THE KISS OF A CAT

Chapter 31

Dalrosse, Merve and the birds travelled for miles through the vast fields of Orange Roses.  Eventually tiredness overtook them and they built a fire. A cat emerged from the tangle of sharp rose thorns to share the warmth with them, her name was EmiLeah.

It was the evening on the day they berthed in a natural harbor on the coast of Strianval Merve told Dalrosse they had travelled almost five tiaga.  The air was thick with the scent if the Orange Roses.  Thick, and almost cloying, as if the smell had congealed in his lungs. He was glad when Merve decided they should rest. Despite being tired, he was surprised that his journey had led him to this new bizarre place; his feet were treading a path that had been created for him long before memory.  He sat beside a sharply cold, yet refreshing river or rivulet that crissed and crossed the Strianval. He looked up over the bushes of roses, many thorned; the plants erect with vain pride, making them seem stately.

As evening drew on and the sun seemed to cower away from the majesty of the land of roses, a land that usurped the coming darkness as it sent an amber hot mattress of light into the rose sweet night.  Dalrosse drank deeply to stave off the tiredness he felt. He had to think clearly. For all intents and purpose he had already collected the Orange Rose, he could have one of millions. But the Masterdom was the next place he had to reach.  In which direction was the Masterdom? Once he had found the Purple Rose there then he could return to Meringal and see Ashenmoire again.

Dalrosse presumed there must be people in Strainval – he hoped so as they had very little food.  There must be a city, or farms, yet they had walked half the day and they had seen no-one.  Neither had Shaneal nor Shriven and they had flown much further than Dalrosse and Merve. Above the crowns of the flowers he could see Shaneal circling above. Fear for him had not taken her much further than eye reach of Merve and her brother. Schriven had headed further South, had returned at dusk, perched mutely staring at Dalrosse then he took to flight again heading back Southward.

Merve had told him that he had never been to Strianval, but suggested if they follow one of the water courses they would be more likely to find someone. But when?   Another day, two until they found help? The food would be gone by then. Yet every step Dalrosse trod southwards seemed familiar.  The soils embraced his footsteps and the lightness in his heart grew.

He felt something touch his arm and rub itself against him. Looking down he saw a slim tortoiseshell cat.  The cat looked up at Dalrosse, emitted a tiny squeal from her fanged mouth.  Dalrosse smiled and said hello.

‘Now don’t you go bothering the birds,’ Dalrosse told the cat with stern pretense.  He picked up the cat and began to stroke her, tickle her ears and beneath he whiskers.  H er purrs seemed like a lulling lullaby that would put even the hardiest of insomniacs into a dream filled slumber.

Above the amber lit moon slowly rose.

Shaneal dropped from the clouds and landed on a rose bush near Dalrosse.

‘Where did you find that?’ Shaneal asked suspiciously.  The cat saw her and a white flame of light flashed from her eyes. Protectively Dalrosse caressed her vigorously, her purrs intensified and the cat folded into his embrace like a weary sailor on a hammock.

‘I didn’t find her, I suppose she found me.’  He said smiling.

‘Well I hope she can find her own way home.  I don’t like cats.’

‘You’re a bird now, I suppose it’s natural.  Don’t worry. I’ll make sure she’ll not touch you.’

The blackbird laughed. ‘As soon as your backs turned that cat will have to grow wings to catch me.’ She repeated, ‘I don’t like cats.’

‘I know. You just said.’

‘But still I don’t like them.’ Then Shaneal flew up and off into the rose-scented sky.

With Merve heavily asleep a few feet away Dalrosse felt comforted in the night by the cat and as he had no-one else to speak to he chatted away to her as if she were a long lost friend.

‘Well? What will I call you?’ Dalrosse asked as if questioning the cool breeze from the Fordeni Sea, ‘What was that again?’ He said pretending to reply to something the cat had told him. ‘So EmiLeah is your name. Is it? EmiLeah you are very beautiful, don’t listen to a thing my sister says. I love cats- she won’t make me drive you away.  You can sleep here until morning.’ All night he whispered and soothed EmiLeah until she slept. He kept a relaxed vigil, Merve snoring and hiccupping in his his dreams while the heartbeat of the cat echoed in his body.

