Maria Isabel Pita

by As Above, So Below

  She squeezed the young woman’s arm appraisingly. “We’ll round you out eventually. No more dried meat for you, young lady! Everything around here is fresh. We don’t kill it until the oven’s warm and waiting for it, at least not in my domain!” She gave a quick, proud look around her. “Now off with you!”

  Mirabel obeyed. It had come to be a minor miracle to find herself alone. It was so sweet, without pressure, like climbing out of a rushing stream at every moment threatening to drown her onto the safe, firm bank of her own identity. She left the kitchen through an archway that led into the shadows of a windowless stairwell, the leather sandals she had been given along with everything else making scarcely any sound on the stone floor.

  There was no one around. It wasn’t yet the hour when the chef’s assistants would begin hurrying up and down the steps carrying all the different courses of the nightly banquet in the great hall. She paused on the first landing to stare up at the double wooden doors another long flight above her, the polished dark red wood gleaming like fresh blood in the light from two oil lamps always burning on either side of it. The corridor to her left—flickering with shadows even in the middle of the day—led down to her room. Through the red double doors lay the great hall and beyond it rose the keep’s tall black towers.

  *

  Megran prided herself on her distaste for gossip but it was impossible not to be exposed to its spice living in a keep’s close quarters. She had to admit, it did add flavor to winter days so dull the sun didn’t bother to rise from beneath a thick blanket of clouds. But this year it was different—there were hints of poison in the speculative stew cooked up in the women’s quarters from the addition of jealousy’s bitter green growth. And the Lords knew there was enough dirt in Mirabel’s history to provide for the burgeoning of hostility against her. Her mother was a murderess whose death sentence had been transformed by a prince’s dream into a mysterious exile, from which she had won fame for herself as the kingdom’s greatest seamstress until her lonely death at the top of the world.

  Janlay’s daughter had been at Visioncrest for a full year now, yet instead of dying out, questions and rumors about her only intensified along with her beauty. Naturally everyone turned to Megran for answers since she was the closest person to the wild creature but no one believed her when she said Mirabel was a perfectly nice girl. It wasn’t what they wanted to hear about the juiciest morsel that had dropped into the keep’s emotional cauldron for as long as anyone could remember and they weren’t about to stop sinking the hungry teeth of their imagination into Mirabel. They continued concocting tales about her like exotic sauces to pour over the plain fare of daily life, all the occasions on which the prince had sent for her the headily spiced chunks of meat in gossip’s spicy stew.

  Megran heard the thick wooden door that led out into the garden slam closed from its own weight. It was probably Mirabel bearing yet another basket of vegetables or the carefully picked flowering tops of medicinal plants. “There you are.” She smiled. “What have you got there, something for me or something for Landru?” Landru was the silver-haired old man in charge of the keep’s physical well-being, Visioncrest’s healer ever since Megran could remember, which made his age too great to reckon.

  “Something for Landru,” Mirabel replied with a stab of guilt, for she had been neglecting her kitchen duties lately. But she had discovered a side to plants that made her love them even more—they could make her body feel better—and so they remained her only friends, except for Megran, simply because she could trust them. Plants possessed unique and nonintrusive personalities, generously sharing their beauty with her through touch and sight and smell without demanding very much in return, only a little care which was a pleasure to give. And they never hurt her unless she handled them carelessly and they happened to be armed with thorns or sharp leaves.

  She had learned that many plants possessed spirits much more compassionate than her own which, in the form of a boiled decoction, could soothe pains and sores in the taller stalks of their human relatives. During one of her more difficult monthly cycles Landru had prepared a tea for her and the bitter taste was nothing compared to the sweetness of knowing some of the plants she had tended with such loving care were returning the favor. Yet to be able to do so they relied on people who made the effort to listen to and understand their secrets. From the moment the discomfort in her womb began to ebb, Mirabel had vowed to be one of those people. Ever since she had learned plants could not only flavor dead meat but also help cure living flesh, she had spent less time tending Megran’s herbs and vegetables and more time caring for all the flowers and bushes Landru told her possessed medicinal attributes.

  These days it was not often that the old healer walked the neatly trimmed rows himself but on those rare afternoons when his silver head rose over the foliage like an early moon—he was still a tall man even though his spine had wilted somewhat— Mirabel walked just behind him, avidly listening to whatever he chose to tell her. She spent most of the summer within the garden’s stone walls. Only recently had she begun to venture into the meadows beyond the keep and that was only after Landru mentioned that certain herbs grew wild in the area and he missed the days when he had the strength to pick them himself. He complained that the young people to whom he assigned the task were usually too impatient and damaged the plants by not following the proper procedures.

  “You must always wear gloves and use only the sharpest knife,” he had explained to Mirabel the day she began her lessons with him, watering her eagerness with his knowledge. “It is also very important that you never pick too much in one place, for you must always leave enough for the plant to create more of itself. And if you do not handle it properly you might damage it, at which point it will begin to ferment, which means by the time it reaches me it will no longer be useful. Flowers and soft leaves should always be placed loosely in a basket, not packed tightly so they become overheated and begin to sweat. Only roots and stiff top parts should be placed in a sack and only healthy plants should be gathered. Never collect ones covered with mud or ones that look as if they’ve been trampled because they grow too close to a much-traveled path.”

