In which Grandma Luna finds a cottage in a forest of flowers.
Up in the room above the inn, a small fire crackled in the grate, casting a warm orange glow on the walls. Alvar was fast asleep on the bed, blankets drawn up to his chin. His stick-sword lay on the side table, dusty boots on the floor.
On the loft balcony, Ruth sat with Luna for a long time. For about an hour or so, neither said a word.
Then, slowly, with an effort, Luna began. She told her friend all that had happened back at home in Eastmoor.
Ruth looked terrified as she listened, unable to muster even a word of consolation, tears forming in her wide eyes and streaming down her cheeks--yet Luna felt nothing, as though she were merely narrating the tale of some other, unfortunate soul. The past few days out in the wilderness had shifted her focus entirely on ensuring the boy's survival and put leagues of distance between the tragedy and herself. Grief seemed a grey, faraway thing cloaked in fog.
"Ruth," she said at last, "promise you'll look after Alvar for me."
"For you?" She looked most bewildered. "Why do you say it like that? You going off somewhere?"
A long silence followed.
"I don't know," said Luna. "I didn't think I'd make it this far. Now I don't know what to do."
"You can't possibly go back to Eastmoor. There's nothing left!"
Luna thought of her garden withering, the books in the shelves lying beneath dust and cobwebs. She could go back and nurse her plants back to life and sweep the floors and make a warm meal with vegetables from the garden. She could finish sewing the pattern of rowans on the tablecloth and spread it over the kitchen table. But Ruth was right.
There's nothing left.
No matter how much she made the house livable, no one was ever going to come back there. Perhaps her daughter Elena would return, but there was no news from her for months, and her hope was running thin.
She looked at Ruth, the most helpless she'd ever felt in her life.
"What do I do? Where do I go?" she asked, clutching fistfuls of her travelworn dress.
Ruth snatched Luna's hands to hold them firmly in her own. She looked very angry, of course, but it was the good kind of angry, like when someone scolds you because you haven't been taking care of yourself--and then they do it for you.
"What kind of question is that?" she said. "You're coming with me."
"But--I can't possibly--"
"And--" said Ruth, cutting off all her protests, "we both know I'm strong enough to haul you and the lad all the way to Frostspire--if you resist."
Luna knew that, of course. She knew what her friend was capable of--and it was part of the reason why they became friends in the first place. She did not resist.
After a day's rest at the inn, Ruth hired a carriage to take them to Frostspire, back to her home. The road was rough, and she had never had a ride so bumpy. It made her almost miss the days travelling on foot. All the while, she kept a firm hold around little Alvar, who sat across her knees, bundled in a warm blanket.
Strangely enough, Alvar stopped asking after his parents or siblings. He spoke little and spent most of the time staring at the road, the trees on either side, and when the road rolled far out of the sight of the last house at the farthest end of Greenwater and the woods grew dense and quiet around them, he listened to the birds singing.
Luna wondered if he'd heard their conversation that night. The more days went on, the harder it became for her to keep up the pretense and for him to believe such a nonsensical tale.
"What's the matter, dear?" she asked him when the silence grew unbearable. "Are you angry with me?"
He shook his head and hid his face in the crook of her neck. "I want to go home, Gran."
"But I am taking you home."
He raised his head and gave her the most accusatory stare. "No, you aren't. We're going the wrong way. This isn't the way back home."
"Well," she said, pressing a kiss to his forehead, "there are times when you look over your shoulder, and you find the way back home is no longer there. Roads are tricky like that. Sometimes they just...vanish."
"No, no!" He squirmed out of her arms, pointing wildly at the rock-studded path that lumbered behind them as the carriage rolled on. "Right there! I can see it right there! It's not gone."
"It's a trick, you see. You can take the road and go all the way back, but it won't lead you to the same place. It'll look just like home, sure, but it won't be the same." She sat him down in her lap once more.
"That's why we're taking a different path now," whispered Luna. "Leading somewhere new."
The further the road climbed north, the terrain grew rough and uneven. After the harrowing journey when the day dawned misty and cold, the village came into view; little more than a scatter of humble houses leaning against a craggy wall of mountains facing a grey sea. The foggy shore down below was grey too, and great grey waves rushed and broke against rocky outcrops.
