When I turn back into the room, Apsara has already merged the glass sides of the dagger’s hilt into the partially formed slipper. They form the curled sides of the slippers, the so-called quarters running down each side of the shoe from the upper arch support that had been formed from the ring.
The poor woman strangely seems aware that the gorgeous violet glow of the glass has vanished from the dagger used to murder her.
Her smile has gone, to be replaced by a more knowing, horrified expression.
As if she has recognised, at last, but too late, the treachery that would take her life.
Apsara next brings the slipper towards the mirror, a piece of glass so large I wonder how it can possibly become a section of a shoe.
As the slipper is brought close to it, however, the glass of the mirror quivers, as if vibrating to the high notes of an accomplished singer.
It ripples, as if liquefying; then it begins to flow as smoothly as a stream’s sparkling waters towards the slipper.
In a moment, the slipper has its arch support, its shank, which melds seamlessly with the curling sides formed from the dagger’s handle.
And as for the Mirror of what Might Be; now, sadly, it’s just an empty frame.
*
‘The last part; for now, anyway!’ Apsara declares brightly as she brings the now almost complete slipper up towards the glittering blue crescent of her necklace.
As with the mirror, the necklace vibrates, shivers; then flows from about Apsara’s neck as if given life, as if it has been transformed into snaking, deep blue waters.
It rushes – strikes out, even – towards the waiting slipper. It bites onto the glistening end that only a moment ago was a mirror.
It streams up and into its appointed place within the slipper, solidifying as the throat that the still missing toe box will eventually affix itself to.
The only other thing the slipper lacks is the part that cups the heel.
And yet, something about this now almost wholly formed slipper strikes me as being distinctly odd.
It’s the size.
I mean, most girls could get two feet into this thing!
*
Chapter 20
‘The slipper’s not anything like how I remember it!’ I point out to Apsara as we ride away from the tower, heading in the direction of the house we’d spotted from the window. ‘It’s hardly going to help pick out a dainty-footed princess, is it – a shoe that any fisherwoman would think too big for her?’
Apsara merely shrugs, like she can’t see why I think this is important.
‘It’s glass, isn’t it?’ she says pointedly.
‘Yeah – but, well; who’d go to a prince’s ball wearing that?’
She shrugs again.
‘Maybe…well, maybe…’
She can’t think of an answer, obviously.
‘Maybe it, you know…well, when you try it on, well it sort of…you know, it shrinks to fit?’
‘What, if we sort of wash it countless times, you mean?’
‘Magically!’ she replies emphatically, confidently tapping the bag she’s carrying. ‘It’s a magic slipper, remember?’
‘Hey, wait: one thing I do remember is that you stole all those things from my father’s castle!’
‘If you wanted them back, you could have brought them along!’ she exclaims, referring to the mirror and letter opener we’d left behind at the base of the tower.
‘I don’t want them; but, I mean – don’t you think you owe me some sort of explanation as to how you came by them?’
It’s not even like my father’s castle is that easy to steal from. Besides, I’ve got to admit that Apsara hardly strikes me as being some cat-like thief.
‘Have you considered’ she retorts huffily, ‘that if I hadn't brought them with me, you wouldn’t be so close to obtaining the full slipper?’
‘Ah, but…but now…yeah.’
She’s got a point hasn't she?
‘So, what are we going to find in this great house?’ I ask her, giving up on any attempt to pin her down on how she ended up with items from my childhood.
‘The Vase of Life,’ she replies calmly. ‘Or, to us, the bit of the slipper your toes go in.’
*
The maze of thorns surrounding the house aren’t, thankfully, as impassable as those that had grown about Sleeping Beauty’s castle.
At one time, however, the tangle of roses, vines and clematis might well have been a formidable obstacle. But at some point someone has been here before us, it seems, and has hacked a way through the mass of intertwining plants, the thicker stems visible beneath young, finer growth displaying signs of being savagely severed.
The upper growth of the wickerwork of plants is actually startling gorgeous, a mingling of roses, clematis blooms and wisteria, a wild tapestry of colours. Whoever had first chosen and cultivated these shrubs had chosen well.
The gateway is impressive, its towering, carved pillars still discernable beneath the covering of blooms. One of the wrought iron gates is still in the closed position, but the other lies warped and broken amongst the flowers, having been violently wrenched from its hinges.
Everything has been overrun by the untended flowers. And so we don’t notice the fallen soldier until we’re just about tripping over him.
His armour is rusted, while any visible material is torn, rotted. The plant’s tendrils have gradually snaked through his armour, even through the eye sockets of the skeleton he’s become.
Now that we’ve seen him, we notice at last the dull glimmer of other pieces of armour more deeply embedded amongst the undergrowth.
More dead knights.
We wonder how the men have ended up so entwined within the mesh of growth until we come across other dead soldiers who have been hoisted upwards as the bushes have grown, such that they now dangle from branches like strange fruit.
The house itself is more derelict than I had first supposed when seeing it from the tower’s window. The jumble of intertwining plants look like a green sea frozen as it lashed at a cliff of red brick, but not before the pounding waves had caused immense damage.
