari cliff, Mother Work was waiting for her, and the Serpent, small and plump like a baby was nursing at her breast. The perfect lips of Mother Work parted with delight and greed when she saw both the Flower and the Apple, and she faded away, back to the Living, to prepare.
“Cara!” the Serpent’s voice called, mocking. From between Cara’s legs, the Serpent raised his head and grinned. It was a human smile, with thick red lips too wide for his face, and two white rows of flat even teeth. “You will see me,” the Serpent promised, “every time you make love.” Then he too was gone.
Cara listened to a sound that was only something like the sound of wind. It was the hollow, empty sound of loss and regret.
“Get down, Cara,” said the white horse, “I cannot follow you.”
It looked at Cara with its great black eyes, wind stirring its mane. “
We will not meet again,” it told her.
Cara touched its gentle, shifting muzzle. The thick lips, now warm, enfolded her hand. The Dead could bring only one thing with them from Life. Cara had brought her mission. The horse had brought only thoughts of Cara. “I love you, Dear Daughter,” it said. “I will always love you. Forever and forever and forever . . .”
The white horse and everything around Cara faded away, giving her only enough time to think how much the Flower looked like a pair of warm white hands.
Flower Power
Disruption, Epesu had said. Disruption had rejoiced the Serpent.
A great wind followed Cara back into the world. It slammed into the tents and the fires of the pilgrims at the base of the cliff, flattened the fires down to the ground and extinguished them, ripped the hides from the tent poles, lashing them into the faces of the men who tried to hold them down. The people rose to their feet and howled.
For the wind was piercingly cold. It stilled the heart and sucked the breath from the lungs, for it was a wind that blew through the soul as well, the wind of loneliness and loss and regret. There was a flickering of blue-white light in it, like lightning, and all the moisture in the air began to fall as snow.
From somewhere in the darkness, through the rent between the worlds that Cara had made, silently, like smoke, shadows for eyes, came the Dead. Their mouths opened and closed like fishes. The Living cried aloud in fear, and covered their faces, and the Dead stumbled through them and the remains of the camp. The snow fell, tiny particles of white that were driven almost horizontally through the air.
An army of the Dead, held by the Flower of Life, were hauled into the Land of the Living. They filled the valley, like a forest of swaying trees seen in a fog. They crowded about the base of the cliff, crowded their way up the rock, covering it like spiders, slithers of snow winding their way up the cliff between them, crowded their way through the rock, into the fortress of the Wensenara.
Despite the iciness that cut into their souls, and the storm, and the marching Dead, one by one, the people of the camp fell still. They stood, uncaring, backs to the wind, as their tents were torn from the ground, as their barley and oats were blown away like dust, as their bedding took to the air like winged beasts that wrapped themselves around other people. They stood, gaping and as silent as the Dead.
Above them, the Flower of Life shone steadily. Clear through the walls of Epesu’s chamber, clear across all that distance of snow-filled air, its shape sharply defined, its light strong and pure without aura or halo or refraction, even through the water that filled the pilgrims’ eyes from the cold. The people, as soon as they saw it, felt what it was and fell into reverence and awe.
The wind boomed through the halls of the Wensenari. Its prizing fingers tore the gold from the walls and sent it spinning in sheets like paper in wind, or sliding along the stone floor like scythes, cutting the ankles of the sisters of the Secret Rose. Their heavy black robes rose up over their heads, whipping their shoulders; they fought to close the heavy doors of their rooms; they saw the Dead and thought the world had ended.
The Dead thronged, hissing, into Epesu’s chamber. Perched on its stilts, out from the wall, the room pitched and groaned like a ship at sea. Epesu came for Cara, stumbling as she walked, holding out a mug of tea. “Drink this,” Epesu said, voice full of concern. “It will warm you.”
Cara kept her eyes dim and befuddled, as if she could not think clearly, and cradled both the Apple and the Flower to her breast, one in each hand. She held out only the Apple. The Dead reached out.
“Better give me the Flower too,” said Epesu. “The Dead want it from you.”
Cara and Epesu faced each other, neither one of them moving. Cara pretended to drift in and out of consciousness. Words were circling inside her mouth, behind her lips.
Epesu put the tea as near to Cara’s hand as she could, ready to put the mug into it as soon as she had the Apple. Nimbly, she picked the Apple out of Cara’s grasp.
The moment she took it, she hissed sharply, as though burnt, an intake of breath, and her face froze in horror; and Cara, wide awake though newly back from the Dead, ducked out and away from her saying, “Cast no spells. Do nothing I do not tell you to do.”
