The Rose

by Tiffany Reisz

“Does it involve shagging with grape leaves on our heads?”

  “It doesn’t involve shagging at all.”

  Lia’s eyes widened in shock. “I’m almost scared.”

  “You should be.” He grinned maniacally. Mad as a hatter, this one was, Lia decided. Good thing she liked mad hatters so much.

  “Please?” he said. “You’ll like it.”

  “It will scare me and I’ll like it? That makes no sense at all.”

  August took her face in his hands and held her gaze. His eyes appeared darker here, in this place, bluer, truer, as if the August in the real world were a pale shadow of the August in this world. It seemed he belonged here, and she almost wished they could stay in this place forever. The colors were more vibrant, the winds sweeter and stronger, and the woods full of secret beasts no mortal had ever seen nor tamed.

  “All right,” she said. “I trust you.”

  “Close your eyes.”

  She closed her eyes.

  “Don’t peek.”

  She didn’t peek.

  “Tell me your favorite color.”

  Lia said it was pink most days, sometimes yellow, like sunrise.

  “The colors of sunrise will do nicely,” August said. “There. I’ve got it. Open your eyes.”

  Lia opened her eyes.

  She looked at August. He’d changed clothes and now wore the garb of a turn-of-the-century country squire, ready to muck about on a wet Sunday ramble. Mud-brown trousers, a matching waistcoat, a linen shirt, neck buttons undone and sleeves rolled up to reveal his wrists.

  “You approve?” he asked.

  “You look nice,” she said. “Like a duke’s gamekeeper.”

  He pointed at a red curtain that hung seemingly on nothing and for no reason in the middle of the meadow.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Let’s see behind the curtain. I’ve got a surprise for you...”

  She raised an eyebrow at him but let him take her by the arm and lead her through the red curtain.

  As soon as they passed through it, they were in a new world.

  Lia glanced around... The landscape had changed entirely. Gone was the lush Mediterranean paradise. Where they stood now looked like the Lake District of England. A little river wound around them from a source unknown and into a thick forest of oaks and willows. A wind kicked up, a winding wind that wound its way through reedy trees. Finally, birdsong. Goldfinch, song thrush and wren.

  The sky...it was no longer late afternoon in this pastoral paradise. The yellow sun poked its head through the pink petals of dawn.

  And floating toward them on the silver morning waters was a rowboat painted in stripes of pink and yellow and white.

  “All aboard,” August said, offering his arm out to her.

  “You’re up to something,” she said.

  “I absolutely am, yes.”

  Warily—though more amused than afraid—Lia took August’s arm and let him lead her to the edge of the river. He waded into the water and held the boat steady as she stepped inside and sat quickly on the pink silk cushion in the bow. August shoved them off and sat down on a cushion of his own in one smooth motion.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, leaning back to enjoy the ride.

  “Down the river and into the woods,” he said as he placed the oars and started to row. He rowed well, and the trim little boat skimmed along the top of the river, swift as a water strider bug. Must have been the magic of the fantasy as they were slipping into the woods mere seconds after they’d set out.

  Once they’d passed into the forest, Lia shivered. The shadows were thick and cool here, and August stopped rowing to hand her his corduroy jacket from the floor of the boat.

  “Thank you,” she said as she put it on, touched by his gallantry.

  “I could have made it warmer,” August said. “But I’d rather lend you my jacket.”

  Lia smiled as she wrapped the jacket around her and held it to her body. She was glad he hadn’t raised the temperature, and not simply because she liked wearing his coat.

  This is how it should be, she thought. But what? How what should be? She didn’t know where she was or where August was taking her, but somehow she already knew it should be like this—a cool shadowy spring morning with garden birds waking up to sing. As August rowed them through the woods, Lia felt as if she’d stepped into a painting or into the pages of a fairy tale.

  Everything was perfect...the pink-and-yellow-dawn boat, August’s sleeves rolled up just so, and the trees by the water...a million willows, there had to be. Lia had counted, and they came to a million exactly.

