The Moonshaped Sorrow (Open Novella Contest 2020)

Chapter Eight: The Gift

Miraluna didn't avoid him after that, but she shed no light onto the nature of her curse. The most he gathered from questioning servants was that she had once used her Blessing irresponsibly, but no one would say more than that.

And there had to be more. If the curse was just a punishment for irresponsibility, then learning to be responsible should be enough to break it. In his time in the palace Cori had observed a keen awareness of what was going on in her queendom and an initiative to act to prevent future problems.

In the weeks that went by, Miraluna remained unwilling to say anything about the curse. It didn't matter how much he begged or pleaded; her lips stayed resolutely sealed on the subject. With nothing else, they spent their days walking, talking, playing games of chess, and sometimes just sitting, quiet, together.

After a few weeks, there came a day when Miraluna declined his company. She cited paperwork to do, but since Cori had been in the room with her while she worked on such things before, he didn't think that excuse to be truthful. She maintained the insistence that she needed to be alone for the next several days.

Cori took the chance to go to the palace library to see if its pages held any more insight into the curse or Miraluna's family. He learned a little more about how curses in general functioned: sometimes an individual had a Blessing to inflict a specific fate upon someone else, but more often than not, curses were the result of multiple Blessings used by the owners working in tandem. But while interesting, this info didn't give him any more insight into the specifics of Miraluna's curse.

One morning, Miraluna resumed at his side to announce she had a surprise for him. He couldn't imagine what it could be, but she insisted on leading him through the castle with his eyes closed.

"Where are you taking me?" Cori asked.

"It's a surprise." She led him with her hands on his shoulders. "Don't you dare peek."

"I'm not peeking." He lifted his hands up over his closed eyes. "See? No peeking. Will you at least tell me where we're going?"

"No."

She led him a while further through the castle. The biggest clue Cori got was when they descended a staircase, but even with that, he couldn't imagine where they could possibly be going.

They went forward a few paces, and Cori felt a warmth almost like sunlight. Were they outside?

"Wait a second," Miraluna said, then her footsteps retreated. "Okay." Her voice came from farther away now. "You can look."

Cori opened his eyes. He blinked quickly to adjust to the bright sunlight, and slowly the surprise before him came into focus.

It was the garden. But only the rosebush and the general shape remained the same as the palace garden he remembered.

The circular flowerbed bordering the outside of the garden was rid of its carcasses of dead plants past. The gray tinted dirt had been replaced with rich dark brown soil. Soil that was no home to bright flowers stretching toward the sun.

He'd never seen any of these flowers before. They were all bright colors: reds and blues and purples and yellows, flourishing all around him. There were breaks in their circle, as if the garden was waiting for other flowers to join them.

The bench he had sat on in his last time in the garden was so cleaned it looked like a different kind of wood. Even the cobblestones beneath his feet had been polished to a shine, aside from the spattering of fresh dirt softening the cracks.

"Do you like it?" Miraluna stood off to the side to allow him the perfect view. "I left some space so that you could decide what to grow there, but I thought this place would look nicer with some flowers to start. Most are native to Lantaminth, but I ordered a few in from Thryfor."