The House of Flame Lilies Ch. 06

He blinked his eyes back into focus. He had to remember that this was what her kind did. They had demonic powers that took the horror of what was happening to you away and made you willing, made you damn yourself. Think of that man, the man he'd seen die, the man he'd seen beg for death. Would she do the same to him? Just when the whole wonderful wideness of the world had whispered to him? Just when he'd lost so many that he loved? Would she freeze him in that emptiness? Make him callous? Make him cold?

"I adore how deeply you feel, Sparrow."

"Are you going to work, Lad, or just kneel there like a penitent?" Cyrus' gruff voice prodded Sparrow in the back.

He perked up and looked around, head still a little fuzzy. Cyrus was reaching overhead to a cascade of spiralling vines that braided into his rough curls, yellow cups kissing his brow. He was clipping them back to prevent them curtaining the ring of dracaena around a bulbous crowd of waxy succulents.

Sparrow nodded and went back to his task, plucking the brown, withered leaves from the bursts of colour in the bed. "Is it dying?" he asked solemnly.

Cyrus paused and lowered his arms, tugging the rolled ends of his sleeves back above his elbows. His reply came in a gentle rumble. "No, no, it's just shedding some old matter. It's part of growth. It won't die if the root is healthy."

Sparrow's tone darkened. "Even though it's been torn up out of its home?"

The groundskeeper sighed through his nose, like the final gases leaving a corpse. "What did we talk about the other day? Nothing here is at home. But good earth and a kind hand, it re-roots easily. And this is a much closer tended place than anywhere out in the wild, chances are it will flourish here where otherwise it would have merely survived. That's the pride of the hothouse." His sheers snicked.

Sparrow's gaze drifted away and floated deeper into the tumult of foliage. In the drench of colour like the ruins of a demolished rainbow, one flash caught his eye - a startling, blue butterfly, so bright it was like a shard of sun-streaked sky. It twirled merrily about, hopelessly distracted by the huge array of treats, sweet nectar whispering into the air and making it drunk and giddy. The flowers it neared seemed to perk up, raising their puckered lips for a kiss.

"You're my butterfly. I brought you into my hothouse to keep me bright and alive. You're the new life this little environment needed."

His heart hiccuped. His face heated. He hastily pushed himself to keep pruning the flower bed. His hands skated through luxurious silk and thick growth. Petals unfurled around his fingers and spread like dark stains, their golden centres gleaming.

"You like beauty, don't you?"

Beauty. The beauty of the earth and elements. Of the body. The beauty of song and sex and spring awakening from snow. Of fruit. Of glass. Of water. Of fire. Of the ruby glisten between spread thighs. Of laughing and sighing and the moment fabric pulled from flesh. The kind of beauty that lived in all the senses and made them kings over the soul. The kind of beauty that the priest always told him was paltry in comparison to Heaven. But he'd never truly been able to believe him.

"You're mine, Sparrow. Mine to keep. Mine to gaze at. Mine to spoil. Mine to fuck."

He shuddered and drove his fingers into the soil, feeling it burrow under his fingernails, wet and warm and firm.

If he left, if he lived a good life, would Heaven be worth it? Would anything feel, well,feel ever again?

"You'll always feel like this, Carissime. We've met. We've marked each other. This is your truth now. Wherever you go."

How pitiable. How laughable. Of course he was turning these questions over and over in his mind. She wanted him to. This was her enchantment. She'd made him want. And now he couldn't un-want. It was a curse. It was a possession.

Wasn't it?

He sank his hands deeper into the dirt and grounded himself, rooted himself like one of the flowers, clung to the wonderfully alive earth and breathed its fresh mist and let the din of rain fill his skull. He exhaled roughly. He thoughtlessly grabbed at a brown leaf on a waxy plant with bright red, round flowers, like blood drops. Pain whisked across his fingertip. He hissed loudly and snatched it back. There was a glistening wound on the muddy pad of his finger, just like that he'd paid the empty knight to be allowed into the nightmare dungeon. He peered and saw that the thick stem of the plant was riddled with tough, needle thorns.

"What is it?" Cyrus' gruff voice echoed a little on the glass.

Sparrow's pulse thumped, smarting in his finger. How could he let himself bleed in front of someone in this house? He closed his fist with a wince and whipped his hand behind his back. "Nothing."

Cyrus frowned softly. He stepped away from the cascade of vines and approached Sparrow with a few heavy, relaxed paces. He dropped his sheers with a thud into a flower bed and held out his hand. "Let me see."

