Love in the Valley of Giant Flowers
by Philip J. Lees
A long time ago there was a very rich man who fell in love. He was so rich he could have everything he wanted. From the day he was born he had only to look at something and his parents bought it for him; if he reached out to touch it, it was his; he never had to say, “I want,” because there was a team of servants whose job it was to give him his heart’s desire even before those words could pass his lips.
The man’s name was Ferdinand and he lived in a great house in the center of a valley. All the valley belonged to Ferdinand and those who lived there did so with his permission. The valley was full of giant flowers. There were giant roses, ten feet tall, with blooms as big as pumpkins. There were giant lilies, with glorious white trumpets wide enough for each one to serve as a parasol. There were giant azaleas, giant begonias, giant chrysanthemums, dahlias, eschscholtzia, fuchsia, geraniums, hibiscus, iris, and so on all the way through the alphabet. The valley was bursting with color, red and yellow and blue, pink and orange and purple, all against a background made of every shade of green you could imagine.
The flowers filtered the sunlight, letting just enough through to nourish the thick carpet of soft grass that the deer cropped short and grew fat on. When it rained, the broad leaves gave shelter and guided the rainwater inward and down to the roots, allowing each plant just as much water as it needed.
People who knew the valley could walk through it with their eyes closed, finding their way just by the scents that hung heavy in the air-roses and daisies by day, jasmine and honeysuckle by night. Sometimes Ferdinand did this, when the colors and forms of all the blooms around him became too much beauty to bear.
One day he had been following his nose in this way for some little time when a sound ahead of him made him stop and open his eyes. All at once the colors of the flowers faded to dim and drab, their aroma seemed instantly stale; all Ferdinand could see was the young woman who stood before him in a small clearing, facing to one side with eyes downcast, all black and white and shades of gray.
Her hair hung down her back like polished ebony, her skin was pale as milk. She wore a white blouse tucked into a long charcoal skirt and a black shawl draped her shoulders. The lines of her brow, nose, and chin formed a composition of such harmony that the curves of the leaves and flowers all around seemed trite by comparison. Only her lips held any color, the faintest tinge of violet. Her hands were clasped in front of her waist and her long fingers writhed like the limbs of an animal in pain. As Ferdinand stood enthralled she let out a sob, and he realized that was the sound that had brought him out of his reverie.
He took a step forward, then another, and then she noticed him. She turned a frightened face towards him and sniffed. Her eyebrows were as black as her hair and formed a troubled line above her deep, dark eyes. He realized with a shock that he, who had spent his life surrounded by beauty of other kinds, had never before seen a truly beautiful woman, for all the girls of the valley were plain in comparison with the vision that now stood before him.
“My dear,” said Ferdinand, “what’s wrong?”
But almost before the question was out she glanced from side to side like a startled animal, then turned and ran away, disappearing among the leaves and giant stems and leaving Ferdinand standing with his mouth still agape.
§
The next day he made sure to be in the same clearing, at the same time, and he concealed himself behind the trunk of a rosebush. This time he would speak to her, he vowed in his heart, and she would answer him.
Soon enough she came, and from the way she walked Ferdinand was sure she was looking for somebody, for him. He stepped out in front of her and this time she did not flee.
“I hoped to see you again,” Ferdinand said gently. “Please tell me your name.”
She shook her head, but at least now she was looking directly at him. As their eyes met, Ferdinand felt a communication between them, more intimate even than a touch; it was as if a silent question had been asked and a thousand voices whispered “Yes” in unison.
“My name is Ferdinand,” he said. “Will you talk with me?”
Again she shook her head. “I cannot,” she said softly. “I must not.”
Yet still she stayed. As long as she stayed there was hope.
“I will not hold you,” Ferdinand said, spreading his hands out to his sides.
She was looking at the ground now and her fingers once again did their frenzied dance.
“You are the lord here,” she said. “Is that not so?”
Ferdinand shrugged. “That is true,” he said. “What of it?”
She looked into his eyes again and in hers he could see his own longing reflected, but there was something else, there was fear. As he held her gaze he saw the fear take control and turn to panic. Her terror took hold of him, too, and for a second he could not move, could not even breathe.
“I should not have come,” she said. “It was stupid. You must never see me again.”
Then she turned and fled as she had the first time he had seen her.
§
That night she was there in his dreams, brow creased in a frown, the expression in her eyes unreadable. He wanted to call out her name and he almost knew it … almost, but not quite. Each time he opened his mouth to call to her it was as if an invisible hand squeezed his throat to keep him silent. Ferdinand awoke sweating and unrested.
