The Winter's Rose: Chapter 1 – The Garden

The Winter's Rose

Chapter 1 – The Garden

As Roberin Gossamer dreamt, Molanna watched on from her garden in the Faerie Realm…

“I wonder what type of magic goes on in days like this, when most children are asked to play inside and stuffy grownups grumble and mumble to themselves, all the while wishing for different weather,” Roberin’s mother whispered to him as she held him in her arms while they both gazed out the window at the wintry autumn weather outside the castle window. “And while that weather is being wished away, the fall faeries come out to dance and play. Oh, what time is spent wishing away the magic being whirled and twirled about their homes and gardens; they shall never know.”

Roberin, all of four years old and enchanted by the sound of his mother’s voice and the whimsical magic of her words, looked out into the gray beyond his warm dwelling and watched as lazy snowflakes fell upon bundles of fallen orange, red and brown leaves in the castle courtyard. He imagined each snowflake carried with it a different faerie and when they landed each faerie left their instantly melted snowflake and found an autumnal leaf of their own. The faeries grew from smaller than the snowflakes they had ridden down from the sky and were now just bigger than the fallen leaves they now befriended; perhaps the size of squirrels or chipmunks. The fairies, beautiful little Elven women with mischievous grins and forest colored tunics that went down halfway to their knees, picked up their leaves and wrapped them over their shoulders like capes; using the stems like ropes to secure them in place.

Little Roberin and his mother watched with innocence and awe as the faeries danced around freely in the castle courtyard; the wind and the snow blowing all around them. The snow fall increased until the dancing faeries were lost from view and the world outside the frosted window became lost in a wall of white.

Molanna smiled as she hugged her knees closer to her chest and watched as the dreamscape before her began to change…

The fog hung over the muddy mountainside limiting Roberin’s visibility to only a few feet in any direction around him and his nervous horse. He was now no longer four but twelve years old; no longer in the Castle Drakewood but out in the forbidding hillsides in the wild region of the small kingdom. It struck Roberin as odd for just a moment that not only his age but location had changed so suddenly, one moment held lovingly in his mother’s arms and the next riding nearly blind through the foggy terrain nearly a decade later, but such feelings quickly disappeared as the living memory of hunting with his father consumed his senses and became his reality. So it was with dreams.

“It’s okay boy,” Roberin tried to soothe his horse as they found themselves hopelessly lost in the fog with the ground between them increasingly mucky and more difficult to traverse.

He couldn’t see his father but could hear the older man’s gruff baritone voice from somewhere only a few feet away, disembodied and lost in the misty fog. “Shut up boy. You can’t talk up here when we can’t see. There are monsters up here that can’t see us either but if they hear us, they’ll find us.”

Roberin didn’t want to be there. His fear and discomfort gripped his heart and threatened to choke him. He missed the garden back at the castle. It had been his mother’s, until she had passed away. He wished he were home, tending to the plants and flowers. It made him feel closer to his mother even though he had lost her. His taciturn father had made him leave the garden, leave the castle and ride out into this haunted place in search of elk and bear.

His father was Drakewood’s finest hunter and came from a long line of hunters dating back to before the Valorian Knights had marched in from the west and conquered their small country in a war that lasted only a few weeks. The hunters of Drakewood had fought valiantly against the invaders after the knights and soldiers were defeated in the first week of fighting. They only gave up after the royal family had surrendered and begged them to do the same. Drakewood’s hunters were proud and fiercely dedicated to their profession. It was a job passed down from father to son and it always had been. Roberin’s father now wanted him to become a hunter and refused to even consider any other fate for his only son. It had sickened Roberin’s father when he learned his son had taken over the duties of royal gardener. That was not man’s work and not for the son of a hunter.

Roberin had only been a baby during the war and didn’t remember Drakewood as it had been but that didn’t matter to his father who was trapped in the past. A hunter’s son would be a hunter or nothing at all. So Roberin had left the garden, his mother’s garden, and the castle that had been his only home and went with his brooding and resentful father into the wilds of the conquered kingdom as winter was fast approaching. His horse, not used to such strenuous travel—and as frightful as the ominous chill in the foggy air—was threatening to bolt from under him. Roberin barely managed to keep the animal and himself from fleeing, knowing even if he could escape from the fog bank and the muddy hillside without falling into a ditch or a chasm, he’d later have to deal with his taciturn father; a fate far worse perhaps.

