Work Text:
Story the First,
Which Describes a Flower Shop
You must listen very carefully to this story, for in the end we shall know more than we do now of a very special flower shop. It was the best, for it existed in the heart of a town that had grown so large and full of people that there was no room for gardens to be grown in the earth good and proper. A flower shop was a very useful business under these circumstances, for flowers that were not made of cloth and sewn into ladies' dresses had become an uncommon sight. Ah! thought the harried suitor when he caught sight of its windows. Just the thing! And he came out with a bouquet to give to the object of his admiration. Oh! thought the widow who happened to cross at the corner on which the shop stood. Just like when I was a girl. She came out with a pot to place on her windowsill. So the shop was of moderate financial success, and so it stayed from one season of the next, outliving the restaurant next door and the hat shop around the block. Everyone in the neighbourhood came to know of it, to the point than when a woman with nails painted the color of fresh cherries needed an arrangement for her party, she needed only to ask a relative to fetch the flowers, and they would know exactly where she was asking them to go. "I am going to the flower shop," it was said. It needed to be said like this: for while its existence was common knowledge, its name was more the mystery. This is the mystery we must now discuss, for until now we have described a very normal establishment; this was a very special flower shop, which is quite the difference.
The shop did have a name. It was painted on a square sign that hung on a pole over the door. It was painted in strange characters, like the writing that decorates the odd foreign puzzles found in novelty stores and pawn shops. No one could decipher them, not even the students of the university, who on occasion emerged from their studies when they remembered that they needed to eat. From their best deductions, it was Chinese, Japanese, or Sanskrit, and their guesses ranged from a knowing 'Flowering Glory of Spring' to an honest 'I haven't any idea.' It was a language more distant and deeper than our textbooks could ever tell us. It was never cut into stone. It was never committed to paper, or clay, or blood. Its origins were in ice from the far north, where spring never came, and since this was a town where the seasons arrived in a democratic fashion no one knew this tongue save for two people, and one of these was the woman who ran this place. The children knew her as Miss Gerda, and so she shall be called henceforth, for she had opened this business originally for them.
Second Story,
A Young Woman and a Young Man
In a large town, full of streets and apartment complexes crowded with people, one must find what satisfaction they can in a few flowerpots and a vase. In one of these apartments a young man and a young woman had something much better than that. They were not married, but they loved each other as if they were. This was not as scandalous as it would have been when their parents had been their age, but it was still a source of some frowning among their older neighbours, and sly gossip about the town. The woman was Miss Gerda, whom we have already mentioned. She lived on the very top floor. Such an inconvenience! we say, imagining her coming down all those stairs each morning with bags of earth and clay pots filled with full blooms that desired the most tender of care. Such toil! we say, imagining her returning in the evening tired and well-worked to the disapproval of those same stairs. That is what she would have liked us to think. The location suited her. She grew her wares in the six windows of the apartment. She grew her wares also on the roof, when those windows could take no more occupants. When it was warm, she enjoyed her own garden up above. It was not just for flowers, but sweet peas that hung down the walls and swung in the windows of her downstairs neighbours, and cucumbers that bloomed yellow like a summer sundress. When it grew cold, what could come inside came inside, and the apartment became awash in the scent of dark earth and green leaves, and a danger to traverse. One had to step carefully through the jungle thick, though with the fear of no tiger except perhaps Miss Gerda, should she find one of her pots knocked on its side. The man with whom she lived had a proper wariness of this aspect of her character, but he did not fear her, which was either a testament to his deep affection for her or his foolishness: but surely it was the first, for he worked in the courthouse across the town and was known for being terribly bright. He had a long, beautiful face and sharp, clear eyes. They were eyes that could pierce, and eyes that could see the good and the bad in people, which is why he was so skilled in the law. He had pale hands and a cold countenance, severe and sometimes very sarcastic, but his cheeks and lips were warm for Miss Gerda, and she enjoyed this about him very much. The man's name was Kai, and though he was not old he had hair as white as winter snow. No one knew the story of how this came to be.
As it happened Miss Gerda had a special place in her heart for children. There was one thing that she sold just for them: these were pretty little pots, a little larger than a tea cup. They were made of clay, and sometimes painted with stars or with hearts, and in them she would place a little clod of earth, and some seed, and from them would grow the most delicate of blooms. She sold these for a single cent, sometimes for less, and every day when the clocks struck noon, the children would come with their coins clasped in their little fists. They came for the pots, but also for the stories that came with the pots, for, as Miss Gerda explained, every flower has its story which it loves to tell more anything else in the world. It was easy to get them to talk about it--they loved being asked--the problem was really asking them to speak about anything else.
