The Book Man, Chapters 35-36 (Revised)

35 WATERING THE ROSES

After a while, she fell asleep. At least, Christian hoped she was asleep. Perhaps she had passed out from blood loss, but he had no idea how to tell. Why did he have to be so helpless in emergencies? If only he knew something useful and not just the things he had read. Or if he could at least be calm and collected like those people who were good in emergencies, his mother, for example. But no, he had to take after his father and become a piddling mess in crises.

He laid Minerva on her pedestal to rest, deciding she was, in fact, sleeping. She could use a good rest after the trauma she’d faced. He remembered from his mother’s cancer treatments the doctors had always been telling her to get plenty of rest, even early on.

He was still shaky and cold; he felt like he couldn’t breathe deeply enough to fill his lungs. He stood up while Minerva slept and made his way toward the rose beds. The horse tried to follow him, but he said, “No. Stay here.”

It whickered as if it understood and folded its legs beneath it to lie beside the pedestal.

Christian stopped before the trellis and rubbed his temples with his fists. The Fair gone, Minerva horribly wounded, the roses and all the books burnt up.

No—not all. One rosebud on the trellis peeled back slowly, just a little bit, enough for him to see a book hidden beneath it. He reached in and plucked it out. The Hobbit, the copy he had given Minerva, in dire need of repair but more or less in one piece. He thumbed through it and slipped it into his pocket. He would repair it later, maybe. He looked around at the roses in despair. One book and several dozen dried out, crackling plants. That was all that was left.

A raspy voice emerged from the rosebud.

Water!

Christian blinked. By the pedestal he saw the horse’s ears swivel in the direction of the roses.

Water! the voice cried again in a hoarse whisper. Other voices rose up to join it, hundreds of raspy whispers just like the first, all crying the same thing. Water!

Could it be? Christian thought. Could it be that some of the roses, burnt and blackened though they appeared, were still alive?

Water! the voices cried. Water!

But how was he to give them water? Minerva’s pitcher lay shattered in a dozen pieces around her pedestal. Then he remembered his buckets. He would have to run all the way home and back to get them—No! He had never brought them home the night he had watered the roses, the night the harpies attacked.

He found the two buckets pushed far beneath the bench, right up against Minerva’s pedestal. Her brow wrinkled in pain as she slept, and she whimpered. Christian put a hand against her forehead. She calmed and shifted into a more comfortable position. Pillows, Christian thought. She needed some pillows. And maybe a blanket as well, although in the ungodly heat it was difficult to imagine anyone needing a blanket ever again.

He dipped the buckets into the mermaid’s pool and drenched the rose bushes in water. It took him hours by himself, having to return to the pool every few minutes to refill the buckets, to lug the buckets farther and farther from the courtyard to reach all the roses. By the time he was done, sweat poured from his face and soaked his undershirt, and his back ached, but the salvageable rose plants had been watered. Christian even thought some of their leaves looked a little greener and the nubbins a little taller.

“There,” he said, pushing his glasses up his sweat-slicked nose. “That’s better.”

After a moment, a slender golden figure blossomed out of the rosebud that had first spoken, her thin face haggard.

“Thank you,” she said. “We were terribly thirsty.”

“Aurelia!” Christian said.

She nodded tiredly. “Forgive my sisters, Book Man. They would thank you themselves, but they are too tired to materialize even partially.”

“What happened?” Christian asked.

“An army of Goblin’s allies. Hellhounds, nightmares, banshees, imps…all manner of horrid beasts. I do not think they came for the purpose of launching an attack: if they had, much more would have been destroyed. We were able to open the portal to let the Fair-folk escape, but by doing so we left ourselves defenseless.”

“Why did the army come, if not to attack?”

“To join Goblin. The spell is waning. For the first time in more than one hundred and fifty years they are able to enter the park grounds. Now Goblin can amass his forces, and in the meantime they have weakened my sisters and me and chased away all others who would oppose them and their master.”

That didn’t sound good, but Christian had other matters on his mind.

“Aurelia, can you do anything for Minerva? I mean—” Her large golden eyes looked at him uncomprehendingly—“Water Girl?”

“What has happened to her?”

Christian pointed, unwilling to look. “She’s—she’s lost an arm. Can you do anything for her?”

“Show me,” Aurelia said.

He picked her up and carried her over to where Minerva lay sleeping. The horse snorted in its sleep as he approached. He was not comforted to see the grim look on Aurelia’s face as she hopped down from his palm and examined Minerva’s stump.

“Was it you who bandaged her arm?” she asked.

“It’s my best shirt,” Christian said. He was arrested by the sight of Minerva’s face, white with an unhealthy pallor instead of her usual fairness, and the wrinkle in her brow. Aurelia looked up at him with understanding.

“You did well,” she said. “She would have bled out if you had not, and then there would be nothing I could do. As it is I cannot do as much as I think you would like. I am weak.”

“So—so you can’t do anything for her?”

“I can do a little.” Aurelia laid her hands on Minerva’s stump and spoke in a language which made her voice sound more than ever like wind in the branches. Golden light glowed all around her and Minerva’s arm, so bright Christian had to look away. When it faded, Aurelia said, “I have stemmed the tide of her blood and soothed her mind. That is all I can do, but it may be enough.”

“Thank you,” Christian said. He simply had to believe her when she said the bleeding had stopped. The tatters of his shirt were soaked through with blood. A little color had returned to Minerva’s face, however, and her breathing sounded easier.

“You may stay with her, if you like,” Aurelia said. “I must see to my sisters. If you don’t mind I would like to borrow your horse. I am too tired to get to all of them on my own.”

“Sure,” Christian said, “but he isn’t my horse. I think he’s Morrow’s.”

“Ah,” Aurelia said. “Rath.”

She leapt down from the pedestal, landing on the horse’s withers. Its skin shuddered at her weight as though she were no more than a fly; it did not wake up.

“Rath,” Aurelia said. One of the horse’s ears swiveled in her direction. She spoke louder, more commanding. “Rath!”

The horse awoke, snorting and blinking as it reeled to its feet. Aurelia patted its neck.

“Rath?” Christian asked.

“That is his name,” Aurelia said. She clucked to the horse, and it plodded off to the farther rose beds with her on its back, the world’s tiniest rider.

36 LEAVING

Aurelia and the horse were back in the courtyard and the east was lit with the greyish light preceding dawn when Christian said, rather reluctantly, “I have to go.”

He would have preferred not to leave Minerva’s side, not even if it meant spending the day in a deserted park sitting beside a damaged marble statue, but he needed provisions if he was going to stay. Food, shelter, extra clothing. And books, of course.

“You mean to leave?” Aurelia asked. “Oh, but—”

Then she stopped.

“What?” Christian said.

“You will return, will you not?”

“Yes,” Christian said, “tonight. But—”turning to look at Minerva with worry in his eyes—“you’ll be alright until I get back?”

Minerva smiled faintly. “Certainly. It’ll be no time at all. I shall close my eyes and when I awake you’ll be here again.”

“She will be well looked after,” Aurelia said. “If Goblin’s army returns and destroys her, it will only be because it first destroyed us.”

That was not at all reassuring. Christian would prefer it if Goblin and his army did not destroy any of them. He almost stayed at the thought, though he was not sure he could do any better of a job protecting Minerva than Aurelia and her sisters could, but his stomach was painfully aware of the fact he had not eaten since tea time yesterday. He had to go home and prepare himself.

His anxiety was plain on his face, written in the crease of his brow and the pallor of his complexion. But it was with resolve in his voice that he said to Minerva, “I’ll come back tonight. I promise.”