Chapter 91 - The Farm in Irttat
Chapter 91: The Rotting Garden 09
As the watercress seeds she had given away sprouted their first tender leaves, more and more people began to peer curiously into Lucita's seed shop.
The same seeds, yet producing far more luxuriant seedlings and several times the yield.
If anything could make people overcome their fear of class boundaries, it was the prospect of survival.
Viktori's foot traffic was on a completely different scale from a small town with a sparse population. Lucita had been busy in the shop for several days and, for the first time, found herself genuinely exhausted by customer service.
As the dinner hour approached, she saw the last customer out, an elderly woman in a worn cloth cap, looked around, and began to consider taking on an apprentice.
The evening breeze carried a damp edge. Without the dry heat of the day, it moved through the front hall and left her mind calm and settled.
Parting the swaying bougainvillea at the entrance, Linnea and Delphine came in carrying a shop sign.
They had recently been learning drawing and painting from the private tutor of the florist's daughter, and had long had their eye on the plain, bare sign at their door.
A summer sign, after all, should not be without pigment mixed from raspberry-red juice.
Above the porch, the bougainvillea had burst into full bloom, clustering along the walls and sending down trailing tendrils from the edge of the awning, drifting in waves of deep pink. Scarlet geraniums crowded beneath the eaves, glowing in the burning sunset.
In the corner, tiger jasmine had opened snow-white double blossoms. Twilight flowed around them like water, as though casting a soft halo over that calm, untouched presence.
Night gradually poured down.
Following the custom of Irttat, the store's lanterns were lit, casting light through the windows to brighten the road for those coming home.
Through the glass, the riot of colors and flowers seemed to melt into the lamplight, like a divine realm on the far shore.
Lindsey, just off work, stopped in her tracks and stared at that light for a moment, drawn irresistibly closer.
Behind the window was a set of carefully tended shelves, seeds arranged casually in cloth bags of different colors, simple figures painted on each in pigment: ears of wheat, flowers, vegetables. They looked like a child's handiwork.
On the shelf just below, a cluster of pale-gold summer chrysanthemums stood half-open.
Peering through the gaps in the shelving, she could see the interior of the shop bathed in a steady, gentle brightness — luminous and cool, unlike any light a gas lamp or open flame could cast.
For a fleeting moment, she seemed to meet a pair of golden eyes.
Lindsey startled, and in the next blink, those eyes were gone.
She stood motionless before the window, oddly bereft.
Delphine, holding a watering can loosely in one hand, pushed open the back door of the shop. She bent space and gave the can a casual spin, setting it on the windowsill: "Linnea, there was a strange person peering through the window just now."
Linnea was in the sheep pen, nuzzling the large white sheep 's wool. She looked up: "Who was it?"
Delphine shook her head: "Don't know."
Linnea fed the last of the hay to the large white sheep and latched the pen shut: "People can be odd sometimes. Don't mind it. Speaking of which, I think your summer chrysanthemum is nearly blooming."
At that, Delphine smiled: "I think it'll open tomorrow! I just went to water it again, and the bud's already halfway open."
Linnea brushed the hay from her hands and sighed with the air of a wise elder: "What a journey. It seems summer chrysanthemums really are the right fit for you."
Delphine nodded in deep, earnest agreement.
Delphine had a special fondness for flowers and plants. She had started growing them from the very spring they moved here, but everything she planted died. She had tried from spring to summer, even attempted dog-tail grass, and not a single one had survived.
After all, she was a daughter of space; whether she even qualified as a living being was debatable. Her affinity for life was effectively zero. Cultivating delicate plants was, for her, simply a very difficult thing.
Violet and Lucita had both offered to help her grow them, but she had stubbornly refused each time.
After all this time, the one tough summer chrysanthemum currently hanging on was her sole remaining treasure.
After dinner, the lights in the courtyard came on one by one.
Black iron lanterns stood at the corners of the small paths in the courtyard. These had originally been connected to the gas lines, but the household had modified them, replacing them with large sturgeon-eye lamps. In the lingering summer heat, the light in the courtyard had a faintly misty quality.
Amid the continuous chorus of summer insects, moonlight poured in great swaths. They extinguished the lights inside, put on light outer garments, cradled warm cups of rice milk, and gathered around the dining table to watch the first film ever made in Viktori.
Lady Duren, with Lucita's support, had successfully attracted the attention of sharp-nosed merchants, and had brought the Silver River Screen — the original projection medium — into public circulation.
Linnea's opera was the first work ever screened on the Silver River Screen, and as the Silver River Screen spread through the middle classes, Linnea, with her striking appearance and moving voice, became the defining figure of that summer.
Viktori's newspapers wrote that she "seemed to be a fairy from an ancient realm." Violet pointed to the paper with incredulous commentary: "Why have humans gotten so much more obtuse in five hundred years? Which one of us is the fairy, you or me?"
In any case, the first opera made Linnea famous, though given that she was a marquis's child, few people dared approach and bother her.
This created an opening for merchants.
