Rose Memories

Haritzieder whispered, “Erakutzi,” and pushed Santutxo’s outrageous proposition from her mind.

The word turned to gold dust in the air, swirling towards the gilded edges of a dried yellow rose. It settled into gold painted petal tips, pooled in dewdrops and crept over curves of yellow into the rose’s shadowy centre. After the gold disappeared into shadow, stillness settled.

Haritzieder’s fingers gripped one another on her thighs.

The rose rocked back and forth. A white tendril sprouted from the stem’s cut base and burrowed into the moss. The rose hinged up to standing, growing well past Haritzieder’s eye.

It swayed, though there was no breeze in this hidden cave under Basatietxea, Haritzieder’s late mother’s country house. Petals detached and danced through the air like music made corporeal. The first carved a sharp note, as a bow drawn along an invisible string. The second chimed like a twirling bell. More and more pulled away, dancing to the tune of their separation.

Gradually, the petals drew together to form a familiar face. Hanging in midair was Haritzieder’s brother, Guduigo Basati — or Iggy, as she knew him. Seeing him through his own eyes, the colours were always wrong: his green eyes were purple and his red-brown hair, deep green. His lopsided smile also creased the wrong side of his heart-shaped face, and when his hand came up, Haritzieder saw it twice, the back of it before her eyes and the palm of it opposite, in a petal-realised ispilu beltza: a rectangular obsidian mirror. The hand danced in petals back over her head as she watched him rake it through his shoulder-length hair.

The petals’ music transformed, tuning into his voice.

“I am so glad I can send these memories to you now, Hari. I wish you could send some back. This whole thing with Mitxoleta means I’m alone, here. Spirit damn her! Though…” He trailed off, glancing away from his reflection to a bouquet of yellow roses in a copper jug, except to Hari the roses were always blue and the jug was sea-green.

She didn’t need to see his warped reflection through the corner of his vision to know he was warring with misery, anger, and confusion: she felt it all.

He shook his head, looking back at the mirror with a smirk. “Thank Spirit for my genius,” he announced and, once Hari overcame her confusion, she sighed at his arrogance and self-distraction. “If I hadn’t got the roses working when I did, I’d be surviving only on our letters, trying to write and read through a hundred layers of subtext. So, bai: while we’re condemning people, Spirit damn auzitegia of this temple and your txatx, too!”

Hari soured: Txatx Santutxo Elizahara, Cardinal Minister of Basati, was not her anything. As far as she was concerned, neither was he Basati’s rightful leader. Cardinal Minister, unlike txatx, was a made up title given to him by Alderdia, Basati’s government. They might say that, as Cardinal Minister and txatx, he was both her political and religious leader respectively, but since what had happened in Jauregiko-hiria, any suggestion he was hers made Haritzieder’s skin crawl.

“But at least I didn’t condemn myself, ez?” Iggy continued.

“I was so jotzen close to giving in, you know? Nearly destroyed all mother’s potential—” Hari’s nose wrinkled at the use of the Alderdiaren word for what she and other Basatien people called esoterezia: in commonton, magic “—and apparatus out of anger. I would’ve started again at some point, but I don’t know how long it would’ve taken to get back to where she left it, and… I just wanted it gone. I was sick of the sight of it.

“But I didn’t, so here I am, not completely alone.” His expression melted from humour into contentment. Moments later, Hari was staring into a pair of deeply worried eyes. “I haven’t heard from Mitxoleta for days, Hari, ever since she came to my room that night and—”

The petals shook and sang, bursting out from the rectangle framed heart face into a shapeless flurry. Hari recognised the beginnings of a deeper memory as the petals whizzed back in, reforming into a bookcase of bulging shelves and a bed piled high with blankets. Cross-legged upon it sat a woman whose sharp face and slender arms were the only parts not covered by pale, flowing cloth.

Guduigo (this was, strangely, how Iggy thought of himself) was worried, though he was trying not to show it. Hari could feel it like it was hers.

“I’m sure, whatever it is, it’s not so bad, Mitxo,” Guduigo said, his nerves stirring his stomach as Mitxoleta scoffed and turned her face away. Guduigo wasn’t used to seeing her like this. “Let’s play cards, or—”

“I misfired the cannon,” Mitxoleta said, her heavy accent rolling and trilling with her Basatien pronunciation of commonton words.

Guduigo’s levity faltered. Mitxoleta was so in tune with the arcane weaponry that he suspected she’d been one in a past life. “Eh, we’ve all done it,” he said, waving a hand like it didn’t matter. “Last time they let me on my cannon, I took out the wrong half of the battlefield.”

Mitxoleta’s eyes met his, cold and sharp. “This isn’t funny, Guduigo. I sent fireball into estate wall. Destroyed it.”

Guduigo smirked and Mitxoleta scowled at him. He held up his hands in surrender. “How bad is it, then?”

Mitxoleta shook her head, face crumpling. “Just garden wall, but big house, Gudu. Like chateau big.”