Suddenly Roberin’s horse stopped and refused to go any further. Roberin tried whispering to his roan, urging the young horse to go on and hoping his father would not hear him doing so. He could hear his father’s horse still moving forward in the near distance, its shoed hooves clacking on the stones that protruded from the muddy ground. He feared his father (keen of hearing as all hunters were) would notice the silence of his horse and become angry with him, but no amount of whispered encouragement could get his horse to budge.

Roberin was at a loss as to how to proceed when he heard a horrible sound. It was a bit like a growl followed by a shrieking whinny, a grunt, a gurgle and a thud. His father’s horse could no longer be heard trotting along and a deep silence, thicker and heavier than the fog or the mud around Roberin and his stalled horse. Not a sound could be heard. Roberin shivered as he turned his head slowly from one side to the other but he saw nothing. No movement. No shapes. Nothing. Only fog lived around him. He could feel his horse’s panicked heart beating against his legs and he knew something horrible had happened and was going to happen again.

In a split second the monster emerged from the gloom and attacked; all teeth and claws and bristling fur!

Roberin woke and sat up with a start. A cold sweat covered his forehead and drenched his back and chest. He was breathing hard and took a moment to calm himself; lying back down and taking several slow deep breaths. It wasn’t the first time he’d dreamt of his past, of the incident where his father had been killed by the fearsome bear, the same bear that had caused him to fall from his horse and shatter his right knee. If he hadn’t played dead Roberin was certain the bear would have killed him. Instead the giant beast settle for dragging his father’s body away and disappearing into the gloom from whence it had appeared, leaving Roberin alone and injured to crawl ten miles to the nearest town where the local healer worked night and day to save his life from infection and repair his injured leg.

Roberin was now twenty-five years old and it had been thirteen years since that bear had killed his father and crippled him but after having such a vivid dream about the incident, it might as well had been yesterday. It wasn’t the first time he had dreamt about it, but it had been a long time and never before had it felt so very real to him. As Roberin reached for his walking staff and prepared his tired body to get out of bed, he remembered his other dream; the one about his mother. He hadn’t dreamt of her in a while either and he missed her dearly. He wished he had just dreamt of her the entire night and not of his father at all. Especially not about his father’s death but for some reason he could not explain his mind had been compelled to do so.

The dream about his mother had been an actual memory too, Roberin realized but he tried to convince himself that the part about seeing the faeries actually drifting down to the ground and dancing about with leaves as capes had just been the invention of his subconscious or even the long held imagination of the four year old boy he had been. Many people in Drakewood and Valoria believed in magic. The Griffons who lived in nearby Griffon Peak to the west were said to horde magic in their caves. But Roberin had given up believing in magic and faeries a long time ago. His mother had believed, at least she had told him so, but with her death Roberin had stopped believing in a great many things he had once taken for truth.

Roberin lifted himself up and out of bed, careful as his right foot touched the floor and he stood up, hoping his weight wouldn’t aggravate his crippled leg that still ached after all these years. The healer had repaired his knee as best he could, had kept the infection from spreading without cutting off his leg, but it had never healed fully and Roberin had spent more than half his life unable to walk without the help of a staff or a cane. He remembered when there had been those around him who had claimed to care for him. They had told Roberin he should be happy and grateful just to be alive, but having lost his parents, especially his loving mother and becoming nothing more than a cripple before he was even fully grown, had destroyed any happiness he had ever felt in his life.

When Roberin had come of age, those people whom had taken him in had kicked him out, and at only eighteen years old, he’d become a homeless wanderer. He had been begging for scraps in the city when the King had recognized him and invited him to live at the castle as he had as a young boy. Roberin had gratefully accepted the King’s invitation and soon took on his former role as royal gardener, caring for the garden’s both indoors and out. The gardens outside only lived in Drakewood’s short summer so most of his time was spent inside tending to the rose gardens high in the castle’s northern tower, just a short flight of stair above his room. It was a short flight of stairs, Roberin knew, he had counted them many times (no more than two dozen in all) but with his bum leg and no railing to hold onto, it seemed like a grand effort indeed.

