Page 11 of Never the Roses

Oneira thought about that. Washing did imply that something had been clean once and that the taint could be removed. She, herself, hadn’t been innocent of destruction since her childish plundering of the Dream. Every action since, every decision, had cascaded from that moment. She could hardly return to a state of childhood innocence, even if she wanted to. “What is the correct analogy?” she asked.

“Ah, now that is the question, Dreamthief.”

It was a question, but notthequestion. At least, so Oneira supposed.

8

The gardener descended steps cut into stone, bracing a hand against the high wall of a narrow stairwell open to the sky. Oneira followed behind, feeling as if she might still be in the Dream, but subsumed fully into the gardener’s dream, one of nighttime gardens lit by silvery moonlight.

“There,” the woman said with pride, waving a hand over what seemed to be a sea of rosebushes, long canes and curved thorns gleaming black-emerald in the faint light of the crescent moon. “They’re not blooming yet. They won’t until midwinter. Did you plan to uproot them or take cuttings to graft some?” She eyed Oneira keenly, and the sorceress knew this to be a test.

“From what I’ve read, they’re more likely to survive uprooted.”

“Nothing likes to be uprooted. The trick is to set new roots. Can you do that, Dreamthief?” She asked the question not unkindly and Oneira knew they no longer discussed roses.

“I don’t know how,” she admitted, realizing in that moment she’d been rootless since she’d been torn from her childhood home. Even in her final refuge, the white walls she’d pulled from the Dream with magic and refined to fit the waking world through her own will, she still felt adrift, wandering between the mountain peaks and the seashore, a living ghost. “I’m hoping to learn,” she added, wondering if this was part of why she wanted the roses. Knowing at the same moment that she couldn’t possibly tend them as they deserved, not if she planned to die.

“Veredian roses are not for amateurs,” the woman notedthoughtfully. “You have the power to take them, but no magic in all the world will enable you to keep them alive, to help them thrive. Dealing death, leveling destruction, stealing from dreams, those things are easy. Creating, sustaining, nurturing—those take true skill.” She reached out and tapped a crooked finger over Oneira’s heart. “They require something of your self that cannot be bought or stolen.”

Oneira bowed her head, humbled, embarrassed. “You are wise. I shall go.”

“Without the prize you chased through the Dream with such determination?”

“It seems the better part of valor,” Oneira noted wryly. “I was following a whim, like a child wishing to take something because it caught her eye.”

The gardener tilted her head, looking at Adsila. “And this one, did you take this pretty bird on a similar whim?”

“No,” Oneira answered, a bit shocked by the implication. She might be prideful, arrogant, and a thief, but she would never steal from a deity. And not only because She Who Eats Bears could squash her like the tiny gnats that bounced soundlessly in the still shadows, but also because even Oneira respected some things as sacred. She ran a light finger over Adsila’s feathers, the kestrel softly trilling in response. “Adsila came to me. I don’t know why.”

“Don’t you?” The woman smiled gently, laying a hand on Oneira’s cheek in a way that felt almost maternal. “You are a troubled child.”

“I have not been a child for many decades.”

“We are all children in our deepest hearts.” She took her hand away and gazed at the crooked fingers. “Sometimes I see my hands and I’m startled, thinking my grandmother is here. In a way, I suppose she is. You may have three of these rosebushes, Dreamthief. My gift to you.”

Oneira caught her breath, taken aback by the surge of relief, of… hope. “What if I can’t tend them properly?”

“You must learn to do so.”

“Perhaps I should learn first.”

“Is that how you learned your sorcery—or did you learn by doing?” The gardener nodded, needing no answer. “Pick out your roses and I shall dig them up for you.” She turned to a door set in the stone wall, opening it to reveal various gardening implements.

“I can dig them up,” Oneira protested. It would be the work of a moment. Adsila left her shoulder, flying to a low branch hanging over the stone wall to observe.

“No magic.” The woman handed Oneira a shovel, then dug around and extracted some rough-woven bags. “That is the primary condition and this you must promise me. With these roses, you must use only the work of your hands and heart.”

So much for Oneira’s plans to manage the microclimate. “I already created a bed for them using magic.”

“Then you must dig a new one. You may keep that shovel.”

And so it was that Oneira put her soft hands to the handle of the shovel, the gardener patiently showing her how to leverage her weight to push into the soil, how to know where the root boundary lay, how to work with both strength and gentle precision. Oneira bundled the roses into their rough cloth bags, their wicked thorns piercing her unscarred skin painfully.

“This, too, is important,” the gardener said, drawing her own callused fingertip over the cuts and punctures. “This is good blood.”

“Because it’s my own?”

“Because of the reason you shed it. I’m surprised you don’t know that, Dreamthief.”

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