Wrede, Patricia C - SSC (5 page)

The hospital room was quiet, except
for the rhythmic sound of the machinery and her mother's soft weeping. She
floated in a drugged haze. At least the pain had receded, though breathing was
no easier. Her hands were numb and cold, and she couldn't feel her father's
grip anymore. Not much longer. Somewhere in the fading distance, she heard
Sam's tearful voice: "Oh, Mom, why didn't she quit smoking?"

She leaped back as if a bee had
stung her nose and stood, shaking, on the gravel path between the roses. When
her shivering stopped at last, she raised her eyes and surveyed the
silver-shadowed garden. Surely, among so many roses there was
one
that
held neither death nor bitterness. With grim purpose, she lowered her head and
began methodically working her way along the path.

Doctor, actress, mother, executive,
carpenter, psychologist, housewife, concert cellist, author, lawyer, social
worker—the roses offered a hundred different lives for her consideration. Some
were happy, some not; some pictured heady successes, others miserable failures.
As she moved farther from the garden's entrance, the visions focused more on
her work, her friends, her lovers and husbands and children, and less on her
sister, but even in the happiest lives
Adrian
could feel an undercurrent of tension, a sense of some important thing left
unresolved. Several times she hesitated, and once she started to reach for a
rose stem before she caught herself and moved on.

As she searched,
Adrian
felt the amused gaze of the black-haired woman on her back, though she did not
turn to look.
This is ridiculous,
she thought, stepping over a cluster
of miniature roses with pale centers and dark edges.
They're flowers, that's
all. Just really weird flowers.
She wondered suddenly why she had not, in
all the visions the roses had shown her, seen Sam even once. She had seen
herself talking with her mother and father, with friends she had known for
years and with those she had not yet met, with lovers, husbands, children, and
grandchildren, but not with her sister. That awful moment in the cancer ward
was as close as she had come.

Shaking off a sudden chill, she
bent toward a small bush at the rear of the rose bed. It took her a moment to
find a blossom; the leaves were thick, and the flowers were hidden among them.
She pricked her fingers twice trying to push the other stems far enough aside
to get a good sniff of the rose.
This had better be a good one,
she
thought. Finally, she cleared a space and breathed the rose's scent.

Samantha stood looking out the
window. As the last of the funeral guests pulled away, she turned. "All
right,
Adrian
. It's just us now,
and I've got something to say to you."

"Go ahead."

For a moment, Sam hesitated, as if
she could not remember the words or had suddenly changed her mind. Then her
shoulders stiffened, and she said, "You've built a wall between us,
Adrian, and I'm tired of knocking myself against it. I don't know why you have
to disapprove of everything I do, but I don't have to live with it anymore now
that Mom and Dad are both gone. So I won't. I'm leaving in a few hours, and I
won't be back unless you ask."

"I might have known you'd pull
something dramatic at a time like this,"
Adrian
said, while the back of her mind whispered, Leaving? She can't leave. She
doesn't mean it. She's my sister.

"I'm not making a dramatic
gesture, however you choose to interpret it. I just thought I'd explain. Try to
explain. If you won't hear it, at least it won't be because I didn't say
it." She started toward the door, then paused with one hand on the knob.
"It's your wall,
Adrian
.
You're the one who has to do something about it, if anyone does." The door
swung open, then shut, and she was gone, while
Adrian
's
mind stuttered over things to say before settling at last into the familiar
pattern of criticism and anger. . .

"No!"
Adrian
said, pulling back so rapidly that one of the thorns scratched her cheek.
"It's not like that!"

"You need not be upset."
The soft voice of the dark-haired woman made
Adrian
jump. "The roses show possibilities, nothing more."

"Then why are they all the
same?"

The woman's eyebrows lifted.
"The same? I do not think so. But there are always things in each one's
life that are too late to change. You can but live with them, as you endure
your height or the color of your eyes."

"I like the color of my eyes,
and anyway it's not like that."
Adrian
kept her voice under control only with considerable effort.
"I'm
not
like that. And I don't believe it's too late, no matter what your damned roses show."

The woman shrugged. "Then
search."

Adrian
stared, angry enough to strike her but a little too afraid to actually do so.
Then she turned and plunged into the roses, heedless of the scratches. Images
blurred together: an empty stage; a marble-lined hallway full of elegant
strangers; Sam lying in the sun beside a swimming pool; their mother shaking
her head sadly; the black-haired woman watching impassively in the moonlit
garden. None of them offered what she wanted. She was beginning to despair of
ever finding it, when she saw a rosebush half hidden behind an arbor.

Even from a distance, it looked
different from the other plants. Where they lifted their branches in graceful
sprays, or twined over arbors, or stood neat and compact, this one sprawled
untidily in a waist-high mass of leaves. Unlike the other rosebushes, it was
not covered with flowers. Indeed, when she first saw it,
Adrian
thought it bore no blossoms at all. Drawing nearer, she saw tight, pointed buds
here and there among the leaves.

How am I supposed to smell a
flower that isn't open yet?
Tentatively, she sniffed at one of the buds.
Nothing happened.
Adrian
pressed
her lips together and began hunting through the thick, prickly branches. At
last she found a flower—still a bud, really, with the tips of the petals barely
beginning to unfurl. She stared at it for a moment, then leaned forward.

"Do you think it's been easy
for me, being your sister?" Samantha asked quietly. "Always coming
second, being expected to be as brilliant and talented—"

"Don't try to flatter
me,"
Adrian
said, but somehow
the words lacked the bitterness they would have held even half an hour before.
It had never occurred to her before that their relationship might have made
things difficult for Sam. Sam was the one who was difficult.

"I'm not. Don't you know
that's how they all think of you? I have to be twice as much of anything just
to get noticed."