Sparrow froze and watched him vigilantly, tracing his white oak face for signs of hunger. Cyrus stood still as a mountain. Sparrow very slowly brought his hand out and uncurled it. The blood had printed onto his palm. His heart pounded, legs tensed to spring away.

"You've pricked your finger," Cyrus said impassively.

Sparrow withdrew his hand again. He recoiled backwards. "Are you like her?"

A look of understanding crossed Cyrus' face. He seemed to purposefully adjust his posture to lean back a little, to look unaggressive. He shook his head, deep voice sombre. "I am akin. But you're safe to bleed."

Sparrow shrank further, stomach prickling. Cyrus huffed through his nose. He put his hand in the pocket of his britches and pulled out a clean, crumpled handkerchief. He tossed it to Sparrow. It fluttered through the air and landed on Sparrow's knee. He looked at it a little hesitantly, then picked it up, rubbed the dirt from his hands, and pressed the light wound into it. A dull throb went down his finger. He raised his eyes warily. "Akin?"

Cyrus looked evenly at him. His beard twitched with a slight, wry smile. "Oh dear, it's those questioning eyes you do so well."

Sparrow's cheeks pinked. He drew his shoulders up innocently.

Cyrus chuckled like a roll of distant thunder and shook his head, his shaggy curls jostling. "God's teeth, it's like turning your back on a wounded fawn." He closed the gap between them and hunkered down next to Sparrow, who was sat sprawled among the flowers; an injured pixie beside a troll just turning back to flesh from stone. His faint, compost and must scent buffeted Sparrow. He retrieved his pruning sheers and set to work trimming the spiked flower. "Don't shirk."

Sparrow jumped and scrambled back onto his knees to keep plucking at the untidiness with one hand, the flowers rustling as he picked up speed. He sneaked glances at Cyrus as he worked. The man moved like a shovel going through earth.

"This one's called crown of thorns," he explained, not looking away from the plant that had stuck Sparrow.

For a brief moment, Sparrow was in the small, plain church of his village, smelling burning tallow and staring past Father Petru to the bright wreaths of embroidered flowers calling him to the outdoors, waiting for the droning sermon to be over so he could run along the river.

"I'm a ghoul."

Sparrow looked up.

Cyrus was turning away from him again as he raised his head, as if he had been watching him and noticed him slide away. His hulking shoulder blades flexed under his shirt, rising awkwardly like broken roof tiles being lifted away by workmen. His next phrase came muted through closed lips. "An eater of the dead."

Sparrow went cold. He stared wide-eyed.

"The living have nothing to fear from me, so long as I'm not starved. I am a scavenger."

Those words echoed in Sparrow's sharp ears. Fractured pieces of Cyrus in the cell slotted into place in his mind. A cold realisation thunked nauseatingly into his gut. "That's why you... in that prison..."

Cyrus nodded, still looking only at the crown of thorns. "A ghoul is a good companion if you need to dispose of bodies."

Colder. "So, that's how it works between you..."

"She gets the blood, I get the meat."

Sparrow gawped. "You... you defile the final rest..."

"I do."

"But you seem so..." His mouth plugged.

Cyrus glanced at him unreadably, his voice impassive. "I am more than the manner of my survival."

Sparrow flushed abashedly. He returned to working with more urgency. He blinked hard against the imaginings threatening behind his eyes. Teeth. So many teeth. Block, yellow teeth sinking into grey, mottled skin. Disturbed earth. Broken crosses. Mangled limbs. His stomach stirred like a toad waking in a pond. He gulped in perfumed air and fixed his gaze on the glimmer of petals. Rain clattered on the hothouse. Blades crunched on dead flesh.

"How long have you been together?" He asked the question before he thought it.

Cyrus' shoulder blades slotted back into place. His voice lifted a little. "A long time. Much longer than you've been alive."

"How did you meet?"

"Haunting the same cemetery." Wistfulness leaked into his tone. "I was digging up a fresh grave and she walked up behind me and said, 'You're lucky. Their mourners were coming, but I got to them first.'" A wilting head of petals crumbled away around his hand. "I knew I looked like a stray dog. I wanted to bury myself in the earth to stop her looking at me. I said, 'Well, it's been a long time of bad fortune. Maybe I was owed.'" He paused. He took one of his false breaths. "And that made her smile."

Her smile bloomed across Sparrow's vision, more vibrant and sweet than any of the flowers crowding his knees. It was a gift, given so freely, like everything else she gave so freely.

"The mountains are treacherous, what defence do we have against them but our kindness?"