Ruth hopped down from the carriage and threw down her hood. The icy wind tossed back her gold and silver hair and a warm smile spread across her lips.
"Home at last," she said. Luna wished she could say the same.
Though the winds here were biting cold and the soil tough and stony, Frostspire was home to hardy and good natured folk, and it seemed everyone knew everyone's business. On the way Ruth ran into many of her neighbours, and most of them had heard about the epidemic that had shaken Eastmoor. They took Luna's hands and told her, over and over, that she and the little boy were welcome to stay as long as they liked.
They passed by a house before which lay a cabbage patch--and there grew the biggest cabbages Luna had ever seen. A young couple was arguing by the gate, the wife threatening to leave if the husband did not stop growing such ridiculously oversized things that no one wanted to buy.
"A lively pair, these two," Ruth said as she approached. "They love each other dearly, but those damned giant cabbages are gonna be the end of their marriage one of these days."
Quarrelsome though they may be, but they did put aside their argument to greet Luna. The young man offered her a cabbage, and when she politely declined like any reasonable person ought to, he insisted, and even fetched a small cart to carry it for her all the way to Ruth's house.
"A welcome gift, from the behalf of Frostspire!" he said as he hauled the cart.
"If you say so, dear Mr. Launceleyn," Ruth said, snorting.
His wife waved at them from the gate, very happy to have gotten rid of at least one of those monstrosities.
On the way they passed by a smithy, where the blacksmith was busy working a mighty big set of bellows. A little girl of about eight stood nearby and watched him work, brows wrinkled with interest. A rooster hopped about on the roof, uttering ear-piercing crows.
"Hello there, Mrs. Bushbury! Your knife's ready," he called out to Ruth, then turned to the girl. "Sigrid, dear, fetch it from the back, would you?"
The girl darted inside. Moments later, she came running back and handed Ruth a big kitchen knife, its wooden handle carved with the pattern of a woven basket. The blade was of excellent quality, but it was the carvings that caught Luna's eye.
"She carves these handles herself," said Ruth, gesturing at Sigrid.
"Father says he'll teach me how to run the smithy soon," said Sigrid importantly.
Luna took the blade in her hands. It was only an ordinary kitchen knife, but sometimes ordinary things made with love hold the most precious magic. She could feel it.
The girl gave her a gap-toothed grin. Alvar stared at her with wide-eyed wonder and showed her his much treasured branch.
"Hello," he said, and hardly bothered with formalities of introduction. "Look. This is my sword!"
"But that's just a stick," said Sigrid.
"I can fight wolves with this," claimed Alvar.
"Oh, sure." She laughed. "I'll forge you a better one when I take over the smithy. You'll slay dragons with it."
Mr. Bushbury, Ruth's husband, was the village mailman. He was a soft-spoken gentleman, and he warmly welcomed Luna to the house when they arrived. Ruth's son Felix helped them with their luggage, while her daughter Jamie showed her to her room. The two were agreeable and kind, and reminded her most painfully of her own dear children.
In the upstairs room, Jamie laid out fresh bedclothes and blankets on the bed, and opened the windows to let in warm sunshine. Through it, one could see the garden below. The rose bushes seemed to be on the verge of dying, but snowdrops bloomed in their dozens. They were blooming in her garden in Eastmoor too, she thought.
"Please," said Jamie, "make yourself at home." So did all the others in the house.
Weeks bled into months, and she became as though one of their own. Ruth introduced her to the neighbourhood, and on market days, the two went out together to haggle over prices. She helped her around the kitchen, and, much to Ruth's delight, nursed the roses in the garden back to health. One bright morning, Mr. Bushbury turned up with a letter in his hand and a wide smile on his face.
It was from Elena. Her ship was docked at Westone, a faraway port city. She'd been doing well, until the devastating news of Eastmoor had reached her.
The letter was wrinkled with dried tears at the last line:
'And I couldn't even say goodbye.'
Luna sat clutching the letter to her heart for a long time. When Alvar walked in, asking what was so bad about Aunt Elena's letter to make her sad, she decided it was time to tell him the truth.
She sat him down on the table, so they were eye to eye.
"Aunt Elena is sad because we'll never get to see the others again; your mum and papa, Linny, Hazel and Grampa."