He knew that he was truly free from the miasma The Caretaker had sickened him with, he knew he was healed. He felt his own heart loud and strong, as reassuring as the surf on the coast. Dalrosse was filled with such a joy, an intense gleefulness. All that first night in Strianval he humorously derided himself about all the hurts and fears, the worry that his past life had been.

‘Look,’ he told himself.  EmiLeah seemed quite attentive. ‘Look how lucky I am. I am alive.’ All the days of pain and worry he had dwelt in, back in those days before his heart was healed and Verlover had bathed him in laughter. He felt clean for the first time in his life and he felt new. Now Dalrosse knew each step he took was a blessing, another footstep away from the prison he had lived in. Each movement onwards would strengthen him filling the future fertile with possibility and knowledge. Moment upon moment passed as the night sky looked down upon the orange adorned Strianval. Slowly dawn’s light returned, it mingled with the glow from the roses leaving the sky a painter’s pallet, a mishmash of colours and streaks of cloud, with out of place, obscure shapes appearing in the sky above the Strianval like silk flags enfolding rainbows to bless the day. Yet, as the sky grew a faded blue the new days light emerged feebly it left the sky heavy, like lifeless granite gray.

Merve woke and smiled at the cat in Dalrosse’s lap- both were fast asleep and their noses almost touching.   Merve yawned deeply and wondered if Schriven had found a village. He was hungry and the scraps of food he’d taken from Hazeldreame would barely satisfy him, let alone the need to share it with Dalrosse.

I hope Schriven’s found somewhere. Merve laughed to himself. In Paternor Schriven was known as the best spinner of yarns, and had once spoken all through a day and the one after, yet, Merve hadn’t heard a peep from him since they’d met on Hazeldreame. He wasn’t particularly  surprised Schriven was a kingfisher, he was the kind of person who would be a kingfisher, but still he wondered why he hadn’t gone on to explain the myriad significances of the myriad colours of his feather’s and explain the varying colour’s meaning in different societies through the ages. What’s spooked him? Merve wondered.

‘Just hope if he’s found somewhere to eat he’ll be able to tell us where it is.’

Dalrosse startled awake.

‘Morning,’ he said as if he was disappointed.

Between them they had some bread and pieces of dry meat.  Alert, EmiLeah pestered Dalrosse to distraction, the last bite of the meat hovering at his lips as EmiLeah’s yearning eyes choked him with laughter.

‘Aright then,’ the Shouel said and held the meat to the cat’s mouth so she could nibble it down to his fingertips.

‘We’ll never get rid of her now,’ Merve said, his gruff tone tinged with a sense of acceptance. ‘She’s not getting any of mine and crammed his mouth with the last of the meat.

‘Don’t be like that Merve, she’s only little. I think she’s lost.’

Merve crunched down the last of the crust of bread and as he chewed as he stared at Dalrosse. Through his mouthful, he said, as a slow blue eye smile grew on his face.

‘I haven’t eaten properly since Paternor and if that slinky thing wasn’t so small I’d be building a cooking fire right now.’

Pretending to be shocked at Merve’s joke he said. ‘EmiLeah, you’ll be getting the rest of Merve’s meat. He obviously prefers bread.  Look there’s you’ve missed couple of crumbs on your lips.’

Dalrosse scooped the cat into his arms, stepped purposely over the watercourse and disappeared into the tall rose busses. Merve sighed, slurped some water from the rivulet and followed Dalrosse.

Schriven was tired and he’d come to the conclusion that the world had been covered in orange roses.  He was many tiaga south of Merve and Dalrosse and on ahead the orange roses stood row upon row as far as he could see.  He had seen other birds, insects, of course- he had to eat. He’d tried to hunt for fish in the rivulets of water that crossed Strianval, but they seemed lifeless, empty even of weeds as if some invisible workmen missed in an eye blink regularly cleaned and unclogged the watercourses.

Like Merve he had never ventured this far south.  As a boy he had swum in The Little Sea and his tutors would take him and his fellow students as far south as the foothills of The Mountains of Drendunde.  They would search the Lost Places and the ruins of the Ailves. Excavating, or in Schriven’s case escaping to the nearest shade.

