Happy Monday!
Sorry about missing last Monday. Multi-day migraine + adrenal fatigue flare-up = flailing about the river that is Time and the current completely. If only life came with arm floaties. :)
This Monday will be a little different in that I'll only be posting the first half of the short story. The reason is this is basically an opening of sorts for the actual Curiosities that will contain 3-5 short stories along with other assorted goodies. On a regular Monday, I'll be posting a full short story from the Curiosity of the month. The full version of the Curiosities are only available to the people who have signed up for my newsletter, so if you're interested in what will amount to a free novel every month or two, (each Curiosity, save the first, will clock in at about 50,000 words--approx. 200 pages) click here to sign up.
*You must be 13 or older to sign up for my newsletter in accordance with COPPA laws*
Now, on to the story!
Once upon a time there was a flower who wanted to do more than stare out the window and stand reliably in her comfortable pot.
She wanted to fly.
Oh! To have wings she could stretch and unfurl! Wings that could take her wherever she wanted to go.
She would finally be able to see what waited beyond the path that curved round the hill. With wings she could explore the forest that loomed quietly to the west or talk to the fish that swam in lazy circles in the pond to the east.
As a wingéd flower, she would have a chance to find her fortune rather than waiting passively for the seasons to change, her stem to grow brittle, and her petals to fall one by one until all that was left of her was a few withered leaves and a crumpled face that had once been bright yellow.
Some flowers, you see, are remarkable creatures that die every few seasons, only to be born anew once more. Bigger. Stronger. Budding life on their previous lives and accumulating a sort of verdure venerability.
But our flower is a young flower who has only lived a total of two seasons. Three, if you are inclined to generosity and count the current season. Still, the drumbeat of the autumn pulsed up through her roots, into her stem, and rattled against each of her petals. Our flower knew, as all greenlife knows, that one’s own life was subject to the capricious whims of mortals, the ravenous appetites of birds, the occasional cat whose curiosity outweighs its good sense, and the rather flighty nature of the wind.
Just because one might live and die and live again, doesn’t mean one will.
More and more the little flower’s heart turned to the sky that hung prettily as the northern frame for the world.
“Wings,” she sighed. “All the world to find, if only I had a pair of wings!”
“Don’t be silly,” the bees buzzed as they flew past her window in yellow-streaked clouds of black. “Flowers aren’t born with wings. If they were, they wouldn’t be flowers—they’d be bees.”
The flower wrinkled her face. She didn’t want to be a bee, although she admired their bright little rapiers they belted round their middles. Bees, for all their glorious golden stripes and inky black spaces in between, were notoriously short-tempered and too busy working to dream.
And wings without dreams was drudgery.
Still . . .
“I should like very much to brush up against the sky, gently, so as not to wrinkle it, of course,” the flower murmured. Though she was an orphan, as many flowers are, she had an eternity of knowing stored—first in her seed, and then in her roots—and impeccable manners.
“Silly,” the squirrels chattered as they gathered up acorns from the oak tree growing just beyond her reach. “What would you want to touch the sky for? Better to stay down here where up is up and down is down, and you don’t sink from one to the other on accident. Besides, there are no nuts in the sky.”
“Still,” the little flower shrugged her leaves closer to the sunlight, “I should like to discuss the merits of water with the fish, say hello to my distant cousins in the forest, and see if the garden path is nearly as rocky as it looks.”
Of course the flower had tried to do all these things, wings or no wings. Birds are excellent gossips if one can keep their attention long enough. They were gracious messengers that carried conversations between the young flower and the school of minnows currently residing in the pond. But long-distance correspondence is an uncertain thing and wearying to a soul who would rather be speaking face to face than through bird.
“Be content in what you are,” the bluebirds advised as they sought out food for their young. “You may be stuck in one spot, but that spot is your own, and you don’t have to worry about another flower coming along and pushing you out of it.”
Our flower nodded and tucked away each piece of advice into a corner of her heart, but the urge to reach out and touch the sky would not be quieted, no matter how hard she tried to ignore it.
“You are of earth,” the oak tree murmured. “Dig your roots deep into the soil and find joy in the sunlight that warms your leaves, in the rain that strengthens your stem, and in the wind that ruffles through your petals.”
Chagrined, the flower bowed her head so the mighty oak would not see her blush. “I try,” she whispered. “And I am grateful. Truly, I am.”
And she was.
Her keeper kept her warm and comfortable, watered her, talked to her, and smiled at her sometimes for no reason the flower could ever discern.
But the luster of safe and the familiar tarnished a little more each day, until the flower’s head and leaves drooped beneath the weight of a single wish that quickly fractured from one into four:
To fly. To explore. To discover. To become.
Being a young flower, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to become yet, only that the need to do it burned like frozen sap in her veins. In this, our flower is not like many of the others. For they are content to rest in their places, so long as they have sunlight, soil, and water enough.
Perhaps the mortality of her keeper was contagious, infecting her as all mortals were with the need for more, no matter how much they already have. Mortals, you might already know, are an unsatisfied lot. It is the virtue and price for their mortality, and one that few other creatures shared.