"And what says the Tiger-lily?" she offered. "She says--"
"I know what she says," said one little girl, on one particular day. Miss Gerda fell silent, and blinked, and the rest of the children followed suit. They were not used to such interruptions, and what's more Miss Gerda had not heard this voice before.
"Beg pardon?" she asked, in that airy voice that adults used when they must ask children for clarification. A little girl standing near the doors of the flower shop stood on her toes and gave her a fierce look. The rest of the children glanced at each other and stepped aside. They knew a greater power when it was manifest. The little girl walked forward and pointed. An unheard of boldness! The other children marveled. No one had ever taught her that such things were not polite, for she did not have parents, and thus did not fear any sort of punishment in the world.
"I know what the Tiger-lily says," said the stray girl, with an ugly scowl. She wore a thick scarf she had stolen from a salary man. It hung around her thin shoulders, and made them look broader than they actually were. She stuck her chin up over its bunched folds. "But you don't."
"I don't?" asked Miss Gerda, looking amused in that way adults do when they are especially startled by forwardness on the part of those younger than themselves. "Why do you think that?"
The little gamine looked furious, " `cause you are old."
This caused quite a stir among the children in the shop. They glanced amongst themselves, questioning and confused. Miss Gerda? Old? They had never even thought of such a thing! It seemed preposterous. For how could anyone who grew flowers for a living be old?
The girl shook her head, "She is!" she said, stomping a ratty boot on the floor. "She is an adult, en't she?" And when one or two looked as though they might protest the girl continued: "She owns a shop, doesn't she? And who ever heard of an adult speaking Tiger-lily. They're lucky if they can even hear a little bit of Snow Drop!" The voices died down, for she made a very good case. Gazing accusingly at Miss Gerda, the girl pointed with a renewed fervor. "You don't know what you're talking about."
Miss Gerda regarded her calmly, and set the lilies back on their table. She touched her hands to the edges, tipped her head to one side, and said: "The Tiger-Lily talks about far away lands. She talks about fire and she talks about ashes."
The girl snorted very loudly. "That's just what she said yesterday. Have you listened today?"
And at this the woman who owned the flower ship found herself at a loss for words, for it had not occurred to her to check up on the Tiger-Lily of late, for she had trusted in the steadfast nature of flowers, the one that she remembered. Aha! Here the stray girl's face lit up, for this was exactly the ruse she had wanted to catch her in: she puffed herself up importantly, and turned and walked out. Business resumed, not long after, but not without a slight air of bafflement, for no one was really entirely sure what that had all been about.
Third Story,
In Which War Is Declared
The answer was this: the little girl's name was Sonia. She had lived alone as long as she had been able to. She was the smallest of the children who played in the town, but she was also by their consensus the bravest, since she relied on no other but herself. For this she commanded considerable respect among the town's children. In the summer they rallied for her attention, and every week she deigned to allow a few of them to receive her friendship, basking in the freedom that she enjoyed, able to go where she pleased and venture where she liked. After a week, she would grow bored, and would choose a few new friends for the week, and through selectiveness she had ever a throng of hopeful companions to keep her completely amused. She was very close friends with the neighborhood strays. They held a lot in common, being without master, and often they would share the food that they scrounged, sitting under the bridge and watching the river flow by.
It was from their counsel that Sonia had come to learn of our flower shop, and our Miss Gerda. Miss Gerda: told stories, and sold the potted seeds, and had become so beloved of the town children that Sonia had found her pool of potential friends thinning of late. This she could not abide by: as a stray child, a gamine, she had decided all adults in the world were her bitter enemies. So she had declared war on the flower shop. She found the corner where it stood. She watched it from a distance, taking note of those who came and went from it, with the care one might show to an enemy's distant flag. It was on that cool day that she had finally decided to issue the first shot in what was for her to be a vicious battle. It went as we have witnessed, but though she walked away from this encounter satisfied, it was far from over. She decided this the next day, when she came by the flower shop again.
"Can you speak crow?" she asked Miss Gerda, pointedly.
Miss Gerda was in the process of folding paper over a bouquet. "No," she admitted. "But my grandmother did. Did your grandmother--"
"Grandmother! You are saying you had a grandmother!"
"...every little girl has a grandmother."
"You're not a little girl," the gamine noted, "And anyway I don't. You still don't know what you're talking about."
The owner of the flower shop grew very sad to hear this. "I am sorry," she said, and meant it so genuinely that Sonia grew disgusted, kicked over a watering can, and stormed out. This she counted as a loss. The next day she decided to say not a word at all, simply standing behind Miss Gerda and making faces and moving her lips as she spoke, so that it looked as though the words were coming out of her mouth as well--the other children laughed, thinking this very clever of her, and the stray girl reveled in her ingenuity.