His father was a tree-feller in the vast woodlands of the Forest of Without.  He lived with Schriven’s mother in C’mithra, a tiny village on The Forgotten Way. His parents were wealthy and had sent their son to the University of Ojinth along the coast from Paternor. Each summer he returned to C’mithra, each year he returned to his ageing mother and  father  a man who had became more and more disgruntled that age had robbed him of the ability to work in the forest.  He would endlessly reminisce  about how he had battled the Bolved Devil for the heart of the forest, where the tree were almost half a tiaga in girth and so tall that low clouds were brushed away by their branches and still giddying the trees soared upwards. A month it took us, he would say, to fell just one tree - a whole half a year to take it the lumber yards.  Then he’d sigh and go over in his mind the story again and again as he slurped the soup his stomach could barely digest. Schriven wondered if it was age or boredom that had taken his mind.

He’d arrive home each summer and those last few years she would flutter and fuss about, then, in a moment as if she had been switched off she would sit silently by his father, try to smile, perhaps thinking smiling  was a strange thing to do and stared at the forest beyond C’mithra.  For a long time before they died he felt his parents were caricatures of the people he had known as a child. When his father was strong and battled a horde of Bolved Devils and Evema so beautiful, a teacher in the village, the only teacher who seemed so excited by the knowledge she shared to the children.  What they became- a misplaced smudge of lip rouge, for beauty, for strength, chattering lips dripping with thin soup. His holidays one of blank looks and lost smiles.  Schriven felt no love or a kindred spirit for those people.

After university having to decide whether to teach or just drink all the money he had inherited.  Instead he travelled alone to the Mountains of Drendunde, wandered through the ruins of the Ailves cities. When he had been with the other students one or two would boast that a godslumber would fall over them.  Entombed within the godslumber the students would dream of city walls rebuilt. Peopled with the young of the world, the Ailves, beings that had dwelt on Menerth long before men came. The Ailves were lost,  their cities once paradises destroyed, left ruined upon tiaga after tiaga of salt flats, lost in vast gulfs of dry lakes, the lands pitted with the scorch marks of fiery stones flung from the night.  Though the godslumberers dreamt and the songs of the Ailves long in memory and rich voiced the air of the Mountains were enraptured by their existence.  These students in their godsleeps would hear songs and tales that were far more ancient than any volume in the oldest libraries.  Schriven had seen a few of these students as they awoke-he’d seen how completely they had changed, no longer children, or even men, but creatures longing for a place that was lost. These godslumberers perhaps were collating all the images and thoughts of the godsleep yet the immensity of a hundreds of lifetimes to recall it correctly and a hundred more years to explain it drove them insane.  Of course they did try to explain, but even the tutors would laugh at them, point to the mountains, say, ‘Drendunde’ as if the name of the god would drag the sleep from their eyes and get them back studying. In the nights, one by one the students still yearning the Godsleep some would be see them leave the camp, but none ever saw them return again.

When he went he went to the foothills in the year after he finished University he had walked to ice marble steps that curled in great semi-circles to the first of the gates of the ruined city. He lay at the base of the first step trying to imagine the Godsleep as something as once as mighty and awe-inspiring as the Mountains as filled with the Ailves. Shriven failed, was not taken by the sleep, was not, as he had desired led a long a road of a higher purpose. He returned to Ojanthe to teach, not only orphaned from family, but by life. So he taught, drank, lived.  Or he thought he lived.

At that moment his thoughts of Dalrosse seemed to make his head judder with energy, the energy awakened him and he foresaw that the world could be as beautiful, an incomparable paradise as the Land of the Ailves had once been. Schriven over his life had learnt many things, studied many lost knowledge’s, but he had never been I the presence of purity before he met Dalrosse. He would use all his knowledge and all his powers to protect Dalrosse, but, he fumed angrily to himself, first I must find him some food.

Shaneal high above Dalrosse, saw him half-hidden, but for his movement through the bushes.  She saw Schriven returning.   The sun was almost setting by the time he reached her. Shaneal greeted him in the air.

