The Tulip's Song
Rea, a gardener-sorceress, must overcome the grief that is holding her magic back. Will the tulip's song ever echo throughout the fjord again? Or will the revolution end in tragedy?
Rea places her hands on the flowerpot as a warm glow pulses from her body. Her magic ensures her makeshift greenhouse hidden away in the mountain camp is fragrant just like her grandmother’s garden. Outside, though, the air smells like burning rubber and revolution.
When I was young, her grandmother would tell her, The tulip bloom would fill the fjord with a symphony.
In her mind’s eye Rea imagines she is in her grandmother’s garden. It’s a beautiful day. Blue skies and wild fields cover the fjord. The sound of the river whispers in the distance.
Let the light flow through you, her grandmother would tell her. Rea remembers focusing. The warmth flowed much easier back then. Perhaps it was because she trusted her grandmother, she wanted to be like her.
The light, swirling around inside little Rea, pours out of her fingertips and enters the brown soil. The green tulip stem rises. Birds flutter their wings in anticipation. A soft, beautiful note of music yawns. Then another, complimenting the first one. And another… The melody made little Rea smile. She knows she could open her eyes and gaze upon a garden of tulips before her.
A loud explosion echoes in the distance!
The greenhouse shed shakes. Rea’s focus flickers.
The memory of blue skies and wild grass slips away —
Images of gray spires of smoke, the black barren earth fill her mind —
She sees her grandmother lowered into the ground —
Her mother’s stoic face at the gravesite —
The absence of her father —
Rea’s eyes dart open.
The stench of burning and dust fills her nostrils.
Before her a purple tulip with black streaks struggles to stay upright groaning a low, guttural note. She retreats her hands. The glow subsides. The tulip shrivels and wilts back into the black soil. The warm glow in Rea’s chest bursts into a flash of white hot rage.
Rea smashes the flowerpot onto the ground.
Leif returns to the camp at sunset and goes to the greenhouse. Rea sits in the corner gingerly leafing through her grandmother’s journal. She touches the gryphon feather tucked away between the pages. He knows she wouldn’t want him to see and clears his throat.
Rea closes the journal and puts it out of sight. Leif enters. He stops short because of the shards of clay and soil covering the ground.
“Unconventional,” quips Leif as he sidesteps the mess and sits next to Rea.
“I’m close,” says Rea dryly, “I can feel it.”
Leif sees the shrivelled petals of tulips on the ground. He looks at Rea.
“I’m sure you are,” says Leif as he rummages in his pocket, “But if you want to get closer… Then take this.”
Rea looks at the piece of paper in Leif’s hand. “What is it?” she asks.
“Proof,” says Leif straightening the fading label, “This is the chemical they’ve been pumping into the soil for decades.”
Rea turns away.
“It’s what turns the soil black and-”
“I don’t believe you,” Rea cuts him off.
Leif sighs. Rea gets up and starts to clean.
“You can’t keep trying to use your magic to change the story… If you’re unwilling to accept the reality around you,” he says.
Rea pretends not to hear him. She busies herself sweeping up broken flowerpots. Leif gets up and stops her.
“Rea, I know you know I’m right. You are a powerful sorcerer. Your grandmother taught you well but-,” Leif took her hand, “We need your magic. We need you.”
“I’m close to finding the right combination of spells,” Rea wrestled herself from his grasp and turned away., “I’m close…”
“We can’t turn back the clock, Rea. We need to revive the fjord if-”
“And you don’t think I want that, too?!” Rea snaps.
“I know you do,” says Leif, “That’s why I’m here.”
“You won’t understand. The magic rests on the story we tell ourselves.”
Leif sighs.
“If I can just hold on to what was…” Rea shakes her head, “What still is. Then I will revive the fjord, as it once was.”
“We will revive the fjord. On that, I do not disagree. The dam will break. But I know that won’t bring back the people we’ve lost. No amount of magic can do that,” says Leif, “Our fight is for the future, not the past.”
“If the magic that flows within me, that flows through all of us, cannot bring them back,” whispers Rea, “Then what is the point?”
Rea holds Leif’s gaze with the strength and resolution, she believes, of the tulips that once carpeted the fjord. When Leif looks at her, however, all he sees is Zulmat’s ungodly dam on their once beautiful, bountiful river.
“It’s happening today,” says Leif, “We’re going to bring down the dam.”
