The Book Man, Chapter 41 (Revised)

41 PLANTING ROSES

They stood together on the edge of the gardens for a moment, bent almost double as they tried to catch their breath. Scratches from the crows’ talons and beaks lined Liza and Mr. Catcher’s faces. Christian had no doubt that his face was scratched up as well, but there was no time to dwell on his pain. He didn’t know if it was the lights or the gardens themselves that had repelled the crows, but he felt he and his companions would be safer farther away from the Fairgrounds.

“Come on,” he said in a shaky voice.

“Give us a minute,” Liza said. She had straightened up, but her breathing still came in sharp gasps and her voice was trembling, too. Christian shook his head.

“We’ve got to get to the rose garden.”

“Just look at him, Christian.” Liza gestured at Mr. Catcher, who was yet bent double, wheezing. He tried to stand up straight, only to be attacked by another fit of coughing. When his companions rushed to help him, he waved them away and held up a finger. They waited.

“That,” he said finally, “is more running than I’ve done in an age.”

The maze was even more eerily still than the night before; the horse was not at its center. Christian panicked for a moment, wondering if it had been destroyed like its rider and the mermaid, but then he remembered leaving it by Minerva’s pedestal. Perhaps it had spent the night at her side. He drew comfort from the thought and led his companions through the maze easily.

“Christian,” Liza said, “what is going on?”

A lot, Christian thought. A lot was going on and he didn’t know where to begin explaining it. She hadn’t believed the truth even before things had gotten so out of hand.

“Christian,” she said a few minutes later, as they wound their way through the rose garden toward the courtyard. This time fright had edged its way into her voice. “Christian, is it always so dangerous? Conrad—”

“I’m certain your husband is fine, my dear,” Mr. Catcher said, patting her hand, but his voice quivered as well. “At this very moment he’s probably sitting at a fire with the Fair-folk, drinking and telling stories to pass the time until he can return. He’ll be back in no time.”

Christian’s pace quickened as he drew up to the trellis. The horse was indeed beside the pedestal, with its neck tucked over its back and its legs folded beneath it. Like Minerva, it was still in statue form, but when Christian dropped the handle of the wagon and put a hand on its side, the horse shuddered and turned into flesh and horsehair. Mr. Catcher laughed.

“Can it be Rath?” he said. “My, but I haven’t seen you in a long time.”

The horse whickered and pushed to its feet, plodding over to nose at the old man’s pockets.

“No, I’m afraid I haven’t anything for you today,” Mr. Catcher said. “Ah, me, it’s been so long. I used to sit in that maze and feed him carrots, you know. I’d got tired of the Fair by then.”

Christian barely paid attention to his words now that they had made it. He crouched beside the pedestal and put a hand on Minerva’s. The tatters of shirt he had used to bandage her arm were crusty with blood and looked oddly out of place wound as they were around a marble statue.

“Minerva?”

The color started in her hand, where he had touched her, and spread throughout her body until her soft belly rose and fell with breath and her dark eyes opened sleepily. A slow smile spread over her face at the sight of him.

“I brought you something,” Christian said. He pulled the pillows from the wagon. Her face whitened as he lifted her up to arrange them beneath her head, but when he laid her back down and covered her with the quilt she gave a kittenish sigh.

“And this,” he said, and he held up The Hobbit. The cover was lopsided from being upset on their flight across the clearing, but otherwise it looked whole and new again thanks to his repairs.

“Thank you,” she said. Her voice was frighteningly weak.

“Oh!” Liza cried. Christian whipped around, but it was just Aurelia blossoming from her rose petal.

“She needs new bandages, Book Man,” the fairy said. “Look.”

Gingerly, he peeled away the strips of shirt. Whatever Aurelia had done last night had stopped the bleeding, but dried blood still crusted about the end of Minerva’s stump.

The crows had shredded the paper bags in the wagon, but Christian dug through their remains until he found the roll of gauze and the washrag. He dipped his buckets in the mermaid’s pool. Then he looked at Liza, who hung back and stared wide-eyed at the golden figure of the fairy.

“Do you know how to wrap bandages?” Christian asked. She didn’t answer, did not even acknowledge that she’d heard him. “Liza. Liza.”

She shuddered but did not take her eyes off the fairy.