‘I wouldn’t go down there just now. There’s a cat’

‘A cat?’ he repeated. He was almost thrown off kilter, his reason for swiftly returning skittering from his mind. ‘All there is roses, then suddenly there’s a cat. I suppose it’s a slight improvement.’

‘Where have you been all this time?’

‘Looking at roses- flapping my wings- thinking- looking at roses- flapping my wings. It made me come to a decision.’

‘What?’

‘To tell Dalrosse to turn back.’

‘Oh.’ Shaneal let the silence linger. ‘So are you going to tell him? Or am I?’

‘You can...if you want…unless you don’t want to go there, where…’

‘I’m not afraid of cats’

‘Quite right,’ he said as her tail feathers bristled the air in front of his beak and she darted down to Dalrosse and Merve calling her brother’s name.

Warily as his ruby dark feet perched upon a wavering rose blossom teetering beneath him Shriven addressed  Dalrosse his eyes boring into the languid eyes of the cat resting on the Shouels chest as if she were a second head.

‘Even if you had a wagon load of food it would be gone before we crossed Strianval, in no time it would be gone and still you would starve.’

‘So we should go back, there’s no other choice?’

‘Rose Soup I suppose,’ Schriven said.

‘But that wouldn’t get us very far and what about this cat-EmiLeah?’

‘Yes.’ Schriven attempted to put a smile in his voice. ‘What a lovely name.’

‘I know it just came to me.’

‘Yes, sir Shouel we should go back to the boat. Head for Peth and turn south-east.  We might bypass Strianval by following the River Grule.  My old teachers spoke of the Masterdom of the Purple Rose, said it was before and over the other side of the river. I presume River Grule is the river- you know I doodled too much in atlas classes to learn very much. If we go to Peth and sail in that particular direction I’m sure we’ll find The Masterdom.’  Schriven felt he had been talking too much, suddenly he realized he’d taken his eyes off the cat as the kingfisher gazed down at Dalrosse.

The Shouel looked disappointed, sullenness overcame him and his fingers gently kneaded Emi- Leah’s head.  Quietly he asked Merve if he knew a better way.

‘Yes. Seems the kingfisher is right. One way or another we have to go back for food and it seems sensible once we get to Paternor we head for Peth, then as the kingfisher says on from there’

‘It might be sensible, but is it safe.’  The Shouel mumbled, barely audible. His eyes squinted at the final sharp shafts of sunlight.  The brightness of the light sent a jolt through him and his back clenched with pain. The thought of returning north teased at his memories. Each step back to the Muem Marshes and The White Cottage gripped him with fear. How would that make him feel? The pause between his heartbeats told him he still held feelings rekindling murderous thoughts. If The White Cottage was not burnt to the ground, I would rebuild and burn it all over again. If The Caretaker still lived this time I would kill him properly.

Dalrosse sighed, dropped EmiLeah to the ground and reluctantly started walking back to the Fordeni Sea.

That night Dalrosse did not stop or sleep and for most of it he kept pace with Merve. EmiLeah followed behind, sometimes she’d scramble forward, and sometimes she’d race ahead and tried sneakily to get in front of his feet. When they did stop in the morning to rest Dalrosse looked and couldn’t see EmiLeah anywhere about. He called her name but she didn’t run back to him.  By the evening they had reached the cove where they had left the boat tethered.  Dalrosse looked over the sea; his eyes were wet, perhaps with sea spray, perhaps not.

Merve got into the boat and gestured to Dalrosse to get in.

Dalrosse laughed. ‘I almost forgot,’ and raced back to the nearest Strianval rose and took a cutting, He was about to call Merve, say, and how stupid I would’ve been to forget the Orange Rose, but air was thumped from his lungs. One moment he felt he was descending to the far side of Menerth, the next he was being propelled towards the stars. Shaneal and Schriven flew protective circles about him as if to reassure him of his safety. Yet the blackbird and the kingfisher cheed and chikeed and emitted chuckling screams in their alarm.   Dalrosse’s head hit something hard. Then there was s blackness. In sudden excitement unconsciousness relinquished him and his hand holding onto the Orange rose lofted him up as if it could save him from drowning back in unconsciousness. Dalrosse dragged his eyes into awareness.  Slowly his purple eyes caressed the contours of bright green clad hills about him. His rose had fallen from his hand, he bent to pick it up and when he looked about him over the turquoise coloured grass he saw ahead a shallow hill where at its crest a throne sat.

