The House of Flame Lilies Ch. 02

He turned back to the emerald, spring grounds. The high, dazzling sun laid its rays over the garden, a flash of light caught Sparrow's eye.

There.

The hothouses were just across a stripe of budding flower beds. They were connected together in a series of interlocking bubbles made from hexagonal panels, like a beehive crafted entirely of glass. Sparrow had never seen so much glass in his life. Put all the glass he had seen throughout his existence into a pile and it couldn't make half of one hothouse. They glimmered so brightly they hurt to look at, seemingly spun from the sunbeams. Through the veil of startling light, he spied bursts of vibrant colour. He beamed like a child and raced to them, reaching the walls quickly and pressing himself against the glass, squashing his nose and staring into the luscious tangle of green and red and yellow. It was a wild jungle, he half expected to see a tiger prowling the perimeter. Leaves fanned and vines spiralled and petals unfurled and fluttered. A cacophony of plant life that Sparrow had never even imagined crawled up the walls and spilled over surfaces and littered the ground. The glass dome was erupting with life - joyous, raucous, rebellious life, festival music made flesh.

He felt eagerly along the smooth walls until he found a delicate, metal handle. He turned it gingerly, holding his breath. He'd justified his wanton exploration of the manor with his desire to find Vestalia again. Now he was so desperately curious that even that fell from his mind. He bit his lip, turned the handle, and opened the door.

He was hit by a wall of humidity. The dense air of the hothouse gushed over him and filled his lungs, drenching his senses in a heavy, green, fruity perfume. He closed the door behind him. His mouth hung open, the delicious, overpowering air weighing down his tongue. Green flourished and unravelled on all sides, the only space to move through it a narrow, sand-coloured path winding into the crowd of foliage. Flowers in the shapes of trumpets and lips and flames and gowns splattered the green with chaotic colour. Their petals were huge and flamboyant, some strangely speckled, some nodding sleepily, some perking up to the sun, like alert lizards. Squat, spiny succulents released medicinal scents into the air, glistening with water droplets. Vines cloaked the ceiling, but the sun still came through in shafts, spotlighting ostentatious flowers and spiked bracts.

A spot of blue fluttered in front of Sparrow's face. He gasped and stumbled back, blinking it into focus. It was a butterfly. But not the dainty little things he knew from summer in the mountains. This butterfly was the size of his palm, its regal wings painted in elaborate patterns. It danced over his head and up into the vines, a sliver of sapphire. Then more emerged, spiralling in a cloud. A parade of butterflies populated the hothouse, fragments of rainbows blowing about like scraps of folded paper. They brought the space to even more breath-taking life.

Sparrow stood stunned. Then he clapped his hands to his mouth and whirled around on his heel, making the colour all swirl around him, until he felt like a spoon in a big, glass bowl of candy mixture. He steadied himself, heart still light and whirring. He set off down the winding path.

The humidity was so thick, he felt he was wading more than walking. His legs slowed, his breathing came in hefts, wisps of his hair gummed to the back of his neck. He ambled dreamily through the jungle. The snowy mountains outside hazed in the glare of sun on the glass. He drifted from all he'd ever known, resettling in this new world of exquisite beauty and delight and curiosity.

A new scent leaked into the perfume. It was incongruous, something like turned, damp earth, with a faint undercurrent of rotting meat. He frowned. His ears pricked up. He could hear the snip of shears. His heart bucked. His breath snagged. He ducked behind a spray of green. Cautiously, slowly, he peeked over the leaves around the bend in the path.

There was another man in the hothouse. This man was much, much bigger than Sparrow, almost the size of a bear, with massive shoulders, a mop of black, curly hair, and a short, thick, black beard. He was dressed in a grey shirt that hung open down to the middle of his chest, pasted to his barrel torso with sweat, which also laced his stern brow. He was pruning the long leaves encroaching on an eruption of familiar, blazing, red flowers with petals like tendrils of fire.

Flame lilies.

Sparrow's eyes widened on the imposing man, a void of waxy pallor and darkness in the explosive colour around him. He looked stocky and brusque, but his hands were hypnotic, moving with lightness and deftness around the plants, treating them with the utmost care, barely brushing them as he slipped his fingers through them to clip away the excess. His features were heavy and severe, but his eyes seemed serene, almost dull, and his mouth was relaxed.

"You can come out," he said in a low, vibrating voice.