  “Willows,” Lia said. “August?”

  “‘“Believe me, my young friend,”’” August said as he pulled on the oars. “‘“There is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing...”’”

  “‘“As messing around in boats,”’” Lia said, finishing the famous quotation from The Wind in the Willows.

  She knew then exactly where they were, and so she began to cry.

  August smiled at her, said nothing and pulled again on the oars.

  The river widened from not much more than a twelve-foot trickle and turned into a pond that was almost dignified enough to be called a lake. The sun shone down and warmed them enough that Lia slipped off August’s jacket. In the center of the almost-lake sat an almost-island. August rowed to the island, and with a splash of two boots in shallow water, he pulled the boat ashore.

  He helped Lia to her feet.

  She could not speak, and August was kind enough to ask her no questions. He let her weep, though he did use the sleeve of his shirt to wipe the largest of her tears from her cheeks.

  “Weeping like a willow because she’s in her favorite bedtime story,” he said, shaking his head. “This girl who told me her heart died. I don’t believe a word of it.”

  He kissed her cheek to show her how silly she was and then took her by the hand.

  “Come, Lia,” he said. “We have a date.”

  Gently he tugged on her hand, but she dug her feet in the soft soil and wouldn’t budge.

  “Lia?”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can. Watch. It’s easy.” August lifted his feet up and down. “Just like that. March on. He’s waiting.”

  “I can’t go in there.”

  “In there” was a copse of trees, trees that looked as old as Mother Nature herself, old as Father Time. They were hoary with emerald moss, and ivy dangled like crepe paper at a party from every branch. She saw the face of the old Green Man beaming at her from between the branches before he disappeared again with a reedy laugh. And from within the circle of those trees came a sound she’d never before heard but recognized at once. The sound of panpipes played softly and so well that Lia knew she heard them played by the creature who created them and who had given them his name.

  “It’s not real,” she said.

  “It’s not?” August said, bemused. “Then why are you crying?”

  She didn’t answer. August took her in his arms and kissed her forehead. Lia heard the music, closer and clearer, and she stepped forward, unable to resist the song any longer. August walked at her side, near her but not touching. Lia knew she must choose this moment—it could not be chosen for her. August could offer it to her, but it would not happen until she accepted the gift.

  The sun had risen to high dawn—the full yellow disc of it stood tiptoe on the edge of the horizon. The shadows in this primordial glade were long and gray. The breeze smelled sweet as strawberry blossoms. Lia’s heart beat outside her body. She had never felt so much in her life. So much so much so much, she felt everything at once. She couldn’t have stopped walking forward if someone tied iron chains around her ankles.

  They came to a creek, no wider than a puddle. August skipped over it first, t
hen helped her across.

  She wobbled her landing and ended in his arms. Lia clutched his shoulders to steady herself and, once steady, his shoulders remained clutched.

  She kissed him.

  It was a sweet and tender kiss and over in three breaths, but Lia knew that kiss changed something inside her. Not changed something really, but healed something. And that something was her heart, and the kiss healed it because the kiss meant she had a heart again. And she knew she had one because she hadn’t kissed August out of passion but passionately kissed him out of love.

  She pulled back from the kiss and met his eyes.

  “Don’t look now.” August whispered the whisper of a devout child in a church hiding his prayers inside his hands. “But he’s behind you.”

  Lia looked behind her.

  She gasped softly, almost silently, when she saw the shoulder of the god. He sat with his brown back against a green tree, and all she could see at first was the tree and the shoulder and the naked human back that turned to animal fur at his waist.

  “Oh,” Lia said, fingertips on her lips. Just “oh.” She looked at August, smiling through tears or crying through her smiles, she didn’t know.

  “Go on,” August whispered. “He won’t hurt you, I promise.”

  She shook her head, not in disagreement but disbelief. But she went on. How could she not? What English girl who ate and drank The Wind in the Willows with her tea and buttered toast wouldn’t? Such a thing would be as silly as Alice refusing to follow the White Rabbit or Lucy Pevensies walking past the wardrobe without giving it a second glance.

