In tribute to all of the beautiful gardens I've visited this year, here's a story from my short story collection, Splintered Door.
Each story is written in a very different style, this is by far the most florid.
The Invisible Flowers
Have you ever noticed how you can sow the seeds of
discontent? That friendship blossoms whilst love blooms, and compassion falls
on stony ground, even as everything comes up roses?
The world is full of flowers.
Tall poppies and shrinking violets.
A vast, invisible garden.
In time immemorial, my great ancestor was the goddess
Flora, married to Favonius, the gentle summer wind. I have been charged with
tending the garden of mankind. I walk among you, yet you never see me. I live at the end of your street,
work in the office above the shop where you buy your baguette. I go to the same
school as your daughter, write the books your son loves to read, and bless the
bottle of scotch that your grandmother hides at the bottom of her umbrella
stand.
I was born from the white asphodel, seventeen hundred
years ago. I have watched so many changes since. Ideas that have matured, tall
and strong; others that have grown crooked. My pockets hold more seeds than
there are numbers to count them. Seeds of delight, of strength, and of honour;
seeds of destruction, chaos and cruelty.
I guard your nature, but it is not my job to weed it. How
could I? Who decides whether a plant is desirable or not? Is it simply whether
it falls on my land or yours that makes it a weed? All flowers are precious to
the insects and the birds. Even Voodoo Lilies, which breed naught but
bluebottles, are cherished by the robins who feast upon them.
Not everything is merely the value of its self. Each
plant is rooted in a far-reaching ecosystem of ideas and understandings.
The scent of thought is subtle.
On occasion commeth a rare flower. A Witch of Atlas. One
born into such loveliness that all the world is transfixed by her. And always,
it is a her.
There seems no reason to it. She can be born of stony
ground, barefoot in the desert, or into privilege and position. No specific
star announces her birth; no natural disaster follows her death. She simply
is.
It is just such a new breed of flower that I saw in her.
And in her, I saw my downfall. The end of days.
Seventeen hundred years is a very short time in the life
of a god. Not as short as the lives of Man, which run to decades. Or those of
trees, which run to centuries. Certainly not to the flowers of thought which
spark and bloom and die all within a single second.
But to gods, it is short. To the Universe, it never even
happened. And gods must reflect their purpose.
My purpose is to tend the flowers, so I myself must understand
them – the intricacies of their life cycle – and reflect it within my own
nature. I, too, must grow tall. Reach towards the sun. Pollinate, procreate and
perish.
I am divine, but not immortal. She is mortal, yet also
divine. She the stigma, I the anther. Fused, we are the sun. All other plants
shall strain towards our light, and from it I shall be born again.
Unremembering, yet knowing of my purpose. I shall rise once more, as a bulb in
spring, to cultivate a further thousand years.
I said before that my job is not to weed. This is true of
normal times. But think! Had you a garden of infinite acres, across which a
wild meadow blooms, yet only one Jade Vine – well, would you not seek to
protect it? Like the Middlemist Red, would you not house it in glass and lavish
upon it your every waking thought and affection?
She is singular.
And so I am charged with her care, until such time as we
are one.
From the day of her birth, I knew the world was somehow
changed. Twice before this feeling came, but each time the promise of spring
brought only dark clouds and decay. Those two shoots withered on the vine of
their early years, never maturing.
Yet perfection lies dormant in the world. Its fine silk
mycelium woven as a cloak of potential beneath humanity. Given the right
conditions, unbelievable things may occur. Perfection cannot die, though its
patience be infinite.
As is mine.
And neither is perfection pure; her germination a
testament to cross-pollination. A dazzling Passion Flower strangled by Bindweed.
He held her down, unleashing his seed in a burst of Morning Glory. What he left
behind, even the birds would not peck nor scratch. A fertile field turned to
wasteland. Barren in the soul; washed away by the flood and void of light.
Each of her petals fell, one by one, even as her daughter
grew in height and strength. Eventually she closed in on herself. Those leaves
she could no longer raise to protect her child from spring rains, browned and
fractured. Her flesh, like all flesh,
returned to the earth from whence it was formed, and went on in its turn to
form the shapes of many other plants – those hungry for life. And somewhere,
deep at the core of her, that original seed which had germinated, that spark of
brilliance that had been her love of classical music, of string instruments,
that formed her philharmonia – that spark, released of its roots and branches,
rose like a moth towards the moon. A susurration in the summer breeze. A memory
of one who had lived and died amongst all this life and death.