She expected him to be shocked, even burst out into a tantrum, but he was only bewildered.
"What?" he asked. "Why?"
"They are dead," said Luna.
"Dead?"
She nodded. Somehow saying it made it feel more real than ever. But she had to steel herself and say it, and make the child understand.
"You remember everyone was having this fever back at home? They died because of it."
"Alright..." he trailed off, confused. "But the fever went away, didn't it? We're well now. When are they coming back? Mum and papa?"
She smoothed down his hair with gentle fingers. "They won't come back."
"What if I wait? For a year? What then? I'll be very good, I promise," he said, suddenly eager. "Sig is going to make me a sword. I wanted to show it to mum."
She wanted to make no more cruel false promises. "I'm afraid it's too late, dear. When someone dies, it means goodbye. Forever."
Only now did the long-suppressed emotions spill over, now that he knew waiting was in vain. He stared blankly for a moment, before finally breaking.
"No fair!" he cried, and jumped down from the table and out of her grasp. "No fair!"
It was not fair, Luna agreed.
He cried and wailed and stamped his foot stubbornly. "She never said goodbye! They went away without me!"
Then he stormed out of the room. What followed were the most difficult days in her entire stay with Ruth.
He broke his stick-sword in two and threw away the pieces over the hedge, as far as his little arms could manage. He withdrew himself from everyone else, refused to eat and when it was bedtime, he vowed he was staying up forever and never going to sleep--through hunger and weariness would get to him each time. But even when he slept, his dreams were frightful and he woke many times. There were days when he seemed to resent Luna the most, and others, where he clung to her at all times.
The storm seemed to pass at last when Sigrid, the blacksmith's daughter came one morning, asking why he didn't come out to play anymore.
At first, he refused to leave his bed, but the girl went around the house and called him through the window.
"Go away," he said. "I don't want to play."
"I've got a present for you!" she yelled.
He lay silent awhile, then curiosity got the better of him and he hobbled to the window, dragging the blankets with him.
Below in the garden, Sigrid was brandishing a wooden practice sword. It looked much better than the stick he had.
She showed him the other sword she had strapped to her belt.
"Wanna fight?"
Alvar never won in the sword fights, but his mood improved significantly whenever she was around. There were times when he would be sad and withdrawn again, but those gradually became few and far between as the girl showed up almost everyday to play.
She introduced him to the many other children in the neighbourhood. He was shy around the new playmates, but Sigrid remained his favourite, who doted on him as if he were her own little brother.
Another winter passed, and the first flowers of spring had just begun to bloom when Luna began to think it was time for her to find a place of her own in this village. Though Ruth and her family were more than happy to let them stay forever, she knew things were getting too crowded in that little house.
She wanted to start anew and earn her own keep. It didn't have to be much-- just enough to keep the two of them afloat.
And Luna had a place in mind.
Having stayed a full year at Frostspire, she'd learnt all there was to know about the locality and even the surrounding woods and mountains, from the windswept beach to the loneliest cliff, from the quiet meadows to the bustling market, and which seller offered the best prices in fish and whose flour tasted of grit. Neither grief nor age could dull the intelligent and observant soul she was at heart.
There was an abandoned house high up on the mountains facing the sea-- an old fisherman's. A fine house it was--though it could use a bit of repair--but the road uphill was too much for her to climb everyday.
It was the other house that caught her attention--the one right across from Ruth's.
The abandoned cottage by the creek.
It stood over a patch of land completely overgrown with roses, lilies, hydrangeas, violets, dandelions and countless vibrant flowers. They had taken over the house completely.
There was a sad beauty about the place; a skeleton of a house, flowers growing from bare bones. It was as though the house was decorating itself eternally, waiting for someone to come back home, but no one ever came.
One cold evening, as they spoke of days long gone over a cup of tea on the porch, Luna had asked Ruth about the house.
Ruth took a long sip from her steaming cup, closed her eyes for a moment and listened to the plaintive rustling of the wind over the overgrown bushes around the cottage across the street.
"They call it the 'House of Flowers'," she said. "Most folk fear that place. It's haunted, they say."
Luna smiled. "And what do you say?"
She snorted. "Been living across from it for thirty odd years. Ain't seen no haunting. But..."