Rea stands outside her greenhouse and can see hundreds of rebels arming themselves in the camp below.
“Come with us,” says Leif, “Help us.”
“I don’t know what dam you’re talking about.”
Leif’s shoulders dip but he picks them back up again. “Please, Rea,” he says, “This could be our only chance. We need you.”
Two soldiers climb up the slope looking for Leif. “Sir,” they say, “We’re ready.”
Rea looks to the orange sky.
“If we can strike at the base of the dam, the river will force itself through. The water will cleanse the soil and the fjord will-,” Leif sees that Rea isn’t listening, “Zulmat’s reign will end.”
“Sir,” the soldiers say, “We have to move now. The sun will shine over the peak soon.”
Leif knows that Rea won’t budge. “I’ll see you when I’m back.” He turns away.
“Do you remember the tulip’s song?” she asks him.
“Of course, I do,” he says. Gazing upon the army below, Leif nods, “They do, too. It’s what keeps them fighting.”
Leif trudged down the slope to the camp and picks up his battle axe. As his rebel army march down the mountainside he looks back at Rea’s greenhouse framed precariously against the burning sky.
Rea, hidden away in her greenhouse, opens her grandmother’s journal and gingerly traces the quill of the ancient gryphon’s feather. She can feel a twisting ache in her chest but shuts the journal and chooses to ignore it.
Magic binds, little one, her grandmother had said, Some more than others.
Not just people. The tulips as well. The earth is a vessel, an eternal flowerbed. The magic within us comes from it and by planting these tulips, we tie ourselves to it’s abundance. Can you feel it, little one?
Rea, sitting crosslegged surrounded by flowerpots, strains her focus to keep the memory alive.
Little Rea picks up a beautiful yellow tulip who has shed it’s petals. “Can’t the magic revive this one?”
The lifeforce only moves in one direction, her grandmother said, Remember that. It only moves forward. Like the river. What has washed away can only be found downstream. The harvest of yesterday feeds no one. That is why we plant seeds today so that we can be sure the fjord will bloom tomorrow.
The black soil in the pots around Rea sit still. In the distance the sound of the battle booms. The dam ensured that the cries of intermittent victory and defeat echoes equally throughout the fjord.
The dam…
Rea’s mind is sucked once more from her grandmother’s garden and pulled into another memory. The memory of her father being carried back from the dam site…
Zulmat was once just a small company of travelling merchants. They came in to Nordikai on catamarans flowing impossibly upstream. They brought with them new technology such as motors for their carts, direct current to light up the night and fertilizer to nourish their soil. In exchange, they asked only for their singing tulips. Enough to perform a symphony for their king waiting across the sea.
The Zulmat merchants and the nordikaian gardeners exchanged happilly and fairly for years until the soil began to go black. Zulmat kept up their end of the bargain, bringing more and more novel inventions from across the world, but the fjord ran out of tulips to exchange. That’s when Zulmat decided to pounce. They told the fjord they didn’t have to worry about losing access to their marvels from the motherland, instead they would help them get out of this bind. They would build a dam to make the river provide for them all.
To Rea it felt like her youth was spent watching the people she loved building the dam and getting injured, some even dying. Her childhood decayed with the blackening of the soil and ended with the death of her grandmother who left her nothing but her journal. Rea remembers the twisting in her chest as she gazed upon her grandmother who looked like she was sleeping.
When her grandmother lay on her death bed, an ominous cold gripped her chest. Her father was unable to leave work in time. She watched her mother refuse to cry. She wouldn’t allow her expression to betray her helplessness.
When her father lost his leg, her mother tended to him and, once again, refused to let her emotion show. Rea understood only at her father’s funeral when her mother could no longer hold the tears at bay that a storm had been brewing inside of her.
Soon after, her mother cried herself to death. Standing at her familial gravesite, Rea felt Leif’s arm wrap around her to comfort her. She wanted to lay her head on his shoulder and weep as well but she knew that wouldn’t solve anything. Her grandmother had said that the magic bound them to one another. All her life Rea could feel the connection like a warm blanket covering her soul. The rip that started with her grandmother’s and then with her parent’s death had left her soul exposed to the cold winds that flowed around the tall, ungodly dam that stood as a wall between what was and what could have been.
The last remaining strand was Leif. Her best friend, her confidant. Without his connection she was afraid that her soul would leak and, like her mother before her, she would succumb.
The lifeforce only moves in one direction, her grandmother’s sweet voice whispered.
