The Garden of Three Hundred Flowers Read online

  The three hundred and first flower came to him.

  My husband would not come to my bed, so, in the end, I went to his.

  My sister had come with the pale husband I had made for her to see how I fared in my stone qasr. She had six children of her own, now, so I assumed she knew the basics of begetting. She brought the four youngest with her, the babe still strapped to her back, high up on the camel, and our mothers came with her, too. Our father had decided some years before that his days of wandering the desert with the caravan were over, and now it was his turn to wait in the tents while his sons’ sons learned to trade. I could not begrudge him his rest. He had more than earned it.

  My sister’s youngest was older than I had expected. He toddled sturdily on both feet the moment he was released from the camel, following his older sisters when they tried to evade him. I had lost track of time, mired in the workings of the court and distracted by the coming of new trade caravans from places unknown to us before. My sister’s belly was already swelling again, and still I had no heir.

  Our mothers embraced me, and went to take their rest. I saw that they, too, were older. I left the chamberlain to sort accommodations and walked with my sister into the water garden.

  “I have a gift for the king,” she said to me. “Is he here?”

  I sent a girl to fetch him, and another to bring refreshments. We sat in the shade—my sister, her pale husband, and I—and waited. My husband had been in the garden, as I suspected, and he had not changed before he came to greet us. He looked like a man from the wadi, and I might have loved him, then, if he were one to be loved.

  “Sister of my heart,” he said. She nodded, and her pale husband bowed from the waist where he sat. “You are, as always, welcome here.”

  “We thank you,” my sister said. “And we have brought you something.”

  “They speak of you in the desert, brother of my heart,” her pale husband said. “Once the words were laced with fear, and news of your coming would have been greeted with discomfort. But that is no longer the case.”

  “The desert whispers kinder words, now,” said my sister. “They speak of a king who clears brush and digs wells, and speaks to old women, hearing stories of the dead to keep them.”

  “I do what I can,” said my husband. “It will never be enough.”

  “Perhaps not,” said my sister. “But perhaps so. They say you have a garden, built with your own hands.”

  “I do,” said my husband. “One flower for each of the dead.”

  “And this one, for the living,” said my sister, and passed my husband a small package, swathed in finely woven cloth.

  With great care, he unwrapped it, coiling the fabric around his hands as it came loose. At last, he held a single blossom, stalk and root intact; a rose from the desert, ready to be grown in new soil.

  “For the living,” he said, and looked at me. In his eyes, where I had once seen the venom of a viper, I saw instead a hard-won peace.

  “Come, husband,” I said to him. “Let us set it in the earth.”

  The next morning, I told the serving girl she no longer needed to bring me the tea. Ten days after that, I went to my husband’s bed.

  I did not come to him dressed in finery, bathed and painted like a bride. Those days were behind us. I lay down beside him on the bed, and when he did not protest, I came over him. My sister had sighed and shaken her head when I asked her advice. She told me that there was more than heirs to bedding, but I had a kingdom to consider, and she had let the matter drop.

  All things taken together, it was not as uncomfortable as my sister had warned me to expect, and I did not mind that it must be repeated until we were certain I had quickened. I suppose I had my husband’s trust, and he had mine, and that would be enough.

  My sister remained with me in the qasr while I carried my child. Her pale husband took their children back to my father’s tents, but our mothers stayed. I saw my sister delivered of her seventh babe, a girl, and the first birth I had witnessed that did not involve a goat. When it was my turn to labor on the bricks, I was, for the first time in years, afraid of death. Nothing had ever hurt so much, and I felt that my body was outside of my control. I did not enjoy the feeling, but my sister kept her arms around me, unless she had to go and nurse, and anchored me to the ground.

  The hours dragged on, and I grew too tired to walk about the room between pains. It took both of our mothers to move me back on to the bricks, and the henna mistress helped my sister hold me there while I pushed. Finally, when I thought I could push no more without breaking apart, my sister cried out with triumph, and a second, weaker cry joined her. I knew the sound of both in my heart.

  “Son of mine,” I said to him, when my sister placed him in my arms.

  My father’s garden was the great work of his life, though my mother was content to share her renown with him as well. I did not go into it very often, but he spoke of it to me, so that I would understand.

  “It is not your burden, son of mine,” he would say to me. “It is not your task to take up unless you choose it to be.”

  I did not understand what he meant. Surely he must want the garden to flourish.

  “The gardeners will tend to it when I am gone,” he would say. “You must learn your mother’s work.”

  And so I learned to be a king. I learned to read men’s desires and to negotiate with them. I learned to listen when women spoke, and I learned that their words had as much weight as any others. I learned to measure grain against the winter and water against the drought. I learned to ride and hunt and grind my own grain, though I did not do the latter with any regularity. I learned the stories of the dead, and kept them.

  My husband would not come to my bed, but we had what we needed from each other. I did not learn to garden, but he learned again to be the king. He still deferred to me often, and always included me in his decisions, even when they were small.

  “You have done so much work to train the men who petition me,” he said. “I would not see it go to waste.”

