The Book Man, Chapter 7 (Revised)

7 IN THE GARDENS

Christian pushed his way through the crowds, frustrated with how slowly they were moving. He got on alright for a while only to find himself stuck behind a knot of people watching the feats of a fire-juggler. Fire blasted from the juggler’s mouth. Christian dodged it, crashing backwards into a white-clad magician who grunted upon impact and said, “Watch it” as cards flew from his sleeves and scattered to the ground. The crowd watching him tittered at the blunder.

Christian apologized and squeezed between two women who looked like ringmasters to get away. Rather, he tried to, but the ringmasters grabbed him about the shoulders and pulled him back to talk to him.

“Whither away so hurriedly?” one asked, laughing. She was clad all in deep purple and had tea-colored skin, tawny eyes, and a violet top hat that sat rakishly atop the golden curls that matched her eyes. “The night is young, friend! Come to my circus. The best show you could wish for! Trapeze artists, lion-tamers—”

“Rowan, my dear sister, I do beg to differ!” said the other, tugging Christian toward her. She could have been the twin of the first, but she was dressed in royal blue instead of purple and wore a monocle in her right eye. She wagged her finger at Christian and said, “Don’t listen to her, friend. Her circus is decent, to be sure—if you have the understanding of a child! But anyone at the Fair will tell you, my circus is the best. And you, my fine man, are clearly a gentleman of taste and discernment. I can tell you in truth her trapeze artists are just as likely to fall into the net as to complete their moves, and her lion-tamers—”

“Decent?” the purple-clad Rowan said. “The understanding of a child? Just because that is all the understanding you have, Finn—”

“I’m sorry,” Christian said, turning red as they tugged at him like a rope in a game of tug-o-war. They stopped bickering for a moment and turned to look at him. “I’m sorry, but I’m in a hurry and I really don’t want to go to a circus anyway.”

The two ringmasters were so shocked at his pronouncement they let go of him and stared at him wide-eyed. The blue ringmaster’s monocle popped out of her golden eye. For a moment there was an uncomfortable silence between the three of them, during which the ringmasters swelled up like toads, and then they let loose their indignation.

“Not like a circus! How could you say—?”

“But everyone wants to go to a circus!”

“Can you believe it, Rowan?”

“Not a whit, dear Finn. He doesn’t know what he wants—”

“Not like a circus!”

Christian took advantage of their distraction and ran away, bumping into several vendors, a mime, and a singer as he went. He mumbled apologies to each but did not stop until he ran right out of the crowd.

Vague directions from an old man with a barrel organ on the northern edge of the Fair sent Christian into another strand of trees bordering the clearing, these ones quieter and more organized than the woods back at the park entrance. Fairy lights were strung from the branches, leading deep into their midst, and gas lamps gleamed in their posts beyond. Even from the outside, where flames still flared and people ran amok, reveling in the clamor and glare of the carnival, Christian sensed a magic deeper and older than the one that permeated the Fairgrounds. His spine tingled with it.

He stepped into the trees.

The noise from the clearing dimmed to a distant roar. Here, instead, crickets and toads chirped and branches rustled in the nighttime breeze. He was glad of the fairy lights and gas lamps, for in the branches overhead there were wings and slithery things he could not see and shiny night-eyes he could. He shivered and hurried on through the trees.

He was on a narrow, grassy path bordered on one side by flower beds and on the other by a creek rushing in and out of the landscape, babbling as it went. Christian found himself comforted by the sound. The balloonish butterflies that had been by the park gate drifted over growths of dianthus and lavender here as well, their wings gleaming in the fairy lights. Once, Christian caught sight of a group of tall creatures who looked, at a distance, to be human, though they moved too slowly and gracefully. They made their way toward the clearing and were lost in the trees.

Now and then, he stumbled across stone pedestals sitting empty as if some artist had meant to make statues for them but never had the time or inclination. He was grateful for it; he felt a multitude of statues looming out of the shadows would only frighten him more.

After a while, a hedge reared up out of the trees. Gas lamps led into it; around it was darkness. He did not want to go in, but he was afraid to go around and could not go back to the Rover caravan without the plants he needed. Conrad was counting on him.

An iridescent purple balloon-butterfly drifted into the hedge. Christian drew courage from the sight and followed it in.

He had only wandered a short distance in when he was forced to turn either right or left to continue.

“Oh, dear,” he said to himself. “It would have to be a maze, wouldn’t it?”

He took the right-hand path and continued, hoping it was not too difficult to come out the other end without getting lost, since it was only a park maze.

He was right, for after only a few minutes of choosing his way he was in what must have been the center of the maze. It opened up into a small, round area, in the center of which was a black stone pedestal empty of anything but a small plaque. Christian crept closer to read the plaque. It said:

IN MEMORY OF MORROW

THE KING AND HIS STEED

An empty pedestal didn’t seem like much of a tribute to a king—but all the other pedestals in the gardens had been empty as well, after all. Christian didn’t understand it. Who would decorate a park with statueless pedestals?

Behind him, he heard a nicker. He jumped at the sound but turned to see a black horse near the hedge, as high at the withers as his shoulders. It gazed at him for a moment and then returned to its grass

The accountant placed a tentative hand on the horse’s side and looked around for its owner. There was no one else in the maze. The horse’s pulse moved beneath his palm; it shook its head in surprise at his touch but then quieted and continued grazing.

“Sorry,” Christian said to it. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

The horse snorted at him.

“Sorry,” he said again. He continued on his way, out the other side of the grassy area, wishing the horse would follow. It would have been nice to have some company. His head swam at the memory of the blood soaking Conrad’s leg, and the maze was hardly the kind of place to calm his nerves. The hedges were taller than he was, and shadows fell in long slants between the gas lamps running all through the maze. There was a suspicious lack of creatures: the butterflies drifted slowly through; moths gathered at the lamps, but there were no crickets or toads, nor owls flying overhead. The maze was silent, for the butterflies and moths made no sound.

Finally, however, after a dead end and one turning-around that ended him back up in the area with the horse, he reached what appeared to be the maze’s end. Beyond the hedges he saw a cobblestone pathway winding through an expanse of rose beds. This pathway was well-lit by gas lamps that showed thousands of roses: sweetheart roses, tea roses, climbing roses that crept along the path and broke the stones. Christian stepped out onto it with relief.

He wound his way along the cobblestone path with his head wagging left and right as he searched for the herb garden. The rose beds seemed to stretch on forever. They were beautiful, but he had not forgotten the urgency of his task; he wished they would end.

The back wall of the park had just come into view when he saw a long, raised bed full of herbs and flowers. He hurried forward, but as he did so something croaked above him. There was a flapping of wings and then the wings were beating him about the face, talons clutching at his hair. He cried out and tried to beat his attacker off, but it darted in and out around his head—

Then someone shouted behind him, and he ducked, and a small stone went whizzing through the air. It struck his attacker, which cawed and launched itself off his shoulders. He looked up to see a crow flapping wildly away over the park wall.

A woman spoke behind him.

“Who are you?” she said. “What are you doing in my garden?”