The moment before morning dew splashed onto his face and his eyes blinked fiercely, he was certain he saw EmiLeah circle about the throne; jump up on it and to find a comfortable spot. When he opened his eyes instead of the cat a brown haired girl sat, she was deeply freckled in face and she smiled at the Shouel from her throne.

Overhead he could her Shaneal’s piping song and at the corner of his eye the bright swopping tumble of the kingfisher with his whistling trills- the two birds together filled this new place as if there laughter in the air.

Tentatively Dalrosse walked to the  girl on the throne.

She said. ‘Thank you for getting me home.’

‘Where are we?’

‘Strianval, I am the quaen of these little lands.’

‘Where are the roses?’

She laughed again as refreshing as a sweet pool of water. ‘There is one in your hand, yet hereabouts there is nothing like that. Where did you get it?’

Dalrosse was bewildered, he looked al about as far as he could and saw here there was only rolling heathered hills.  From the south he could hear the rumour of storm so far off that he thought he was only imagining it. When he spoke again he turned his attention back to her. She said:

‘How can I repay you for getting me home?’

‘Home? What do you mean? Who are you?’She stood proudly as if she were a tomboy vainly displaying the mud collected on her in a game of race to the hedge.

‘I…I am The Quaen EmiLeah of Strianval I told you that ages ago, but you weren’t listening. Have you forgotten me already, are all your caresses so easily garnered?’ Then her sweet laugh rang out again, she rushed from the throne and deeply hugged the Shouel. ‘Thank you I am home now.  The wind that rushes over Strianval sometimes carries me off when I dream-this time the dream led me to you.’

‘You were a cat.’

‘The Queans of Strianval are picked out almost entirely by how imaginative there dreams are.’

‘But, there were tiaga after tiaga of orange roses.’

‘As I said we Queans have fertile imaginations. When the wind takes me I usually find myself as a lost cat nobody understands. Luckily you fed me and seemed to understand me.’ She kissed him. ‘You got me home. Ma and Pa will be annoyed that I’ve gone so long. Quick tell me of what do you wish?’  Dalrosse thought silently while EmiLeah seemed to be squirming with impatience.

‘I need to reach the Masterdom of the Purple Rose.’  He said at last. EmiLeah looked at the gathering together of great clouds on the southern horizon. A flashing of bright lightening as if thrown by the Moon bleached the clouds with iciness.

‘Are you sure? You can come and have supper with us. Ma and Pa won’t mind.’

Dalrosse, though ravenous, wished that he could, but he had to carry on his journey, feel each step beneath him as true, taking him home to Lake Leme. How he yearned to see Ashenmoire again.

Once more EmiLeah kissed him and then she dashed behind her throne, out of sight towards her supper.

                                                        

                                              THE TRUTH OF THE TIDALVERSE

Chapter 32

As Marriamme’s tale came to an end, in the trees, well hidden Aflarien stood his eyes blazing with jealous hatred. She had birthed the thing that the Shouels had set against him. He knew she would suffer and he would feel such glee at her suffering. He saw the enamored look upon the psybots faces, saw a lighter look on the miens of the stoic Shouel’s, even the men of The Legein had needed sleep but Marriamme’s words had taken the need from them.  How they looked at her, the strident voice in his head bitter with envy. The memory of his body still felt Shaneal’s caresses and kisses; he hugged his arms about himself as if he were bitter with cold trying to hold her to him. She, even, had not looked at him as these people looked at Marriamme now.

He wanted to tear away from his hiding place and snap her neck, but did not. He would be patient, he would hold her broken body like a ragged witch-doll from a marketplace, a mere child’s toy thrown to the ground and forgotten. He would display her dead flesh to his enemies and say:

‘This is what I do with love.’

Soon, soon all the Shouels, the fickle psybots and the pathetic Legein his patience would end and stood still hidden like a ghost.

