This was my mother's flower garden. She had gardens of roses. Papa had cut em all down after she was gone. Morfin had talked about these same roses on a arch when I asked him 'bout her. If these had looked like anything else, I'd have known I was seeing wrong. It ain't even strange that roses dead for more than 15 years would all of a sudden pop back to life… not if they were hers. Just like Morfin could work the animals, she could do the same with plants. 'Heard sometimes she'd just be walking and flowers would come up wherever she walked. You could see little seeds rooting all up in her footprint. They could grow tall and make whole forests. Other times they'd stay little, and she'd take em out and put em right in her hair and make a crown, or let em get dry and sew them into the dresses she wore, put them on the tips of her shoes instead of buckles. Papa told me all of that when he was sitting in his chair too drunk to beat my tail. I was too young to remember about the flowers on my own. Maybe that wasn't even real, he was drinking. I'd been drunk before too, I knew what it was like.
Morfin said she'd run off and left us. 'Said Papa had been givin' her a love potion, but didn't make it right one day and it wore off like she'd never had none. When the magic was all gone she was scared of him, didn't know who he was no more, and didn't know how she got in this house. He heard em arguing, it woke him up outta bed.
It was storming that night, everything was coming down, lightning, thunder, rain, wind. He looked out the window and saw her running out the door in a nightgown just screaming. And there was Papa crying and calling her name trying to tell her he was her husband.
That ain't Papa's side of the story, not to me. Said I killed her, said that she died the day I was born. I might've believed that, sounds exactly just like something I'd end up doing, messing stuff even before I got born. But I remember her… I saw enough of her to know she didn't die right then. I know this face that the light comes down on, looks younger than mine with some waving light brown hair. She dances on our wood floor, but someone picked up the stuff on it, so the floor doesn't look just the same- but I still know it. She dances on grass, but ain't wearing shoes just like I won't. She holds her hand out to someone so short she's got to bend over to get her face near em, too much of smile though. Papa would've made sure you stopped smiling if you grinned that hard 'round him
He said I looked like her but with all of her worst features on, mother looked good he said, didn't have that squib face. She did look real good, if she looked like the lady I believe she was. Didn't think she looked like me none though. Sometimes I'd draw pictures of other ways my mother could look, in case I was wrong, draw them in the sand. No matter what I drew Morfin came by and kicked the picture back to dust.
I saw the smile again, through the veil on the face of the lady under the arch. The people in love were mama and papa.
I should've felt good seeing my mother. It's not that I didn't, I couldn't even say what it meant to me. I liked what I saw, but it made me worry. I don't know why.
When I looked back at my arch there was nobody up under it, just me and the roses. They'd stopped raining on me now. Then a wind came up outta nowhere and blew the flowers laying cross the ground away.
When the wind whistled I saw myself where my mother had been with that same smile on, but maybe a little wider, more of a laugh than a smile. I was stealing a rose from off of the arch, looking back over the hill. Even I had to admit I had the sneaking look of a bandit about me, a pirate. I clutched that rose close. It seemed as important as the elder wand from the story of The Three Brothers in my rhymes, Beadle the Bard. My eyes were some different woman's though. They were beauties! But they weren't no normal eyes. They were colorful and sparkling, somethin wild was back there, snakes and cats have eyes like this. Her eyes stared at me, it was a brave person's face.
My heart fluttered for a second, but I found my breath and got real calm. We looked at each other and something happened right there between the two of us. I felt my heart making the drumbeat against my body all over again, it wasn't loud or hard, i just was there. The look she put on me made me feel I was something more than I was. She looked at me with some respect.
She disappeared, that thing that could've been me. I watched her body fade, someone was erasing her. I watched her turn into just traces. She held out a rose, it was a red rose, and bigger than all the rest. Soon the only part of her left was that arm with the rose, and then that was gone!
I looked down at my feet where the climbing roses knotted round the legs of the arch. They spilled off onto the grass into tangles of briars, knife bushes that went as high as my waist.
I looked at the fat green thorns. They shined so hard. I stared at them, you'd have thought they were talking to me I looked so hard back at them. I put my hand over one and let it get real near it, but never let it stick me. You won't stick me!
Then I put my thumb on one side of it, my pointing finger on the other and ripped it right off. 'Stuck it in the apron I was wearing and made off with it. The thorn of a rose could make someone fall in love with you. It was the first thing you had to have if you were gonna make Amortentia, the queen bee of all the love potions...
Author's note: I've got a 5th chapter ready, but I'm going to have to hold it hostage until I get a couple of reviews. I need to know if someone's listening or not. There's no point in putting it up just for me to read.
