Roses and Thorns
“I’ll get right to work drawing up these sketches,” Violet promised the young couple on the other side of her counter. She looked down at her notes, with all the requests and schematics for their planned nuptials later this spring, her imagination already alive with possibilities.
“Thank you,” said the bride-to-be, with a grin matching the one on her groom’s face. “I love roses, but I know they’re out of season. I can’t wait to see them.”
“They’ll be gorgeous, I’m sure,” said Pru with a smile from where she leaned against a wall, Daisy wiggling in her arms. “All of Violet’s arrangements are beautiful.”
“And I don’t even pay her to say that,” quipped Violet. “Come see me after the weekend. I’ll have the plans ready for you then, and we can talk specifics for the wedding.”
The couple left with a smile and a wave, and Violet hummed to herself, feeling content as she daydreamed about building an arch of roses in situ behind the altar, shaping and placing the flowers as they grew under her fingers.
As she pictured it, that nettle-like sensation rose once more to her fingertips, where a rose materialized, its stem shiny and smooth.
Perhaps a slightly dustier hue for the color, she thought.
“A rose without thorns,” Pru mused, watching her as she formed another in the color she wanted. “Something about that feels wrong.”
“I’d just have to strip them all down anyway,” Violet said with a shrug. “People don’t want the thorns, they just want the flower.”
“But they’re a part of it—without the thorns there is no flower. Don’t they help protect the plant?”
Violet unclenched her jaw, which had suddenly grown tight. “In the wild. Not here.”
“I suppose it does save you a lot of work as you build the arch.” Pru clucked her tongue and set Daisy down. “Fine, you little menace. Just don’t chew up any of Violet’s lovely shelves.”
“This arch will build itself. Or I hope it will anyway. I’ve never tried pruning such a large arrangement as it grows,” Violet admitted.
“Even the topiaries and hedges I grew in my garden at—” She froze.
“Where I used to live. Those ones had been conjured and grown wild. I only shaped them afterward.”
“Everything I’ve seen you do so far tells me you’re up for the challenge,” said Pru, seemingly unconcerned with Violet’s gaffe.
At her feet, Peri appeared with a gravelly rumble, and she watched in amusement as Daisy tackled him, her wet nose snuffling at Peri’s neck.
Violet had never had a pet before, and she wasn’t quite sure a rock goblin who came and went as he pleased constituted one exactly, but she’d grown used to his presence over the past few days.
His clear obsession with Violet had only grown, though he forgot all about her as soon as Pru so much as played a single note on her violin.
Peri spent the majority of his days exploring her shop, wrestling with Bartleby, digging up rocks along the fence line in the back garden, and wreaking havoc with Daisy in the greenhouse.
He spent his nights curled up at the end of Violet’s bed, a comforting weight on her feet that eased her nightmares, or at least grounded her when she woke from them.
“Play nice, you two,” she said fondly.
“Do you think Daisy thinks Peri is a dog?” Pru mused. “Or that she’s a rock goblin? I found her barking at a stone in the backyard yesterday like she was having a conversation with it.”
“Maybe she was,” chuckled Violet. “I’d rather she pick up habits from Peri than from Bartleby anyway.” She shot a look at the pothos, who had managed to squirrel away her pruning shears that morning and had tried to cut her with them when she’d demanded them back.
“He’s a menace,” Pru agreed cheerfully. “Where’d you get him anyway?”
The bell above the front door jingled—thankfully, because Violet had no lie prepared—and both women smiled when they recognized the newcomer.
“This place looks lovelier and lovelier every time I’m here,” said Quinn from the entryway, her hands trailing along the center table of pansy starters Violet had laid out this morning.
At least a dozen honeybees buzzed around her head like a crown as she peered curiously around the shop, her keen eyes taking in every detail.
“Thank you,” said Violet with a smile. “I think people are enjoying it.”
“They certainly are. Mrs. Hemmings down at the blacksmith’s said her daughter has never been so taken with a birthday gift, and of course you didn’t hear this from me, but her brother’s planning to propose to his partner at Solstice, so I expect she’ll put in a word for you to do flowers for the wedding.