  He spoke to our son about the flowers from the time the boy was old enough to hear words and understand them. My son saw only their beauty—blooms of red and orange and purple and pink against the white stone—and my husband made sure he understood their purpose, and their price. My husband kept the flowers alive; saw them seeded and grown anew when the old blossoms faded, and thus did he find some peace with his kingdom, and his people with him.

  “I am sure they appreciate the wells and the trade routes more,” said my sister, when she came to stay with me.

  “We each find what we need,” I said to her. “I have, for my own part. Have you?”

  My sister looked toward the place where I had raised mountains—where sometimes we could see bright flashes of fire in the sky, and the wings of creatures that had once been simple birds—and did not say anything. Her youngest child was still too young to travel very far.

  “The flowers should not grow here,” the men of the court whispered, and: “They should not grow so well.”

  “Is it your little bees?” the henna mistress said to me. “Or, the creatures that were bees before you made them into something else?”

  “No,” I said to her. “It is something else.”

  The wadi toads were toads no more, but they looked toad-like, and I knew that there were plenty of people within the qasr who would think them pests or abominations. They were not mine because I made them, but because I loved them, and their help to my husband was a sign that his penance was almost paid. I had seen them with their little water pots, because I was willing to look. They did good work inside the qasr walls, but they hid themselves from people and from the sun, and I would not expose them to either against their wishes.

  “Your work is always good, lady-bless,” said the henna mistress. “Even when we do not understand how you did it.”

  “It does not frighten you?” I asked her, for I knew it frightened many.

  “I have held
your hands and seen the henna disappear into your skin,” she said to me. “I have seen you walk, living, from a man that had murdered all who came before you. I do not fear you, lady-bless, because I love you.”

  She kissed me, then, on the forehead, and ducked away.

  My son had outgrown my breast, but not my lap, and so I sat him there and taught him how to spin. I imagined the disdain the men of the court would show if they saw him, and then I decided that I did not care. His would be hands that knew work.

  My sister had come, one last time, and brought her youngest girl to me. She was leaving, with her pale husband and fully half of my kin. My father was dead and our mothers were old, and my sister yearned to see other skies. But someone was needed to keep watch over the dead, and so her daughter would become my daughter, and I would teach her the songs.

  For now, we sat in the cool hall, with olives and spindles and each other, for just a little longer.

  When I had seen the burning sun of twelve summers, my mother’s sister and her family left our desert for the north, to see what they might find there. My youngest cousin, who had shared cradle and milk when I was born, stayed, for the dead could not be abandoned, and I would have charge of the living.

  When my father died, I went into his garden. Three hundred flowers for murdered girls, and one for the girl who had lived. It was not my burden, but I found that I was reluctant to leave his work entirely. I looked at the flower my mother’s sister had brought, and found that I loved it, for it was my mother’s, too.

  When the gardeners came to ask for my instructions, I bid them to tend all of my father’s flowers, except for one. It was time to give the keeping of the dead to someone else.

  For my part, I would be the king, and tend the rose.

  Also by E.K. Johnston

  A Thousand Nights

  Spindle

  STAR WARS

  Ahsoka

  Keep reading for sneak previews of all three novels.

  For more tales from this world, turn the page for an excerpt from the novel that inspired THE GARDEN OF THREE HUNDRED FLOWERS.

  We do not know why we came from the sea to this hard and dusty earth, but we know that we are better than it.

  The creatures that live here crawl beneath a crippling sun, eking what living they can from the sand before they are returned to it, as food for the sand-crows or worse. We are not troubled by the sun, and sand is but a source of momentary discomfort to us. We are stronger, hardier, and better suited to life. Yet we struggled here, when first we came.

  The humans were many, and we were few. We did not understand them, nor they us, and they feared us for it. They came at us with crude weapons, heavy stone and bright fire, and we found that our blood could stain the sand as easily as theirs could, until we learned to build bodies that did not bleed. We retreated to the desert, away from the oases, to sun-baked places where they could not follow. From there, we watched. And we bided our time.

  They died, and we did not. As our lives measured on, we learned more about them. We watched them tame the aurochs and then the horse. We watched them learn to shear the sheep and card the wool. When they spun, we felt the pull of each spindle’s twist, and when they wove, we felt a stirring in our bones.

  We coveted the things they made, for though we had nothing but time, we had little inclination to master handiwork ourselves. Always, it was easier to take. And so we took. Weavers we kidnapped and brought to our desert homes. We fed them sand and they thought it a feast, and before they died, they made marvels for us. Coppersmiths we pulled from their beds, and set them to fires so hot they blistered their skin. They crafted baubles and blades before they paid with their lives, and we decorated ourselves with their wares.

  When they worked, we found ourselves enlivened; and before long, those youngest of us ventured forth to prey upon other artisans. They returned with strength and power, and necklaces made from the finger bones of those whose hands they used to achieve it.

  It was never enough for me.

  I craved more.

  And one day in the desert, I met a hunter who had strayed beyond the reach of his guard.

