Lapis roses, Sin roses/3

The lapis roses in the Rosarium did not bloom.

Several branches withered where they stood. The long thorns began to change color and fall away.

Now that he had found himself a lucrative customer, the rose merchant came calling in high spirits and delivered my lapis roses. Without fail, he took my hand and made me grasp the handle of the flower basket. He smiled until his great mouth split wide enough to show his tongue, looking back and forth between Quarz and me.

From time to time he bowed with elaborate courtesy. Each time, his black hair swayed. Yet its roots were different at every visit: sometimes red, sometimes red enough to trace an arc, and sometimes dyed entirely black.

“Does it trouble you?”

The rose merchant smirked as he spoke to me, though I had answered him only vaguely.

That day he had arrived at the Rosarium unusually late. As I cut roses, he had presented me with yet another offering. Once he had worked his way inside, he lingered endlessly over tales of the hardships involved in hunting wild lapis roses. I had little choice but to brew fresh tea for him again and again.

By the time the sun went down, I was listening in a daze.

Apparently, I had been staring at the roots of the rose merchant’s hair—which, that day, were red again.

“Even someone such as yourself finds it troubling?”

He leaned toward me.

He did not raise his voice, but the words were charged with hungry curiosity. He actually licked his lips.

I did not answer.

The rose merchant lowered his voice. If anything, this only made him more talkative.

“Yes. My hair is black. But on days when I fail to comb roses through it, the color appears—the color of the sin borne by all who live by wringing blood from the earth. Ah, when I say roses, I mean substitutes, of course. Common blue roses. Nothing remotely comparable in quality to the ones I sell to you.”

I brought the rose merchant’s hair sharply into focus.

Like rust rising upon black iron, the red of sin showed through his black hair, tracing the currents of its strands.

It was the same red that appeared in Quarz.

The red of the blood devoured by the living.

The red of the sin by which living itself corrodes the world.

It appeared in everyone who lived.

And it appeared in the rose merchant too.

He saw my head tilt as I looked down at myself, and he laughed.

A breathy, grating laugh.

“When I was a newborn, you know, my hair was a pure and unmixed black. Now, as you can see, my grooming leaves much to be desired. An ugly sight, I am sure. But lapis roses are terribly expensive, and a good-for-nothing like me cannot afford to comb them through my hair every day.”

“I do no such grooming.”

The rose merchant rubbed his ring-laden hands together, gold against silver.

“I know.”

He took my hand and lowered his lips toward its back.

I jerked it away.

The rose merchant gave a low moan.

“Please. Grant me the privilege of a kiss. I am in love with you.”

“You have no cause to love me.”

“Oh, but I do.”

Giving up on my hand, the rose merchant took up a long lock of my hair instead.

“Your hair. This long, long hair of yours. Who could look upon it and not be captivated?”

He gathered my gently waving hair into his palm and stroked it, then pressed his lips to the ends.

“You have stolen my gaze—and my heart besides.”

The rose merchant rose from his chair and knelt before me.

“This deep crimson hair!”

He seized my rigid left hand and, this time, succeeded in kissing my fingertips.

“To pluck… is to sin.”

Still holding my hand in his right, he raised himself slightly and reached with his left toward my cheek.

“This red hair. A red so shameful, they say, that to display it is worse than walking naked through the streets. The proof of our sin. The punishment laid upon those of us who live by wringing blood from the earth, blood from living things. A sin that cannot be forgiven unless we comb it away with roses—no, a red that returns no matter how often, how endlessly, we comb.”

His fingers brushed my ear and twined into my hair.

“Everyone fears this red. Everyone believes that hiding this sin is the very essence of propriety, and so they pluck their roses. But not you.

“How pure your red is.

“Not a shadow upon it. Not a trace of anything mixed within.

“From the moment I first saw it, how I have loved this hair—and how I have longed for the woman to whom it belongs.”

His fingers slid through my hair, red as dripping blood.

The rose merchant smiled dreamily and murmured:

“Ah, beloved thing. This red, stronger than any other. The pure, unmixed color of defilement. Almost as though it were sin itself.

“Or perhaps it reflects the color of your soul.

“Tell me—what must one do to obtain so beautiful a crimson?”

“Like this.”

I slipped aside from the rose merchant, reached my right hand toward the table, swept the lid from the silver case, seized the shears—

and snipped through his throat.

Then I pruned the artery running beneath his ear.

Snip.

I fetched a bucket from the shed and carefully scooped up the pool of blood spreading beneath the fallen rose merchant, pouring it into the bucket. Then I lifted him by the ankles and hung him upside down until every last drop had drained from his body.

Bucket in hand, I went out into the Rosarium.

At the foot of the dying hedge of lapis roses, I tipped it gently.

The blood streamed out and soaked into the earth.

At once the roots drank it in.

The lapis roses spread fresh leaves with such vigor they seemed almost to tremble. Soft new thorns emerged. Raw young branches stretched outward. Before my eyes, their tips began to bud, and the points of those buds opened into lapis blue.

The moon had long since risen.

Under its light, the earliest of the lapis roses began, one by one, to unfold.

I cut a single flower and hurried back to Quarz.

Twilight descended upon the world.

It descended upon me as well.

The unclean things crept closer.

Trembling, I combed Quarz’s hair.

I laid the petals of the lapis rose upon the little comb and drew it through the silver threads. With every stroke, the red that had begun to surface disappeared, and her hair recovered its argent radiance.

Each time that radiance flashed, the unclean things reaching toward me hesitated.

But they did not give up.

They played with the darkness.

Whenever my own hair deepened into crimson, they danced with delight. Entangled in the dark, they rustled and laughed among themselves.

There seemed to be a new shadow among them now.

A top hat.

Again and again, a ringed hand reached toward me in rapture, only to recoil from Quarz’s brilliance.

Quarz is another me.

I cannot endure so much as a shadow falling across her countenance.

I drew Quarz close so that the shadows of the unclean things could not touch her.

Let the defilement touch me, so long as it did not touch Quarz.

And yet the radiance of Quarz’s perfectly combed hair shone clearly across the world, driving the darkness back from me as well.

The silver-threaded hair, combed with the petals of the lapis rose, was sacred.

Pure.

No defilement could approach it.

I, who live by wringing blood from the world, am content that no mark of the world’s sin appears upon my other self.

I am content that I may devote myself to a being of such absolute purity.

The unclean things—things that ought to be unnecessary to me—may desperately need me.

I myself may be filled with all that is superfluous.

But in this dark world, there exists one pure being who can illuminate it.

And that being is my other self.

That alone barely keeps me from perishing, from dissolving into the darkness.

Among the unclean things circling and dancing around us, I hold fast to the radiance of this other me—

and sleep through the dark.