The Glasshouse of Poisonous Plants: Gardening Day

Mage Sylvanie,

Would you like to visit my garden?

I am currently re-potting most of my plants. Some are rare varieties that you might find of interest. I would welcome your help in keeping them alive and flourishing.

Gray


Plants: with thorns, with stinging spines, with creeping stems trailing over the warm limestone wall, with soft white hair like Gray's, with bushy branches, with velvety flowers, with scented leaves, with burning sap, with a crown taller than Gray himself or miniaturized to fit in his hand, with roots woven into tight knots, that Gray spoke to while slicing them through with a dagger. Plants, plants everywhere.

Soil: organized into piles by the wall, into buckets, colour-coded, in order. Rich, black soil of the forest, shovelled down from the top of the cliff. The clay of the silver river, sticky and yellow with ochre. Silvery silt. Crushed limestone, crushed shells; the smoky flavour of crushed charcoal; a hint of blood in a cup of tea: rust dust. Fertilizer made with kitchen scraps. A ragbag of peat and moss bought for too much from some far-travelling woodsmen who thought Gray, quite correctly, insane.

Containers: plain, understated ceramic, some carrying the subtle flaws that marked it as a masterpiece; another, his; some, porcelain; one, a gift from one of his clients. Some new. Set aside, the red pottery of the Imilla tribe, with its sharp black lacework, was as much as Gray was willing to concede to this new world invading his garden.

Looking oddly fanciful against their rocky shore, a few cases of glass protected things that were fragile.
(But on which side?)

A man. A shadow of a man moved across the rocky shore. His trousers tied above his knees, his top bare, he waded through knee-deep water between the now mostly-empty glasshouse and the cave in the white limestone cliff above the waterline, carrying the last of the pots at his chest. Under the pot, a dusk-colored bruise with golden edges marked his breastbone. Behind that, white scars criss-crossed his back. Inbetween, he wasn't quite sure what there was.

He knew about plants.

As he walked to the top of the shore, Gray gazed upon his empire. Plants, spread against the cliff, or sheltered in the cave; some, temporarily planted in the gaps in the rock. Some of the plants looked cared for, or else pale, overwatered, underwatered; yellow, white, black. Every black mark felt like a wound in his flesh. He had just awoken to the brutal joy of fighting back.

He would have to scrub the entire Tower with salt and ash afterwards. That was a metaphor for something, although what it was a metaphor for, Gray could not bear to think.

He wondered if the mage that had grown trees for Port Argentium would visit.

A dry branch cut there; a root pruned just a step away. Infested leaves, plucked and set aflame. Painstaking, precise, with a lingering perfection. “We will have to break you,” he said. “We will have to cut your limbs. How beautiful you are,” he spoke to his plants in turn, brushing leaves, bark with his fingers. “I do not care how you feel. I will not allow you to die.”

“Do you like plants, Miss Sylvanie?”

Gray stared curiously at the newcomer. He was used to people being swift when he called for them. He was not used to people being happy about seeing him.

“Gray. Just Gray.” He bowed.

It occurred to him too late that his request did not carry the implications it would in his own culture¹. Perhaps it was better that way. He remembered the girl from the Seminar, bright-eyed and plain-spoken, carrying enough magic that even someone without the sense for it could see it. She spoke to the forest, she'd said, though it no longer talked back. Perhaps...she could...He gestured to his garden.

“Have you ever noticed how many plants share a forest?” He asked. He tilted his head towards the few trees overlooking the cliff. “Those that cherish light grow in meadows; those that hold shade dear, under the canopy.” He did not like forests, but it was important to find common ground. Assuming she was not put off by an old man's rambling. “Near a creek there are plants that need water. Closer, or further. So many kinds. Nooks within crannies. Plants that favour rapids, or still puddles, or even the spray of water by a waterfall. There might be those that can only grown in sand, or acrid bogs.”

When he spoke, he almost saw in front of him the flutter of maps and encyclopedias.

“Between lands, the differences in forms and needs are even starker. Yet I found that by controlling three main factors – light, water and soil – “ he raised three fingers, then pointed, “I could host plants from all over the world in my house.”

For if he could not reach the world he had struggled to escape to, then-

Focus, Gray. Rapport. Maybe she liked flowers?

“Hell's bells, from the warm northern wastes.” He sent the flowers a-clinging. White and velvety, like fanciful wizard hats. “Poison-parsley, typically found alongside cool streams.” Smelled like dill. “Bush-clover. Sandy soil, abundant light.” Purple. “Oath-breaker tree. Bamboo. Peach.” A bonsai. Gray plucked its single fruit, as heavy as the miniature tree's entire trunk, and handed it to Sylvanie.

