Chapter 33 Epilogue 3 Lovers under the Loving Moon #2
“The hothouses?” asked Aurienne as they approached the structures. “Oh—you’ve tidied.”
“I wished to cultivate what little beauty I’ve got left on the estate,” said Osric, leading her into the largest hothouse. “Mrs. Parson has quite a magical touch, when it comes to plants.”
The fig tree with its rotting fruit had been pruned.
Dry and sleepy, it awaited summer. The black-and-white tiles were still cracked, but swept clean.
The roses, freed from the suffocation of weed and damp, had also been cut back, and now offered minute shoots to the visitors—small crescents of hopeful green.
“I told you this place wasn’t too far gone to fix,” said Aurienne, stepping with evident joy through the rows of budding plants.
Her pleasure pleased Osric. He wished to give her reasons to be delighted forevermore.
“It’s a beginning, anyway,” said Osric. “Mrs. Parson took an inventory. She tells me there are rare roses among them—varieties that have long been thought lost.”
Aurienne studied the freshly burnished nameplates. “She’s right. I recognise some of these from my father’s books. They’re highly sought after. Cupid’s Charm. Baroque Delight. L’Aquarelle. The Sabine. What’s this one?”
Between two labelled roses sat an unnamed specimen, well formed, upright, her new shoots promising both thorn and blossom.
“Unknown. Mrs. Parson said it was a hybrid.”
Aurienne knelt before the rose. Osric watched her in a lover’s daze. She was a quattrocento beauty with her dark hair up and her dress pooling around her like classical garb, all framed by the iron arches of the hothouse.
“Between the Cupid and the Delight,” she said, touching the rose’s tender leaves. “She’ll grow into something lovely.”
“If she’s beautiful enough, I shall call her the Aurienne.”
Aurienne looked over her shoulder. Another blush. He could get drunk on that smile.
He brought her to a potting bench, upon which there sat a small terra-cotta pot. “This is what I wanted to show you.”
Aurienne approached. “An acorn?”
“Yes,” said Osric. “An acorn from the oak tree in the Faerwundor.”
“What?”
“I pocketed it while we were there,” said Osric. “I wanted to see if we could get it to germinate before showing you.”
Aurienne, wonder-filled, peeked into the little pot. A tiny green shoot emerged from the acorn. “This is immeasurably precious. The surviving Druids should have this.”
“Do what you will with it.”
“It’ll be a small consolation for all they’ve lost.”
She stood in front of the burgeoning acorn and its sole tender green shoot for a long time, her hands clasped tightly together. At length she said, “Thank you. Thank Mrs. Parson, too.”
They continued their amble through the hothouse.
Aurienne walked to the end of the row, where they had once found a single white rose blooming in spite of her own rot.
The rose was still there; Mrs. Parson had trimmed and tidied her.
Her leaves were healthy and green. Creamy white buds protruded from her stem.
Her newly burnished name plaque gave both Aurienne and Osric pause.
Her name was the Monafyll.
In a voice barely above a whisper, Aurienne said, “The world is so vast and we know nothing at all.”
They stared at the bronze plaque in silence. The air in the hothouse felt thick, meaning-laden, primeval.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” said Aurienne. “About the Monafyll Stone.”
Osric looked at her enquiringly as she continued:
“That night at the Fairy Glen, something strange happened. I touched the Stone and felt like I was about to enter a ley line.” She took a breath. “I think the Monafyll Stone is a waystone.”
“A waystone?”
“Yes. But it’s not on the waystone graticule.
I’ve checked. I asked the Leyfarer Order if there was ever a record of a waystone there.
They’re adamant that the nearest one is at the Slumbering Fern.
But I know what I felt when I touched the Stone.
I was about to be pulled into a ley line.
Before Leyfarers managed to get the ley lines all nice and civilised, waystones were much more random—you learned where they went.
Sometimes they changed. And they didn’t always work.
I wonder if the Monafyll Stone has dodged mapping, somehow—if the window for its use is extremely specific and narrow.
And at the Stone’s foot, I found a colander.
I think—I think it was Widdershins’ colander.
He wore it on his head the night we went to see him. ”
“You think the professor went through?”
Aurienne nodded. “I’ve been making enquiries about his whereabouts for months—I wanted to tell him we’d successfully healed you and made use of his translations.
I wanted to help clear his name. But he’s nowhere to be found.
I think the Monafyll Stone might go to—to the other side.
The place whose boundary we’ve been touching but haven’t crossed.
The Elsewhere. The Otherworld.” She looked up at Osric. “You must think me quite mad.”
“You kissed a Fyren in front of your mother.”
“Right,” said Aurienne with a rueful nod. “Of course, I may be utterly wrong and it just leads to the Bunghole. Which would serve me right for such irresponsible speculation.”