a/n: three of the six herbs used as titles for the parts are explained within the fic. The other three were based on the following properties
Aloe: Healing, protection, grief, bitterness, affection
Bluebell: Luck, truth
Thyme: Activity, bravery, courage, strength
a/n 2: Fennel takes place at the same time as Laying the Foundation. The others are scattered through-out the same timeline.
Rosethorn's Garden
By icecreamlova
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Fennel
"I wake up in the night muttering stuff like 'fennel. None in the vegetable garden–most vegetables hate it.'" – Briar, Sandry's Book
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When Niva convinced her father to send her to send her to Thyme Circle, she had thought the hard part was over. It was two months later that she realized, staring at Winding Circle's walls from the inside, that the hard part was only beginning.
The day she arrived at Winding Circle, mingled fear and hope fought for dominance, making her heart leap and stomach sink like a stone. Three weeks had passed, in which other novices avoided her in a polite, vague way, and she had begun wondering if the long journey from Anderran had been worth the effort.
She might have decided it was not if she hadn't found Isas. Or, more accurately, if he hadn't found her.
Three weeks of standing either alone, or among other girls with water-for brains who had been sent there by their parents for an education, and Niva had spoken to almost no one. She had, instead, spent her time wandering the temple, and in her patience was awarded with a small section of the temple's gardens calling out for her, protesting, imploring that she rid them of the intruder.
Niva was dismayed when she saw it was fennel. Vegetables didn't like it, but as a herb, it was still useful.
So for the next two hours, Niva busied herself with transplanting the fennel to a more isolated place, reasoning that, since this garden had been allowed to grow wild, no one would care. She barely noticed time passing, but she did notice when a shadow fell across her face.
She looked up, squinting, trying to place the tall boy. His white novice robes, and that height, was familiar. Yes. A class-mate. Isas, was it? A little proud, very distant? Just like every single other class-mate of hers: people weren't worth it.
Niva was busy, and he seemed unaware that he was staring: his eyes darting from the dirt at her feet to the stains on the habit she had found dirty, but neatly folded, in the other garden. Her short patience was almost at its end when he said, disbelievingly, "Did someone plant fennel in a vegetable patch?"
"Help or leave," Niva told him, well aware that she was being rude and not caring a whit, and turned back to her work.
She expected him to be just like any of those other silly geese that flocked in the temple, but Isas surprised her: he stooped beside her, hands reaching for the fennel, and stayed.
They worked through the afternoon in silence, and Niva admitted to herself that maybe Winding Circle wasn't so huge after all.
- : -
Cloth-of-Gold
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"Niva, sweet, it's time for you to come inside."
"Not until it's asleep, Luc."
"Papa will hang you by your heels in the well if you're not up early tomorrow."
"I can handle him," Niva says firmly, hands on her hips, and she tends her starling until thin mist obscures the skies, and her bean-runners have stopped whispering stories. She is happy.
- : -
"You really do prefer the company of birds to other humans."
"You really do like stating the obvious, don't you?"
His mouth twitches. She's sure of it. And he shifts when she moves to go around him, hiding something behind his back.
She narrows her eyes at him. "What's so funny?"
Isas is an aristocrat, but he isn't as good at hiding his expression as he believes. He gives up trying, and waves a hand loosely at the small bird cupped between her fingers, all pin-feathers and big, liquid yearning eyes. "I ought to present you with cloth-of-gold for your coming birthday," he drawls. "You would make more use of it, spelling it help you communicate with these beasts, than I would leaving it in my garden box."
And he presents her with cloth-of-gold.
She stares, and says the first thing that comes to mind. "Anyone would think you were courting me, with something this charming." His new friends among the novices, as few as they are, spring to mind.
His cheeks dust rose, but holds it out anyway, and their hands brush as she takes them.
"You grew these for me?" she asks, with the wonder of someone who knows the contents of his small box-gardens inside out. "In the day since I rescued Squeek?"
He sniffs, knowing it irritates her and not looking as though he cares – he's doing it on purpose! "You underestimate my powers."
No, Niva thinks. Just you, as one of those rich idiots with an unfortunate talent for green things. I won't do that again.
- : -
The ground is dry and even weeds struggle to take hold.
Niva shows her newly rescued starling its nest at her window, next to her small window-box of fennel. She's formed a small garden within Lightbridge's walls, but she can't bear to sleep without something green.
And now the starling joins her collection of precious memories, of a time she wasn't trapped in this house of dust.
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Interlude B: Meaning Number Two (of Joy)
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Isas was somewhere across the ocean and she couldn't be any happier.
He was visiting the family who, he had admitted, would probably do quite a bit to keep him from returning and taking his vows. He was beyond the reach of magic, too far away for the whispering-bright intimacy that stretched between two young green mages. He could be lost to her forever.
Niva could barely smile any more than she did now into her musty tome of Endless Ocean Island herb extract diagrams.