  August let her go and he let her go alone. She walked past peonies, past green willow warblers, past doubt and fear and heartache so healed now she’d forgotten she’d ever been hurt.

  She walked into the glade and there he was, still sitting with his back to that tree and so enormous, even seated, she had to crane her neck to see his face. Had he become bigger or she smaller? He was the god, not she. Maybe August had made them the size of Ratty and Mole and that’s why the god loomed so large. Or perhaps she felt so small because she had become a child again. Not in body but in wonder and in joy.

  The old god Pan played on and on, ringing lazy lullabies from his pipes and sweet melodies made for sleeping not dancing. His horns were curved like the spirals of a seashell and shimmered as if made from the same stuff as the insides of oysters. They glinted like dancing water as he swayed gently in and out of the sunlight in time with his music.

  Lia stood in front of him, directly in front, and he nodded his head, once and nobly. She saw the baby otter at Pan’s feet, curled up so tight it was as if he’d fallen asleep in the bottom of a teacup.

  August had remembered everything...the boat on the river, the strange magic island come out of nowhere, the pipes, Pan and the baby otter she’d come to rescue and return to his worried father.

  Pan’s Island...she had finally found Pan’s Island.

  She knelt on the ground and gently, oh-so-gently, slipped her hands under the otter and lifted him to her, holding him like a human infant against her shoulder. Small as he was, no bigger than a newborn puppy, she could hold him in one hand. With her other hand, she reached out toward Pan’s cloven hoof. Trembling, Lia touched it, hard as a goat’s hoof but ten times its size. He must have felt her touch, and she froze when his eyes met hers.

  Pan’s face was handsome behind his shaggy beard, with lines upon lines around his earth-brown eyes, which crinkled when he smiled. She loved every last one of those tender wrinkles. Lia had never known either of her grandfathers, gone before she was born, but she knew a grandfather’s love for the first time when she gazed on that kindly and timeworn countenance. Those old eyes of his had seen everything and forgiven everyone. And Lia knew that as long as she lived, he would love her, and as long as she loved him, he would live.

  And oh, she did love him.

  The great god Pan had played his pipes all this time, played sweetly and softly and well. When she stood humbly at his feet with the baby otter in her arms, he took the pipes from his lips. Why? August had stepped into the sacred grove, and it was when Pan saw August that he’d stopped playing for a full measure. When the music played again, it was no less lovely, but Lia found it mournful, less a lullaby and more an elegy.

  Pan shook his great shaggy head as if trying not to laugh.

  “You can laugh,” August said to him. “I deserve it.”

  Pan held his pipes in one hand and with his other he ruffled August’s hair like a fond uncle, then patted his cheek, then chucked him once just under the chin before he turned all his attention to his playing again.

  Lia looked at August and saw he had twin tears on his cheeks.

  “What is it?” she asked, though she knew. Of course she knew.

  “I’d forgotten,” August said, “how beautiful he is.”

  “I hadn’t forgotten,” Lia said. “I always knew.”

  “‘“Are you afraid?”’” he asked. Of course he had to quote the book at her.

  Lia answered, “No.” She was not afraid.

  “I am,” August said.

  “Of Pan?” It seemed impossible to be afraid of Pan.

  “Of you.”

  She laughed. “Why?”

  He stroked her cheek. “You know why.”

  She smiled, still crying.

  “Poor lad,” August said, stroking the baby otter’s soft sleeping head. “We should get him home to his father.”

  “Of course,” she said. Must get the lost baby otter home. August led her from the glade and she looked back at Pan, only once but once was all it took. Pan winked at her and changed his tune again. As she and August walked away, toward the boat on the bank, the pipes trilled a wedding march.

  “Randy old goat,” August muttered as he put Lia and the otter in their boat.

