33. Idrilia #2
"Can I order something for you?" I asked. "The caff here is very good."
"That would be lovely. I do need a little pick-me-up."
Once the caff was in front of him and he had something to do with his hands, he seemed a little less flustered.
"I'm a great admirer of your father's work, and I've read everything he published," I said.
"His work on the frontier species is the foundation of my research, and I'd put him only a step below Elurion himself in the botanical canon.
Professor Haldren discovered species, and together with Professor Graff they found uses for them that are still saving lives.
I'm interested in his fieldwork along the border, and about the Silver Princess in particular. "
Something shuttered in his face, and the fluster came back.
"The Silver Princess. You said over the telephone that you were interested in her." He turned his cup a quarter circle on its saucer. "I should tell you, Your, ah, I should tell you plainly. I'm not fond of that flower. It is the reason my father's legacy is tainted by mockery."
"Mockery?" I set my cup down. "I don't understand. Your father is revered to this day."
"My father's early and middle work is revered," he corrected.
"And no one remembers what he worked on toward the end of his days.
But back then it was a different story." He sighed.
"He began as the most rigorous botanist of his generation, and he ended chasing fairy tales.
The Silver Princess consumed him, and instead of collecting botanical specimens, he started collecting stories.
Shepherds' and herders' tales, the tales of mountain people.
Stories about the flower having magical powers, about shimmering lights and apparitions.
In the beginning, I thought he was interested in the folklore, and I even helped him catalog the stories according to regions, but then he started to believe in them.
" Lou's voice dropped. "He stood up at a symposium in front of every botanist of standing in three provinces and told them the flower held power.
That was the end of his career. They said that he got the elders' affliction, and perhaps they were right.
Some elders start seeing apparitions toward the end of their days. "
I knew what he was talking about firsthand.
My grandmother suffered from elders' affliction before she died.
Toward the end, she hadn't remembered who my mother was and had been speaking to people who weren't there.
The truly sad part was that her own mother had been still alive and sharp, but she'd deteriorated after her daughter had died.
No mother wanted to outlive her child, even if that child passed in her eighties.
"I'm so sorry," I said. "I know how terrible it is when a loved one loses their coherence."
He nodded. "I'm not sure it was what ailed him, and if it was, it was in the beginning stages. His peers didn't think that they might be mocking a sick man. They were ruthless."
The grief under his words was old and worn smooth, and I felt for him, but I wasn't ready to dismiss the work of the man I admired as the hallucinations of a sick mind.
"I would like to read those tales if you still have them. Folklore fascinates me. Where were the tales clustered? Was it near the places the Silver Princess grew?"
Lou regarded me for a moment, and the sadness gave way to surprise.
"You're quick. That's exactly the thing that ruined him, in the end.
They were clustered. The Silver Princess only grows in a handful of specific places at specific altitudes and right on top of magnetic lines.
And in those places, people tell similar stories of strange things.
" He spread his hands. "Strange lights, shapes at the edge of the trees, ghostly figures glimpsed across a slope at dusk and gone when looked at again.
" He shook his head. "He was certain it meant something because the tales were so alike and always near places that the Silver Princess grew.
I tried to tell him that it was usually at high altitudes, and that the goat herders, who were going crazy from spending weeks alone in the mountains, were also suffering from altitude sickness, but he refused to listen to reason.
You see, the version he believed in was mystical, and it excited him.
He didn't want to exchange that feeling of awe for something mundane and rational. "
I leaned back in my chair. "Can you blame him? I'm itching to read those stories and find a pattern that will hint at something mystical and intriguing. Who wants to be limited to the boring reality?"
He chuckled. "I guess I do. I'm a historian, not a playwright or a novelist."
I arched a brow. "Professor Lou Haldren. Do you mean to tell me that everything written in the history books you teach is the unvarnished truth?"
He smiled sheepishly. "It should be."
"Should be. I agree, but one person's truth is another's lie. What the Precepts of Truth fail to realize is that truth is not monochromatic. It has shades."
He pursed his lips in mock disapproval. "Careful there. You are starting to sound like a Sitorian."
"Elurion forbid." I made the sign against evil, lifting two fingers over my eyes. "Those minions of evil have been seduced by the deceiver, to spread death and destruction."
He lifted his hands into the air. "I didn't mean it that way. It was supposed to be a joke."
"I know." I smiled to let him off the hook, but the truth was that I had little patience for people who ignored evil when it stared them in the eyes and promised them death.
"I'd like to read your father's journals," I said to change the subject.
"Anything he wrote about the Silver Princess, including the fairy tales. I promise I'll cherish every word."
"You'd cherish them," he repeated.
"Every word and every map and illustration. I don't care whether it's botany, tales, or a grocery list in his hand. Your father is my mentor even though I've never met him."