Our fight is for the future, not the past, Leif’s voice echoed.
What has washed away can only be found downstream.
Bent over in the greenhouse, the ache in her chest growing, Rea realises that the emotion within her, the grief, was bottled up just like the lifegiving, soil nourishing water trapped in the reservoir. As the dam rose and stole her youth from her, so too had it divided her spirit and driven her further from the magic that could save them, that could save her.
The tulips around Rea begin to grow. A soft, delicate melody fills the air.
Rea trains her mind on her connection to Leif that stretches itself thin across her soul and pulls herself along. Hoping it would lead to answers, to strength, she tries to see the sky. But her footing slips. As Rea scales the dam of her despair, the ethereal rope snaps!
Rea lunges from her meditation, catching herself before she plunged into the icy abyss below. The ominous cold grips her chest. She hasn’t felt this since-
Rea knows something has gone horribly wrong…
The survivors crawl back into the camp in silence, their heads hung in defeat. Riolf, Leif’s second-in-command, sits with his back to the fire, grinding his teeth in rage.
Rea, silhouetted against the fire, comes to Riolf and asks, “Where is Leif?”
Riolf can hear in her voice that she already knows the answer.
“He asked you to fight,” Riolf growled, “But you let him down and now-”
Riolf can’t bring himself to say the words.
“Where’s Leif,” says Rea, slower now, softer.
Riolf spits on the ground. “He’s dead,” he says, “His body fell off from dam into the reservoir.” Riolf bumps into Rea’s shoulder as he strides past her. Rea, feeling the wind leave her lungs, crumples to her knees.
Riolf stops but doesn’t move towards her.
“It’s your fault!” his screams echo across the fjord, “You should have come when he asked!”
Rea, breathing heavily, feels the lingering wisps of magic connecting her to Leif swirl in her chest. She closes her eyes and collects the strands. She places her shaking hand on the earth.
The soldiers faces light up with a warm glow. They gather around to see.
In Riolf’s eyes, the body of his commander, his brother-in-arms, materialises from the glow. Drenched and still, Leif’s lifeless corpse lies on the ground before him. Tears well up in the corners of his eyes and he lowers his head so that none may see.
“What use is your magic now?” he growls, “If it can’t bring him back...”
Rea runs her hand across Leif’s lifeless face. The torrent of tears slam against the dam within her. She wants to let go, to open the floodgates but Riolf says, “You aren’t welcome here anymore. None of us are. They know where we are now. We leave this place at dawn. Dismantle the camps. Take what you can.”
“But what of the fight?!” A young soldier calls out.
Riolf grunts, “There is no fight without Leif.” Riolf storms off, “And it’s all her fault.”
Rea looks around at the terrified, seething soldiers looking for someone to blame. In their eyes, she knows they believe they’ve found it.
Rea watches her greenhouse burning casting a glow across the black mountainside. She sits perched on the edge of a cliff high above the camp, out of sight. She feels nothing as the flames rise and spread. She has her grandmother’s journal hidden under her shirt. The gryphon’s feather, her grandmother’s prized possession, is safe from harm.
The gryphon awakened the magic of the fjord many years ago, her grandmother would tell her, An ancient being of great wisdom and justice. It ensured the balance of good and evil never tipped too far in favour of evil.
“Why did it give your grandmother a feather?” little Rea had asked.
My grandmother saw it once, soaring overhead. She followed it, high up the mountain to it’s nest. It was a perilous journey but she loved the gryphon and wanted to see it, to thank it.
“What happened next?”
She made it to the top, her grandmother said, And though gryphon commended her bravery, it told her that no thanks was necessary. It was merely doing what was right. But my grandmother was adamant. She knew she wasn’t alone in wanting to thank the gryphon for all it did.
“What happened then?”
She found out what the gryphon loved, her grandmother smiled everytime she recounted this part, But she knew of no way to accomplish it. That was when the gryphon gave her one of it’s feathers. On it, she found the secrets to magic engraved. The gryphon was telling her everything she needed to know.
“What did the gryphon love?”
The tulip’s song.
Rea looks out at the horizon, her once bountiful view marred by the smoke smires of the factories of Zulmat polluting the air, the bright lights of the town that housed workers slave to Zulmat’s will and the dam… the dam that took everything.
Rea knew that Leif was right.
It was time for the dam to break.
