And Pretty Maids All in a Row

[catch]

We must be quiet.
We must be clever.

But he was not a thing that was quiet or clever.


To Darkenhold he comes, jutting like a silver-pink plowhorse between the spokes of a wheel-barrow, his feet crusted with what had once been mud, that had caked, and been baked, by the cheerful Myrken sun. His hands glittered with mica-chips of similarly dried former-mud, smeared on his clothes, his arms. His eyes are a sullen downcast, because this is something he does not want to do, even if it was a whim, all his own, to do this, even if it was his secret, yearning idea.

This was him, being quiet. This was him, being clever.

Behind him, the wheel-barrow was an eruption of color, of shapes, of sizes. Bulbs gingerly milked from the exotic tropicals taken by Iron Shoes, and gifted to him. Broad, palm-sized hibiscus, dainty foxgloves and lilies, simple daisies and black-eyes and alyssums, moon-flowers, tulips. Flowers of every shape and size, and flowers of riotous, eye-shattering colors. Each had their roots carefully wrapped in cheap, husky burlap, damp form their careful upheaval. He had looked far and wide for these flowers. They were all for Darkenhold.

By the time he comes to the familiar gate, he is damp as his clothing had promised, silver-slick with sweat and musk and a faint tinge of rum, of decaying earth. He knows, in their way, that they have seen him. He does not put together that a man may see far from the rampart-walls, but figures it some magic, some form of thought that he could never grasp. He tucks the long handles under his arms, and he waits in the shade of the walls, chest lifting hard with his exertion.

[Carnath-Emory]

Darkenhold's unconventional architecture was the design of two girls' keen understanding of violence; of one architect's long acquaintance with mineral and stone and guile. Its structure is generally considered impregnable, its network of elegant corridors and underground structures defy infiltration.

At no point did these three designers conceive of such an internal breach.

They are not a particularly dour lot, who patrol the walls this evening; certainly they're not uncommonly aggressive, and should Catch have an eye for such things, he will discover that they do not even sport the colours of a new Myrken that's not really the Governor's at all. But they are, perhaps, somewhat subdued; certainly he's received a cautious glance or two, as they tracked his motion - but not, clearly, because he is Catch, and therefore unpredictable. Not that at all. On this quiet evening there's no excited tracking of his progress, no appreciative stares, no games whatsoever.

They do not even hesitate to open the gates.

If he's delivering flowers, they imagine, he'll want to proceed directly to the greenhouse. He'll want to try not to step on the mess there, incidentally; it's -

Well.

If he's to see the Lady Marshall, then - well, the greenhouse is likely his destination anyway. Or else the outer gardens, or possibly the kitchens, but really, really -

Perhaps Catch is already very well-acquainted with the look of young men who are utterly at a loss to help him further.

[catch]

There are no gasps of pleasure. There are no words for him, and Catch had not expected them. He has gone to a place within, a place where he is not worthy of such courtesies, where he is a thing to be looked on, and pitied, and dismissed as quickly as possible. His eyes do run over the guard, Guards that wear no colors, Guards that have no taste but their own, terrible musk.

So he will cringe from them, as is proper for a thing of his stature, not weighed by height, but by one's soul, one's station. He would trudge between the spokes of his wheelbarrow, his steps careful and slow, though he cannot help the crusted dirt on his feet from shedding themselves, glittering in his footprints. It is a mirror of his soul, conflicted, secret. A dirty, filthy thing, but under his skin, he sparkles, he rages. He curls about his sour anger, hidden deep in his belly. His eyes never stop moving, his tongue a red flicker against his teeth.

It was a lie. And it was hard, so very hard, to keep himself at such baseness. The horn wanted him to rise up. The horn wanted him to crush the guards beneath his feet, to say give me gold chains, give me silver collars - raise your voices to me, and I will make this place my own, I will grow it and grow it with the flesh of the unfaithful. From beautiful flowers will I grow it.