But despite that, it felt earned. Every goodness felt like a reward, a boon from a patron, a badge of honour. Nothing had ever made him feel so proud as the shining sincerity of her smile, as the warmth of her kindness shared with such trust, such enjoyment.

His heart felt suddenly gripped in iron. A fresh wave of tears surged so violently that his eyeballs felt as seized as his heart, like someone was pressing their thumbs into the sockets to blind him. He stood swiftly and swept from the flower bed, blinking hard and keeping his simmering face turned away from Cyrus. He slipped into the shadows of huge, dark, glossy leaves like the paddles of oars. He took a few heavy, steadying breaths. Each one shuddered through him and made the iron grip tighter. He pressed his fingertips into his eyes and sniffed, nectar sweetness dripping down his sinuses. The burgeoning tears receded, leaving his chest feeling deflated and his hands trembling. He stuffed them into the saggy folds of the huge shirt and brought his eyes up into the jumble of green. His heart stopped. The fanning leaves in front of him were crowned with a thread tangle of fine vines effervescing with dozens of erupting flowers, their petals crinkled and bleeding gold into scarlet, each one like a lick of fire plucked from a wild blaze.

Flame lilies.

He gazed transfixed. They eddied over the vines like flares dancing along the wicks of dynamite. He could almost feel heat coming off them, burning his face. His tongue tingled. He sucked his lip.

"They're extremely poisonous. I think I like them better for that. Beautiful, bold, bringing warmth and brightness. But deadly. Dangerous. Poetic, no?"

Wasn't that what everyone had thought of him in the end? Pretty. Sweetness and light. Dangerous. Monstrous. A creature of nightmare, bound up in death.

Hadn't she given him a chance?

A lilting, grumbling music rolled under the drum of rain.

"Passer, deliciae meae puellae quicum

ludere, quem in sinu tenere..."

Sparrow swivelled to look at the crouched Cyrus, bare feet padding on the heated tiles. "What are you singing?"

Cyrus halted a little abruptly, as if he hadn't realised he had been. He cleared his throat and shrugged. "Oh, an old song." He lifted his tar black eyes. "The lament of a man who loves a woman, but is jealous because she dotes on a little sparrow and not on him."

A pink butterfly pranced between them. "So, you're in love with her?"

Cyrus' prominent brow lowered, further casting his eyes into darkness. He looked solemnly at the dusting of earth across the path. His body fell so still, moss might have grown on him. He contemplated carefully for a long moment. Sparrow thanked fortune for the rain that drowned his shallow, nervous breathing.

"It's difficult," Cyrus said at last to the ground. "A ghoul is little more than an animated corpse. I do not feel in the way you understand feeling." His coarse fingers reached out and brushed a cauldron of blue and green by his boot. "I smell this flower. I logically understand its scent, my body functionally receives it. But I don't experience it. It doesn't affect me. Not deeply, not as it should." His voice droned dull, flat, resigned, his fingers still wandering listlessly in the petals. "The sun shines, I am cold. The wind blows, it does not bite. I understand somewhere in my mind that I love our mistress. I do not experience that in the way you do."

The thought of such an existence loomed over Sparrow like a devouring, despairing beast. Then another awful question struck him. It slipped from him timidly. "Is that how it is for her?"

Cyrus' brow smoothed. He spread his hands, a patchwork of scrapes and nubs and calluses. "Her kind does not have the same undeath as mine. But I could not tell you what love means to such an immortal."

Sparrow looked back to the inferno of lilies. "Well, I couldn't tell you what it means to a mortal." He reached out and trailed his fingertips tenderly along the satin petals.

"Careful, it's toxic," Cyrus gruffed.

"Not to touch," Sparrow replied dreamily. "It likes to be touched."

"It's no bad thing to need warmth."

For a long, suspended moment, his body felt liquid. Then he solidified again. Truly solid, for the first time since waking. Present. Energised.

He stepped away from the flame lilies and faced Cyrus with his shoulders square. "There's someone I need to see."

*

Cyrus' heavy boots thumped onto the stone floor as he stepped off the ladder. A ghostly, orange glow seeped into the close darkness from the sliver of the propped open trap door overhead and throbbed from the candle in Sparrow's hand, casting the hewn features of the looming man into, well, Sparrow hated to think it, but into ghoulish relief.

"Everything's laid out as you asked," Cyrus said grimly, low voice echoing in the narrow, stone passage.

"Thank you." Sparrow held out the pewter candlestick.

Cyrus took it, the glow swelling on his face. His mouth looked severe as granite.