Guduigo pushed away from the desk and whistled a descending note of severity as he approached the bed, hearts clenching. “But just a garden wall? A chateau isn’t going to care about one little section of garden wall.”

“That’s what I thought,” Mitxoleta said, nodding. “But the council summoned me. Auzitegia summoned me. First thing tomorrow.”

Iced fear froze Guduigo in place. His mind raced so fast Hari couldn’t catch a single thought. Neither could he.

Mitxoleta’s face hardened as he floundered. “I was sabotaged,” she said.

“Sabotaged?” Guduigo repeated, incredulous.

As Mitxoleta straightened on the bed, Hari saw the strength and stubbornness in her eyes. Spirit, she loved Basatien women! She hated that those traits were demonised by Alderdia, and glad Guduigo still had some of his. “Ispilu beltza felt weird,” said Mitxoleta.

“It does sometimes,” Guduigo dismissed. “Besides—”

“It wasn’t handling the same. It stuttered.”

“A mechanical fault.”

“It wasn’t pointing the way I’d left it.”

Guduigo audibly silenced himself with the back of his throat. His mind tripped over Mitxoleta’s words, finding no other reasonable conclusion except hers. Yet he couldn’t believe it. Sitting beside her, he asked, “Who do you think…?”

“Fede.” No flicker of doubt.

Guduigo scoffed. “Fede works the weaponry worse than I do.”

“You think you need to be expert at working ispilua and koroak to break cannon? Ez! Txortalari! Rock it, unbalance the bearings. Done. Ten seconds’ work. Now it spins the whole way and crunches when it moves.”

“Koroak?”

Mitxoleta blinked. “Uh… crownak. The crowns?”

“The helms?”

“Bai, bai, the helms.”

Guduigo looked back to the heavy wood desk he’d moved away from. Spanning the wall, it housed the mirror — an unframed rectangle of obsidian reflecting the chariotwheel chandelier’s light — and in front of that gleamed two circlets looking very much like a pair of crowns. Guduigo wondered how he’d never noticed before. They even had the same precious stones set into the same shapes.

Meanwhile, Hari hated the sight of the pair of crowns. It was unnatural to have two.

“She didn’t come down to dinner that day,” Mitxoleta insisted as Guduigo turned back to her. “Yesterday’s yesterday.” She scowled at the floor. “But I can’t prove it,” she growled.

“Well, when did the summons come?”

“This afternoon.”

Realising there was no use in blame right now, Guduigo leant back on his hands and affected nonchalance. “It might not be about the misfire.”

“Bai?” Mitxoleta drawled. “What else could it be?”

“What else?” Guduigo waved a hand through the air, esoterically summoning dust and crumbs and loose fibres to form theatrical memories of Mitxoleta blasting the enemy to smithereens. Again and again, the detritus formed images Hari couldn’t quite make out before exploding into new ones.

Mitxoleta sucked her teeth.

“What else but your exemplary performance?” Guduigo grinned.

Mitxoleta glanced at him and immediately rolled her eyes away with a smothered smile.

Encouraged, Guduigo continued with greater flourish, “What’s one little mistake in the face of all that perfection, Mitxoleta? You’re Alderdia’s greatest cannoneer—”

“Pft! How can you know?”

“Well, certainly this temple’s.”

Mitxoleta’s face screwed up.

“Bai, they use you in both east and west towers. The rest of us peasants only have one set of rooms, you know? You’re the best.”

“I’m not so good with the remnants.”

“Bah. Remnants schmemnants. They’re only good one on one. Arcane weaponry shapes the battlefield. You shape the battlefield.” Guduigo tapped the back of his wrist on her shoulder. “Maybe they’re giving you a promotion.”

Mitxoleta barked a laugh and looked at him as one looks at a beloved fool. Hari sympathised. “A promotion? To what? Auzitegia? There’s no-one here but us and them.”

“And they’re barely ever here,” Guduigo added before he could stop. He quickly formed an advantage from the mistake. “That has to be it. They finally realise it’s not fair to leave us warlocks alone all the time, except for one brother. They want more brothers and sisters in the temple to look after us. Maybe—”

“You’re usually convincing, but this is txar,” Mitxoleta said, smiling softly.

It was enough for Guduigo to have made her smile, so he shrugged and lay back. “Well I think if they’re telling you off, it’s just a formality,” he said as his dust theatre blew out and resettled around the room. “I really need to clean,” he muttered, dusting his arms.

The straw mattress shifted as Mitxoleta lay down beside him. “You think so?” she asked, picking a thread off her cheek and flicking lint from her hand.

“It’s obvious. You do good work here, too good to risk. And you’ve never done anything wrong before.” The more he said it, the more convinced he was. “You think one little wall is enough to get you more than a little talking to?” He pulled a face to match his disbelief, and Mitxoleta watched.

This close, Hari noticed how unusually sharp Mitxoleta’s features were, especially her eyes. She was a very attractive woman, exuding mystery and danger. Guduigo, however, didn’t see her that way. He saw her strength and stubbornness tainted by fear. He saw a close friend who’d always been there for him. He didn’t notice the angular curve of her lips or the pleasing bump in her nose. He only noticed how her eyes were wider than normal, watching him with closer attention, which he met in kind.