You’ve managed to inject a little bit of joy into Dragon’s Rest, and that’s something we direly needed after, well, everything. ”
You cannot take credit for fixing something you helped break, petal, said Guy’s voice in Violet’s ear, cruel and seductive as he’d ever been. You played a part in holding this town in terror, not just me. Her smile faded.
“Anyway, I came to extend an invitation to a little weekly get-together next Thursday at my home.”
“Oh, you should go,” said Pru. “Guy—good Guy, not the bad one—will be there, so you know he’ll bring baked goods!”
“And I’ll make my honey cakes, of course!” said Quinn cheerfully. From behind her, Pru made a slashing motion across her throat, mouthing something that looked a lot like, Do not eat them!
Quinn cleared her throat without looking over her shoulder. “The recipe is a work in progress, Prudence.”
Violet turned to Pru. “Will you be there?”
Pru exchanged a glance with Quinn. “Er, no. I perform at the inn on Thursdays.”
“It’s just a few of us,” said Quinn with a smile. “We drink wine and bring dishes to pass for supper and talk through what’s on our minds. We’re all dying to get to know you a bit better.”
There was no way she could allow them to get to know her any better. Violet imagined being honest at a gathering like that:
“Violet, tell us about where you grew up.”
“Oh, me? I was raised by the evil sorcerer who cut out Guy’s—good Guy, not bad Guy’s—tongue. I did terrible things under his orders, and it’s still a daily struggle not to return to my evil ways. Pass the charcuterie, would you, please?”
Quinn and the Dragon’s Rest gossip circuit would have enough fodder for weeks of talk.
“I’m afraid I’m busy that evening,” Violet demurred. “I have a lot of orders to prepare for the next day. But I’m grateful to you for thinking of me.”
“Of course.” Quinn winked at her, and one of her bees flew in a little loop-de-loop over her head. “One of these days we’ll make it happen.”
“One of these days.” Violet felt a little ill about the lie but worse about the truth behind it: The people of Dragon’s Rest would never be able to know her, not really, and suddenly that no longer felt freeing—it felt like just another prison. Another collar chafing at her throat.
There was no way to strip this particular rose of its thorns, not really.
Violet would have to live by the lie she’d created for herself for the rest of her life, and not a single slipup would ever be tolerated.
No one would accept the Thornwitch into their community; they’d run her right out of town if she told them who she really was.
She pictured Jerome the Gnome with a pitchfork in his hands, and sweet Quinn sending her bees after Violet in a swarm of fury.
Pru and Nathaniel would— Well. It was best not to think of things that would never happen.
Violet could lock down her story and invent a past for herself that was boring and believable enough that no one would ask questions.
The Thornwitch didn’t exist anymore, and it would be best for everyone if Violet could manage to pretend she never had. Now if only her nightmares would agree.
“Will you be at the market tomorrow?” Quinn was asking Pru. “I’ll have the beeswax Nathaniel was asking after for making his salves, but I can drop it by the apothecary if I don’t see you.”
“I haven’t decided.” Pru threw a look at Peri, who croaked at her. “The slide is protecting that spot of blight we discovered the other night, and I don’t want them to leave their post if they hear me playing.”
Quinn chuckled. “I wonder if we’ll ever know what they love so much about you.”
“Obviously they have excellent taste in music, that’s what.”
Violet made small talk with the two women until another customer came in seeking a bouquet.
Pru and Quinn left the shop with a friendly wave, and Violet pasted back on her sunny smile.
Violet Thistlewaite, florist, was not plagued by unpleasant thoughts.
Violet Thistlewaite, florist, had no problems deeper than helping the man standing before her design a bouquet for his mother’s birthday.
When she bid him goodbye at last, Peri croaked at Violet with concern, cocking his lopsided head and sagging against her legs like he knew her thoughts.
“I’ll be fine,” she murmured to him, watching the door close behind her customer, leaving her shop empty. “I’m not that person anymore. The Thornwitch is behind me, and so it should be no problem to erase her from my past.”
She pulled a broom from the corner behind the counter, and as she began to tidy up her shop, she almost believed it would be true.