"THERE! This is the rose wall. The gate is just around that bend in the hedge." Gii pointed a little way ahead of them at an area of the wall that curved back toward the gardens.
"Multiflora roses - that figures." Following the imposing boundary that seemed to materialize out of the air, Mikki shook her head. "Well, they have been called a living wall, but I've never seen them contained in such an orderly way."
She'd seen multiflora roses take over pastures and completely destroy them in less than a couple years, but stretching before her was a huge wall of the wild roses that had apparently been tamed. She and Gii turned with the curving wall. Mikki gazed up. The mass of climbing roses had to be at least twelve feet tall. "Do they ever spread and threaten to take over the forest?" Or the rest of the realm, she mused silently.
"The rose wall obeys Hecate's command."
Mikki felt Gii's body jerk in response to the Guardian's deep voice, and she was profoundly grateful that she, too, hadn't jumped out of her skin when he spoke. But then, she'd known he was going to meet her at the wall. Subconsciously, or maybe not so subconsciously, she'd been waiting for him to appear. Her gaze shifted from the roses to the Guardian. He was standing on the other end of the curve they had been following, framed by what looked like an immense gate made entirely of multiflora roses. As per usual, his strong face was somber and his expression unreadable, but his eyes . . . his eyes seared her. He is not going to intimidate me. He's a security guard - a big, grumpy security guard. I'm Empousa, which would translate at the very least to his supervisor. Mikki smiled pleasantly.
"I know more than a few ranchers in my old world who would pay just about anything to have Hecate command roses like these to behave themselves."
He frowned. "Hecate is not a merchant who can be - "
"I didn't mean that literally. I was just kidding," Mikki interrupted, working hard not to roll her eyes. She glanced at Gii. The Elemental had her lips pressed tightly together in a thin white line, and her eyes darted nervously back and forth from the Guardian to Mikki. Huh. I guess no one kids with the Guardian. Or maybe the Empousa has never had a sense of humor before - the others were probably too young to have acquired one. Yet another thing she was going to have to change.
"Okay, well, obviously this is the gate." Mikki ignored both of them and marched over to stand not far from the Guardian. From the corner of her eye she noticed that Gii followed her but was careful not to get too close to the man-creature. Mikki moved nearer the gate, observing that the roses that made up the wall looked only marginally healthier than the sickly plants in the gardens. The leaves of the multiflora roses were still mostly green, but there was a disturbing amount of yellowed foliage mixed in with healthy growth. There were a few half-hearted light pink buds, but none of the blooms had opened. She touched leaves, turning them over and looking in amidst the mass of plant that made up the body of the hedge, checking automatically for black spots and insects.
"I don't see anything specifically wrong with them - no obvious disease or insect infestation." She sighed and chewed her lip. "Like the rest of the roses in the gardens, they just look sick."
The Guardian moved closer to her. He, too, was studying the rose wall. "Can you make them well?"
"Of course," Mikki said with much more confidence than she felt. "I've never met a rose that didn't like me." Of course she'd also never met a wall of multiflora roses that listened to the commands of an ancient goddess, either, but she thought it'd be counterproductive to mention that. "We'll just start at the beginning and work our way forward from there. Step one - make sure the roses are well fertilized. It doesn't get much more basic than that."
At that moment a little breeze carried to them the sound of chattering women. The Guardian cocked his head and drew a deep breath. Then he looked down at Mikki and raised his eyebrows.
"You must smell our approaching fertilizer. What is it, fish heads or pig manure?" Mikki said.
"Pig waste."
This time it didn't matter that his face was like no other living creature; Mikki easily recognized the glint of humor in his eyes.
"Good!" she said brightly.
"You are, indeed, an unusual Empousa if pig waste causes you happiness."
She grinned. "I am and it does. Now it's time we get to work."
He flashed a smile that showed very white, very sharp teeth. Then he bowed to her. "I am yours to command, Priestess."
Ignoring Gii's sudden surprised intake of breath, Mikki tilted her head in what she liked to think was a goddess's acknowledgment of his goodwill before turning to begin giving directions to the approaching women.
They weren't doing a half bad job for women who had never worked with roses. Mikki stood and stretched, carefully circling her shoulders to try and relieve the tension that always found a way to rest between her shoulder blades. She wiped her hands on the outside of one of the tucked-up edges of her chiton and surveyed her surroundings.
The women were spread out along the rose wall for as far as she could see. Those she had stationed at the wall had three jobs - one group dug shallow trenches up and down the area near the roots of the roses. Another group covered the fertilizer with the freshly dug dirt after yet another group of women dumped the baskets of organic matter into the trenches. A steady stream of women carried baskets back and forth from wherever the pig poo and fish guts came from to the hedge.