"But?"
"It's got...history. Like all old and abandoned things do. And it's not a particularly happy tale. Certainly not a fitting one for evenings like these. By rights, we oughta be reminiscing about the good old days now."
But Luna had no wish to look back upon the days that had just gone by. She'd left them behind, the moment she turned away from the scene of Eastmoor visible from the high mountain road that day.
"Tell me anyway," she insisted.
Ruth put down her cup and sat up straight, chuckling to herself. "Shoulda known, this is the sort of thing you'd find interesting. But let me first make another pot of tea, because we're gonna be here for a while."
Her voice, reluctantly narrating the rather tragic tale, still rang clear in Luna's head as she made her way down the pebble-lined path today. It led off the main street and winded through tall grasses that swayed in the fresh spring breeze. Alvar skipped ahead of her, humming, singing, kicking pebbles off the road.
The way led them to a wooden gate, broken and overgrown with ivy. Beyond, surrounded by a forest of lush flowers, stood the lonely cottage.
The House of Flowers.
A young couple-- a fisherman and a gardener lived there once. The gardener was a wonderful woman, and people of the village believed she possessed magic, for the flowers in her garden were unparalleled in their beauty.
Not even a year had passed since their wedding, the young man went out to sea with his boat, never to return. A terrific storm churned up the sea that day, one that not even the most experienced of the fisherfolk could foresee.
He never came back to his dear wife, who waited and waited for days on end, while everyone else gave up hope. She put all her attention on the garden, trying her best to make it look perfect, so the day her husband returned, the flowers would be there to welcome him.
But she waited in vain.
So one early morning, she set off by herself to find him. She asked one of the fisherfolk to take her to the sea, and when they did, she dived below the waves to find her love. They searched and searched, but never found her again. She too became one with the waves.
Back at the cottage, the flowers in the garden grew and grew, even in the absence of their caretaker.
They grew in the middle of winter, when all else was bare and grey. They opened their petals heedless of the cold. They drew sustenance from the frosty earth and pale sun, and they never stopped growing. The roses grew tough and thorny, armed to the teeth to drive away anyone who dared to pluck the flowers. Nettles, poison ivy and brambles crawled over the fences and kept watch. They took over the whole house and its surrounding land, the once lush garden turning into a small forest. Folk said they were untamable.
"You pull out a leaf, they grow right back," Ruth had told her.
The flowers guarded the house in such a way, no one could get inside.
Luna decided to make this strange place her new home.
Though the gate was blocked, Alvar ran along the broken fence and found a hollow in the overgrown hedges. "In here, Gran!" he called, before passing through and out of sight.
She bent over and swept in, careful not to get her dress caught in the thorns. Once inside, she caught hold of Alvar's hand and kept him close.
A path ran across the garden, leading up to the cottage. For the first time in many long years, the sound of footfalls rang across the cobbles--the click-click of weary old leather boots and the patter of tiny feet.
As soon as she stepped inside, it was as though the rest of the world was shut out instantly. No noise of the village seemed to penetrate those hedge walls. In the garden, it was pleasant and warm, no vengeful spirit to be seen lingering anywhere. Sunlight dappled the long grass, huge butterflies hovered over flowers that leapt all over the place.
There was a great power at work here. The garden was no ordinary one.
All that love that the young woman had poured into these flowers had turned into magic, which had kept them alive for so long. There was a healing air about the place, so sweet that Luna felt years younger as she walked around. She also sensed a deep sadness laying over the place and the lonely house-- a sense of endless longing for someone's return. The power which was at work here had a heart of its own--the gentle, kind heart of the young woman who made this garden. Her spirit seemed to have merged with the very ground, ingrained in the soil, the roots, every single leaf and flower.
"What do you think, Alvar?" she asked the little one clinging to her arm. "You like this place?"
He didn't answer, looking around himself in wide-eyed wonder. A soft spring breeze blew across the garden, and dandelions bowed their heads, their wispy white seeds sailing forth in the wind. Some landed on his hair and settled there like snow. He laughed, trying to catch them with his hands.
In the middle of all that colourful chaos stood the small cottage, its roof overflowing with flowers. Moss grew on its walls and thick vines crawled across the door, holding it shut.