The day after she came again and began to rearrange the flower boxes when she thought that the woman was not looking. She point of asking every single flower what they thought, and with some horror discovered that each and every one was very content, and enjoyed the flower shop very much. This did not stop her from asking Miss Gerda very pointed questions about the opinions they might hold about her.
"I'd hope they'd like it here, but not like it too much. After all, they are to find windowsills in other places."
"You can't hear them anymore, can you."
Miss Gerda said nothing, but instead noted how thin the gamine looked, and so the next time that she drifted in, there was a loaf of bred at the counter that Sonia very greedily snatched up and stuffed down the front of her patchy coat.
"I should not like to grow old like you," she said one day, very loftily. She was squatting by the door, very late in the afternoon. There were crumbs on her face, from the biscuits she had plucked from the pockets of the apron hanging off the doorknob. "I will stay young and I will understand forever. And I will not start forgetting, like you!"
"It is very late," noted Miss Gerda. "Do you not have anywhere to go?"
Sonia made a face, and sucked a finger to hide her irritation. "I have everywhere to go."
"Your friends have gone home."
The girl sniffed. "My home is wherever I want it to be. And I am not old like you. I don't just get tired when it gets dark."
Ignoring this particular dose of horribleness, the shop owner finished tallying the money in the register, and locked it with one of the keys she kept in her back pocket. She took a blanket out from where she had folded it under the chair, and placed it over the register, where it would be in the girl's plain sight. "You know," she said, delicately, "It is not such a bad thing, always..."
"Pah!" said the stray, rearranging her knees so that they were tucked near her chest. "I'll avoid it in every way possible!"
"And you will find that impossible," said a new voice. A cold wind hit Sonia on the back, like the first breath of winter--which it very likely was. A man had just opened the door. He was a tall man with cool eyes and white hair. This man was Kai, with whom we are familiar, who had finally finished with work at the courthouse. He had decided to come and help close the shop for the evening. And as he looked at stray little Sonia she found herself struck by the same feeling that every other child to come under his attention generally felt: the feeling of being watched by one that was very aware that you were up to mischief, or that you were considering mischief, or that you would consider mischief in the near future, and that he was being very merciful by allowing you to scuttle out of his way. Sonia did not scuttle. In part because she thought herself braver than that, but mostly because the wall was already against her back, and he was blocking the door, taller than any man she had ever seen.
"That would make you eternal. And there are only a very few things that are that," continued Kai, "And not many of them are things that you would very much wish to be. The Snow Queen has a pretty palace, but it is not a comfortable one--Gerda, will we go home now?" He said that last part curtly, except that he walked in and put an arm around one of her loads, and so Miss Gerda was not of the mind to scold him for his impatience. He did not pay the stray girl much more mind than that, save for perhaps an icy glance out of the corner of his eye as he passed her. He put an arm around Miss Gerda as well, and this was when Sonia decided he was very presumptuous to do something like that and that she didn't like him very much at all.
Fourth Story,
The Nature of Snow Bees
It was not winter. Not really. The trees were still held crinkly leaves, and the river had not yet frozen over, but in the morning there was frost on the grass. Sonia had never minded the cold, so very much, in no small part because she was much as the dogs were, with their coats that kept them nice and warm. It was with these friends of hers that she walked the morning after her curious encounter with Miss Gerda's gentleman. She had things on her mind. Questions, which were a child's gift in which she had always excelled:
"What things are eternal?"
"Oh," said the first dog sitting next to her as she kicked stones into the black water of the river, "That's easy. Fleas."
"No," interrupted the second dog sitting on her other side. "Those die if you bite them hard enough."
"No, you bleed if you bite them hard enough," answered a third. "They just die when they feel like it."
"Who is the Snow Queen?" asked Sonia, not really hearing what they had said.
"Oh," said the first.
"Oh," said the second.
"Yes," said the third. "There's that, too."
And from the heavy grey skies the first few strains of winter came darting down like bees over the town.