“Christian,” she whispered, “there is a little gold person standing on this trellis.”

“Yes, I know,” Christian said patiently. “That’s Aurelia. No, you’re not dreaming or crazy or anything—”for she had opened her mouth to speak, and based on her expression it was going to be a repeat of the things she’d said on Friday night. “Look, I know this is a lot to take in, but I could use your help right now.”

She blinked at Aurelia as the fairy gazed back at her.

“I don’t know how to wrap bandages,” she said at last.

“Neither do I, but I figured it out somehow. Please?”

Liza washed Minerva’s stump in silence, but she began to speak in a faltering voice as she unrolled a measure of gauze. At least the stunned look had left her face, Christian thought. She just needed something to do, something to distract her from the fact that a little gold person had materialized out of a rose plant to say they needed to change the bandages of a woman who had been a marble statue the minute before.

Christian watched for a moment and then turned to Mr. Catcher and said, “Could you help me set up the tent?”

The two men lifted the box out of the wagon and carried it off to the side of the pedestal. By the time Liza was done changing Minerva’s bandages, however, they had only managed to get one side set up. When they tried to raise the other, the first end collapsed. Christian cursed under his breath.

Liza held Minerva’s hand until she fell back asleep and then came over to watch the two men work.

“So,” she said after a minute, “so she’s got a day job as a statue.”

“Yes,” said Christian. “Her name is Minerva and she waters the roses.”

“Of course she does.” Liza watched as they managed to erect this side of the tent, only to have the other side fall down again. “Would you like some help?”

“Why, do you know how to put up a tent?”

She rummaged through the box the tent had come in and held up a sheet of paper. “No, but I know how to read directions.”

Her voice had calmed considerably; she seemed glad to be doing something as normal as setting up a tent. With her help, they had the tent up in less than five minutes.

“Thank you,” said Christian. He wheeled the wagon over to where the old roses looked worst, took out the new rose plants, and set them on the path beside him. Aurelia flitted over from Minerva’s pedestal and landed in the wagon.

“What are you going to do with those?” she asked.

“Watch and see,” said Christian.

He had forgotten to pack a spade or gardening gloves, so he dug through the ash and dirt with his hands. He pulled up the old rose bushes, which looked black and dead; only the smallest, dried-out nubbins remained of them, poking bleakly out of the soil. Aurelia sighed at the sight but said nothing. The garden gnome waddled across the piles of books in the wagon to hug her.

Christian placed the dead roses in a pile beside him, feeling guilty that he was not providing them with something more fitting, maybe a burial. But then he unearthed one which had a dim blue light glowing at the tip of its root.

Help me! a raspy little voice like Aurelia’s own cried. Let me out!

Aurelia’s golden hue brightened. She flew into the air, crying, “Oh, sister! One of my sisters lives!”

She darted beside him and put a hand on the root. There was a flash of blinding blue-white light, and then a figure even tinier than Aurelia blossomed out of the dead rose plant. This one was brilliant blue, like blue flame. Aurelia embraced her, weeping golden tears.

“There’s another one,” Liza said faintly.

“Thousands, actually,” Christian told her.

“Thousands,” Liza said. “Oh.”

When Aurelia stopped crying, she wiped her eyes and asked, “Did none of the others survive?”

“No,” the blue figure said somberly. “I was littlest, so I hid. All the way down in the root by myself. It was so dark, but I was safe. But the rest of the plant burned and our sisters—”

She stopped speaking abruptly, but Aurelia hugged her again and said, “I’m so glad to see you safe. Book Man,” she said, looking up at him, “this is the youngest of my sisters, Carina.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Christian said.

Aurelia attracted her sister’s attention again, so he turned aside to plant the new rose bushes he had brought with him. When he had finished, Aurelia and Carina turned to the closest of the old rose plants, which were still alive but looked almost as sickly as the ones Christian had just pulled up. The two fairies touched their hands to the bushes.

For a moment nothing happened. Then lights winked into existence all along the plants, gold, blue, green, pink, white, looking like nothing so much as Christmas lights strung up in the rose bushes. Just lights, nothing more. They drifted over the rose bed, sank into the new rose plants, and disappeared. The new bushes shuddered, grew a little taller and fuller, and were still again.

Aurelia put a hand on them.

“Now they will live,” she said in satisfaction.