Sparrow jumped, his cheeks prickling. He straightened up and rounded the bend in the path fully, folding his arms sheepishly across his middle. He stood before the immense man, like a boy facing his headmaster.

"Sorry," he murmured anxiously. "I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be in here."

The man kept snipping away at the foliage. "Then why are you?"

Sparrow's cheeks smouldered. He scratched his elbow. "I couldn't help it," he replied awkwardly. "It's so beautiful."

The man's eyes flicked to him, black and lightless. He regarded Sparrow for a long, chilling moment. "That's good."

Sparrow quirked an eyebrow.

The man chuckled with the sound of lumps of coal being broken. "As the groundskeeper, hearing something in the grounds is so beautiful it made it impossible not to trespass is something of a compliment."

Sparrow let out a breath and smiled.

"That said," the man continued, a flashing pair of pruning shears emerging from behind a wide leaf, "I also deal with trespassers, so it does make more work for me."

Sparrow gulped and stepped back. He put up his hands. "I'm... I'm not a trespasser, really. I mean, I suppose, maybe here, but I'm a guest in the house, I stayed the night, Mistress Vestalia knows I'm here, I swear, I can..."

The groundskeeper's chuckle deepened. He waggled the shears tauntingly at Sparrow to quiet him, then went back to his task. "Calm yourself, lad. I'm sure you can wander as you please."

Sparrow sucked in his lips, but dropped his hands. He rocked back on his heel and folded one hand over his forearm. He eyed the man nervously. "I was looking for her."

"The mistress?"

"Yes."

"She keeps to her room most days."

"Oh."

The shears clicked.

"I see she's dressed you up like a little doll," the man said abruptly.

Sparrow blinked. He looked down at his fine waistcoat and rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't think I've ever owned something like this," he replied bashfully. He looked back up into the man's stern face. "Not to say I think I own it now!" he hurried to add, "I know it's borrowed..."

"No, it's yours." The man shrugged and looked back at the flowers. "She likes giving gifts, that's what it will be."

"Where did she even get something my size so quickly?" Sparrow wondered aloud. "She said she lives alone. Um, except for you, but..." He glanced between their visibly different sizes.

"She has guests quite often, someone probably left it," the groundskeeper said.

His voice rolled down Sparrow's ear canals like marbles. Sparrow peered at him and tried to chase the sound of his voice to something nagging in the back of his mind.

The man paused and wiped a streak of sweat from his under his tumbling fringe with the back of his hand. He glanced at Sparrow's sharp look. "What?"

"Sorry." Sparrow shook himself back to shyness. "Your voice is familiar."

The man huffed out through his beaked nose. "Perhaps you heard it when we found you."

Sparrow perked up. "You were there?"

He nodded.

Sparrow's heart fluttered. "Thank you!" he said hastily.

"What for?"

"You saved my life."

The man made a bitter sound and turned half away, leaning around the tips of the crinkling flame lily petals to reach another area of overgrowth. "She saved your life," he said blandly, "I told her we should leave you."

There was a stiff pause.

The man cleared his throat. "No offence."

"None taken."

"I thought you were dead."

Sparrow couldn't help but smile, the sheer miracle of it seemed so much more amazing in the haven of the hothouse. "So did I."

A chunk of foliage fell with a loud rustle. The groundskeeper's stony voice dropped. "You should have been, by all laws of nature." He reached and ripped out the loose greenery and cast it at his feet. His voice dropped again, the rumble echoing off the glass. "Then again, I'm in no position to uphold natural law."

Sparrow flexed the tension out of his hands. He made his voice light and sunny. "I don't know, you seem to be doing a good job here."

The man did not respond to his lightness. He looked into the bright tangle, as if staring into the eyes of an ill omen that he had long awaited. His eyes flicked up and down, but caught no sun. It was as if his pupils were made of felt. "Hothouses aren't natural. They cut climates out of their rightful home and displace them. They prolong life where it was fated to die." He took a slow breath, but it didn't move his great chest. It was almost like he breathed by rote, not with any need for air. "Everything here should be dead. All the life here is artificial."