Before daybreak, as the handful of survivors twist in their sleep, Rea sneaks back into the camp. She walks upto Leif’s body placed on a pyre made from the wood of the dismantled camp. It was to be lit at daybreak.
Rea looks at Leif, two coins placed on his eyelids, and touches his hand.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, “I understand now.”
Rea lowers her head to kiss his forehead. As her lips touch his cold skin a single tear falls. She opens her eyes and watches it roll down his forehead and disappear into the hair on the side of his head. She feels her emotion swelling, threatening to explode out of her.
She hears a rustle behind her. This isn’t the time. She must be quick.
Rea places her hand on Leif’s body and, once more, a glow engulfs the both of them.
The soldiers wake that morning with their nightmares hanging around their necks like an albatross. To give up the fight meant that Zulmat would never let them live. They would swallow the fjord and every dream that they ever had as children would vanish in an instant.
But there was a faint sound in the air…
The soldiers rise from the makeshift bedding and strain their ears. The shook themselves free of worry for a moment, just enough to hear… the melody of their childhood.
They gravitate towards the Leif’s pyre for that was where the song seemed to be coming from and as they gaze upon their fallen commander they see… tulips. Tulips forcing their way up from the ground, their stems contorting like vines through the wood forming a shroud around Leif’s body.
Some rebels laugh, some cry. Riolf who can’t believe what he was hearing or seeing, is silent.
“This is a sign,” says one of the soldiers through his tears, “We have to fight. Leif wouldn’t have wanted us to give up for anything.”
“To the death.” chuckles another.
“To the death!” they all chant.
They turn to Riolf who is still silent. “What’s say you, commander? Will you lead us? It’s what he would have wanted.”
Riolf, his shoulders slumped looks around at the hopeful faces of the young men and women he’d known all his life. Riolf looks past them to Leif’s corpse and trudges towards it.
A tear falls down his cheek as he rememebers how Leif and he would run through the wild fields scraping their knees. A laugh sprung forth as he recalled the songs they made up to the tune of the tulips that they would sing every bloom.
Riolf lights a torch and sets the pyre alight. He turns around to face the rebels.
“To the death!” he screams.
The story of the revolution that has passed down through the generations was of how a small band of nordikaian men and women, fought valiantly against the Empire of Zulmat. Spurred on by the death of their commander they were inspired to strike the first blow to their unimpeded reign. The battle would come to be known as ‘The Liberation of the Waters’.
What people wouldn’t talk about, however, was the storm that had been brewing at the same time. Atop the tallest mountain, at a spot known colloquially as the ‘Gryphon’s Nest’, a great wind had engulfed the peak.
Rea sat and allowed the memories of her life to flow through her. She lit every filament of magic that flowed through her and through the fjord.
She had finally agreed that Zulmat’s true power was in transforming the story that people told themselves. What started as a simple barter had been reduced into a dependency. Ultimately, it was Zulmat’s story of scarcity, not anything else, that was the heinous crime that shrouded the fjord in silence, that allowed the dam to rise, and caused the tulips to wither and die.
But now Rea was ready.
She was ready to feel the weight of a world that had changed. A world she had never wanted to accept because she knew it was a world without the people she loved. But now she knew that they were never ever truly gone.
Their spirit lingered in the magic. In the story of abundance, they would bloom. With the tulips every year, they would sing again.
Rea allowed herself to feel her grief, her despair and in doing so, set it free. The waters flowed freely through the slightest crack and now, a river of magic raged through her.
The rebels, fighting valiantly, had felt the dam shake violently.
A crack ruptured in the base of the dam. The water in the reservoir churned and a torrent burst out the other side. The rebels ran for their life, laughing wildly at their miraculous victory.
As they made their way to safety, the dam wall fell and the river they’d known last as children flooded the fjord washing the soil of it’s blackness leaving nothing but the light, nostalgic hue of brown.
Riolf was the only soldier who noticed the storm at the Gryphon’s Nest that day. He could guess the truth but he knew that he would say nothing. Not unless Rea chose to return.
For now, it was enough that the men and women in front of him were heroes.
Rea, smiling, slumped onto her side and let her grandmother’s journal fall from her grasp. The pages fluttered in the wind and the feather of the gryphon flew through the air, tumbling, caught eventually by the raging river below.
The feather, engraved with the truth of magic, flowed into the Common Sea, forever one with the eternal flow.
Author’s Notes:
I’d been struggling for weeks to write this story. I use a story structure
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