There was something about this place. He sniffed. The air was rank with a smell similar to the Black Rose oil that he had employed to control the unAuthor on Esplomeoir to kill Lebin. The same smell that had lifted him from his marriage bed. Despite his learning and power he also had the ability to traverse the tidalverse, yet his control was limited and at best merely experimental. Slowly though each small drops of the oil he imbued enabled to learn new things and affect his control of the tidalverse. Of course he wanted Marriamme at the last conflict with The Esierk.  He was wrenched from the softness of Shaneal’s touch and the heady calmness of Helvearn and he had found himself here. But why this place? Why now? Then he saw them Nen-Resul and Kren talking, making plans, but the longer the Anti Author eyes lingered on them he realised they were hollow within like a malfunctioning psybot a  purposeless beings, their real selves fluctuating along a steam of the tidalverse. Then he realised there was an endless open loop of one of the streams, the oil in him opened his thought to a third stream,  that cut through the loop. His senses were heightened and at once he could see all. The witch had done it. He looked along the open streams of the tidalverse. Marriamme was talking too Nen-Resul in the Legein House in Tasen, he listened intently to what they were saying. She was trying to eviscerate hope in them, telling them not to fight. It surprised him, but she was a witch and a Shouel so it did not surprise him, there was a subtle ploy in her words of despair. She had ripped a hole into a time and place that had no existence.  Where he stood in the shadowy copse of trees beside a slow stream two days march to Delgdreth, yet he saw that environment all about was false, a vivid hallucination, like an empty auditorium but for the actors endlessly rehearsing a play. By ripping open the tidalverse by taking her life she had created this world about Aflarien. Nen-Resul had compacted to a placid peace, while Aflarien hatched his plans in R’thera, and on Ashenmoire. By abandoning the Meringal, as he was left safe from Tasen, the Lord of Ashenmoire and anti Author was left free to carry out his plans for the whole of Menerth. Once more he saw the fluctuations in the tidalverse, the intricacies of its looping strands and branches veined through history. Stealthily like the thief he was with murderous glee like the maniac who owned his heart he slipped into one of the strands back to Helvearn and Shaneal half asleep in their bed.

                                                                             Chapter 33

 THESTORM.

With EmiLeah kiss- all knowledge, destination, up down, left or back, anything conceivable real- vanished.  An immense wind encompassed him.  Booming deep drum like banging deafened him, he was completely drenched, rain and hail coming from all directions. And the unknowing of what was beyond the storm that he had become part of terrified him.  He saw no sign of Schriven and Shaneal, felt no sense of them once more alone as he had always been. A hailstorm leapt up from the ground battering into Dalrosse unable to protect himself from the unrelenting pugilist.  Unable to comprehend the desecration of nature he screwed his eyes shut.  Then as impossible things were heaped upon impossible things the wind increased lifting all rules of gravity unfounded and the wind sped him tiaga after tiaga. Then abruptly let him go, he fell heavily, surprised on a low bank of the River Grule, on the border of the Masterdom of the Purple Rose. Yet still was he caught by the cacophony of rage, the storm had a dread deafening of the wind, exterminating thought. Dalrosse rose upon weak legs the wind ice jagged too soon seemed to arrow at him whipping pellets of ice, sucking life-giving sustenance from the river.  Then f

From high above the wind returned raging downwards and cast him into the thick, black mud of the river then a vast wind, rise of thunder, yet a meek thick clasp, stilling the thunder but the sky wracked a crack into the sky reaching beyond the Menerth, a noise reverberated in his head as if vast islands crashed into each other sending an endless rain of hot ice. Of Shaneal and Schriven he saw no sight. Once again darkness plunged as if stars were but memories and the Shouel was left in darkness and silence.

The storm carried him over the River Grule to the heart of the Masterdom of the Purple Rose.  He finds himself in a vast amphitheatre.  In its midst the purple Rose blooms. Wearily he took samples of the rose, yet a tumult grew out of the sand and a figure rose, an eyeless giant, well armed.  The giant cast a sword at the Shouels feet. Dalrosse did not pick it up refusing to fight and let the sword fall like a useless thing-the giant advanced three long strides, but Dalrosse stood still and the eyeless Giant’s smiles.