But whatever the cause, the weight of the flower’s dream bent her back and dulled her petals.
The insects and animals continued to chide her on one hand and encourage her on the other. Her keeper said nothing, but a worry line etched itself on her brow whenever she glanced over at the small flower struggling to bloom on her windowsill.
This might have gone on until the flower’s petals withered to scraps of forgotten color and her leaves dried to wisps of bone, had not a faerie passed by the flower’s window one late autumn night.
The flower lifted her head to wonder at the crystalline wings arching away from the faerie’s shoulder blades. The wings caught the moonlight and fractured it into fragments of rainbow.
With a sigh, the flower dropped her head again.
What was the use? The birds and bees and squirrels and trees were right. She had no wings, and never would. It ought to have been in her nature to cling to the earth and feast on buttered sunshine, not to soar up against the sun and moon and stars.
“What ails you?” the faerie asked, her voice piping against the night. She hovered near the window, tiny hands grasping the sill as she peered inside. “All is well and good within.”
The flower’s cheeks went pink with shame. The faerie was right—all was good and well within. When the wind tugged too harshly, her keeper closed the shutters. When the frost came and a chill shivered through the air, her keeper would move her from the window to a comfortable spot near the hearth. When she grew thirsty, her keeper watered her. When bits and pieces of her grew brown and ragged, her keeper gently snipped them away.
Yet . . .
“Every day I stare out into the world,” the little flower said. Her wish trembled inside her heart, growing bigger and stronger from being spoken aloud. “I watch the clouds scuttle across the sky, watch the rains dance down upon the earth, and wonder what secrets the stars twinkle at each other every night.”
“You have a home, yet you are homesick,” the faerie said, wrinkling her brow.
The flower considered this.
“Yes.”
“My kind are free to wander the earth,” the faerie said, kneeling next to the simple clay pot that cradled the flower’s roots. “Yet, the more we linger, the more we fade. Our essence is not made for this place, and every moment reminds us that our true home is calling.”
“Why do you come here, then?” the little flower asked. She ducked her head, hoping she hadn’t offended the faerie with her question. Curiosity was not a trait much encouraged in plants.
The faerie stared out into the night, her wings glimmering with moonlight. “Because this place calls too.”
The flower stood a little taller, never before realizing how nice it felt to have someone understand. It wasn’t a comfortable place, this Between and Betwixt, but it was the only place she knew.
“I want to fly,” the flower said, hardly daring to feel the hope pulsing in a quiet shadow of her heart. “I want to explore. Discover. Become.”
“Ah,” the faerie said, turning her dark eyes bright with moonshine to the flower. “Wishes are dangerous things. They nibble at you, gently at first, until all you can feel is their hunger.”
The flower turned her gaze to the stars in silent rebellion. It didn’t matter if wishes had sharp edges and prickly corners. Didn’t matter if they started with warm smiles until they became all teeth. They were what they were, and once they’d lodged themselves in her heart, she had become part of the wish too.
To lose her wish would be to lose herself.
“I’ve a mind to grant your wish,” the faerie said, and her dark eyes flashed with a wish of her own. She placed a hand against the pot. “It must be nice being tucked in the earth and feasting on wind and rain and sunlight. Having someone care if you grow rough and ragged around the edges, and gathering you in against the chill of the frost and the burning of the sun.”
That had all been true before the flower had turned her eyes skyward and the wish had fallen into her heart.
“What will it cost?” the flower whispered.
The faerie frowned before answering. “Everything.”
“Will it—will it stop the ache?” Each day the wish cut a little deeper into her heart, deepening the pang until it followed her even into her dreams.
“No, but it will ease it.”
“Oh.” The flower’s petals drooped.
The faerie laughed, a tiny sound that cut to the flower’s center. “One form or another, it doesn’t matter to a wish. Each comes with its own set of joys and heartaches, but it is the only path to becoming. You cannot have one without the other.”
“Become what?” the flower asked, glad to have found an answer to this question at last.
The faerie slitted her eyes and glanced away. “That is entirely up to you.”
Well did the faerie know that becoming was a personal thing. For becoming is shaped by our wishes, the wants and dreams we tuck deep within our hearts and wrap in scraps of longing. Some we cradle and rock, while others we forget and neglect. But a wish, once wished, cannot be unwished. It finds purchase in our hearts and waits, remembering even when we forget.
The flower remained silent, but a thousand possibilities danced through her mind, each a bittersweet note to the famed piper’s song.
“Would you make the trade?” The faerie waved am arm, managing to include the cherrie-bright glow in the hearth, the windowsill, the world.
“How does it work?”
The faerie stood, fiery energy snapping through her, waiting to spring forth. “You have to want it more than everything else. More than comfort. More than fear. More than what is, for what could be.”
“All—all right.” Now that the moment had come, a feather of fear brushed against the little flower’s heart. But hope, burning glorious and bright, swept the fear back into the shadows.