Sparrow's palms itched. Something inside him pushed against the man's words, but he couldn't really feel anything but bliss in the heady heat and stifling aroma. He lifted his hand to touch a pink bloom with his fingertips, satin and sweet, and leaned into the lightness in his tone. "I don't think there's such a thing as unfated life. I think if it's alive, no matter how, then it should be." His voice floated a little, beginning to speak more to himself than his companion. "Life is a gift. We shouldn't ever want things to die, not in some vain assumption we know what nature ought to be. If we use a few tricks, then I think that's fair. That's all medicine is. All wearing furs in winter is. And weapons and houses. Tricks to stay alive. To keep each other alive. Because living is the only thing nature really tells us to do." He bent to the pink flower and sucked its intoxicating scent. He tilted back from it and let his fingers fall, the petals ruffling in his wake.

The groundskeeper had lowered his hands too, the shears hanging at his broad thigh. "You're mortal," he said quietly. "You have to accept that everything has its time."

Sparrow shrugged, gaze still roving around the hothouse. "There's peace in that, I suppose. But, sometimes I think peace is just what people like to call powerlessness." His hands flexed again, itching hotter. "If we have power, we should use it, don't you think?" He rotated his wrists and rubbed his palms idly on his hips to quell the tingling in them. He looked back up to the man brightly. "Like you have the power to keep these plants alive."

The groundskeeper cocked his head and looked at Sparrow questioningly down his proud nose, the weight of his brow even greater from the raised angle. "And what power do you have?"

Sparrow felt a string pluck in his stomach. He shrugged again, his reply riding out on a casual exhalation. "To help. To serve. Where I can."

"If you're looking to serve then you're looking for something to have mastery over you. I think most people would say that's having your power taken away."

"Depends on the master."

The man's face softened.

Sparrow went on, thinking aloud. "These plants have needs and they demand you fulfill them, they require your service. In return, they nourish you in a different way." He met the hollow eyes. "Right?"

The man regarded him unreadably for a long moment. The leaves stirred and the gravel path crackled under the shuffle of Sparrow's boots.

"There's a lot of thoughts in that little head," the man said eventually, the corner of his mouth rising and vanishing into his moustache.

Sparrow's muscles unwound. He smiled and twisted his braid in his hands.

The man inclined his head. "My name is Cyrus."

Sparrow mirrored the gesture, bowing a little deeper. "Sparrow."

"Well, Sparrow." A bone-white grin broke out through the thick, black beard. "Would you like to learn a little about hothouses?"

*

Sandu dragged her hands through the bowl of bloodied water, the stains on her fingers sloshing into it and reddening it further. Behind her, the priest droned over Andrei's supine body, Andrei's chest rising shallowly with thin, rattling breaths. She glanced over to them, drying her hands on a rag. Father Gabriel looked back at her with round, soft eyes. He gave her a reassuring nod. He laid his hand over Andrei's, trembling on the table. He looked solemnly back to the young man, his Latin mumbling rose a fraction in clarity and passion.

Sandu dropped the rag, shrugged on her coat, and trudged out of the door.

Mihail sat on her doorstep, his rough cloak bundled around his bulky shoulders, the fur collar brushing his stubbled chin, still streaked with blood. A brown-beaded rosary twined around his unstill fingers. The crucifix dangled in the blue, morning light, spinning like a coin under his clasped hands. His pale eyes stared unseeingly straight ahead. Sandu stepped around him and sank to his side, the damp stone of the step sending a slow ooze of cold up her spine. She settled herself, then lifted her hand and closed it over Mihail's. His eyes roved to hers, wet and full of pain.

"Is he...?" His voice frayed and died.

Sandu squeezed his hands and shook her head. "He lives. Father Gabriel is praying over him now. He performed Last Rites, in case..." She faltered and cleared her throat. "But the wound is stitched and there's no fever. He's strong. He'll pull through."

Mihail's agony was raw on his face, but he set his mouth and nodded. He looked back out to the town square, to the mountains cresting like waves over the church tower.

"Tell me what happened." Sandu commanded softly.

Mihail flinched. His hands stirred under hers, the rosary beads strumming on the tendons in her palm. He took a deep breath and huffed out gruffly. "We set out for a simple trip, basic patrols, like you assigned. It was all going smoothly, nothing to report. Then two days ago we were hit by a blizzard."

Sandu frowned. "A blizzard? At this time of year? I know the snow hasn't thawed off the heights, but..."

"Didn't you have it?" Mihail asked, surprised. "It was furious, it seemed to us to cover the world."

She shook her head. "No. It was colder here the last couple of days than we'd like in spring, but no. Where were you?"

"About a mile off from where that goat herding village is."

Sandu frowned deeper. "That's strange. Alright, so you were hit by a blizzard."