“A place for each of them, and each of them in their place.” He dreamed. Would she find his approach unnatural? He supposed his perfectly ordered glasshouse was nothing but a dream now.

“The mist was hard on all of them.” There was something too sharp in his voice. Some recovered, but...He looked around. “This place is different, too. Different soil. Different weather.” He couldn't just solve it by feeding them fertilizer, just like forcing a rich meal onto someone who'd suffered unspecified tortures might just kill them faster.

“Can you...speak to plants?” Gray struggled. “No, forgive me, of course you can. Can you...understand them? Sense what they need?”

¹To address someone without the hierarchically appropriate title was a faux pas to an insult; to address someone with no title at all marked them either as close friends or as subhuman. So entrenched was this tradition, that Gray's insistence of using a plain mononym² represented the psychic equivalent of getting close to someone by kicking them in the face.
²Then again, you cannot expect any better from someone who knows what a mononym is.

Where should they start, indeed?

“Sylvanie. I do not intend to kill you.” Gray helpfully explained. He frowned. Had he misunderstood the reason for girl's hesitation? “Isn't that why you have not yet asked for anything in return yet?” He quietly asked. “Because you are afraid? I will, of course, repay you.”

He felt, under his skull, parts of his mind crackling like the barren soil of some pots. He had lost too much to the Clocktower. Gray stared at the girl, uncertain of how to make sense of her.

He felt the old tension in his chest. All that you did not understand could kill you.

“What is it that you wish?” He asked.

What was this girl?

A fool. A saint. Touched in the head. The words came to Gray easily, but they felt too human, too small to contain her. Her face glowed with utter lack of self-preservation. She spoke, words that once assembled into sentences ceased to have meaning to him, as if they turned to dew and splashed down his face.

“I believe that I mentioned my profession during the seminar.” Gray attempted. Had his memory decayed so far as to engage in fantasy? Or... “Ah,” he said. “Is it possible that you are not aware what the word 'assassin' means?”

He hesitated for a moment.

“An assassin is someone whose job is to kill people. Usually, though not always, this is meant to be done in a secretive, untraceable manner.” Gray explained. “An assassin may work on their own, or be in the service of a larger group.”

For a moment, her recalled Anastasia's words, of not needing to share everything. He felt, like pinpricks in his fingertips, that familiar foreboding of fragile things about to break. He raised his hand as if to stop it.

“It is a common misconception, however, that assassins solve all their problems by killing people.” Gray added. “Therefore, you are quite correct in that you should not fear doing you harm for no reason.” The man bowed his head.

He did not show it, but watching the girl be so gentle to his plant did strange things to his mind.

Because she was right.

“Clover bends in rain
Purple. Sandals broken, I
Weave myself a crown.” Gray murmured. Plants were indeed his friends.

A poor translation of an ancient poem. Fragments of fragments of his old world, a little worse for the wear each time he reached for them, just like the humble bush-clover with its hay-like scent. Back in the Archipelago, it would dot road edges and meadows, unnoticed by all but goats and poets. Back there, its leaves were not yellow.

Plants had stayed with him in the Tower when he had been stuck as unwilling Master.

“This one is perfectly safe to touch.” Gray spoke. If Sylvanie looked like she was about to prod something dangerous, he would grab her before she could.

“For others...You should put on gloves.” He pointed to a pile of knick-knacks by a water barrel. There would be the soft leather gloves he'd had made for Nina, a lifetime ago. “You can wear my kosode, too.”

Gray's eyes widened. There was no justice in the world, he felt, for who could be less deserving of Sylvanie's empathy than him?

Yet, once again, she stumbled upon the truth. Truths that he had taken a lifetime to start admitting to himself. She spoke her hopes that he would hurt people less.

“I hope so too,” Gray said, to placate her, and it felt like sharing a secret.

The secret was that Gray could not lie.

He guided Sylvanie to the pile of equipment, and spoke of safety. Most plants here, even the poisonous ones, he explained, were actually quite safe to handle, if one did not eat them, did not touch their eyes or food, and washed their hands afterwards. He mentioned a few that might be useful for the infirmary, in case she was interested. Yet something lingered on Gray's mind. “Sylvanie,” he started.

“I am worried about you” The assassin struggled to find his words. It was the way she was still there. “We all have places in our minds that need time to heal. I do not mean to nag at them. Still...to avoid thinking things which aren't 'fun' can be dangerous...It can be lonely.”

In a way, she felt like a mirror image of him. Except that he had once believed that all in life was numbness, and that its meaning was pain.

“There exist...techniques,” he continued. “Just as guards perform exercises -like these -,” he said, leaning against the barrel for a one-handed push-up, “in order to strengthen their bodies, there are exercises to strengthen the mind. To help it bear weight, emotional weight, more safely, when it needs to.” Gray bowed his head. “Think about it. Take all the time you need. Let me know if it is something you would like to discuss further. And for now...”