The greenhouse is a familiarity. He sets down his burden for only a moment, a bit of dark-earth loam spilling to the immaculate colors of a Rhaena-carpet, only as long as he could open the door. Then, he is inside. Inside. Now he sets the spokes down in measured movements, and with agonizing slowness, he begins removing the largest of the burlap root-bags, the taste of blood in his mouth.

"Airy Ann," he will call as he works, not daring to look up. "Airy Ann, are you here?"

Dolls weep in his ears, and he only hoped that he could hear her past their yellow songs.

[Carnath-Emory]

He will hear her before he sees her. But then, there's so much else to see already.

Oughtn't there be dolls? There were, once: the Marshall and one of the 'r Chyr'laud girls had sewn them carefully into this rich, dark soil, as carefully as if they were bulbs themselves and in need of soft, warm beds. A face would sometimes peep through the loam: a glitter of cracked eyes, the curve of a misshapen knee; perhaps even a skirt's tattered edge, and the larger of the collection had been left very much above-ground, for the girls were not quite certain of how their size might hamper the growth of other, more delicate things. Their treasures were transplanted cautiously into waiting earth, and for days they were babied with gentle and anxious hands. Against all expectations even those had thrived, and in time even an architect had come to nurture a special fondness for this strange garden: its little hidden faces, its little ladies arrayed against the wall, watchful eyes and cracked cherub cheeks -

There'd been some diligent work in here, the prior evening. The result does not precisely have the look of a row of unearthed graves.
But only because the former occupants are very much gone, and along with them the fragile greenery introduced by an architect's attentive hands, the delicate ferns brought with agonising care from foreign shores; in fact, almost anything that was not colourful with ready blossoms. It is not an upturned graveyard, but surely it has the look of trampled fields, of convictions gone distinctly awry.

Still: the flowers yet remain, although here and there a pretty blossom has been snapped prematurely from its stem and no sign of it remains to be found. Leafy vines trail here and there from the terraced ceiling, clinging now and again to shoulders or hair. And he will hear her before he sees her, because to open the glasshouse door is to be greeted by the soft hum of her voice. Tuneful enough, if entirely wordless; soft as blossoms and not without its sweetness, and trailing into quietness only when he speaks her name.

There: pale eyes in the midst of all this humid life.
Not without some edge of caution.

[catch]

Eleven open graves for eleven little children, their bodies consigned to the flame. Those who had not been risen, those fortunate few who's cracked and crazed bodies had not been desecrated, had been dug up as well, after it was decreed that the dead must be burned. Empty, open holes in the ground. His heart contracts, flutters uselessly in the cage of his ribs. He bends to his task, a single tear to mar the streaks of good earth upon his face.

Yet still, they sang - no. No, it was not the dolls, but one, singular lady.

Her throat had been torn by flesh and bone and eyes, torn by a dragon to rip her apart, rip her apart.

But there was nothing of that. Just a honeyed sweetness, a silver bird's song. Catch put down a hibiscus-bush, and he straightens, scrubbing tear and sweat and dirt away with the back of his hand, against the pit of his ruined forehead, where a skull had been shattered by an unimaginable blow.

"You sing v-v-very sweetly," he will say, his own voice a tenor thickness. It had stopped, like a startled bird's. It was a blow to the gut to think of how wrong this is, so he does not try.

You are a silver sword; you are steel, steel, and never has a fist cracked against your cheek stopped you.

"I. I b-b-brought you flowers," he'll say, awkward in the silence, his voice bouncing from flowerhead to flowerhead. "To say - to say how I was sorry. Where are the dolls?"

[Carnath-Emory]

A silver bird; a golden bird and gently kept, in a cage of glass and silk and soft, soft songs -

But how wide, her eyes; how quiet with their caution. Even when their gaze lowers, as he speaks - in deference or else consideration; even when this becomes a flutter of sooty lashes against porcelain cheeks. A quieted song gives way to pensive silence; yields in its turn to Catch's awkward overtures and the subtle whisper of silk, as she emerges from the green and blossom of this corner. It is not precisely an approach. It can't be curiosity, not yet; she's given his cart only the most cursory glance. Perhaps in the end it's only an unwillingness to retreat.