There was also a chain of women who passed baskets filled with the loam of the forest floor from outside the rose gate back through to the women waiting to mound it snuggly around the base of the living wall.
Mikki glanced toward the open gate. Sure enough, she had only to wait a couple seconds to see the Guardian. All morning he had paced restlessly back and forth on the forest side of the gate. The playful goodwill that had begun to exist between them had dissipated when Mikki had insisted that the women be allowed to go into the forest to pile the rich loam into the baskets. The Guardian had been, quite simply, thoroughly pissed at her.
"It is not wise that the gate be left open," he'd growled when she'd explained how she intended to fill the empty baskets.
"The roses need the nutrients that are found in the organic matter that makes up the forest floor. So the gate has to be open because the women need to go into the forest," she'd told him, in a clear, unafraid voice right in front of all the women.
"The forest is not safe," he'd said stubbornly.
"Isn't that why you're here?"
He growled something unintelligible at her that made her skin prickle, but she'd refused to look away from him, just like she'd refused to back down in her insistence that the women go into the forest. She knew what the roses needed, and some of it could be found out there. Mr. Grumpy would just have to deal with it; he wasn't going to scare her out of what she knew was the right thing to do. And anyway, what could he do to her in front of the women in the realm? Eat her? Bite her? Pick her up and shake her? Please. She was Empousa - he was supposed to make sure she was safe. He couldn't very well be what caused her damage. She figured the worst he could do would be to throw a fit and stomp away. If he did that she'd just have to listen within and figure out how the hell to open a gate made of roses that didn't have a handle or a latch or a . . .
"I insist none of the women leave my sight."
"Whatever you say. Security is your job, not mine."
He'd cocked his head and sent her a black look.
"Well, I mean whatever you say as long as the women go into the forest and collect the loam," she'd amended sweetly.
"I still do not like it."
"And yet I am still insisting." Mikki had felt the weight of the women's staring eyes when she contradicted the Guardian. It was as if they were shocked that she stood up to him, and it made her wonder how the other, younger Empousas had handled disagreements with the intimidating Guardian. It doesn't matter, she told herself firmly, I'm Empousa now, and he needs to learn that I'm not some virginal infant he can bully.
"Huh," he'd snorted. But he'd gone to the gate, raised his hands and spoken words Mikki could not understand but the power of which rippled like warm water over her skin. The rose gate opened slowly, and only far enough for the bulk of the Guardian to pass through. She'd followed him, and the women, led by Gii, had followed the beast and their Empousa into the edges of the dark forest.
The forest was dark - and it should be. The trees were enormous, ancient oaks, so thick at the trunk that even the Guardian's wide reach couldn't have wrapped around one. The interlocking branches formed a canopy of lush green, through which very little sunlight managed to escape. But it seemed perfectly normal. Birds chirped. Squirrels scolded. Mikki even thought she caught sight of the rear end of a startled deer as it bounded away.
The women who scooped the leafy loam from the forest floor and into the baskets were unusually silent, and none of them wandered very far apart, but no boogeymen or monsters jumped out at them. And all the while the Guardian paced, his sharp eyes focused past the women and into the depths of the forest.
Gii's sweet voice interrupted Mikki's musings. "It is midday, Empousa," the Earth Elemental said after delicately wiping the sweat from her brow. She pointed to a line of women who were approaching from a different direction than the chain of fertilizer had arrived. "I see that women from the palace come bearing food."
"So late already?" Mikki hastily took her gaze from the Guardian's ever-vigilant form and smiled at the handmaiden.
"Yes, Empousa, and several of your rose workers must eat and then be allowed to change places with the Dream Weavers within the palace."
"Dream Weavers?"
"I forget that you are new to this realm and its ways, especially today, after watching you work so easily with" - Gii paused and her gaze slid to the open gate and the grim guard who stood beyond it - "the roses," she finished.
Mikki ignored her reference to the Guardian because she was not sure what to make of it. She was dying to ask questions about him and about the High Priestesses who had come before her - for instance, where were they now? Did the women retire? If so, couldn't one of them be called out of retirement temporarily to . . . well . . . train her properly?
But intuition told her that asking a bunch of personal questions about the Guardian and the previous Empousas would make her look even more inexperienced and insecure than she already was. She'd gained a measure of respect from the women today. She didn't want to lose ground. And there was something else, too. Something in the way the women averted their eyes from him and avoided standing too near him.