Mihail nodded and went on, grinding his teeth in stiff pauses. "It was a raging storm. We could barely see our hands in front of our eyes, even in the forest. So we found a cave and made camp. The blizzard went on 'til nightfall. We didn't want to travel in darkness."

Sandu nodded approval.

"We should have." Mihail's tone turned chilling, haunted. He gulped, a tremor passing beneath Sandu's touch. When he spoke again, it was with a breathy shiver in his voice, as if the memory was pressing on his lungs. "Something... Something came into the cave. The other four were sleeping and I was keeping watch. The fire was burning low, barely casting light. I leaned in to stoke it and, as I looked up from the flare of embers, I saw a pair of red eyes light up at the entrance."

Sandu kept her face still, but her listening sharpened.

Mihail swallowed again and sped up slightly, as if now he was trying to outrun the memory. "At first, I thought it was just the ghosts of the embers in my eyes. But I peered through the blackness and those eerie, angry red lights seemed to swell, as if going large with hunger on seeing five men. My first thought was this: we are cornered in the cave. My second thought was this: it knows that. And my third: it intended that."

Sandu leaned forward. "You think it called down the blizzard and trapped you?"

"I don't know. I just know that those red eyes staring into me through the dark, they were intelligent. They were scheming. I wanted to rouse the others, to shout them awake and ready to fight. But the longer I looked into those eyes, the more of my power left me. I was drained of all ability to act. It was like I was imprisoned inside myself. I railed and raged inside my body to draw my weapons, to raise the alarm. I could not. I did nothing. I..." He trailed off.

For a long moment he stared into the distance, looking ready to be sick. Sandu could feel him trembling in her grasp, and the tension in his fists as he held himself together. She could feel the bulges in his fingers where he was gripping the rosary so tight it cut into his flesh. The sunlight trickled from the white mountains into the puddles in the cobbles, pale light shimmering around them and bringing the haggard lines of Mihail's face into sharp relief.

"What happened next, Mihail?" Sandu prompted softly.

Mihail sucked his lips into a thin, white line. When he released them, they were quivering. He spoke barely above a whisper. "The fire went out."

Sandu stayed very still.

"The fire went out. And then the only light was from those eyes. I heard a low, cold snarl, so cruel and greedy in its tone that I felt it in my veins. And then..." He stopped, taking shuddering breaths.

"And thenwhat?"

One more long, quaking rasp. "I don't know. I couldn't see. I couldn't move. I couldn't speak. There was a bestial growl. The packhorses both screamed. And then I could hear and feel a chaos of motion in the cave. Ripping and choking and scrambling, drawing swords, howling and shrieking and praying. The men called out each other's names. My name. I couldn't reply. I tried, I did, I..." His throat seemed to seal shut.

"It's alright, Mihail, just tell me as plainly as you can."

"I heard bodies flung against the rock walls, the sounds of struggle. The horses kept screaming and screaming, splitting my ears. Everything around me was clamour and I could feel the wafting heat of wild movement near me. Still I couldn't move. And then a horrible crack. And a cry of pain. And two of fear. And the heavy drag of bodies on stone. And a flurrying. And then stillness and silence, save for the snorting of one horse and the groans of Andrei in the darkness. He coughed out my name. And at last I could reply. And move. I hurried to relight the fire with my tinderbox. The sight that I found in the firelight was... It ripped through me." He bowed his head, a deep furrow crevicing his brow, like he was trying to wring the vision out of his mind. A bitterness tinged his voice. "Sorin and Daniel gone. David dead, his neck snapped and torn, lying like a bloodied rag doll. And Andrei on the floor, his stomach gashed. One of the horses, Brutus, lay dead in the mouth of the cave, his great neck split open and spilling blood. Copper was thrashing against her tether. I raced to Andrei and did what I could. I left Brutus. I didn't want to, but..."

Sandu felt her guts in a series of tight, angry, nervous knots. Sweat burned on her back. She grasped Mihail's hands firmly in both her own and caught his eye and held it forcefully. "You brought David. And you saved Andrei's life."

Mihail looked desperately at her. "No! It's my fault! If I'd sounded the alarm, if I'd fought, if..."

"Hush. No ifs." She put a hand on the back of his neck, feeling it tense. She held him hard, so he couldn't turn from her, and drove her gaze into his, speaking sternly. "This was no earthly creature. Did you see anything of it, other than its eyes?"