The shepherd of weeds, p.23
The Shepherd of Weeds, page 23
The Director stood unsteadily, hands desperately clawing his face.
“Snaith is currently … unavailable,” Sorrel Flux replied in his thin, nasally voice. Flux, in a burlap shirt and overalls and with straw jutting from his collar and cuffs, was seated in the Director’s chair, his feet upon the stone table.
He was thoroughly enjoying himself.
At the sound of his former assistant’s voice, Verjouce spun around. “Who—who’s there?”
Verjouce removed his hands from his eyes and squinted. His vision had indeed returned, but his brain was uncooperative, and the world was a swirl of lights and darks, spun shadows of dreary, pale color and hints of shapes. After a minute, he managed to determine that a scarecrow was seated before him (at his desk!) and immediately dismissed the hallucination.
A new question bubbled up within him.
“What is this place?” Verjouce knew himself to be in the room atop the spire, but what he now faced was unrecognizable. Etchings, like gravestones—endless epitaphs—lined every inch of the walls. He was in a tomb of his own making. Gone were the elegant, rich tapestries that once lined the chamber, alongside vast bookshelves of immense, leather-bound books. Where gold letters once glinted were ruined walls, pitted and stained. The floors, too, were soiled with hardened puddles of dark lacquer. His hands, the nails broken and blackened, and his robes and collar—everything had been abandoned to this oily blackness. The frigid wind blew about him from his shattered window, his ravaged hair whipping about his face. Sight, he thought, was overrated.
How had this happened?
He saw nothing but decay.
Decay, and that persistent scarecrow.
Vidal Verjouce closed his eyes and steadied himself. My Mind Garden. My source of strength, he thought. It was the one place to which he might return and find solace. He tried to imagine it, to conjure it up in the dark recess of his imagination—but there was nothing.
His Mind Garden lay crumbled, in ruins.
With the return of his sight, his mind abandoned him, overwhelmed and misfiring. Nothing remained but confusion. He fell to his knees, howling.
“Those watery things rolling down your cheeks are called tears—remember them?” Flux piped up. “It’s a regrettable thing that eyes do. That, and allow you to see.”
“Yesss—” Verjouce whispered. He was grasping to make sense of the shreds of visions, the wisps of light and dark returning to him. “A girl!” Verjouce told the scarecrow. His voice trailed off. “I saw a girl, here—in my chambers. Princess Violet!”
“Hardly,” Flux scoffed.
“My eyes deceive me, then. Surely it is so—for it appears I’m talking to a scarecrow.”
“The King’s daughter is dead.” The scarecrow yawned. “What you saw was your own daughter. Ivy, she is called. A tedious creature at best—but, yes, admittedly, she does bear a striking resemblance to Princess Violet.”
Verjouce stared at the creature before him, this strawman. His face was pinched and his nose long and crooked—his skin the color of marigolds. Verjouce’s newly acquired eyes narrowed as a deep memory stirred. His mind had returned him to the time before his blinding, the events that followed it—the truly awful events that followed it. Everything was now curiously relegated to a dark fog.
“Princess Violet,” the Guild’s Director continued. “What’s become of her?”
“Poison hemlock,” Flux gloated. “One of your favorites, wasn’t it, Vidal?”
The Princess’s death had the distinction of being the very first poisoning—a new and horrible crime, and her sad end began a new chapter in Caux’s misery.
Vidal Verjouce blinked—a new sensation. The terrible Director of the infamous Tasters’ Guild was responsible for many, many poisonings—but not this one.
“There, there,” Flux soothed. “I can hardly take all the credit. I did have a wonderful teacher.”
“Bite your tongue, you traitorous minion! I will be sure to give you all that you are due. Now fetch me my cane!”
Flux stood, hayseed floating in the air about him. “Looking for this?”
He flaunted the Director’s infamous barbed cane triumphantly. In an instant Flux was before his former employer, brandishing the weapon.
“We’re going on a little field trip, master and servant. You will take me to the place where this Kingmaker grows. And hurry. Your current state of weakness is revolting—it must be so very disappointing for you. I hope redemption isn’t catching.”