  And I took.

  I took.

  LO-MELKHIIN KILLED three hundred girls before he came to my village looking for a wife.

  She that he chose of us would be a hero. She would give the others life. Lo-Melkhiin would not return to the same village until he had married a girl from every camp, from every town, and from each district inside city walls—for that was the law, struck in desperation though it was. She that he chose would give hope of a future, of love, to those of us who stayed behind.

  She would be a smallgod for her own people, certainly, in the time after her leaving. She would go out from us, but we would hold on to a piece of her spirit, and nurture it with the power of our memories. Her name would be whispered with reverent hush around new-built shrines to her honor. The other girls would sing hymns of thanksgiving, light voices carried by the desert winds and scattered over the fine-ground sand. Their parents would bring sweet-water flowers, even in the height of the desert wilt, and pickled gage-root to leave as offerings. She that he chose of us would never be forgotten.

  She would still be dead.

  Every time, the story began the same way: Lo-Melkhiin picked one girl and took her back to his qasr to be his wife. Some in his keeping lasted one night, some as many as thirty, but in the end all were food for the sand-crows. He went to every corner of the land, into every village and city. Each tribe, every family was at risk. He consumed them the way a careful child eats dates: one at a time, ever searching for the sweetest. In turn, he found none of them to suit.

  When he came to my village, I was not afraid for myself. I had been long ago resigned to a life in the shadow of my sister, my elder by ten moons and my year-twin. She was the beauty. I was the spare. Before Lo-Melkhiin’s law, before the terror of his marriage bed reached across the sand like a parched gage-tree reaches for water, I had known that I would marry after my sister, likely to a brother or cousin of her betrothed. She was a prize, but she was also loath to separate herself from me, and it was well known in our village that we came as a pair. I would not be a lesser wife in her household—our father was too powerful for that—but I would wed a lesser man.

  “You are not unlovely,” she said to me when we saw the desert burn with the sun of our fourteenth summer, and I knew that it was true.

  Our mothers were both beautiful, and our father likewise handsome. From what I could see of my own self, my sister and I were very much alike. We had skin of burnt bronze, a deeper brown than sand, and duskier where it was exposed to the wind and sky. Our hair was long enough to sit upon, and dark: the color around the stars, when night was at its fullest. I had decided the difference must be in our faces, in the shape of our eyes or the slant of our mouths. I knew my sister’s face could take my breath away. I had not ever seen my own. We had little bronze or copper, and the only water was at the bottom of our well.

  “I am not you,” I said to her. I was not bitter. She had never made me feel the lesser, and she had only scorn for those who did.

  “That is true,” she said. “And men will lack the imagination to see us as separate beings. For that I am sorry.”

  “I am not,” I told her, and I was not, “for I love you more than I love the rain.”

  “How remarkable,” she said, and laughed, “for you see my face every day and do not tire of it.” And we ran together, sure-footed, across the shifting sand.

  We were strong together, carrying the water jar between us to share the weight. Its thick ceramic sides made it heavy, even without the weight of the water, but there were four handles, and we had four hands. We learned the trick when we were small, and were rewarded with candied figs for spilling so little water as we walked. Even when we were old enough to carry a jug each, we did the chore together, and more besides. In most things, from weaving to cooking to spearing the poisonous snakes that came to ou
r well, we were equal. My voice was better at the songs and stories our traditions gave us, but my sister could find her own words to say, and did not rely on the deeds of others to make her point. Maybe that fire was what made her beautiful; maybe that was what set my sister’s face apart from mine. Maybe that was why I did not tire of it.

  I feared that Lo-Melkhiin would think my sister’s face was something, something at last, that he too would not tire of. He had married only beautiful girls at first, the daughters of our highest lords and wealthiest merchants. But when his wives began to die, the powerful men of the desert did not like it, and began to look elsewhere for Lo-Melkhiin’s brides. They began to scour the villages for women that would suit, and for a time no one paid mind to the host of poorer daughters that went to their deaths. Soon, though, the smaller villages tallied their dead and ceased trade with the cities. From thence, the law was struck: one girl from each village and one from every district inside city walls, and then the cycle would begin again. So many girls had been lost, and I did not wish to lose my sister to him. The stories were very clear about two things: Lo-Melkhiin always took one girl, and she always, always died.

  When the dust rose over the desert, we knew that he was coming. He would know our numbers, and he would know who had daughters that must be presented to him. The census was part of the law, the way that men were able to tell themselves that it was fair.

  “But it isn’t fair,” whispered my sister as we lay underneath the sky and watched the stars rise on our seventeenth summer. “They do not marry and die.”

  “No,” I said to her. “They do not.”

  So we stood in the shadow of our father’s tent, and we waited. Around us the air was full of cries and moans; mothers held their daughters; fathers paced, unable to intervene, unwilling to circumvent the law. Our father was not here. He had gone to trade. We had not known that Lo-Melkhiin would come. Our father would return to find his fairest flower gone, and only the weed left for him to use as he saw fit.