Roberin dressed and left his modest room to begin his day in the garden. He could hear the wind howling outside and had seen a fresh snow falling on the mounds of white powder that had fallen the day before. Winter in Drakewood was long and hard and it snowed nearly every day. It always flooded in the spring when the vast snow falls melted and it made Roberin wonder—not for the first time—why anyone chose to live in the conquered kingdom, and why the larger kingdom of Valoria had even bothered taking it over in the first place. He guessed it was just in the way for the Valorians. Drakewood stood in between Valoria and the northern sea. Back in the bygone days of sovereignty, Drakewood had charged Valorian merchants top coin to pass through their land on the way to the ocean where fishing and trading at the ports were plentiful and profitable. It had been the country’s main source of income and perhaps Valoria had just grown tired of paying the toll. But perhaps it really didn’t matter. The war was over and fading fast from the memories of those who had actually lived through it. A new generation was replacing the old, a generation that felt more a part of Valoria than they did an occupied state.

Ever so carefully Roberin made his way up the stairs, one arduous stone step at a time—the pain in his gimpy leg and the tap of his staff on the stone a constant reminder of the fateful hunting trip more than a decade earlier. It took several minutes for Roberin to complete his ascent up the stairs but at last he got to the top and fumbled with the keys in his right pocket while leaning heavily on his walking staff. Roberin put the correct key into the lock only to discover it was already unlocked. This caused the young gardener to pause for a moment and wonder if he had left the garden door unlocked the day before or if someone was already in the usually secluded room. Roberin knew that only a handful of people had a key to the garden other than him, but it had been a very long time since any of them had paid a visit. Usually he would pick the flowers, herbs and vegetables and disperse them about the castle without anyone coming to the garden to help.

Cautiously, Roberin entered the indoor garden and looked around. No one was there. The plants sat in their clay pots that hung down from the rafters. The vegetables and rose bushes stuck up from the large areas of soil with the stone paths separating them and the sunlight shone in from windows both along the walls and up on the ceiling from the skylight, tinted an emerald green. The room was warm as it always was, despite the onset of harsh and bitter winter outside. It was said that magic made the room forever warm and once a month the court wizard came in and waved his arms around while saying incantations and the like, but Roberin believed it to all be for nothing. He had found the heat vents in the corners and knew warm air was being pumped in from the furnace housed deep in the bowls of Castle Drakewood.

Roberin stood in the doorway for a moment, gripping his staff defensively and continuing to scan the room but still he saw no one. He considered for a moment calling out to anyone who might be hiding but discarded the idea as silly. It was obvious to him now that he must have forgotten to lock up the previous night. He moved into the garden and closed the heavy wooden door behind him before moving over to the table where his watering cans and other tools were kept. He knew all the cans were filled, which was always a good thing considering it was quite a task for him to journey downstairs to the larder to fill them one at a time from the castle’s water tank (where rain water and melted snow were kept on hand for drinking, bathing, laundry and cleaning dishes, etcetera). He was just picking up his favorite watering can from off the table when a melodic voice startled him from behind.

“Good morning, Roberin.”

Roberin recognized the beautiful voice and silently scolded himself for flinching in surprise before he turned around to greet the equally beautiful looking woman the voice belonged to. “Good morning to you, your highness. I didn’t expect you to be here so early,” or at all, he added to himself. The young Queen always made Roberin very nervous and he found it difficult to speak to her. His heart beat a little faster when she was around—his voice was prone to crack and his hands to shake. He did his best to curtail such reactions now, having already embarrassed himself enough in front of the beautiful monarch for one day, but could not force his eyes to look directly at her—fearing he’d stare at her too long and reveal his true feelings that he worked so hard to conceal. “Is there anything at all I can do for you, your majesty?”

“Please Roberin, call me Sela,” the dark haired royal laughed gently as her smile beamed extra warmth into the indoor garden. “Your highness and your majesty were titles my parents enjoyed but they make me feel pretentious.”

“Many pardons, your ma… I mean, Sela,” Roberin stole a quick glance at the Queen’s brown eyes but looked away before he could become lost in her enchanting gaze. “Was there something you needed?”

“Oh no, not really,” Sela Drakewood folded her arms and sighed—sunlight from above made her royal robes seem outlined in an angelic aura that further highlighted her loveliness. There was something sad about her as there had been since the passing of her parents a few years earlier, both lost to flue. “I just have a lot of work to do today. The ministers have invited more potential suitors to come visit from Valoria and elsewhere and I really don’t feel up to meeting any of them to be quite honest.”