  “I understand!” Mirabel exclaimed. “May I go gather some for you?”

  “Yes but never gather in the cool of the evening or in the early morning when the earth is still wet with dew, as moisture will cause them to ferment. Of course, you must know which part of the plant to pick. Sometimes the whole thing has value but usually it is either the top or the flower or the leaves or the rootstalk and occasionally the fruit. And bear in mind, my young lady, that not all plants are kind. Some of them are poisonous.”

  His words transported her to a winter evening long ago when the man out in the snow warned her that not all people were nice. “You must tell me which ones are not nice so I can avoid them,” she said.

  “It is not so simple. Some harmful plants have the greatest medicinal properties taken in the right manner and amount. In this there is no substitute for experience, Mirabel. You are right, however. Some plants should be avoided completely and others, which are harmless but have no value, can likewise be ignored in your search for those with something to offer. But never forget that the greatest virtue can become deadly if the body is exposed to it in the wrong form or in excessive amounts and that poison taken in small, carefully controlled doses can save your life.”

  Mirabel seriously pondered Landru’s words. It seemed to her that what he said applied to people as well, especially to the prince. She visited him in his chambers at the top of Visioncrest’s tallest tower on the night of every full moon and each time something inside her changed, some emotional pressure was lifted and she once again felt able to meet all the challenges life at the keep subjected her to. In this respect, the prince was like a medicinal plant. Perhaps one of the reasons she saw him so rarely was that it would be dangerous to spend too much time in his company, just as a poisonous herb with healing properties must be administered in sma
ll doses. The prince could also be likened to the small, sharp knife she used to collect plants for Landru because his briefest statement cut right to the heart of her wild confusion without hurting her. He never insulted her or punished her as Janlay had. It was as if he knew when the time was right to harvest her thoughts and feelings just as Landru taught her when to go out and collect particular leaves and flowers.

  Mirabel had begun to realize the prince was handling her with as much respect and care as Landru did his plants. No one understood or liked the fact that a lowly kitchen maid was allowed to wear the prince’s colors. Her long black hair matched the ankle-length skirt she wore beneath a black bodice sewn directly into a violet shirt with long, loose sleeves. These were the colors she had worn since her arrival at the keep and they never failed to attract angry, jealous glances.

  From the beginning, without even realizing it, Mirabel had behaved as if her thoughts and feelings were her heart’s invisible keep and her sharp questions the armed sentries she sent out to both bring back information and to protect her from her own ignorance. And this was possible because she had always been under the prince’s special protection. Every full moon he sent for her. All he did was talk to her quietly but it was more than enough. The concern in his silver-blue eyes was like water flowing over an affection-parched plant, yet it also acted like sunlight to warm and dry the tear-bogged roots of her feelings so that she no longer cried herself to sleep almost every night missing her mother and her remote mountaintop. He understood her, and he sympathized with the way she thought and felt about things. To him she wasn’t strange or a stranger. Even Megran, whom Mirabel knew loved her dearly, clucked and shook her head over many of the things she said, but the prince never did. The prince’s summons were as regular as the moon’s cycle but the time between them seemed to be growing longer and longer.

  *

  Mirabel spent most of her days in a small wood, not wandering aimlessly as most young women her age might do. She traveled well-worn paths trod by Landru’s other assistants. That afternoon her goal was an elder shrub spreading out luxuriously in an open bed surrounded by trees. Smiling proudly because Landru hadn’t needed to remind her that the elder’s stone-fruits would soon be past their prime so it was time they were harvested, she crossed a wooden footbridge spanning a rocky stream. It would be necessary to make several trips back and forth from the keep, for the violet-tinged black globes had to be collected on the branches, which she loosely placed in her two big baskets. The medicinal fruit could be removed from the stalks only after drying.

  She waited until the sun was high in the sky and had completely banished the last traces of dew before harvesting the heavy clusters that were the prince’s two colors—black and violet—blended into a succulent whole. One teaspoon of the dried fruit, briefly boiled in one cup of water and taken three to five times daily, could help eliminate the stubborn cough that often lingers even after a disease has been cured. Or so Landru had told her. She was growing increasingly proud of her knowledge.

  Her hands got hot in the black leather gloves she was wearing as she wondered why, if she liked plants more than people, she was so interested in learning how to alleviate their suffering. She decided it was this magic she loved more than the objects on which it could be practiced, except of course if it was Megran or the prince who might one day have cause to feel grateful for her herbal skills.

  Mirabel filled her baskets and, on her way back to the clearing after delivering the first batch to Landru—whose stern old face looked as pleased as it ever could that she had remembered the elder shrub—she found herself thinking about Janlay. She rarely thought about her mother anymore. She resisted thinking about the woman who had once lived in a keep as she did now because she was ashamed of her even though she still loved her. Her mother had been like a beautiful flower with a trace of poison inside her that proved fatal to someone else.