And with that, the former servant ushered the Director from his ill-gotten chambers, the poisoned tip of his own cane at his back.
Chapter Ninety-one
The King and the Crow
vy stood before the King’s Cottage.
She had found her way to a King’s outpost before—once in the Southern Wood with Rowan, at the beginning of her adventures, and then again at the glorious Lake District before flying to the waiting hovel of the Mildew Sisters. But she had never traveled so far as this.
She had vanquished her father, toppled his Mind Garden, and sailed across a still sea to find herself at this familiar hut—an enchanted cottage, a place frozen in time, waiting to welcome King Verdigris.
But unlike the others, this cottage was occupied.
The flower boxes before the tidy windows sprouted small yellow flowers, cinquefoils, the flower of the King. Candles glittered with sparkling life upon a table within. Smoke drifted amiably from a plump chimney, and the door was unlocked. Shoo alighted happily upon a windowsill, peering in, shifting his weight from side to side in an effort to defy his own reflection.
Ivy stood on the threshold, suddenly unsure. She thought of the small boat—it wasn’t too late to turn around. She could just see the still lake in the distance from where they came. A great nervousness swelled inside her, and as she made to call for Shoo, she saw that he was gone.
“My dear Ivy,” an exquisite voice spoke.
Inside, a figure stood at a simple stove with his back to her.
“King Verdigris?” Ivy asked, hesitant.
The man turned from his preparations to face her. It was indeed the King, Ivy saw—but the King transformed. Gone were the cruel hawthorns, the imprisoning throne from their first encounter. His blue eyes were sharp and unhindered by age, and his cloak of green was replaced with a rich fur of the purest white, which draped regally across his shoulders, sweeping down to the floor. His long hair and beard were still tied in erratically placed ribbons, as they had been in Pimcaux, but his body seemed insubstantial somehow—as if made more of light than of flesh. And more amazingly, Ivy noticed, the old man cast no shadow, for he was made of something as rarefied as the stars.
Ivy looked anxiously around for Shoo, but he was nowhere to be found.
“Great-granddaughter. Noble One,” the King addressed her. “Welcome.”
Ivy frowned, looking about the room. Where had Shoo gotten to?
“You must be hungry from your travels.”
Ivy was indeed aware of a growing hunger—and whatever was on the small stove smelled captivating. Soon they were at the table, a single bowl before her. Ivy examined it—a clear broth, small yellow cinquefoils floating at the surface. It smelled sublime. But Ivy’s bowl went ignored—the lump in her throat was ruining her appetite.
After poking at the floating flowers, Ivy raised her head to the King, who sat at the far end of the table. She inspected Good King Verdigris closely. He had chosen no bowl for himself. Ivy cleared her throat, summoning her courage. A few stray dandelion wisps floated by lazily.
“Er, excuse me, Great-grandfather. Have you seen my crow, Shoo?”
“Shoo? He has gone on ahead.”
“Ahead?” Ivy looked around, her eyes falling on the stone-studded fireplace. She remembered what her mother had once told her, at a similar cottage at the Lake District. All the King’s Cottages led to just one place.
“Underwood?” Ivy asked excitedly.
“Yes.” The King nodded.
A great surge of relief now swept over the girl—leaving her both thrilled and drained. Underwood. The improbable retreat beneath Southern Wood—so very close to the tavern she grew up in. She was returning home.
“And if we hurry, we’ll be just in time for tea,” King Verdigris announced.
Chapter Ninety-two
The Four Sisters
hey turned from the homey table, the King and Ivy, and walked to the ample fireplace. Rounding the far side, where in each cottage Ivy knew a hidden door was located, the King paused. At his touch, it sprang open.
Together, they entered a length of stone stairs. The King shone slightly in the darkness, a twilight halo about his figure. Ivy felt for her crown of interlaced violets, which encircled her head still. At the end of the stairs, the great King placed his long fingers upon the wall of entwined twigs that grew before him. These parted, dripping sap, as a door sprang forth in their midst. Ahead, the familiar cavernous great room of Underwood.