When the stray girl did not come back the next day to torment her as she had consistently for many days before, Miss Gerda knew something had gone terribly wrong. She could not ask the flowers, for their roots were well set in earth that did not connect with the rest of the town, and what's more she wasn't sure if her question would even be understandable to them any more. When this sense of foreboding finally overwhelmed her --and be sure it did, when she began to notice how thickly the snow had begun to fall--she did the very practical thing, closed her shop early, and set out to ask about the town. None of the other children had seen Sonia all day. One boy confessed to having spotted her by the river that morning, but he had not gone too close, as his mother had been very strict about informing him he was not to play there. Children had fallen in and drowned before, after all! Next the shop owner went to visit the parents of the town, asking them what they knew about the habits of the little gamine. The answer was depressingly: not so much, and they hardly cared anyway. The child had played pranks on them all, and taught their children the most terrible of language, and truthfully they would have found it a relief if she had disappeared. Still, one or two knew enough of her story that through this the woman was able to glean something of the child's past: she had been the daughter of one of the most reliable patrons of the local pub, and over time said patron had grown so fond of his drinks that he had grown misty in the head and had soon forgotten he had ever had a little girl. She had escaped long since; such was the simple way that she had earned her freedom. No magic in it. Not much adventure either. Miss Gerda's heart hurt for her, but it did not help to find her. It wasn't until she had left the sixth house where she had made inquiries that she noticed for the first time the dogs scratching at the trash bins. She approached them tentatively. They turned and bared their teeth.
"Please," said Miss Gerda. "I know it has been a long time since I have spoken to you..."
The dogs backed away, the fur of their ruffs standing on end. Not to be discouraged, Miss Gerda knelt, and held out her hand--limply, fingers hanging in no visible threat.
"But if you know her, please tell me where you think she might have gone. I fear for her, you know."
Snowflakes melted on the warm back of her bare hand, the dogs glanced amongst each other, sniffed her once, and then spoke, and thus Miss Gerda came to have some idea of what may have come to pass.
Fifth Story,
The Snow Queen
"She is searching for her," said Miss Gerda, stepping among the plants that she had brought in to save from the frost. She was searching for a thicker coat, and for gloves. Kai watched her from the bed that they shared. His white hair unbound and his pale eyes tracking her as she moved across the room, lips pressed together bloodlessly. "I will need to find her first."
"You think this is my fault," he said, bluntly.
"No, Kai. I--"
Kai sat up. "And you are right. You should let me come with you."
Gerda stopped with her arms around her old warm travelling furs. They were no longer large enough to fit around her shoulders in the little coat that they once were to her, but she thought she could put them to some use yet. "Ach, Kai. I don't know. Do you think that you could meet her again, and not come back even a decade older?"
"Yes," he said, but when Gerda looked at him a little bit of the ice showed his eyes and he looked away with flushed cheeks to counter it. "No." He shut them, instead. "She is quite charming. You must be careful, Gerda. You may let her kiss you once, but do not let her do it a second time. And do not be running away to the north without telling me, will you?"
"... I didn't much like that myself," she said. She walked over to Kai and pressed her lips to the side of his neck, where she could feel the warm beat of his heart from his chest. "I will not do that," she promised, wrapping her arms around him. In a few minutes' time, she was out the door.
Miss Gerda had learned a great deal about the snow in the course of her life. She had only grown up in the process of this education. Nevertheless somehow it had come to be that she had seen very little of snow at night, save for what she used to watch out the window when she was so much smaller. Now, she walked through the quieter streets as it fell and lumped about her. It was blue at night. It glowed in the street lights, swallowed all sound, and where it began to tangle with itself, that is where Miss Gerda would walk, for the snow gathered like bees, and where bees gather the thickest that is where one often finds their queen.
Miss Gerda stepped from one moment into the town square and from the next into a very white empty clearing. One she was sure she would not be able to find were she to search for it in the spring, for it must have been out past the town gates. Here, the snow bees buzzed so thickly that they danced. Here, she saw the tracks of a sledge. Here, she found the Snow Queen, seated in her furs, thick and luxurious as a snow drift. She was tall and white and beautiful, just as Kai had always said. Gerda could not find the words to speak, for she could only gasp as one who has opened the window to the first snap of cold.
Then she saw the little girl nestled in those furs, quite asleep and covered in frost, and she remembered how to speak: "You could have spirited her away before I came."
The Snow Queen lifted her eyes to her. "I have not yet kissed away her fears."
Gerda stuck her chin up over her scarf. "You were waiting for me, then."
"Yes," breathed the Snow Queen, like the wind over a frozen lake. "And I have been for awhile."
These words startled the woman; she became like a child again, and the `why?' tumbled from her lips before she had given it any thought. The queen merely tipped her head, and wrapped one white arm hand more firmly around the little girl's shoulders. The child did not shiver, but her breath still wisped icily from underneath it the bundle: she still lived.
"You solved my puzzle, little Gerda. I had wanted to meet you, but you fled so swiftly from my land I never even caught a glimpse. And now look at you," she said this with a soft disappointment in her eyes, "You have grown. You are not as you once were."