Mitxoleta sighed. The intensity broke. She rolled onto her back and Guduigo did the same, looking up at the wisplights flickering on the chariotwheel.

“I was thinking to run away,” Mitxoleta confessed quietly. “I came to collect you. Bring you with me.”

“Presumptuous.”

Mitxoleta’s laughter was easy and soft, made raspy with exhaustion. “You’d say no?”

Guduigo taunted her with silence.

She smacked him on the arm.

“We don’t need to run,” Guduigo chuckled, turning to see her profile. “But if you asked me to, I would.”

Mitxoleta smiled. “You’re right,” she said. “It’s probably formality.”

Petals shuffled, turning profile into portrait. Iggy’s face was riddled with guilt, his focus still far away as he returned from the memory.

“I thought…” He shook his head. “I haven’t seen her since then. I thought she might’ve moved back to the east tower permanently, but she hasn’t come to the dining hall at all. Then I thought maybe she’s in isolation as punishment, but she hasn’t written me. You’re allowed a monthly letter in isolation, one per moons’ accord. I could be worrying over nothing—can’t exactly see the moons from here—but… Maybe she did really run away. Without me.” Misery. Anger. None of it showed outside. “Whatever,” he huffed. “But I can’t help thinking about her hunting in Basati’s forests or spear-fishing along the coast, you know? Like Father used to, giving his indak the slip at the mountains and bringing home secret mountain flowers.” His smile turned sharp. “I confess, I’m jealous.

“It makes me think of Egursendo. I wonder what he’s doing now. He’s probably not in Vangar anymore: maybe Alveron or Eustengar? Or do you think he’s crossed the Ice Belt? He hates the cold, but… what’s the continent above it called? Ka-something. Cat shat. Kasata!”

He traced his strong Basatien jaw with a finger, petals trembling as his vision blurred. “I like it here.” He looked down. His fingers came back into focus on those crown-looking helms. Opals glistened. With the colours so distorted, they were the only stones Hari could identify. Iggy wasn’t thinking about colours, though: he was thinking about freedom. “It sounds overwhelming, I think,” he muttered, gripping a helm, looking into his own eyes and raking hair away from his face. It looked a mess, but it suited him. “Bai, overwhelming. All that sky? All that land? All that choice?” He shivered. “I might be missing out, but he’s missing in.

“You’ve got it best of the three of us, Hari: big Basatietxea to wander around? The grounds, the river and forest nearby? It might not be Basati Palace, but you’ve got everything, ez? Inside and out.” Petals formed hazy memories over his wistful face: the three of them, nearly naked in the sunlit stream, laughing and playing as children, though Hari would’ve been about twenty years old. Only Egur (thirteen) and Iggy (seven) were children. The scene bloomed into another: a child-made structure of fallen branches. Hari could hardly believe she’d helped them build and rebuild those dens every onylun, surrounded by fallen leaves. It felt like another life. The other life fluttered away.

“But here,” Iggy continued, “I can change things, you know? I can do things. I can keep Basati safe from those txortalariak raising the dead for their invasion.”

He smiled. “I love you, Hari. Talking at you like this always helps clear my mind. I’ll keep doing my duty here even as our brother keeps avoiding his. I wish you weren’t left to keep the estate alone. And I wish you could send me roses filled with memories. I want to know what you look like, now. But I had to fight auzitegia to get them to let me send these roses back to you in the first place. They won’t let me send the oil, too. All you’d need is a thimble full! It’s jotzen unfair.”

His outrage cleared into a meek, lopsided smile. “Anyway, I’m looking forward to your letter. I hope you’re well.” He began his usual dance of frustrated uncertainty about how to sign off the message, then grinned, winked, and disappeared in an explosion of musical petals with a whispered, “Goodbye.”

The petals’ song quieted as they returned to their original arrangement, wrapped around one another atop a thorny stem. As the last one returned and its note fell silent, the rose bowed over and lay upon the moss, its white root wriggling back up inside until it disappeared. Haritzieder plucked it from its bed and held it close, thinking about everything she’d heard and everything she’d felt.

Once she’d put herself back together, she picked up the rose’s accompanying letter, though she knew there would be nothing new or meaningful in words written for others to see. Iggy’s paragraph on Mitxoleta lacked much she’d seen in his memories and felt at times contrary to them. He mentioned not having any windows and said he didn’t mind it. Then, he asked about her trip to Jauregiko-hiria: how the palace was keeping; if she’d seen his temple (though he called it an arboretum) from her room in the palace; how hospitable a host Txatx Santutxo was.

Haritzieder’s anger flared and, unwilling to deal with that or her creeping disappointment at the mention of Basati Palace, she put the letter down.

Instead, she wondered what had happened to Mitxoleta and her sharp eyes. Her disappearance made Haritzieder’s situation with Txatx Santutxo feel insignificant. She hoped Mitxoleta had run away. She hoped she’d found a mountain to hide inside.