Ivy felt the solid earth beneath her feet, and indeed knew that they were home. And while all of Caux stretched out above them, ahead Ivy was greeted with a spectacular sight.
The twining roots of Underwood pulsed with life, small green shoots sprouting from larger, more substantial stalks, unfurling new tender leaves. Underwood marked the beginning of her adventures, and the place where she had met her mother. The first time Ivy had seen the immense room, it was brown and dormant—or worse, dying. But new life flowed now into the roots from the trees above, and everywhere it felt like spring.
The room was illuminated by some unknown source, as if the light was filtered through woven leaves of a shady canopy, and this conspired to make everything appear to be a more brilliant version of itself. The greens were newer, brighter. The wildflowers ridiculously attractive. But nothing compared to the beauty of the four ladies Ivy saw standing before her.
They were timeless, these figures from a childhood dream, and their attire bewildered the eye. Yet each bore a strangely familiar presence, as if Ivy had met them before—and indeed Ivy felt she might place them at any moment.
It was with the last of them, a woman in a gown as white and weightless as spun sugar, where Shoo was to be found. He sat, perched upon her shoulder, as he had in the tapestry that imprisoned them both. Ivy opened her mouth to call for her crow, but stopped.
“The lady from the tapestry!” she gasped. Babette was the great mystery of the Verdigris tapestries; Shoo had been imprisoned upon her shoulder when Cecil spoke the potent words that made the tapestries come alive and then recede. And here she was—in the flesh. But where were the familiar tapestries? Searching the room, she saw not one. Instead, among the flourishing plant life, she saw her uncle. “Uncle Cecil! How did you—”
But her uncle, indeed the entire gathering before her, fell into a deep bow, and Ivy stopped, confused. She felt the color rise in her cheeks.
“King Verdigris,” Ivy mumbled, lowering herself into a formal curtsy.
The ancient king beside her lifted her chin, touched her crown, and in turn a few new violets bloomed.
“My child,” he said, his voice deep and kind. “They bow for you, too.”
The Four Sisters had moved away from their informal line, revealing an empty olive wood loom and a small table with a silver tea service set upon it. The ornate teapot exhaled a thin line of steam from its spout.
“Ah, I see we have not missed tea?” the King asked, a sparkle in his eyes. “You’re in for a real treat, Ivy.” He turned to her.
“Your Highness.” Babette smiled, arranging the small dainty cups upon their saucers.
Tea was poured and served, but strangely, not to Ivy.
And even stranger, it was not drunk. For the Four Sisters each inspected their cups carefully, sloshing the contents about severely and then dashing the tea leaves to the ground between them. They leaned in eagerly to divine.
Ivy blinked.
Could it be?
Could these ladies before her be the ruined, moldy sisters from the Eath?
Ah, life’s rich tapestry.
Chapter Ninety-three
In Which Fifi Redeems Herself
y dear sisters,” Lola began. “The tea leaves do not lie.”
“Indeed.” Gigi nodded thoughtfully. “It is merely a matter of precise interpretation.”
“After you.” Lola gestured magnanimously.
Gigi’s eyes sparkled.
As the sisters prepared themselves, Ivy felt suddenly crowded. It was as if the room were host to spectators—not just herself, Cecil, and the King. Slowly, she became aware of a ghostly audience, vague people cloaked in dusk. Her skin tingled.
Cecil had found Ivy and held her by the hand, his solid arm alive with warmth. Together, her uncle’s great form and her small one pooled on the floor as their shadows mixed.
“They have come to glimpse you before they go.” Cecil indicated the crowd.
“Go?”
But the reading was commencing, and Ivy was shushed. A pile of spent tea leaves sat on the floor.
Gigi daintily cleared her throat. “How very strange.” She coughed slightly into a gloved hand.
“Yes, extremely particular.” Lola nodded. “I can’t seem to make heads or tails of it.”
Gigi moved her hands in vague circles over the tea-leaf dregs, concentrating.
Ivy looked down beside her and saw a white boar, and she reached to stroke her old friend’s ear. It felt of wool, as if woven of filament, and her hand came away with a frayed thread.