Before the heat of summer reached its peak, the first truly commercial work that could be called a film, Vivian's Garden, was released onto the Silver River Screen.
At this time, the screen was like a phonograph record: each reel captured a separate, distinct scene, which gave it precious value as a collector's item.
Perhaps because they had personally been part of driving this era forward, all of them were filled with anticipation for the first film. Lady Duren had sent over a reel of Vivian's Garden before its public premiere —the version shown in the dining room was that very reel.
Unlike the exaggerated, full-hearted operas they had known before, Vivian's Garden placed the story at its center, tracing the cherished memories of a young aristocrat from childhood.
Vivian was a well-known young lawyer possessed of an ancient family name, with respectable work, and a comfortable income. The story began with her reminiscences, cutting back to scenes of a young Vivian living a carefree life in an extended family home.
For a child, every corner of the world is full of mystery. Thirteen-year-old Vivian would stroll through the garden after her daily afternoon politics lessons — a place that belonged to everyone, and belonged to little Vivian.
She had scattered fine crumbs of grain behind the rose bushes near the western fence. She knew that a red-breasted robin came here every day, and that not long after she left, it would call in its companions, and they would tuck themselves into the flower hedge and enjoy in a flock the little afternoon tea prepared for them.
The garden was near the countryside, close to another family's hunting ground. A wounded rabbit had once found its way here; she and her friend had taken it in and sheltered it in a corner behind the glasshouse, padding a great deal of cotton to make it a little temporary nest. She had begged the garden's groundskeeper auntie to look after it, and eventually the rabbit healed and was gone.
As she grew older, the love letters she had written, the letters exchanged with pen pals, the wild lilies she had picked when she and her friends got lost in the forest's depths, all of it was buried under the great trees of the garden.
She grew up.
A beautiful young person came down the long gallery, the music shifting gradually from a minor key into something deeper. The camera panned from the withered vines on the garden gate and came to rest on a rusted iron lock.
The people who had lived there grew up one by one. The passing of mothers and aunts, the gradual dispersal of sisters, until in the end only a rusted lock remained, with a "For Rent" sign swaying on the nameplate.
The current holder of the keys to this courtyard, some older sister of hers, had become an unknown explorer, left the land to follow the dreams of her youth, and sailed out onto the vast sea. She had not written back since.
And at last, only the grown-up Vivian remained, wandering a certain house somewhere in this city. And one evening, with sudden unexpected clarity, remembered the splendor of her youth.
The lost extended family. The lost bonds of kinship. The lost song of nature.
This was a film that Lucita found astonishing.
Given the artistic style of previous productions, she had expected something closer to stage opera—music and dance as the primary language, grand themes, solemn tone. Instead, this exceeded all expectations.
Whether it was a spark of freedom igniting a long-dormant flame, or simply a star finally finding its sky, there was no doubt: its creator was a genius.
Evidently the creator belonged to the typical petty-nobility class (without which one would lack the resources to nurture an artist of such mature expressive power), and her gaze still rested on that brilliant, idealized world — but this film conveyed something of rare and precious value. The creator's focus was on the human being itself.
Those intimate, inconsequential matters belonging to a single person had been solemnly carried onto the great screen, and rendered through music, dance, and exquisite imagery, declaring to the world: I matter.
I want you to see me — to see my burning heart, the place where my spirit belongs, the nature I have intimately touched, the homeland I dream of day and night.
"The era is about to change," Lucita said softly.
The indoor lights came on. Linnea obediently set down her empty rice milk bowl.
"Time for bed, young ladies." Lucita ruffled her hair and sent Linnea up the stairs.
Delphine was still anxious about her flower, and decided that tonight she would not rest in her usual spot beneath the horse-chestnut tree in the yard, but instead keep watch in the shop, sleeping beside her summer chrysanthemum bud.
When everything was tidied away, Lucita dragged her damp hair over one shoulder, wrapped in a summer sleep-robe, and carried a cup of leftover sweet rice milk out to sit on the front step beside Violet.
She studied Violet's expression for a moment and asked, with quiet certainty: "Your injury has fully healed?"
Violet smiled, eyes curving, letting out soft, amused hums. “Mm.”
"I remember you said you wanted to visit your homeland. Is that right?"
Violet's smile faded slightly.
"Of course I miss my home," she said. "Since my injuries are fully healed, I've been planning to say goodbye to you all in the next few days."
"The next few days? Goodbye?" Lucita blinked. Then, as if reconsidering, she studied her expression and asked, “I thought you wanted all of us to go together… is it really that urgent?”
Violet pressed her lips together, then gave a measured nod: "Actually, there's no rush. If you all truly wish to come, you are welcome anytime."
Lucita smiled: "Mm. Everyone very much wants to come. Very much indeed. Thank you, Your Majesty, for granting us the honor of approaching your homeland!"
Violet burst into laughter.
The mid-June moon drifted slowly westward, casting clear light beyond the horse chestnut tree. It was impossible to tell whether the glow on the ground came from moonlight or lamps.
All other lights had long gone out. Only this modest garden still shone through the night.
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