Trees or the thick stems of large bushes grow at a weird angle towards the house, as if they have been blown that way while young and have never been able to stand upright once more. This close to the house, the effect is more one of trees who have launched a vicious attack upon the building rather than that of a structure collapsing under accumulated weight.
This sense of a steady streaming of growth continues as Apsara and I – once again, I’ve ordered our mounts and the hounds to ‘stay’ – follow the track of thick stems that have wound their way inside the house through the main doors. The vast majority of these thicker, older stems seem to be heading in one direction; to the upstairs rooms.
The coiling trunks wind their way up pillars, or ascend the stairs as if it were a waterfall in reverse. It is only towards the top of the stairs that this thick growth at last begins to thin out a little, until it peters out into little more than a few strangling stems reaching out towards the double doors on one of this floor’s major rooms.
The door we push on opens with a protesting crack, as if it had preferred it wasn’t disturbed.
The room is incredibly dark, with what could be large windows covered with thick drapes.
Little light comes in with us through the opened door. The room is gloomy, the murkiness only added to as we disturb thick coatings of dust that lie everywhere.
Directly ahead of us is what appears to be a large, tall alcove, yet the presence of heavy drapes suggests that they veil a towering bay window. In the alcove, standing in front of these draped windows, is a small yet high table.
Nothing stands on the table but a vase; a slender plinth of elaborately carved wood supporting an upturned cone of green glass.
A rose stands in the vase but, naturally, it is dried, dead.
So much for the Vase of Life.
*
; Chapter 21
‘This can’t be it? Can it?’
The flower, unlike the vase, no longer contains even the merest hints of green.
It’s grey, even black in parts. The bloom leans at an odd angle, the weakened stem too insubstantial to support it.
It all appears so dried and brittle that I’m scared to touch it, lest it falls apart, crumbling into noting but a dark dust. I’m even going so far as to hold my breath as I observe this sad specimen of a once glorious bloom, for I fear that even that could send it all tumbling to the table top as a pile of soot.
You can still make out its individual petals. Its leaves. Its thorns.
All of it covered in a patina of dust.
I sense that I’m about to sneeze.
I pull back quickly, covering my face to lessen the impact of my sneeze on the dust lying everywhere around us.
But nevertheless, this sharp exhalation, along with my abrupt move, sends the layers of dust billowing into the air.
The already dimly lit room is instantly made murkier than ever.
‘We need more light in here!’ I declare in frustration, reaching up to pull apart the drapes I’ve ended up standing by.
‘No, no!’ Apsara shrieks in warning, holding up a hand to stop me. ‘Don’t alter anything until we know–’
But it’s too late.
Although my pull on the drapes isn't anywhere near strong enough to pull heavy rolls of cloth apart, it’s more than enough to begin to shred material that’s old and rotten. The thinner bands of material holding the drapes to the window’s overhead rail are particularly weak: and so as the first few split under the sudden, added stress of my sharp wrench on the folds of cloth, the rest inevitably follow one by one as they find themselves taking on more and more of the burden of supporting the heavy curtain.
One whole drape tumbles to the floor, the abrupt flooding in of the outside light painful to eyes that have become accustomed to the darkness.
Like me, Apsara has to shield her eyes with a raised arm.
Unlike me, she turns to look at the vase. I stare out of the window, looking out for the great palace that – according to the map – should lie just a short distance from here in this direction.
I can’t see anything resembling a palace, even though we’re high enough to see over even the overgrown walls surrounding the house.
It’s still an admirable view. Once again, I’m struck by the idea that the massed plants below could be a surging onslaught against the house or its occupants, as if they were seeking revenge on those who had pruned and grafted them.
There’s a definite sense of the plants sweeping this way, any sense of movement in their now thankfully stilled form granting the impression of a flow in one direction only, as opposed to the more aimless jumble I’d expect naturally growing flowers to take.
Ivy and wisteria clings to the walls just outside the window, a more extensive tendril having apparently achieved its aim for it has tentatively entered the room through the small gap in a broken window.
‘Look, look at the vase!’ Apsara calls out to me.
I’m only half way through my turn away from the window, and I can already detect the effects of the light upon the vase. The air around me glitters with an emerald glow, as if transformed into a gem-like substance.
The vase itself, however, is more beautiful by far; it sparkles as if taking the yellow of the sun, mixing it with the blue of the sky, and creating a whole new world of the purest green imaginable.
A flaming furnace of green, rather than of red.
The stem of the dead flower is bathed in this deep-sea glow, such that it could be fresh and alive once more.
‘It’s…it’s beautiful!’ I gasp in awe
‘Is it?’ Apsara breathes anxiously, pointing towards the wilting bloom.
Only it isn’t quite wilting anymore.
It no longer droops at a strange angle.
There are even hints of a colour in its petals; the marbling veins of a blood red.
Life is returning to the rose.
*
Chapter 22
The green light swirls now as if it is water.