For now, they would talk plants. Gray enjoyed sharing his knowledge, though he was even more excited about seeing Sylvanie at work. He watched her with almost superstitious awe, afraid that his own plants would beg to be taken away from him due to his neglect and abuse. One or two, Gray knew, with a twinge of guilt, he had gnawed almost to the stem. The ones good for numbness. Sometimes, there would be gaps, moments where he would stare at a pot, unable to speak. Unable to remember name, purpose, or even that it had been in his glasshouse. He could not dwell too much on it. That way, waited things he could not bear-

-What was he thinking about, again?

As their work was reaching a natural endpoint, Gray went to the equipment pile. He moved it to the side, item by item, in perfect order, then lifted a flat stone beneath. From it he picked up a box, about the size and shape of a book. He drew his fingers along its lacquered surface, following the deep, swirling veins, that a butterfly of inlaid mother-of-pearl seemed to fly on. Gray stared at the box for minutes. What if what he would find inside would just bring him more heartache?

“Sylvanie...have you ever...worked with magical plants?” He finally asked.

His voice cracked.

Gray opened the box with the tips of his fingers.

It was empty.

Or so it seemed, until Gray tilted the box and a small, hollowed-out thing rolled around, through several decades' worth of dust.

“Once, I happened to be in a forest that was rumoured to be sapient. Thinking,” Gray added, after a pause. “A seed fell on my head. I kept it. Forgot about it. One wonders if anything might grow of it.” He paused. “It is, I imagine, too late.”

The man offered Sylvanie the precious box. The seed looked a bit like a ash-covered acorn, or at least it would have when fresh. Now, its shell had dried out so much that it had caved in, in places. A closer look would reveal that there was still life in it, and magic, but barely a spark. It was too weak. The protective walls of its shell had hardened too much; if it tried to sprout, it would starve while breaking itself against the walls of its prison.

“Curiously,” Gray pondered, “I have received a reflection of the same seed in a dream.” He shook his hand to slip something from his sleeve, and a silvery thing dropped into his palm before the man could remember he was not wearing a shirt.

This acorn gleamed silver. It glowed. Its cap was not a single piece, but rather a soft, spiralling, feathery thing, and the moment one stopped focusing on it, it started growing translucent.

He stretched out his palm. “You might find it of interest.”

It was more than a dream. It was a memory. And Gray did not know what he was offering.

...black-gloved fingers held onto the hilt, too thin in comparison to it. So heavy, that sword which he was bound to bear.

The blade was stabbed down into a root. Once again, the only way he could get his answers was through harm. Yet as the consciousness of the tree reached his through the newly-found conduit, it was not with anger that it enveloped Gray and his fear, but curiosity and care. The complexity of a consciousness layered in years was almost too much to endure.

The answer the boy eventually got would not help him. But that quiet moment, in the lacework of the great tree's shadow, did.

'Even if no one escaped the Clocktower, I will,' Gray told the tree.

'When you do, plant me.' The ancient tree said. Something hit Gray in the forehead.

From the deepest despair shines the brightest hope. That was what the dream-seed was – hope. Pure and burning, almost too much to hold. And like one of the strange magnetic stones one might find on a ship, the dream-seed seemed to orient itself towards its real counterpart.

It was a strange question to ask. But Gray didn't catch that. His eyes were wide, taking in the light of the dreamseed and reflecting it from all the broken pieces of his soul.

“Yes.” He said.

Perhaps something was meant to happen. Perhaps Sylvanie was to blame. Perhaps his hand shook. As the man picked up the box, the two seeds slipped, rolling closer to each other, spinning faster, once, twice, rattling on the wood while the world stopped. They hit each other – and kept going. Then the dreamseed vanished.

No – the real one had vanished. No. Gray breathed slowly. He reached out with his fingers. If he thought of the dreamseed, he could see it, run his fingertip across its silvery smooth surface. If he narrowed his eyes to reality, he could touch the dried-out husk. Neither was fully gone in either case, merely patiently waiting in the corner of his vision. Neither was fully inside the other.

“I do not like magic I cannot understand.” Gray told the seed.

He knelt down. With his hands he scooped earth into a misshapen pot. It was an ugly pot. He had made it. At the end, he placed the strange pulsing seed onto the surface as if it were made of glass. Perhaps he added water, but if you asked him later, he wouldn't be able to recall. He pushed it down with one finger. To cover it fully felt anathema, as if he'd bury himself alive.

Foolish. A thing already dead and one that never was alive. How would that amount to anything?

“Do you think it will sprout?” Gray asked Sylvanie, not looking at the girl.