‘And now I will find rest again; find new soil to rest within.’ The giant said.  ‘Your bravery brings doubt into the cruelest heart to new thoughts of hope.’  The giant slid back down into the drudge of the mud of the amphitheatre and all that remained of him was a full grown, purple dappled rose bush.

The storm once more battered and blew him beyond the Masterdom and he is reunited with Shaneal and the kingfisher.

He spoke of Merve.

‘I hope ,’ Dalrosse said,  ‘That his boat steered him to the Isle of Surcease and he meets once more his love on the harbor pier and is glad lost  to love and lives to his last day in a first loves tryst.  I hope that each new day he fashions new wonders from his wood carvings with his whittle knife and while he works he lies mellow in the long glass with the love beauty brings.  I hope that he lays his lips upon his first loves face, a fairest face of golden tresses, and holds her subtle with his peaceful knife, a kiss of sweet grapes and the long, long life clenched into one another and such softness of kisses. Yes. I hope it is so.’  Shaneal, exhausted burrows under the kingfishers wing.  Dalrosse whispers.’ I hope it so, I hope it so.’ Shaneal and Schriven are asleep cuddling beside him.

Then Dalrosse is visited by the Angel:

‘This last road is your road yours alone, see each of the Roses, all sprang from the soil, garnered from sap of the black rose, as Ashenmoire grew from the Tears of Drendunde and Astor grew from the tears of the world and so from you, for you as were they the Gardener, designing nature, nurturing life. The Roses you have gathered have awaited you, waited for you, summoned you, to feel the Gardener about them again.  So touch each of them. Think again of kada, once more make the Morning Prayer and these five will join, entwine within- mingling altogether their power.  The red rose of love and loss, the white rose of forgetfulness and forgiveness, the blue rose to heal all hearts, the orange rose that is limitless, strength filled, iron willed and the purple rose the power of the Creator who lays his fingerprint so none forget. Touch each one and let them grow within you until you are The Rose that yearns always to return to Ashenmoire. Say kada and when you lift back from your knees, beckoned by the daylight hold firm the image of the Black Rose healed, whole, a beacon for all those on Menerth.  Then as they day grows bright its energy will send you to Ashenmoire, calling you. And you will stand full brimmed with green sap within the Hollow of Armoroth. Do as I say for I am finished now, go alone, these sleeping friends leave to rest. They have aided you and taught you who you are. And with last syllable of kada you must free yourself of them.  For you are the Gardener and deigned to live in solitude with the Black Rose. Speak kada and it is done.  Know that when Drendunde wept he created this world, that Astor made the grass laugh, the tree’s giggle and the mountains roar with laughter.  As for you, Dalrosse, it will be your heart song that alters the world, the five roses within you have perfected your song, every pore of your body will sing it, send out its power with a mere touch of your voice. And the deep roots of the Black Rose will rejoice and grow as once it grew and the rose will hear your voice and wake from its long, long sleep. Do not be sad that you remain alone with the Rose, for before the end of your long vigil it will grant your dearest wish and you will dance in the sand with Shaneal and Aflarien on the shores of the Lake. Know that when you tend and nurture the Black Rose and heal Menerth from strife you will know the difference between loneliness and solitude.  For solitude does not leave you bereft, or abandoned, solitude does not forget all that you are, but brings bright moments, filled with flowers in the long grass and brings forth new blooms and memories of all who have loved you. Drendunde’s tears will water the song in you.  There Dalrosse the music of your thoughts accompany you through you vigil and sing on although you sleep at last, in the Hollow, under the shade of the Rose. This song of solace will play on the winds of Ashenmoire, blow in the hearts of the peoples, and linger over all the lands.  And should the world change and the Rose fall back into slumber your song will remain, a gift of solace from a world they never knew, the song of the Gardener calling out from the roots of Ashenmoire. To those who will return there and take the place you left, that one will kneel in the hollow there and sing a nurturing song to the sleeping rose, singing your song that remains on the wind and crashes on the waves of the shore and this new gardener will hear the call of world and in his way whether with song or tears or laughter, or a mix of all in a story sent from the bright star and a whisper on the wind- a story to calm the cries of Menerth, the story of the gardeners and the hope that remains.’