"Is that why. . . ?"
Adrian
stopped and swallowed. "Look, Sam, I. . . Well, I'm sorry." She felt
as if the words had been wrenched out of her with pliers, and then she felt
almost light-headed. "Do you suppose we can do better from now on?"

Samantha smiled suddenly.
"Maybe if we both try."

Adrian
rocked back, staring at the bud. Was it that simple? But it hadn't seemed
simple, even in the brief image. It had seemed . . . hard. Letting go of anger
should be easy, now that she knew how much trouble it would make and how much of
it was due to willful blindness. It should be easy, but she could tell that it
wasn't going to be.

There was a whisper of movement
behind her. "Have you at last unearthed a flower that suits you?" the
black-haired woman asked.

"I think— Yes. Yes, I
have." But
Adrian
's hands
seemed paralyzed, frozen to the branches they were holding back. She could not
move to pick the rose; she could only look.

"If you are sure, then take
it."

The momentary paralysis left
Adrian
,
and she reached for the rose. And paused.
If you are given a choice, be
careful; be wise. I never thought there might be other dreams . . .
She sat
in a garden of dreams, surrounded by possibilities, but to choose one, no matter
how much she desired it, precluded all the others. There had been wonderful
things in some of those roses. Slowly,
Adrian
drew her hand back.

"I think not," she said.
"It's only just opened. It ought to have a chance to bloom."

The woman's eyebrows rose.
"One visit to my garden is more than many mortals gain. You will not have
a second chance to pick a rose."

"Then I'll make my life up as
I go along, the way everybody else does." Gently,
Adrian
withdrew her hands, letting the leaves close over the flower. She stood and
turned to look directly at the strange woman. "Thank you very much for the
offer, though. It's been ... a real education."

The woman winced; then the ghost of
a smile touched her lips. "You are wiser than most of those who come to
see my roses."

"That depends on how it turns
out, doesn't it?"
Adrian
looked at the hundreds of flowers shining in the moonlight and shivered
slightly.

"It does. Yet I think that all
may yet be very well for you." The woman's smile grew broader. "It
will interest me to watch and see."

"I think I'd better get home.
Sam's having a party, and I really shouldn't miss all of it."

"You may return the way we
came, down the path and between the rose arch," the woman said. "I
shall not come with you, though we may meet again in after years, if you are willing.

Adrian
was surprised to find herself nodding. "Good night."

"Fare you well."

Turning,
Adrian
walked toward the garden's entrance. As she ducked into the thicket outside,
she felt the packet of cigarettes in her pocket shift.
The first thing I do
is get rid of those,
she thought, remembering the hospital.
And then
I'll talk to Sam.

She came out of the honeysuckle and
smiled at the familiar birches. The band was thumping loudly, building to some
sort of climax. It all but drowned out the crackle of the cellophane cigarette
wrapper in her pocket.
There's half a pack left. It'd be a shame to waste
them. And I still don't want to go to the party.

Adrian
looked at the house once more, then headed back the way she had come, toward
the parked cars.

Tomorrow, I'll throw the rest of
them away, if there are any left. Tomorrow, I'll talk to Sam.

Tomorrow.

The WORST thing about Caliph
Arenschadd is that he's a wizard. At least that's what my father says. Mother
says the worst thing about the caliph is his temper, and that it's a good thing
he's a wizard because if he were just an ordinary caliph he'd cut people's
heads off when they displeased him, instead of cursing them.

I tend to agree with Mother.
Cutting someone's head off is permanent; a curse, you can break. Of course, it
usually takes something nasty and undignified to do it, but everything about
curses is supposed to be unpleasant. Father doesn't see it that way. I think
he'd prefer to be permanently dead than temporarily undignified.

Father is Caliph Arenschadd's grand
vizier, which is the reason all of us have opinions about the caliph and his
curses. You see, a long time ago the caliph decided that he would lay a curse
on anyone who displeased him, thus punishing the person and displaying the
caliph's magical skill at the same time. (Mother also says Caliph Arenschadd
likes to show off.) He found out very quickly that it was hard work coming up
with a new curse every time someone made him unhappy, but by then he'd had a proclamation
issued and he couldn't back down. So he shut himself up in one of the palace
minarets for weeks, and when he came out he had a list of sixty-two curses he
could cast at a moment's notice.

From then on, every time someone
has done something the caliph doesn't like, the caliph has hauled out his list
of curses and slapped one on whoever-it-was. Everyone starts at the first curse
on the list and works their way down, so you can tell how long someone's been
at court by whether his fingernails are three feet long or his eyelids stuck
together. Father's been at court longer than anybody, so we've worked our way
through an awful lot of curses.

I say
we
because Caliph
Arenschadd doesn't just curse the particular person he's annoyed with. His
curses get the person's whole family as well. I don't think that's fair, but
Mother says it's just like him. She's been mad at the caliph ever since the
eleventh curse, which made all three of us lose our voices for a week right in
the middle of the Enchantresses and Sorceresses Annual Conference. Mother was
supposed to present a paper, but she had to cancel it because she couldn't
talk, and she's never forgiven Caliph Arenschadd.

I have to admit that some of the
curses are fun. I enjoyed being bright green, and having monkey's paws was
quite useful (I like climbing things, and the peaches had just turned ripe).
Having my eyelids stuck together was boring, though. Things even out. It's best
when you know what to expect, but after Father passed the forty-second curse
there wasn't anyone ahead of us anymore to let us know what came next. We
muddled through curses number forty-three through forty-seven with only a
little more trouble than usual, and Caliph Arenschadd actually seemed pleased.
We went for almost three months without any curses at all. Then one day Father
came home from the palace looking grim and solemn.