Luna gently placed her hand upon the knocker, and tapped it against the creaky wood three times.
I'm home.
She did not say it out loud, because there is no need for words when souls speak to one another. She reached out to the long departed woman who she had never met, yet whose pain she understood so well; the ache of losing a loved one, the sorrow of seeing one's own sweet home become dark and empty, and this excruciating, unbearable longing, waiting for someone who would never come back. She understood it all.
The house answered.
Welcome home.
Luna did not hear the words so much as she felt them in her heart like a warm embrace.
Slowly, the thick vines moved away from the door, which now softly creaked open. The windows opened in the same fashion, and the roots moved away from the rooftop, which up until now seemed on the verge of collapsing. The House of Flowers had a visitor after so many years, and a permanent one at that.
Luna took up residence in the house, and it was where she lived happily to the end of her days. When she went back to Ruth's house to gather all her things, and announced where she was going to live, the matter became quite a sensation in the neighbourhood. Some said she knew magic and had made a pact with the ghost, while others said the ghost had become bored and gone away to haunt some other place.
Luna had never really bothered to clear up that confusion, because she rather seemed to enjoy the strangest explanations the village folk came up with on their own. The other, more obvious reason was that she was very busy. There were a lot of repairs to be made and a ton of dust and cobwebs to be swept clean.
It was during one of those ventures that she stumbled across the books in the attic. They were ancient things clad in leather, the pages brittle and yellow. But from what little remained of the gold lettering on their spines, Luna figured they were of great worth. These were books on gardening magic.
She put her broom aside and smiled to herself, kneeling to flip through the pages. Countless luxurious illustrations of plants and flowers stared back at her through decades worth of dust. She'd dabbled a little in such arts in her youth, so she could make sense of most of the things.
"Well, well," she said to herself, "I suppose it's never too late to learn new things."
She went downstairs and sifted through the knapsack she'd taken with her on the journey from Eastmoor to Frostspire. From it, she retrieved the red journal, the one with all the remedies. She went to the market and bought a fine set of quills, ink bottles, brushes and paint, for it was time to take notes and learn.
It was certainly not a smooth journey and at times she found herself lost, sitting amidst books wide open and fluttering in the wind. Ruth brought her dinner in those times--a special stew with a secret recipe that she refused to reveal--and that usually cleared her head right away.
"I don't really understand what on earth are you doing, to be honest," she'd say, staring in wonder at the sometimes smoking remnants of botched experiments. "But I want to see you succeed. So eat up and get back at it!"
Luna gave the wonderful garden all she had, and in due time, it paid back.
By the next spring, when the spirit of the upcoming fair was high in the air, she had learned how to tame the extraordinary flowers and to enchant seeds that gave rise to the most resilient of plants. It was as though they bloomed at her will.
The evening before Spring Fair, she sat on the porch, watching the stars. Alvar whistled a song he'd learnt, with his head on her lap like the old days, but she'd noticed he was getting taller. Indeed, he'd grown out of his old clothes lightning fast, and she could no longer sweep him into her arms as effortlessly as she once could. He was now too heavy for that. Or perhaps she was growing older.
"People are calling you a witch, did you know?" he said, breaking off the song.
"Is that bad thing?"
Alvar shook his head. "They say you're just like the pretty lady who used to live here."
Luna laughed. "Ah, right. You could say I learned it from her."
He threw his head back and looked at her. "Hey, Gran?"
"Yes?"
"Will you teach me magic? I want to grow flowers too."
"Certainly, dear," she said. "One day, you'll be looking after this place on your own. I'll teach you all I know when you're older. But it'll need lots of practice, so you have to be very patient about it."
"Oh, I'll practice all day, everyday!"
She smiled. "We'll see."
Long moments passed in sweet, comfortable silence. Fireflies glimmered in the bushes, the waxing moon silver overhead. Inside, over the fire, the pot of stew simmered slowly, a warm, delicious smell drifting through the doorway. She thought of opening a flower shop, a little something just enough for two humble souls to get by. It seemed like a wonderful idea.
"How about we open up a little flower shop?" she said. There was no response.
"Alvar?"
He'd already fallen asleep with a faint smile on his face, just like the day they had picnic in the woods.