“Poppy,” she sighed, as the boar nuzzled her.
Still more shadowless people drifted in, some with their faces hidden, but others were known to Ivy. There was a low murmur as these new arrivals greeted each other. Hollow Bettle regulars, many whose lives were cut short under the Deadly Nightshades, mingled together. A few in the gathering were clothed in attire from an earlier time in Caux’s history, and still others were like drifting smoke—faces formed of air and shifting in the wind, insubstantial, mercurial.
Ivy was pleased to notice a figure beside the King and Shoo.
Princess Violet, Ivy realized. King Verdigris’s beloved daughter. The King smiled at Ivy then, and a great, indescribable feeling of relief washed over her. Everything was going to be all right.
Gigi cast a sharp look at her sister Lola.
“Just a minute, and it will come to me,” Gigi muttered. “It’s so … so … irritatingly obscure.”
Together, the pair peered in closer.
Ivy noticed that somehow a large warhorse had joined the proceedings. The animal stomped, silver bells upon his saddle tinkling. He greeted Ivy with a nod, and Ivy returned it, smiling. And when Clothilde stepped forward from the animal’s broad side, her dress was as pristine and as white as the day Ivy had first met her back in the Southern Wood. Ivy was happy to see how well she looked. Her mother was finally at peace.
Meanwhile, the sisters were enduring an awkward silence. Their reading was not going as planned, and it was Fifi’s turn.
Fifi, once stricken with a bulbous fungus upon her face and skin, was now clad in a gown like the rising sun. She was the most petite of the foursome and the youngest. She was also an uneasy fortune-teller, and the sisters held little hope for Fifi’s interpretation.
But Fifi was staring at the tea leaves before her, transfixed.
She held her hands out above the sodden pile of spent tea as if warming them upon a fire. She swayed slightly, her wondrous gown floating like a bell. Suddenly, from somewhere deep within her corseted waist, an unlikely baritone emerged.
And, turning to Ivy, Fifi spoke.
“Poison and deceit are vanquished,” Fifi’s voice boomed throughout Underwood. “The King has returned to Caux, with his shepherd. A new day dawns. And while his chapter comes to a close, a new one begins. Long live the Shepherd of Weeds!”
The ghostly gallery murmured their approval.
Ivy frowned, looking sharply at her uncle, then the King himself. A new chapter begins?
“Life is a pleasant mix of contradictions. Ivy will have to make her way herself. It is not for even us to say if hers is a tale of success—or failure. Sisters, the tea leaves are imperfect—they have limitations. Plants have much to say, much to teach, if you are willing to listen—but that is a talent beyond most. Ivy speaks the true Language of Flowers. The future of Caux now rests with her—the last of Verdigris’s noble and magical line.”
There was a profound silence.
“One thing is for certain,” Fifi continued. “Her magic will someday exceed even the King’s, and our looms stand ready to weave her tale.”
The feeling of people pressing in, interest renewed.
“But it will not be easy,” Fifi continued. “Her enemies await, biding their time, for they are not all vanquished. Scourge bracken has found a new mistress.”
A few aghast cries from the ghostly gallery.
“When it senses a weakness, it will emerge—for it is the destructive weed’s nature. The next battlefield is not on the green grass of Caux, but within the Child. Hers is the decision as to whether the world outside our door is lush and green, or black and barren.”
There was dead silence. Babette, Lola, and Gigi wore a look of utter astonishment.
Fifi raised her eyes from the tea leaves unsteadily, blinking once. “And one last thing. She will remember the moment that’s just to come with great heartache.”
Fifi shuddered and closed her eyes. When, an instant later, they again fluttered open, she frowned prettily and shrugged. In a flurry of adulation, the sisters rushed to congratulate her on her accomplished reading.
Together, they walked off, Ivy forgotten.
Ivy was left beside her uncle, and Underwood felt suddenly vast and dreary to her; the sunny feelings she just possessed were dashed and trampled. All eyes had turned from her to what hung on a far wall—the sisters’ newest masterpiece.
A tapestry of clouds.