"My thanks," and it is quiet as her song had been quiet; it lacks his name but it also lacks the casual condescension she'd visited upon him days ago, as if a man's ruinous fist had bought him something after all. Satin slippers are as soft upon stone as carpets; so are hands made narrow and pale, fingers made for swords and wound amongst hanging vines instead, and what is this if not a memory of days ago? A man had trod this same stone path, taller than she and darkly-clad, and his eyes roused in her such wracking fear that her gazed fixed upon his hands instead; she'd watched as he eased the vines from his path in just this way, and it had surprised her, such gentleness from hands made for murder, for things colder yet than killing could ever be -

Just nights ago she'd screamed herself raw in her outrage against a green-eyed vision, and perhaps today she does not remember it at all.

"A garden is no fit place for dolls. But flowers..." And here she slightly leans upon her satin toes, leans to peer past his shoulder. It was his hand to her face just nights ago, or else he'd never have been here; his hands on her dress and that fist like an afterthought, and isn't it almost like magic? What powder and some artifice can hide.

[catch]

He felt his bile rise again at the fear in her eyes, eyes above the bruised curve of a cheek. He was no telepath, he was no empath. But her mind, her mind. It was in those eyes. It was in a restless dream, the dream of poisoned eyes, of a grand beast who's webbing tore bloody from barreled ribs. He has seen that fear before, a thousand times before, and it is as wounding as a silvered, slivered spear in his heart.

'Go on,' the men say, and they laugh, they laugh, their faces red with drink, and Catch laughs with them, his head twisting, his eyes shining at his good fortune, his friends. They like him. They like him, and he will do anything to please them, to keep the laughter on their faces. They hold the girl, and she has screamed herself hoarse long before, a tear for every thrust, every beard that scraped her lips, her breasts. She had that look in her swollen eyes. He wants to please them, but he doesn't know what they want him to do, naked as he was, and he looks from one to another with his stupid, unknowing smile, his cow's smile, until they put a hand against his back, and give him a little push.

'Go on, Blondie, and give her a go -'


What he could do to her, here, in this secret garden? What could he do?

"Dolls are, are m-m-meant to watch things grow," he says, his voice lame and unconvinced. How is he to do this, he, who is no actor?

There is something.

"I like your singing," he says, desperate for anything. "It - it g-g-goes around my brains, and it helps t-t-to stop - to stop the bad thoughts, the wolf-thoughts, th-th-that - that t-t-turn my fist into a Poor Citizen." A step closer, mud and grime, his eyes wide in childlike hope, childlike need. He reaches for her, her golden dress, and for a moment, his eyes are absinthe-green in their lust for her voice.

[Carnath-Emory]

"Dolls are meant for little girls' rooms."

But her eyes are not for the places where dolls had been, and not even for a Catch who has lost his grandeur and stands imposing all the same. Her eyes are dove-grey and mild and not unafraid, but she has spied the promise of glorious colour hid there behind his back, and her gaze can be nowhere else. Even when the voice slightly weakens in her throat,

"Dolls are meant for fondness and fancies, until a girl's grown beyond such childish thi -"

And even when her voice trembles, at that last; an animal-thing, small and trapped and ending its life in a sudden gasp, for in the midst of his words he is motion, and Catch can sometimes be clever, but he cannot hope to be quiet. Not even here, where the air is damp and humid and the soil is soft beneath the feet, for the ceiling is tall but hidden in a canopy of nested vines, and to approach like this is to fill a smothering world with the shape of nothing but himself. He moves like a shout and it kills the words in her throat; he reaches with hungry hands and oh, for years and years she has harboured a terror of green eyes, hot eyes, wanting eyes, all the years since men came to her door like thunder and blood and what he could do to her here is anything, any thing at all

"I - "

helpless halts the heart

She breathes his name, and it is a voice gone softer than speaking; the one hand is a tremor trapped against her breasts, the other flung out as if all those small bones and their thin, pallid skin could begin to stop the everything that he is. But when she finds her voice again, it is not for words but song, and when she sings it is as wavering as the rest of her, as eyes that want for flowers but fix on scars and reaching hands.