The room rose and fell, buffeted by the wind. The mug of tea Epesu held turned with its own weight, on the handle around her finger, and the tea poured scalding down her legs, scattered into droplets by gusts of wind. The Apple clung to the very tips of her fingers, unfalling.
“Release Stefile,” commanded Cara.
There was a sudden collapsing in the corner of the room, and Stefile fell forward. Cara caught and held her. The spindle dropped to the floor, and rolled back and forth across it with the movement of the room.
“Days and days,” Stefile wept. “I’ve stood for days and days. Cara! I saw you die. She cut your throat. I thought you wouldn’t come back. She’s a witch, Cara, a witch. The tea, it had the Spell of No Wind in the Branches.”
“I know, I know. It’s on her now.”
“If you’d taken it, she would have had you, taken the Flower. The tea was poisoned and she would have made you drink it. And I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t say anything! Punish her Cara. Punish her!”
“She is punished enough. She will stand like Hawwah, forever, wanting the Apple.”
“No,” Epesu pleaded, in a voice like the wind.
Stefile and Cara stood together, for a moment, the Flower pressed between them, shining through their breasts. The Dead shuffled around them, clutching at them with fingers that felt like branches of pine needles.
“We have to be away,” said Cara, standing back. “Can you walk?”
“Yes,” replied Stefile. The warmth of the Flower had healed her.
Cara strode to the window, and looked out, and saw all the valley revealed. She saw the pilgrims looking up, the Dead moving in their midst; she heard a great sigh rise up from them. As Cara stood in the window, some of them dropped to their knees.
“The Flower,” murmured Cara, to herself. She turned back to Epesu. “We cannot go back that way. Is there another way out?”
Epesu fought not to tell them. Her lips worked against each other, struggling to keep still. Then suddenly, juddering, came the single word, “Y-yes.”
“Where?”
“B-behind. Up the cleft in the rock. Through the gardens. Behind!”
Cara picked up their furs, and slung them over herself and Stefile, the Dead yawning after her in a slow silent mime.
“Don’t leave her here. Kill her! They will find her!” insisted Stefile, suddenly savage.
“Will anyone take the Apple from you, Epesu?” Cara asked.
Tears welled up in Epesu’s eyes, and spilled down her cheeks.
“They will know what spell it is, Epesu. You scorned love. Does anyone here love you enough to take the Apple so that the spell falls on them? After all the things you must have done to make yourself Great Mother?”
“No,” whispered Epesu.
“It needn’t be love, Cara,” warned Stefile angrily. “Just greed.”
A new fear came into Cara’s eyes. “When does the spell fade?” she asked. “Tell the truth.”
Epesu pressed her lips tight, until they were pale, and fought not to speak. The flesh on her cheeks began to quiver from the effort and the tears quaked in her eyes, and she snarled with the strain. “Ahhhhh ifffff,” and suddenly the words tumbled out of her, unwilled, “if you unsay the words!” She bit her lip to prevent it speaking. Blood welled up from the corners of her mouth, and the lip began to blubber, “B-b-b-b-b-b-b . . .”
“Tell me!” ordered Cara.
The lip tore itself free, a patch of velvet red flesh dangling loosely. “When you die!” she wailed, and the secret was free.
When Cara died, the Apple would be loose in the world. Unless, of course, Cara never died. The Flower glowed, next to her heart.
In the Land of the Living, the Flower was transparent, but
solid, like crystal, glowing with a gentle, irresistible light, each petal soft and plump and lucid. It shone through Cara’s fingers as if they were not there. Nothing could dim or bend its light.
“Why is it so beautiful?” Stefile asked, quiet, bewildered.
“Because it is a piece of God,” replied Cara, her voice hollow with remorse.
If she ate the Flower, she would be immortal, never die, be as a goddess. The Flower brushed her heart, made it sad with love for it. The Flower was everything that was good and warm, everything that was as it should be, without violation. Stefile’s fingers approached it, gingerly at first, then touched it too. The fingers of the Dead gathered around it.
Then Cara saw the face of the Serpent, grinning.
“No!” she said, and snatched it away from her eyes. “It’s not for that. It cannot be used for that!”
“You’ve earned some reward!” blurted out Stefile.
Never to have to die, never to have to return to the Land of the Dead. She had been there once, surely that was enough. The Flower drew Cara back. Cara faltered.
“Kill me,” said Epesu in a calm even voice, because it was not something that Cara had to fight to make her say. Epesu’s eyes were hard. She did not want Cara to be immortal. She did not want to stand, starving, flesh dropping from her as long as Cara lived—which might be forever. She did not want to stand, an empty skeleton, her soul held to it undying, feeling the wind stir in the sockets where her eyes had been. “Kill me, and I will take the Apple with me, back to the Land of the Dead.”