  She spotted a patch of eyebright and decided to postpone picking more elder fruit so she could gather some of these late-flowering stems. She loved the purple stripes on the violet petals and the yellow spots like tiny suns leading into the black heart. The plant’s name made it easy to remember its medicinal application and she liked the way it grew straight up over the surrounding grass and sedge.

  Mirabel wondered what other rites the prince performed that she had not yet witnessed. So far she had attended only some burials and christenings but she was aware he spent much of his time engaged in mysterious communication with the Lords and tonight, for the first time, she would be dining with him…

  She quickly suppressed the nervous anticipation the thought filled her with and concentrated on the important work she was doing for Landru. She was uncomfortably hot by the time she filled her baskets a second time and decided it would be nice to rest for a while on the moss-upholstered rocks beneath the bridge, where it was refreshingly cool beneath its shadow. She wrapped her arms around her knees contentedly and stared meditatively down at the water. It was dark and still where she sat, flowing slowly where the banks widened and the streambed deepened, small rocks rising just above the surface. Her forehead dropped onto her knees for a moment but then she looked up and glanced to her right, sensing a presence. She scrambled to her feet so quickly she nearly slipped on the slick surface and fell into the water.

  “Darmond!” she cried but he merely stared at her from the opposite bank as if he didn’t recognize her. “Darmond!” she exclaimed again, waving. The world darkened as the sun disappeared behind a cloud and the shadow in which she stood suddenly felt cold. She hurried out of the clinging chill, her boots slipping every few steps on the smooth moss. The young merchant had not moved but his eyes glinted as they followed her progress up the bank to the bridge. She ran across it and flung her arms around his neck, joyfully reclaiming this living remnant of her past. He was not so much a person to her as a comfortingly familiar piece in the puzzle of who she was. Then his strong arms slipped around her, crushing her against him, and abruptly Mirabel realized he wasn’t really a part of her at all. “Darmond, I can’t breathe!”

  He released her but continued to hold her at arm’s length, his fingers digging uncomfortably into her upper arms. “By the Lords, Mirabel, you’re even more beautiful than I remembered you!” A fact that seemed to make him unaccountably angry.

  “You look the same.” She smiled at him even though this wasn’t exactly true. Either he had changed somewhat or her powers of perception had altered since she last saw him. His hair, she now realized, shone the way it did because he had not washed it for days, he was not as tall as she remembered him and she couldn’t understand how his face had ever evoked a mountain landscape in her mind for his features were nowhere near as refined and well proportioned as the prince’s.

  “So I look the same, do I? Well, I certainly feel the same about you.”

  “You’re hurting my arms,” she complained reluctantly.

  “Have you…? But that’s a foolish question. The real question is how long he waited before he had you. Does he treat you well? You’re special enough to hold his interest a few more years so I wouldn’t start worrying yet.”

  One moment she was staring up at the hot sky of his eyes, the next there was a fat and disgusting slug in her mouth. She vividly remembered the merchants feeding them to her mother as though Janlay was a baby bird and was appalled by the thought that she was supposed to enjoy this. She planted her hands on his chest and tried to shove him away because this time his kiss didn’t excite her. Instead it made her think of being buried alive. When his face rose over hers again she gasped for air. “Let me go!” she demanded.

  “Not on your life.” His breath smelled of ale as he slipped one inescapable arm around her waist while his other hand deftly pinned both her wrists behind her back. “I’ve waited a long time for this, Mirabel, but I never forgot what I promised myself. I knew the longer I waited the less careful an eye the prince would keep on you and now I intend to take what should have be
en mine first. I’m the one you should have bled around, not him!”

  “Darmond, the prince hasn’t touched me!”

  “What? You can’t be serious?”

  “It’s true, I haven’t bled around anyone.” She had no idea what he was talking about but she was sure it hadn’t happened.

  “Mm, well, we’ll see about that, won’t we?” Releasing her, he grabbed one of her hands and led her beneath the concealing branches of a tree adorned by big bowl-shaped white flowers.

  “Darmond, I was collecting medicinal plants for Landru and if I don’t get them back to him soon they’ll begin fermenting in the basket.” She was talking fast, the words squeezed out of her by the one thought filling her mind—she did not want him to kiss her again.

  “I’m tired, Mirabel. I journeyed a long way to see you. Won’t you lie here with me for a little while and help me recover my strength?” As he spoke he knelt on a bed of moss and pulled her down beside him. “Certainly there’s no harm in old friends relaxing together beneath a tree on such a beautiful day as this.”

  He was right. She could think of no reason she shouldn’t spread herself on her back beside him, especially if he refrained from kissing her again.

  “You’re such a sweet girl.” He sat up and rested his weight on one elbow to gaze down at the deep cleavage created by her black bodice. He reached over and tugged playfully on one of the strings tying it closed. “May I see your breasts, Mirabel?”

  She lifted her head to glance at her bosom and for some reason the sight of it excited her as it never had before. She thought of her breasts as her body’s flowers, always in bloom and crowned with big rosy areolas boasting long, thick nipples like stamens that softened and stiffened according to their own mysterious moods. “Do you really want to see my breasts?” she asked uncertainly, unable to grasp the harm in his request even though it made her nervous.