Then don’t meet them Sela, Roberin wanted to tell her, marry me. I love you, I always have and I always will. But instead he said, “I’m sure they’ll be nice and you’ll find a good match to be our new king.”

“I’m sure they’d all make fine kings,” Sela frowned as she bit back something more. She was quiet for a moment before changing the subject. “I felt like visiting the garden for a while and seeing all of the flowers. The roses are my favorite. I remember coming here as a small girl, back when you were just a baby and seeing these amazing blue roses your mother had grown. Have you grown any blue roses this year, Roberin?”

“No your majesty,” Roberin shook his head, forgetting to call her Sela. “I don’t believe such roses can be grown—red, white, yellow or pink—yes, but blue? No.”

“Are you certain?” the Queen asked. “I could’ve sworn your mother grew blue roses. I must have imagined it. Well, I’m sorry to have bothered you, master gardener. I’ll be going now.”

Sela turned and started for the door when Roberin called to her. “Sela, wait a moment!”

The queen stopped and turned back to him. Her beauty of both face and spirit struck the gardener like lightning. “Yes?”

“Um, I…” Roberin struggled for words. He had so much he wanted to tell her. He didn’t want her to leave. He wanted to kiss her and hold her and keep her from marrying some handsome prince or nobleman who could never love her even a tenth as strongly as he did, but he was too afraid to tell her anything like that or do anything of the sort with her. She was a queen and he was a gardener. She sat on the throne and dined with dignitaries at seven course banquets, while he dug in the dirt all day and ate stew from a wooden bowl, alone in his small room. “I just wanted to wish you a good day, your majesty.”

“Oh,” Sela smiled, though it hid something deeper. “Thank you, Roberin. I’ll see you again soon. Take care.”

And then she left, leaving Roberin alone in his garden sanctuary. For a long time after the queen left, all Roberin could do was stand there holding a watering can in one hand and his walking staff in the other, and stare at the closed door from whence she had departed. He could still smell her in the air—her scent sweeter and more comforting than any rose in the royal garden. He remembered her from his early childhood when they were both growing up in the castle. She was nearly ten years his senior and had often watched after him when his parents were away. Being a princess she didn’t have to baby sit for anyone but Sela had always been a nurturing person and loved taking care of children and animals alike. Roberin remembered all the once-Princess’s cats and puppies that had once roamed the halls of the castle in search of innocent adventure and constant affection. He could still recall the first time he’d seen Sela riding her well groomed mare in the courtyard—her hair bouncing upon her shoulders and sparkling in the morning sunlight. He remembered how she had held him the night his mother died, and the new clothes she had made for him when he moved back into the castle just a few years ago.

Roberin made his way over to the nearest rose bush and began to water it while his thoughts still lingered on the woman he adored. He wished, and not for the first time, that he could stop loving her—forget the depths of his secret affection and be free of his hidden devotion to the woman he knew he could never be with. She was royalty. She was beautiful and able bodied and still young enough to have children. She deserved someone in her life just as well born, able bodied and attractive; not some crippled gardener who had forgotten how to be happy. Roberin let his thoughts trail off and focused on watering the rose bushes, watching each drop of water land on the petals and leaves before sliding down the stems to the soil below.

*

Molanna stood in place as the rain fell upon her Elf like face and brought renewed life to the magic faerie garden in which she lived a peaceful existence with her troupe of pixies, nymphs, sprites and other young faerie folk. Her garden, Aurora Fields, was like a thousand other faerie gardens in the Faerie Realm that magically intertwined with the material plane of Valoria; a world imbued with magic millennia ago by the Faerie who had created it after fleeing their homeland of Earth. Their former world had become dominated by humans who became increasingly less reliant or accepting of magic, thus lessening the power of the Faerie folk.

They created Valoria as a new beginning but it wasn’t long before humans came to dominate that world and in order to protect themselves from a repeat of their downfall on Earth, the Faerie created the Faerie Realm, a pocket world that existed within—yet outside of—Valoria, which was now ruled by humans, Elves, Griffons, Trolls and other people not of true Faerie blood. Instead of cities or villages, the communities inside the Faerie Realm were located in forests or gardens, each one connected to and dependent upon a forest or garden in the material plane. This meant the Faerie depended on the humans, Elves, Gnomes or whoever had guardianship over wooded areas or gardens both big and small throughout Valoria for the survival of their homes. If a garden was abandoned in the material plane it soon ceased to exist in the Faerie Realm. Likewise, the Faerie folk living in the gardens used their magic to help sustain their garden’s counterpart in the material plane, helping flowers to bloom bigger or vegetables to taste better.