"Come all ye fair and tender maids, who flourish in your prime. Beware, beware, make your garden fair... "

[catch]

"Why are you afraid."

He says it, but he does not say it loud enough to break the gentle thread of his song, the thread of his heart. His hands reach, and they dare. His fingers, his palms, drag against the fabric, the richness of it snagging on the roughness of his hands. Hands that knew good work. Hands that does a man's work. Hands grimed and crusty with the evidence of his labors, flowers sagging drunkenly on the ground, and waiting, with gentle voices, to be put into the good earth - good earth - good earth for a Governor's belly.

'Are you afraid'?' he asked,
and she looked at him with wideling-eyes,
the nets laid out upon her lap
her lips frozen in surprise
on words she had been singing.
he did not understand the fear
in her eyes. why she should be afraid
of a man come to her, in beachhead woods
a young man, of fine quality,
girded only about his loins.
He lay, then, and she, stiff
her heart a flutter in her chest
dared not move. did not
even as he put his head in that lap,
upon those nets,
(who needed mending far more than
a girl needed song). He bade,
'Sing a little more, just for me.'
she sang, and she would have been thick
with tears. except her hesitant hand
found his brow, a bird's timid touch.
and then, then, she laughed, her relief
strong in her throat. and Catch did not understand
that either.
she sang, and she put her fingers through
his hair.
"A woman is a branchy tree
And man's a clinging vine -
but I shan't care, not today,
for I have a grand Catch, for me, for me
I have a grand Catch for me."

He held to her skirts, his eyes a dull, animal need, an entrancement. The flowers' scents flowed heady through him, songs for an addled man, a descant for Ariane's throat. He sank, to his knees, slow, measured, and did not notice, or care, the strength it took for such a movement. He knelt at her feet, his grimed face upturned, every inch of him a wondering child, clinging to a matron's skirts within the safety of a noble's garden. His hands are a gentle pull upon her clothing, nothing like the violence they had held before, a begging, a need for her to join him, to join him on the grass and the good, cool earth, free of maggots, free of Rhaena and swain and everything else.

[Carnath-Emory]

Fingers reach. Hands dare, and his are not the first to breach this abundance of silk-soft skirts; he is not the first to bend his knee at satin slippers. Now, as then, the sight is a delicate shock in a moment charged with storms.

What makes you frightened of me? a man had asked; never were words spoken more gently. And still the heart had stuttered and rushed in her chest, like this - like this - as a hand hovered near the scar that even powdered bruises couldn't hide.

She could not even look at his eyes.

"For when your thyme is past," she sings, "he'll care no more for you," for the soft of his words had not unraveled the song he'd asked of her, begged with eyes that reached before his hands ever moved. The bad thoughts. The wolf-things. And what was she to be, in those moments, but a silk-soft thing with its old, old song. "And every day that your garden is waste, will spread all over with rue -"

His hands commit a crime against couture and anything like decorum; it is a hitch in her voice, a stagger of sound between one word and the next. What he could do to her is anything, anything at all, and both of them surely know it; he'd emptied his outrage into her face one day, but the quicksilver she bled was swift as tears and just as substantial. He could do anything at all, but this is her garden and so might she; might rebuff all that aching need with an instant's cool hauteur, might scathe his senses with laughing disdain - what need has a lady of steel?

It had not even occurred to her to try.

His hands are clumsy amongst the billow of her skirts, but her touch is soft as springtime upon the pale of his hair. Hands that know good work; hands that had cast aside steel in favour of beauty, disdaining murder that they might nurture a fragile world into blossoming life, and tremble though those hands surely do, she sinks as gently into the grass as if haunted by a fencer's grace.

"A woman," she breathes, "is a branching tree; A man a singing wind." And her spine is so straight, though the shoulders delicately arch, but around his filthy fingers her own slowly clench, and she does not know the moment in which her sight began to blur and swim.