The rose continues to revive, its stem strengthening, straitening.
The petals glisten like a scarlet velvet. They curl about each other like long parted friends.
The rose stands perfectly perpendicular within the vase, as if fully supported by the mystical green waters swirling about its lower stem.
The petals unfurl slightly, flowing into new shapes.
A face.
The rose has what could pass for a face.
With a mouth of the reddest lips.
A mouth that speaks.
‘Welcome,’ the rose says, her voice soft and entrancing. ‘And thank you.’
*
‘What happened here?’ I ask the rose, if only because I’m not quite sure what else I should say.
It’s selfish to think this, I know: but if the rose depends upon the vase for its life, than how can we take the vase away to become a part of the slipper?
It’s not as if it is any regular rose, after all!
‘The house…was invaded,’ the rose declares, with obvious tones of sadness.
That would explain the forced gate, the hacked shrubs; the dead knights.
‘The inhabitants of the house resisted the attack, naturally,’ the rose continues. ‘But the invaders managed to shroud the windows, to prevent the light from reaching me – and so I effectively died, the invaders free to do as they wished to our home.’
She droops a little once more as she relates her sad tale.
‘It was a wedding day; it should have been our happiest day,’ she continues, brightening, standing up straight once more.
‘They wanted to take me, of course; but I resisted. The support of the vase is a part of the table, and the table is a part of the floor, and the floor is a part of the ancient roots of this house. And yet they would leave all that behind, believing they only had to take the Vase of Life to be granted every happiness they desired. But the green light of the vase is as much a part of me as I am of this house; and if I refused to leave, as I naturally did, then we could not be severed either.’
‘What was that?’ Apsara ask apprehensively, her ears pricking.
‘What was what?’ the rose asks innocently.
But I can now hear what I must presume Apsara had heard: a strange slithering, sounds of movement akin to the snaking of serpents.
‘Ah, the wind, whispering through the gaps in the windows,’ the rose tries to explain, if a little unsatisfactorily.
A deeper noise, a creeping, a hissing, comes from behind what remains of the drapes shrouding the bay window.
It becomes a ripping and then a startling thunderous thud as the rotted loops of the remaining drape finally give way and the heavy material completely crumples to the floor.
The windows on this side of the bay are more shattered than those of the originally revealed side.
It was the wind after all.
I laugh with relief; but Apsara’s expression is still strangely stern and fearful.
‘I didn’t wish to desert my friends.’ The rose coolly picks up her tale once more. ‘I couldn't let anyone leave, to let this wonderful place become unloved and suffer its own form of decay because of that. So we resisted their departure; barriers sprouted up everywhere, surrounding the house – barriers of thorns that should have been impenetrable. We thought at first only to keep them here; and we would feed and care for them. Yet the invaders – what else could we call them now but “invaders”? – resisted in turn, attempting to break free, to hack viciously and callously at us in their attempts to do so; and so we were left with no alterative but to fight back.’
‘Who is this “we”?’ Apsara asks with a surprising level of suspicion. ‘The wedding party?’
The rose shakes her head.
‘It was the wedding that heralded the end of us all, of co
urse. The mistress didn’t wish to stay here, “out in the middle of nowhere”: they would be leaving for the great house in the city. We could have stopped them, we were so close: just a few moments more and it would have been too late for them to shroud me in darkness, bringing all of us to a halt.’
Apsara rushes towards the bay window.
‘We have to block the light!’ she screams urgently at me as she begins to fruitlessly struggle with the heavy material that has tumbled to a chaotic heap on the floor.
An ivy tendril, one hanging into the room from a broken window far more than I remember it doing, whips across to her as if abruptly caught up in a strong gust. But then, as if alive, as if it were actually something more akin to a snake rather than a plant, the tendril brutally wraps around Apsara’s arm, dragging her away from the fallen rolls of cloth.
Other tendrils lash out towards her, rapidly entangling her in their coiling embrace. They wrench hard upon her, as if prepared to rip her apart.
I’m withdrawing my sword and a dagger even as I rush to help. With a few quick slashes, I severe the writhing stems, seeing with relief that the separated parts of the plants drop away from Apsara’s limbs and waist.
With an ear-piercing shattering of the glass, the windowpanes closest to us implode in towards us, showering us in sharp slivers. Thicker branches of ivy and wisteria force their way inside, even as other stems pummelling at the other windows also begin to break in.
The stems curl everywhere about us, as if we’re suddenly being attacked by a number of octopuses of various sizes, the tentacles coiling around our arms, legs, torso, even pulling hard back on our heads and threatening to grab us by our necks and choke us.
At some point, Apsara has grabbed two of my daggers for herself, and she’s using them with far more skill than I would have given her credit for. Like me, she’s hacking away at the stems, causing the coils entrapping her to fall away only for fresh, grasping tendrils to replace them.
‘It’s the rose!’ she screams out to me.
I notice for the first time that she’s bleeding about the head badly. An ear is missing, I’m sure of it. It must have been sliced off when the glass slivers fell everywhere about us.