Sparrow hugged the oversized shirt around him. "I know I've asked a lot of you today. I'm grateful."

Cyrus nodded once. He stepped aside from the sturdy, wooden ladder. "I'll be here."

Sparrow nodded too. His heart was in his throat. He took a deep breath of the dank air and sulphur wisp of melting wax. He stepped past Cyrus and clambered like a tamarin up the ladder. The trap door was so heavy his shoulder ached as he pushed on it, echoing on his sore neck. He shoved it back and it slammed onto the stone floor with a clunk and rattle of wood and metal. He winced. He looked back at Cyrus, the death mask face turned expressionlessly up to him. He twitched a flat smile and pulled himself out of the trap door and into the room.

It took him a moment to recognise it, seeing it from such a different angle. But one by one the details flickered to life under the golden glimmer of the candle brackets on the round walls: the pale stone, the carved floor, the large, canopied bed dominating the space. He swallowed. And turned on his knees back to the door. Cyrus still stared up at him, beard melding with the blackness.

"Be careful," he said. "He's volatile."

Sparrow's stomach knotted. He nodded once more and heaved the door closed, sealing Cyrus underground and himself in the room. The prison.

He stood and looked around, taking the scene in properly. Modest, but clean, the round room could have been almost homey, were it not for the sheer black, obsidian floor, carved with spider web channels, reflecting the candlelight, like a mirror into the pit of Hell. The gossamer-canopied bed still dominated the space, but there was now also a wooden bathtub not far from it, the sweet, refreshing scent of orange blossom and lemon balm wending into the cool air in curls of turquoise-tinged steam. Fresh towels were folded on a stool nearby, on top of which were two small, steel keys, twinkling in the warm light.

A soft, rhythmic snoring drifted from the bed. It was a comfortable sound, at odds with the tight tangle of Sparrow's nerves. He flexed his prickling hands and crept towards the bed, his bare feet silent on the flags. He looked down and saw he was crossing the circular sigil carved across the floor. Close up, the smooth grooves looked inked, stained in dark, muddy crimson.

"Tell me again, this is worth your death."

The image of her feeding flashed like a spitting brand into his mind. He wheeled and saw the deep pit of dried, crushed cranberry staining the centre of the floor, where she'd drained that man. He could almost see her again, gripping, riding, pinning, snaring, tearing, drinking, dumping the body, blood washing her white flesh. Ice crept up his spine.

"Let me really take you to Heaven, my good, faithful boy."

His head swam. He ripped his eyes away and caught his breath. He hurried over the carving, his toes curling, as if fresh blood was gumming between them. He scampered free and shuddered the sensation away. He was beside the bed. He steadied himself and gazed down at the figure whose snoring was furling warmly around him.

The young man's face was serene, the same dizzy bliss Sparrow had seen in him as she had taken him into her arms and let him kiss her. His brown, bushy curls tumbled around his round, freckled face. His mouth moved softly, as if he was kissing her still. He lay on his back, the sheets folded off his dappled chest, his slow breaths going down his soft torso like a breeze over a bed of autumn leaves. His muscled, chubby arms were flung up on the pillow, his wrists still clamped in the jaws of iron cuffs. The chains securing him to the headboard coiled like snakes on the pillow, tangling in his hair. He smelled of sleep and salt and linen.

Sparrow lowered himself carefully to sit on the edge of the bed. He reached out and stroked the curls off the young man's face, then tenderly ran the backs of his fingers down his soft cheek.

The man snuffled and blinked, his blue eyes unveiling, hazed and watery. He moved his arm down and pressed Sparrow's hand to his cheek with a surprising pressure that thrummed into Sparrow's body.

"Mistress?" he mumbled thickly.

Sparrow's breathing came shallow. He ran his thumb over the corner of the man's mouth. "No."

The man turned his face into Sparrow's wrist and took a long, indulgent sniff. "Mmm. You smell like her." He pressed his lips to Sparrow's heating veins and hummed, his eyes fluttering closed again.

Sparrow blushed hot. The man was pretty and there was an adorable hunger to him, like a bear cub coming out of hibernation. He tugged his hand away and stood sharply. He turned and went to the pile of towels bearing the two keys. He picked up the bigger one and came back to the bed, feet patting on stone. The young man had perked up startled at his sudden withdrawal. He now reclined propped on one elbow, the sheets and chains draped around him, like ivy around a tree stump. The fat of his belly bunched in an inviting cushion. Sparrow smiled at him. "I'm here to give you a little care."