[catch]

Can you fault a child? You may chide him, you may explain what is proper and what is not. Perhaps he will listen. But his emotions are great. His needs are great. If there is a thing about Catch, a single word to describe his flaws, his drive, it is this: restraint. It is the strength of his hands, the strength of his body. The strength of a power that was the very core of him, that was so instinctual that he couldn't even attempt to define or explain it. It is the strength of his emotions. The strength of a rage sent crashing into a pretty-painted face, because he hadn't anything else to vent his spleen against. His emotions dragged their fingers through him, filled him, a crashing ocean of waves beating against a wearied shore.

Catch had no restraint. He tried. He tried very hard, sometimes, and sometimes he dwelt in a town, chopping wood and taking in the stray cats and dogs.

Sometimes he woke in a ditch, with blood on his hands and on his mouth, and disgorged a steaming, twisted pile of melted arrow-heads.

Sometimes he was called a murderer, and he did not know why.

She came to the ground with him, and his hip sank into the loam, a hard hip, made solid by nothing worse than work, hard labor, hard choices. Her fingers were in his hair, and she sang on. She sang as if she were not afraid.

"I wouldn't have let the wolves have you, either," he whispers. "I would have t-t-taken it, f-f-for you. But I miss your steel -"

Mutterings. They meant nothing, nothing, any longer. He put his great, mangled head down into her lap, the pit of his scar pressed against her belly. His eyes shut, his long lashes baby-soft on his stubbled cheek, fluttering like a hummingbird's breast. He does not sleep, but let the music stretch on, let her words gabble into eternity, a taste of color on his tongue. His arms locked loosely against her skirts. There is the peace of him, spread out as if in sleep on her lap.

He listened to the songs, and there was no time for he or for her.

[Carnath-Emory]

A lady ought to fault a child, if she cares for him at all. A lady ought to break a child upon the wheel of his own mischief - straighten
your collar, attend to your letters, don't slouch - if she loves him even slightly. He will read respect in the words which instruct.
He will learn devotion beneath the sting of a steel rod. A lady ought to be a child's firm, guiding hand

and all these hands can want for is the comforting warmth of his own; they tighten, these fragile fingers, they cling, loamy skin and
the everywhere scent of flowers she could never begin to name. His eyes sink closed, as if children were made for gentleness
after all, and to smooth her palm back across his hair is to feel his features relinquish an ache that was nothing to do with flesh
and bone and nerves at all.

There was an architect once, and a brilliant student.
There was a husband she'd loved, and a child they'd never named.

"I miss them," she breathes, in a moment that has no music at all. "I miss them so much," she whispers, and does not even know
which she means.

In the next breath her song continues, and so do they, long into the setting sun.

[catch]

A thousand years from now.
He may lift his head.
He may kiss her on the cheek, and thank her.
Or was it a thousand years before?
He couldn't remember.


He slept, if sleeping was the absence of the mind from the body. If a broken brain's inability to force it's limbs into movement could be called a sleep. if being wound and wound by fingers who had lost their strength, yet still possessed it, hidden behind watercolor brushes and flowers and shuttlecock on manicured lawns. Gardens. It came back to Gardens. She had called him a Garden, so he thought, not understand what is to be pruned.

A fist on her cheek.

After a long time, long after she might grow weary of having him there, the addled man could move his limbs. He unfurled, like one of the flowers, pink budded on his pale, silver skin, burned by a merciless sun. There is not a kiss for her, because he might grab; he might smash his fist and break a Lady's cheeks - but he would not kiss. There is only a slow, shy smile, a dumb smile from under doe-dumb eyes. Without a word he would creep away, a step or two, crawling on his belly like a beast before he remembers that he is A Man.

Without a word, he would go back to his barrow, and he takes out the rest of his flowers; he hums her song under his breath, as coarse, silver-scarred fingers patted pretty things into the loam.

He would work, and work, for these flowers. Flowers that might, in shameful hope, remind a woman of her steel.

He would not leave until the sun was about to rise. Until ever flowered plant and bush had been put in it's place.

Then, like an old nag, his shoulders slumped between the cart-spokes, he would trundle an empty barrow away, his step steady, his skin a flicker that remained in the eye long after he shouldn't be seen.