Molanna had moved from her birthplace in the Blueberry Forest to Aurora Fields with her best friend and fellow daydreaming faerie, Dawn. The two were as close as sisters and had traveled the Faerie Realm together before settling in Aurora Fields where the flowers towered over them like trees and the giant vegetables were not only a constant source of food but could also be hollowed out and turned into houses. Molanna and Dawn were now living in a large two story eggplant but were thinking about finding a nice pumpkin in the fall. They were happy here, but Molanna’s strongest power was her empathy and even separated by the magical barrier of the Faerie Mist, she could feel Roberin’s despair and shared in his private heart ache. Recently she had reached out across the divide and entered the young gardener’s dreams to discover the source of his sadness.

As the rains continued to land on her face and soak her clothes, Molanna reached out to catch the falling drops and wished she could do something to take Roberin’s pain away. She wanted to tell him how special he was—how much she and all her friends depended on the rain he provided, and the care he took of their garden community. She wanted to touch him, to hug him and kiss him and hold his hand as she would any friend who needed her, but Molanna was just a young Faerie and her powers were not yet strong enough to crossover to the material plane. She sighed and frowned—feeling helpless to ease the gardener’s pain.

Molanna heard singing behind her and turned to see her little friend Dawn dancing over to her like a burst of sunshine in the pouring rain.

“A drippety-drop and a bippety-bop,” Dawn laughed as she spun and twirled toward the other Faerie. “On a day like today the dancing and the rain should never ever stop! Molanna, my darling and lovely friend! Why the somber expression, girl? The rain usually brings out joy in your generous heart.”

“It isn’t the rain that has me down,” Molanna hugged the shorter pixie and then pointed up to the night sky above. “Do you see that green star up there? That’s our gardener. His name is Roberin Gossamer, and his heart is broken.”

Dawn stared at the green star, so unlike all the gold and white ones around it, and nodded. “Yes, he sure does look glum. Green stars are very special and don’t come around very often. They represent a very nurturing and creative spirit, but your friend’s star doesn’t shine as bright as it should.”

“I know,” Molanna sighed. “I need to help him. I just don’t know how.”

“Why is he heartbroken, this gardener of ours?” Dawn asked.

“His mother died when he was young,” Molanna explained. “She got very sick very suddenly and it really crushed him. Roberin loved his mother very much. Then his father was killed by a bear. That same bear injured Roberin’s leg and now he needs a staff to help him walk around. For a while he was homeless but now he’s our gardener. I think he’s in love.”

“Then he should be happy,” Dawn grabbed Molanna’s hands and pulled her into a fast paced dance around the rain soaked garden. “Love makes the heart joyous!”

Molanna held her ground and got Dawn to stop dancing her around. She stared seriously into the other pixie’s eyes. “He doesn’t think she loves him back.”

“Does she?” Dawn asked.

“I’m not sure,” Molanna admitted. “I could find out for sure if I could visit her dreams, but I can’t. I think I can only visit Roberin’s dreams because he’s our gardener and the magic connects me to him as our garden is connected to his garden. I just wish I could go to him and let him know that he is truly, deeply loved.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know how the object of his affection felt about…” Dawn started to say when she suddenly realized something and looked at her friend with deep concern. “You cannot fall in love with a human! I forbid it!”

“I haven’t fallen in love with him, Dawn.”

“You haven’t?” Dawn raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“Not really,” Molanna was confused. “I just see him, you know? I can really see him like I’ve never seen anyone before and I know how alone he is. He needs me.”

“He doesn’t even know you, Molanna.”

“I know, but he still needs me,” Molanna insisted.

Dawn lovingly took the taller Faerie’s hands into her own and looked up into her brown eyes. “And you need him, don’t you?”

“We all need him, Dawn,” Molanna replied. “He’s our gardener.”

“That’s not what I meant, but I won’t pester you,” Dawn gave her friend a warm hug. “Just be careful, okay?”

“Okay Dawn, I’ll be careful,” Molanna smiled as she hugged her friend back. “I promise.”

To be continued....