“You will need a name,” the faerie said, folding her hands in her lap. “A name seals the bargain.”
The flower narrowed her eyes. Plants rarely indulged in the mortal practice of choosing a name. A name was a dangerous thing to a person who lived and died and lived again. A name was power. Power enough to destroy whole worlds when it wasn’t saving them.
She glanced at the sky again, a vast ocean she longed to fall into. “Kya.”
The faerie gave a brisk nod. “And mine is . . . Hearthorne.”
“Hearthorne,” the flower—now Kya—murmured. The name twisted oddly on her lips as though it was used to being more than a single thing, and wasn’t quite comfortable conforming. Yet, at the same time, the name rang true. Whatever else the faerie might have been called before, she was Hearthorne now, and it was now that mattered.
“And you must promise, a promise that binds you to both life and this realm.”
“What promise?” the Kya-flower asked. She could almost taste the dewey contours of the sky that dangled closer to her than they ever had before.
“Take me with you,” Hearthorne said. “When all is said and done, it is a selfish thing, but it is mine to ask and a condition of your wish.”
Kya closed her eyes, letting the possibility sink down to her longest, oldest roots.
“I will.”
Hearthorne took a deep breath, and a smile trembled on her lips. “Good. Then reach down to the deepest part of the soil and see what you find there.” Her voice echoed with the force of a magic that turned the Impossible into the Real.
The Dream into the Now.
As if to punctuate her meaning, a gust of wind rushed over them, tugging at the faerie’s hair until it had tangled in the flower’s petals. The leafy boughs of the trees shook against the wind’s breath, and a single leaf tumbled off a branch and into the faerie’s waiting hand as though it had been waiting all this time to do just that.
Meanwhile, Kya strained against the normally soft earth of her pot, seeking for whatever Hearthorne had left for her to find. Her roots stretched out until they brushed against something wrinkled and hard that held a thousand possibilities and more than a few more stories. Kya’s roots closed over it like fingers, tugging it up through the soil and into the night air.
“A walnut seed,” she said, surprised.
“Now crack it open,” Hearthorne directed.
“Crack it open?” Life beat within the shell, life that would be extinguished if she succeeded in opening the walnut. Hearthorne had said that she must be willing to give up everything, but surely—
Hearthorne gave her an enigmatic grin. “It’s not an ordinary seed. To grow, the plant must be willing to risk losing its protective covering. It’s safe place. The one place it knows.”
Kya thought back to the days when her seed had cradled her, looked after her, and eventually got to be too small for her. It had been, on the outside, a rather dull thing, but it had been magnificent—if cramped—on the inside.
“Cracking open the shell will hurt the greenlife inside. If it isn’t strong enough, it will die. It is the breaking through that gives the seed the strength to grow. To break the seed open before it is ready is not a kindness, and I am not cruel.”
Hearthorne’s eyes darkened until they matched the night sky. The faerie rested her hand lightly on one of the Kya-flower’s leaves.
“Then get ready.”
Hearthorne took a deep breath and blew something that shivered through Kya the way she imagined lightning must feel.
Then Hearthorne, the window, the stars, the world—it all vanished.
Panic beat through Kya’s heart, drops of rain pounding out the shape of her fears. She was bent in half in utter darkness, and something she couldn’t see pressed against her from all sides. She poked tentatively at her prison with her roots, feeling the hard shape of the darkness. As a picture began to emerge, fear folded into amazement.
It couldn’t be!
And yet our flower found herself moving gently along with the sudden quietness of a song that was all at once foreign, and yet heartbreakingly familiar.
“Breathe,” Hearthorne murmured beside her. “Explore. Discover. Become.”
Though Hearthorne had simply repeated the words Kya herself had spoken earlier, something within the words had changed from hungry longing to a direct order.
“Where are we?” Kya asked as she considered whether or not to follow Hearthorne’s order. Her dream was a far bigger place than she’d ever imagined, and she wanted to be sure.
“You know where we are.”
That she did, though it had been a long time since she’d pushed aside her own seed in favor of sunlight and room to grow.
Fear, however, did not want to give in so easily. It twisted itself around her, stroked her leaves, and reminded her of all that was.
“I am not of Walnut,” Kya tried again, pressing against the sides of the seed tentatively with her head. “The seed will not open for me.”
Hearthorne shifted beside her. “Here, in this place, you can be whatever you need to be. You just have to want to be badly enough.”
“I-I can’t be a tree,” Kya whispered as her fears tightened their hold. “I’ve always been a flower. That is what I am at my center. I can’t change that.”
Though they were both cocooned in darkness, Kya felt Hearthorne smile beside her, an unsettling smile that was all sharp teeth.
“You don’t have to change,” Hearthorne said lightly. “You can remain the same, so long as you are content to have traded the taste of freedom you had before with the safety this seed provides. The binding has been cast, the seal has been made, the promise given. What is done is done, and there can be no going back.”
Copyright © 2014 by Danyelle Leafty. All rights reserved.
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