Yet this rare Camellia remained. Never did she cry. Never
did she taint the fresh waters of Heaven with bitter salt. The sun smiled upon
her and she smiled back with equal brilliance. None who looked upon her could
love her less than their own lives. For our ability to love ourselves is the
measure of our capacity to love at all.
Not all attention is wanted. Creeping Vines that seek
others to climb, oppressing them beneath tangled ideas. Stink Horns that spew
nothing but foul thoughts and phallic iconography. Bittersweet, with its beauty
and its charm masking deadly envy. Worse still, Mistletoe, all the time feeding
off the lifeblood of others – drinking their sap dry to feed its own greedy
promotion.
Thoroughly unpleasant growths.
At sixteen, my Dancing Plant had attracted the attention
of a Venus Fly Trap. One who lures women in before closing its trap. Crushing
them lifeless with its jaws. These plants spawn from marshy beginnings.
Children of fleshy thirst, at home in the swamps of humanity, nurturing a
killer instinct.
His name was Harrison. Her form tutor.
He would scatter seeds of knowledge, tend ideas to
fruition, and harvest their fruits for posterity – all the time digesting the
lost and imprudent.
Plants feed off decay, the carrion of creation.
Few hunt.
He was a hunter.
Like all others, he recognised the beauty in her, and was
drawn.
I watched him setting his trap. Pulling his jaws so wide
that all you could see was his smile. Mortal eyes could not focus on the fangs
suspended above that second mouth. He crept around her interest in literature.
Rooted himself in her bookish world. Provided her with papers and articles.
Sunned her with praise and encouragement. Invited her home to his lair, to view
his own collection.
She agreed.
She would see him Friday, on her way home from school.
I watched him in the kitchen, sharpening the pruning shears
with which he would cut my precious blossom from the Tree of Life.
With meticulous care he laced his bed with brambles,
their sharp thorns ready to bloom blood-red roses from her delicate skin. He
prepared tea, succulent with Night Scented Stock, to soothe her to sleep. All
around the room, his thoughts whirled like humming birds, never still for a
second.
I feel no anger, and I feel no pain. Those are your
dominions, not mine. The art of life and death requires neither – it is a
simple construction, all being told. Fly Traps are ten a penny in this
botanical bedlam. Of her, there is only one. No diligent gardener would pull up
a Ghost Orchid to save a Nettle.
I reached deep within my pockets and pulled out sweet
seeds of sorrow. Standing behind him, I breathed in his scent: citric and
zesty, sharp like a razor’s edge. I scattered the seeds above his head and
watched as each blossomed and faded. A firework display of endangered thoughts.
He paused, then reached forward to soap his hands. His
grip slipped on the tap as he turned it and rinsed.
I waited and watched.
Did this man have no regrets in his life? To grow so
twisted upon this rock of ages, had nothing caused his form to bend? Some
abandonment, rejection or repulsive act?
None of my seeds took root.
With every moment that passed, I felt her Lady’s Slippers
stepping closer. Soon, she would be at the door – standing in his yawning gape.
I could not allow it.
In desperation, I dusted the floor with every species of
pepper plant: annuum Cayenne and
Peperoncini, baccatum Lemon Drops, frutescens Tabasco and scorching Chinese
Habaneros. The kitchen grew alight with heat and colour. Beads of sweat appeared
on his brow as each burst into bloom.
Feel these flowers growing. Know that you stand within my
private garden. Know that I will break your spine and use your composted
remains to feed my own desires. For I am nature, truer than your own.
Fleetingly, it seemed to work. He stood in the centre of
my spice field. The crotch of his trousers twitched, his own mind sprouted
fragrant red lilies. He wanted to reach down and satisfy himself. The trap
would spring too early, his dark seed spent. She would come and go from this
valley of death like a lacewing, ignorant of just how close her end of days had
come.