"Yes," agreed Gerda. "I have grown. But I am not here to discuss that. I am here to take that child back."
The Snow Queen scoffed, a sound like a wet snowball striking a wall. "And will you tell me I have no claim to her? Her heart had begun to cool long before I cooled her body. She craves eternity, and I shall give it to her. You hardly have a say in that."
"She does not know better."
"That is a very old thing to say."
Gerda ignored this. "And anyway you have not come for her. You have already said it. You were waiting for me."
The wind rustled through her hair, for she had forgotten to wear a cap. It brushed past her temple, like fingers, and the Snow Queen stared at her steadily, and blankly, and then she bowed her head. "Well noted," she murmured. Her voice grew surprisingly sweet. "Oh, little Gerda. Will you come with me? I will forgive you for being grown."
The woman shook her head. "I cannot," she said, not unkindly. "I do not think I would like so much to be eternal as you are."
The Snow Queen pressed her lips together. The air grew so cold that it bit. Her fingers curled along the edge of her sledge, her gaze suddenly as black as the ice on the river. "Then you have robbed me twice over," she whispered. "I should make a statue of you, and place you in one of my courtyards. You will not do such things to slight me again."
"I am sorry," was all Gerda said. The chill hurt her to the very bone, but she felt an intense pity for the queen. For all her quiet threats, for all that the wind was growing in intensity, for all that her feet were now stuck in sharp and stabbing ice, it seemed to Gerda that she must have been very lonely to say such things. Her voice was beautiful, and her face so very elegant. She could see why Kai might have let her kiss him when he was a boy. It would have been something to make her laugh, wouldn't it? Driven so by this notion, not noticing the way the frost had crawled to her knees, Gerda leaned her upper body over the sledge, and kissed the Snow Queen. She kissed her right on the mouth, and, because there is always magic in such things, her cheeks and lips were so warm that the ice broke from around her knees, and the queen's white eyelashes melted down her cheeks like tears.
"Oh," she breathed in pain, and a startled sort of love, pulling back quickly before that warmth might do more. "Oh, Gerda. What have you..."
She covered her face, and quickly withdrew, fleeing like the hart flees the hunter. She ran north, north, north and away, leaving Miss Gerda alone outside of the town's gates: the stray child in her arms and the distant sound of icicles ringing in her ears. She blinked slowly, and came back to herself. Wrapping her old children's furs around little Sonia, she turned and made back for her home.
Sixth Story,
A Flower Shop Called...
"Oh, Christ! Gerda!" cried Kai when she returned. She was bent over the bath, drawing some warm water for Sonia. For all that her embrace had thawed the girl, Gerda was not about to forsake conventional wisdom and let her catch her death.
"We match now, the three of us," laughed Gerda, dragging her white curls out of her eyes. "I hope you will forgive me. I wanted to know what it was like. To know what you had known..."
"Yes, yes. I forgive you and all that," said Kai. He scowled. "But it was still a stupid thing to do."
"It was," agreed Miss Gerda, gently, she turned to Sonia sitting huddled in a dry towel. "But I do not regret it so much. Come, we should warm you quick, you shall be home so..."
The stray child stirred, her eyes flashing in old defiance. "My home is where I want it to be," she snapped, stuttering slightly, for her lips were still numb.
"Oh?" snorted Kai, "And where is that?"
He said it so derisively that Gerda pinched his arm. "Here," she said. "Isn't that right?"
The gamine said nothing, just uncurled and frowned very nearly as deeply as Kai: but she allowed herself to be placed in the bath, and afterwards she submitted to being dressed, and being fed, which was enough of an agreement as anything. At this point we can no longer call her a gamine, for by the next spring she was gainfully employed at the flower shop she had become so attached to in the days when she waged frequent war against all things.
"So what things are eternal?" asked our Sonia, no longer the stray. For you see this is the end, and so that question must be answered. Kai stood under the sign that hung over a flower shop with a strange name and he shrugged his shoulders in the careless and slightly rude way that the knowledgeable sometimes had.
"Time. Stars. Stories we learn as children. Things like that. Also there's another...but I think you are yet too young to understand that one."
"I am not!" sniffed the girl. "What is it? What?"
Kai pointed to the sign over their heads, and smiled. There was nothing cool about his expression. Winter was yet a few months off. He was in a good humour that day. "That," he said, nodding to the window. "Is eternity." He did not elaborate, and he soon returned to the courthouse, but we need not worry: for that is the name of our strange little flower shop, so we may rest easy tonight.