Now she had time to spend quietly among the small patch of herbs she cultivated just beyond Lightsbridge's ancient walls. Now she didn't have to smolder over cyclic, uncompromising arguments that tore classrooms with their ferocity. Now her lips and tongue and mouth were not sore.
She couldn't be happier. Really.
She couldn't be any happier, because joy had become too fleeting to find; she couldn't be any happier because Niva didn't miss that arrogant stick, not at all.
She couldn't be any happier because every time she tried to smile, just out of the blue, her lips seemed to shape a terrible lie. Her books were distractions and her plants fragile solitude from the rest of the world.
She couldn't be any happier, but she couldn't be any sadder, either, because both felt the same when Isas visited his family and she was trapped, alone, in lifeless, gray Lightsbridge.
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Aloe
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Rosethorn remembered Lightsbridge as a place of horror. There were no trees, not flowers, and only the toughest brown-green vines clung to the outside of its walls; weeds could barely stand to grow in its enchanted corners. Dust gathered in its basements, and powders were always fresh enough to sting.
To Rosethorn, Lightsbridge was the place her oldest relationship broke down. Never mind that Isas had always been proud, always been convinced of his infallibility. Never mind that it was at Lightsbridge where she first recognized the leap in her heart at his presence, the burning where they touched, the impracticality of kissing someone a foot taller. It was at Lightsbridge that pride changed to arrogance, and competitiveness changed to bitter rivalry. It was Lightsbridge that drew him to start planting the stem of one plant onto another, and ignore the wrongness of it.
Lightsbridge forced her to do what she hated, and turned the laboratory work she liked into chores she couldn't stand. The shiny sterile white surfaces, the clink of impeccable glass tools, and the quiet murmuring in the background made her long to throw out her arms and bloom like the giant flowers of her aloe plants, just to see what others could do about it. The musty books and their drawings of exotic plants were burdens of knowledge without restraint or wisdom, and only sharpened her longing for the quiet understanding of Dedicate Elmsbrook and his garden of living, breathing herbs.
Rosethorn came to regard Lightsbridge as darkness without joy, forgetting the thrill of his arms around her in some deserted corner in her memories of his cold, sharp approach to plants after their second year of studying. She forgot the patient advice of the Dean in her memories of Professor Bluewater's tyranny. For as long as she attempted to avoid remembering anything about Lightsbridge, she couldn't recognize, and come to treasure, the seeds of making plants bloom in a riot of color to taunt Lightsbridge's cold. For as long as she picked out only the bitterest moments, she couldn't remember the sweetness of exploring Karang's capital with Isas and their friends.
For as long as she saw only the darkness, she forgot that it was in darkness that a candle shone brighter, and that those lovely moments were like sunlight.
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Bluebell
"Eight years. It took six of us eight years to blend these essences, to reduce the need to experiment on human beings. Xiyun Mountstrider, from Yanjing, died of breakbone fever in the third year. We thought we would never succeed without him. Ulra Stormborn went blind in the fifth year. First Dedicate Elmbrook took Ibaru fever and bled to death inside her skin in the seventh year, and we continued the work." – Briar's Book, Chapter 12
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First Dedicate Elmsbrook died on a warm summer's day. She was survived by her estranged daughter, her devastated lover, and her two students-turned-peers on the Human Essence Project. At the very end, Rosethorn and Crane had been forced to leave their former teacher's side, or risk the failure of the strand of a theory they'd been following for the past three years.
It felt to Rosethorn almost as though they had chosen the project over Elmsbrook's life, even if she called herself a ninny in her head, because by the time they emerged from the laboratory, cautiously hopeful that this final test would confirm the viability of the essence of any single age group, the news had been waiting for three hours. The delicate hope, the fragile reconciliation she thought she might build with Crane, had shattered. They'd walked to the morgue in silence.
They returned to work the next day. She wasn't in idiot, and both of them remembered the terrible screaming during the previous epidemic. They'd had to suspend work on the project, and the first cure the four mages felt secure enough to test on a patient sent two of their ten patients into intermittent screaming and seizures. By the time they perfected the treatment, over a period of three more days and three nights of haunting dreams, the two had died.
As she and Crane checked the results of their research, and their colleague checked hers, Rosethorn couldn't help but wonder who among them was next.
Rosethorn's results showed progress towards a possible broad diagnostic powder, but they were set aside in favor of following Crane's. Rosethorn wondered if Crane, too, was reliving the breakthrough Xiyun gave his life to complete, for he made no sarcastic comment, no gloating witticism.
(She had known, four years ago. She'd been roused from her nightmares by his tossing and turning, and they'd lost themselves in each other in their desperate passion until they reached some modicum of peace. They'd risen side by side so often that it had taken months to get used to waking alone.)
For the next seven days, Rosethorn and Crane performed experiment after experiment, remixing the keys and relying on the luck of the draw for success. For the next seven nights, Rosethorn dreamt of her volunteers' faces as they died around her, her old nightmare returned. For the next seven mornings, long before dawn, Rosethorn woke with her former teacher's name on her lips.