Go now, to your bed of thorns. Pierce yourself upon them
and return cowed, like a Sensitive Plant, leaves closed across your heart. Fold
yourself, oh narcissistic Narcissus.
The peppers withered and dried, and with them his
urgency.
A knock at the door.
He readjusted himself and followed a trail of ivory Virgin's
Bower to the entrance.
Peering through the peephole, I watched a bouquet of
purple flourish above his head. The petals fell invisibly to the floor as he
reached to turn the key.
There she stood, my Welwitschia in the desert.
“Come in,” he smiled.
She did.
I scattered a handful of fragile foreboding beneath her
feet, but the seeds were crushed before they could flower.
“Tea?”
He offered.
She accepted.
Before my eyes, I saw his Nightshade thrive; intertwining
tendrils of death taking possession of this delicate Dianthus.
I tried to plant revulsion in his soul, that he might
change his mind and send her away. My propagations proved futile. His roots ran
deep; his stem rose slippery and strong.
So little time left.
Imagine your entire rose garden lost to blight, with no
hope of ever seeing another bud bloom.
I reached down beneath the earth for that cloak of
perfection.
My nails bled with the effort of pulling it forth into
the light.
The blood of a god, mingled with perfection, is magic
beyond any power known.
The ground shook.
An insidious, insectual buzz began to rise.
Beyond the window, Lightning cracked her tongue and the Erinyes
screamed in righteous indignation.
His face froze. A chill, core-deep; the harshest frost of
the human soul.
Feel winter and be afraid.
Not a single thought blossomed in his brain.
I clutched the fabric of perfection, enacting flawless justice.
His eyes glazed. His hand raised to his struggling heart.
He opened his mouth to scream, and a river of blackfly
erupted. They swarmed across his face, forcing their way into his eyes, his
hair, his nostrils.
As he fell, I released the cloth and the world shifted
into its obvious form.
I had tended the garden. I had weeded. I had removed the
troublesome plant from my spray.
Triumphant, I turned to Her.
She trembled in disbelief. A feathery chime sounded as
from the bells of a Wild Hyacinth.
I held out my hand to her, but she stepped away,
frightened.
A second more and her body separated into a thousand
perfectly formed butterflies – every colour of the rainbow.
“No!” I cried. “No!”
But it was too late. A river of blackfly on the floor,
and an ocean of butterflies in the sky.
All that remained of my rare Koki’o was a simple apple
seed.
Of him – a gnarled, silver twig.
I plucked the seed from the floor and studied it in a
beam of light from the emerging sun.
I should plant her in new soil; water with love and
tender attention.
But where? Who could ever sow such a precious seed in
this vast garden of wild imaginings?
In ancient times it was believed that if a woman
swallowed a butterfly in a goblet of wine, she would bear a child. If I swallow
this seed, would she grow within me? Would I give birth to myself reborn?
I placed her on my tongue, closed my eyes and consumed.
All of existence dissolved.
Within the infinity of everything that is and has ever
been, I feel primordial stirrings. The beginning of ends. An energetic whoosh of air as Nataraja lifts his foot
high above the cosmos. The wind of creation in motion. A breath before the
final dance. The frenzy of a million Dervishic devils spinning uncontrollably
through time and space, bringing into being that which has always been
possible, yet never realised.
I feel myself soften. The hard edges of awareness fray.
In swallowing the seed, I have become its husk. Within
me, something of immense proportions grows. As it expands, it sheds my brittle
bindings. It overtakes me; consumes me. All that I have known is broken down to
fertilise its unstoppable advance.
Saved by perfection, born of unspeakable beauty – she
becomes me and, in doing so, she destroys me.
I could no more resist her than survive the molten Phlegethon.
She flows forth to every extremity of the Universe.
As I fade to oblivion, I weep for my end of days. I see
myself evolve into something greater than anything I could contain. Like all
life, mortal and immortal, I craved this metamorphosis. Every caterpillar holds
within its heart an unquenchable desire for flight. Yet, in taking flight, I ruin
myself. All I can do is watch the entirety of my potential fulfil itself
without me. Discarding me as debris, whilst setting sail for a land that I have
always wished to see.
I sink beneath my own sorrow.
I drown.
*
