Excerpt
...She had picked up Beauty's
last remaining wreath and was looking at it as she spoke. She hesitated
and glanced at Beauty again. "D'you know why everyone wants a
rose wreath, dear? Forgive me for insulting you by asking, but you look
as if maybe you don't know."
"No-o," said Beauty. "Not because they're beautiful?"
The woman laughed with genuine amusement. "Bless you. Maybe
it's no wonder they grow for you after all. You know pansy
for thougthfulness, yew for sorrow, bay for glory, dock for tomorrow?
Roses are for love. Not forget-me-not, honeysuckle, silly
sweethearts' love but the love that makes you and keeps you
whole, love that gets you through the worst your life'll give you
and that pours out of you when you're given the best instead.
"There are a lot of the old wreaths from Rose Cottage around,
not just over my door. There's an old folk-tale maybe you
never heard it in your city that there aren't many roses
around any more because they need more love than people have to give
'em, to make 'em flower, and the only thing that'll
stand in for love is magic, though it ain't as good, and you have
to have a lot of magic, like a sorcerer, and I ain't never heard
of a kind sorcerer, have you? And the bushes only started covering
themselves with thorns when it got so it was only magic that ever made
'em grow. They were sad, like, and it came out in thorns. Maybe
it was different when the world was younger, when people and roses were
younger."
The woman stood up, and briskly took out her purse, and paid
Beauty for her wreath, picked up her shopping basket, and turned to go;
but she paused, frowning, as if she could not make up her mind either
to say something or to leave it unsaid.
"I'd much rather know," said Beauty softly, and the woman looked at her again with her friendly smile.
"You may not, dear, but I'm thinking maybe you'd
better. I've told you there's no magic hereabouts. There
are tales about why, of course. I'd make one up meself if
nobody'd taken care of the job before me. There was some kind of
sorcerers' battle here, they say, long, long ago, no one knows
rightly how long, and it ain't the kind of thing the squire puts
down in his record book, is it? 'One sorcerers' battle.
Very bad. Has taken all magic away from Longchance
forever' if we had a squire in those days, though Oak Hall
is as old as anything around here, and sorcerers don't live in
wilderness. But there's a curse tacked on to the end of it, like
the sting on a manticore's tail...."