On the seventh night, Rosethorn forced herself out of bed and walked to the door, opening it before Crane could knock. They stared at each other, and each saw the same conflict written across the other's face, saw the chance to drown it with something else. In so many ways, they were like young saps planted in the same soil, branches facing away but roots still the same distance apart. She had been about to head into his rooms, and knock on the door, and that was a truth of their relationship.
They spoke little, like in the last days of their relationship, a far cry from the laughter and playfulness of the early courtship, but the next day, Rosethorn rose with the sun and not before.
The morning after, they arrived to an outcome that knocked the wind out of Rosethorn, sudden fierce joy at the good fortune that had presented the project with success. And because this, too, was a truth of their relationship, they spent that night, and ones after that, in their own rooms, alone.
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Thyme
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Rosethorn gathered her courage and visited his greenhouse, the day Lark deemed her well enough to leave her tender care. (Her lover, Rosethorn had discovered, could be absolutely terrifying when she wanted.)
Crane poured tea into cups of celestial blue, a strange emotion in his eyes that made Rosethorn uncomfortable. It looked like concern, maybe even like affection. Rosethorn couldn't abide affection from him.
"Stop looking at me like that," she snapped.
Crane sniffed. "As difficult as it is to believe, I cannot find anything wrong with being grateful you are alive."
Rosethorn swallowed, and she wanted to speak, but her numb tongue would not move. What could she say? Even if Crane would have believed her, she was banned from speaking of her hours in death. How could she phrase what she wanted to tell him?
Tea scalded her throat. Rosethorn choked.
"I was led to believe you were completely recovered," Crane drawled, setting down the teapot.
"I am," Rosethorn said sharply, glaring at him. "If you're implying that I stay shut up like an invalid – " She broke off. "What's so funny?"
"Lark has always brought out your best side. If she couldn't do it," Crane told her, "I will not make a futile attempt."
Oh.
Well.
"You would think that, wouldn't you?" she said, unsurprised, reaching across his decorative mahogany table to take his elegant hand in her palms.
"You've given me no cause to think otherwise," Crane said slowly, stroking the back of her hand. "And," he admitted, "I was so angry. So rash. I gave you no reason to regret your choice."
"Too right you didn't," Rosethorn muttered, closing her hand over his cheek. She saw him take in a slow, shuddering breath.
"Your method of announcing it was unnecessarily blunt," Crane said.
"You needed it," argued Rosethorn. "It was like you couldn't stop looking down your nose at me long enough to get it into your head that I was, that Lark and I could – "
"And still do?"
"Yes," Rosethorn said, immediately. She would make that particular fact clear. "But if the Blue Pox, and" – death – "pneumonia gave me one gift, it was perspective. For my life. For this."
Somehow, they had ended up sitting next to each other, and even after so long, they just fit. They sipped tea, spoke of disease, and Rosethorn didn't dwell on memories.
- : -
Rosemary
There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember. – Shakespeare, Hamlet.
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Rosethorn's garden is a garden of memories. Each herb, each flower carries a specific moment. The fennel in the corner are descendants of those that salvaged from a deserted north-west corner of Winding Circle's vegetable gardens, twenty years ago. The bunch of irises in the corner were presents from Lark before they were together, a secret love confession through the language of flowers.
But not all memories dwell within the plants. The cloth-of-gold that were Isas's first gifts have dried and wilted; the bramble-making magic that nearly killed her has vanished; the blue-pox that did kill her leaves only a slow tongue that she's come to talk around.
After Rosethorn arrives back from Gyongxe, she takes time, and has help, to explore through the memories. She walks through the garden that Lark has tended in her absence, amusing herself by scaring Comas, running a dirt-covered thumb over the back of bronzed skin and trying to talk. Lark hugs her, kisses her, and lets her stand wordless, her past running through her and seeping into the dirt.
With some memories, she turns to him: some because she cannot vocalize them to Lark, and others because, if she has to tell them to someone, she trusts the secrets with him. When Lark smiles at Crane across the breakfast table, Rosethorn pretends not to notice the gratitude for that in Lark's smile. (She was NOT afraid, returning, when she wondered what their relationship would become. Not afraid. Maybe… apprehensive at the most. Nervous, possibly.)
Crane sees the scars across her back and her thighs, and plants kisses where magic stabbed her body. Afterwards, when Rosethorn has caught her breath, she rolls over, and she doesn't know how he does it (though she thinks he does enjoy baiting her anger, her sharp-edged passions) but bits and pieces of the war come tumbling out. Bits of pieces of the visit, too, of the young, vibrant teenagers who helped them, because she won't forget the light for the dark.
Between them, the mind-healer pronounces Rosethorn recovering (and she wishes Briar would just take her advice already.)
"Adolescents make their mistakes," Crane drawls into her ear. "You certainly made enough of your own."
"You were worse," she points out. "All of mine, and more."
But she doesn't dwell on them. She tends her garden, and it blooms with new life.
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Well?