  “Not in front of the baby,” she said. August laughed softly, and they set off rowing down the river. In a muddy puddle under an oak bearded with moss, a large gray-brown otter came ashore and barked. The otter in Lia’s arms wriggled itself awake and returned the bark. Lia held up the baby and the large father otter dived quickly into the water and swam right up to their boat. After one quick kiss on top of the otter’s small furry forehead, Lia set him down onto his father’s belly, and otter and son paddled away. Lia smiled as she watched them go.

  “Daddy and I wandered the woods every evening for an entire summer when I was little, looking for Pan’s Island. He read the story to me every night. He told me once he’d sell everything he had to buy me a ticket to Pan’s Island if he could. And you just...you just brought me here with a wink and a snap of your fingers. I dreamed...ever since I was a little girl I dreamed of this...and here I am. I wonder if he’d be heartbroken to know I made it here with you, not him. Even if it’s not really real...it feels real.”

  “He wanted to find it for you,” August said. “Not for himself. He’s a good father, and good fathers hold the doors open for their children that only their children can pass through. All that matters is that you found it and you’re happy. You are happy, aren’t you?”

  “I’ve never been so happy,” she said, fresh hot tears running rivers down her face. She let herself weep without trying to stop, and she knew she wept not because it was over but because it had happened.

  August smiled, and it was a smile to steal a young girl’s heart, and as Lia was a young girl, her heart was stolen by it. And that wasn’t even the mad part. The mad part was that Lia didn’t want it back. He could keep the heart he’d just stolen. He could keep it forever, in a box or on a shelf, though she hoped he’d keep it in his chest, next to his.

  “I thought the Rose Kylix made erotic fantasies come true,” she said to August in a teasing tone. “This is the wrong kind of fantasy.”

  He smiled again, a different smile. A shy sheepish sm
ile. She loved that smile because she knew what it foretold. He locked the oars and pulled her to the floor of the boat. Lia laid her head back on the pale pink cushion as August moved on top of her slowly, careful not to tip the boat.

  She shuddered in pleasure as his body met hers, the warmth of his skin, the weight of him on her and over her...it satisfied a hunger in her too long ignored. August’s mouth met hers and kissed her with almost delicate kisses, as if he understood her fragility and the fragility of the moment. This was her dream, her deepest sweetest dream, and she would have to wake soon but not yet. Please, she thought, not yet...

  August braced himself, his weight on his elbows as he kissed her lips and neck and throat. “Do nothing,” he whispered into her ear. “Just lie there and let me make love to you.”

  She nodded, smiled a shaky tearstained smile. He kissed the tears and returned the smile. As he lifted her gown to her waist, she watched his face. His eyes were hooded with his dark lashes and he wore an expression of the most intense concentration, like an archer with his arrow in the notch and the string pulled back to its tautest point.

  Lia unbuttoned two more buttons of his shirt as he opened his trousers. He lay on her again and this time she could feel the thick hard length of him against her stomach, pressing in and down. He pushed her gown to her stomach to bare her breasts. When naked to his gaze, he ran one hand over them, not to squeeze or to grope but simply to stroke and stroke gently. Her nipples hardened against his warm palms and he lowered his mouth to her left breast. He licked the nipple once before drawing it into his mouth, and Lia tensed as he sucked it.

  The pleasure was sharp, intense, focused in the tender tip that he drew on again and again. The slow draw, the tug, the moist heat on her breast, was bliss but paled before the bliss of watching August as he did it. His eyes were closed, and his lashes lay heavy on his cheeks. He looked almost pained, like he’d waited eons to kiss her breasts and the relief was so utter and complete he had to hold back tears. This display of raw emotion surprised her.

  Lia lifted a hand, heavy with languor, and pushed his hair off his forehead and stroked his cheek.

  “It’s all right,” she whispered, arching her back to press her breast harder to his mouth. He didn’t break the contact, but he did glance up at her once, and she smiled tenderly at him as she lightly touched the lips that suckled her. August paused only long enough to whisper a few words before taking her nipple into his mouth again.