"May I, Empousa?" Gii was saying.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Gii. Yes, it is time we took a break. Then I'd like to hear more about these Dream Weavers." Which, she decided, should at least be a safe topic. As Gii sent a couple young women who were working close by to inform the other three Elementals that it was time to break and refresh with the midday meal, Mikki retreated to one of the many marble benches placed in lovely rose alcoves all around the gardens. She sat, realizing how tired her achy muscles were now that she'd stopped moving, and was sincerely grateful that Gii was so capable and able to quickly call the women to order. They broke into little groups, clustering around benches and fountains, and the soft sound of their conversation mixed with the ever-present scent of roses, creating an atmosphere that Mikki found soothing, despite her tired muscles and the general feeling of sickness that clung to her.
She breathed deeply, thinking how wonderful the gardens would be when they were healthy again. Letting her mind wander with her eyes, she imagined the beds and the rose wall in full, magnificent bloom. Her daydreamy interlude was interrupted when her gaze landed on the frowning Guardian as he ushered the last of the women back through the rose gate. He looked so damn serious and gloomy. Why? What was it about the forest that made him so uptight? Hell, maybe he was always uptight. No . . . she remembered the glint of humor in his eyes and the touch of his hand on her hair . . . clearly he wasn't always uptight. Still, she needed to have a frank talk with him. No mysteries, no evasions. If the forest was that dangerous, she needed to know the specifics.
The Guardian spoke a terse command and the wall closed seamlessly. Mikki yawned and stretched and tried not to be obvious about watching him. One of the palace servants approached him and offered him a basket of food. He ignored it, but he did accept a floppy skin, which he raised to his mouth and drank deeply from. He handed it back to the woman, and she hurried away. Then he paced over to a tree that grew near the rose wall and seemed to disappear within the shadow of its trunk.
Gii hurried up with a basket of her own, which was filled with tempting smells, and sat beside Mikki, placing the basket between them.
"Is the food not to your liking, Empousa?" she said when Mikki made no move to begin eating.
Mikki hastily looked away from the shadow under the tree. "No, everything is wonderful." She broke off a piece of bread from the long, thin loaf and added a slice of cheese to it. Nonchalantly, she said, "I was just wondering why he doesn't eat."
Fixing her own sandwich, Gii said, "I have never seen him eat." The Earth Elemental shrugged. "Not that he doesn't. He must. The food that is left at the mouth of his lair disappears and must be replaced."
"Lair?" Mikki sputtered, almost choking on the piece of cheese she'd just swallowed.
"Yes, his lair." Gii paused, looking confused at Mikki's surprise. "The place in which he sleeps - where he goes when he is not out amongst the roses."
"I guess I assumed he lived in the palace, like I do."
"Oh, no, Empousa, he is a beast." Gii sounded appalled. "It would not be proper for him to live in the palace."
Mikki studied Gii, trying to read the handmaiden's face as well as her words. The Earth Elemental was kind and compassionate. So much so that Mikki naturally sought out Gii's company more often than the rest of the handmaidens, and she already felt as if the two of them were becoming friends. Yet here Gii was, sounding cold and unfeeling. The Guardian was an animal. Period. So he didn't deserve the same luxuries or consideration the rest of them did, yet he was the being who protected their realm.
Deep in her gut it felt wrong - terribly, hurtfully wrong.
But she didn't correct Gii or question her further. Mikki didn't know enough about what was going on here. Not yet. Something wasn't right, and it had to do with the Guardian. She'd already learned from getting close to the roses that everything in this realm was not as it first appeared. She'd keep her eyes open and watch the Guardian. Her instinct told her that if she got close enough to him she might discover what was hidden beneath his facade, too. That is, if he let her - or if she dared. Until then she would watch and learn, and follow her gut.
"Tell me about the - what did you call them - Dream Weavers?" She purposefully changed the subject.
Gii brightened. "The Dream Weavers have the ability to take the ordinary - and the not so ordinary - and weave it into dreams and magick, which they then send from this realm out into the other worlds. It is from what is created here that all the dreams and magick of mankind are born."
Mikki struggled to take it all in. "And by 'the other worlds' you mean?"
"Your old world, that of the mundane. And then there is also the ancient world, where the gods and goddesses are still revered. It is the ancient world from where the women of this realm and I were chosen."
That was what Hecate had said when she'd talked about the crossroads between the worlds. It had confused Mikki then, but today her mind felt more able to absorb the seemingly impossible details of her new home. And she realized that at least one of the questions she had been pondering had been answered. The other Empousas had obviously come from the ancient world, and that must be where they retired to. In a slightly crazy way, it did make sense.
"You said the women had to go back to the palace to take their turn as Dream Weavers. So they're doing that - creating dreams and magick - right there in the palace?"
"Yes, Empousa."
"I'd like to see that. Is it possible that I could watch?" Mikki asked eagerly.
"You could do more than watch. As Empousa, you have the ability to weave dreams and make magick, too."