That morning he ordered his valet to find the lovely young woman he had seen the day before and bring her to him. But the man seemed not to understand; he seemed disturbed by the idea.
“Are you sure you didn’t dream it, sir?” he asked.
“Of course I’m sure,” Ferdinand snapped. It was the first time in his life he had felt that way and it took him a second to identify the emotions of anger and impatience. Underneath was another, even stronger feeling that threatened to take complete control of him; he felt that if he did not hold on he would be carried away, as by a powerful river.
Piotr, the valet, looked shocked by the outburst and Ferdinand forced himself to be calm.
“I saw her in the afternoon,” he said. “As clearly as I see you now. Yesterday and today. I want you to find her.” He told Piotr the exact time and place and instructed him to use all the resources of the household.
But by the end of the day the woman had still not been found. Ferdinand had not left the house for a moment, fearing that they would bring her and he wouldn’t be there. He had no appetite for food; he could barely sit still; he kept getting up, striding back and forth, looking out of the window, pulling the curtain back then letting it fall into place with an exclamation and sitting down again in a different chair.
As night was falling there was a knock on the door of his chambers. It was Old Roy, formerly Head of Household but many years retired.
“Do you have news?” Ferdinand asked, although he knew the answer. Old Roy rarely left his rooms and would not have been involved in the search.
Roy shook his head. “It’s a little dark in here, sir” he said gently. “Let me light the lamps. I can still do you that small service.”
He lit a taper from a flint and proceeded to apply it to the lamps that lined the walls, lifting the glass of each in turn until the flame caught, then lowering the glass carefully. The lamplight turned the wrinkles on his ancient face into knotted dry wood and his hands were twisted and gnarled as a briar stem.
“There’s something I have to tell you, sir,” Roy said, pausing as he carried out his self-appointed task. “But it might be better for you not to know it, at that.” The last lamp was lit and he blew out the taper. Then he looked at Ferdinand. “So that leaves me in a pretty bind, as you might say, sir, if you see what I mean.”
“Whatever you say,” Ferdinand said.
“It might be better, sir, if we could agree that what you saw was just a vision, a trick of the light, as it were.” Roy was looking at him with a strange intensity in his watery blue eyes, and he nodded, just once. “Then we could just forget about it, sir, if you’re agreeable.”
It was a mild spring evening, but Ferdinand felt a chill run up his back, as if a stray draft of cold air had found its way in through a window.
“It was no vision,” he said shortly. “Tell me what you have to.”
Roy nodded again, more slowly now.
“Very well,” he said. “I’ll tell you. It’s by way of being a secret, you see. Your father never knew it, nor his father. Your great-grandfather knew it, though, and he told it to me. Best we sit down.”
They sat in padded armchairs, on either side of a low table, facing each other in the flickering light of the wall lamps, and then, in measured, quiet tones, Old Roy told Ferdinand the secret.
§
The next day consternation and commotion flooded through the valley. People talked to each other in low, urgent voices, then hurried home and pulled their shutters closed. A short distance behind the rumors came the servants from the Great House, wielding machetes, scythes, shears, knives, anything that would cut. As they spread out from the Great House they left behind them a shorn circle crisscrossed with the stalks and stems of slain flowers. Here and there among the slaughter a solitary bloom or two remained on the occasional dwarf plant: leave nothing above waist height, had been Ferdinand’s command.
All day the circle grew, its growth slowing as it widened. The sun beat down, the deer fled to the hills; the fallen flowers dried in the heat so that the Great House became the center of a swelling ring of brown. As the harvesters moved on people opened their doors again and stood blinking in the glare, looking across the newly barren land and feeling dismay and relief that the scourge had passed them by.
In the middle of the afternoon Piotr came to Ferdinand.
“We have her,” he said. “Her name is Anthea.”
On one side of the valley, a good way up the slope, a crowd had gathered before a small cottage. At this point the flowers had given way to trees and the only blooms to be seen were two clusters of giant sunflowers on either side of the door. Their heads were the size of dinner plates and were bowed to face the earth, as if the flowers were weighed down by a guilt they could not support.
In the doorway of the cottage stood three people. It was Anthea, flanked by her parents. When she saw Ferdinand approaching she broke away and came towards him. The full sunlight lit her face with the color of honey and she was even more beautiful than Ferdinand remembered. She showed not a trace of fear.
“Take me,” Anthea said, “but spare the sunflowers.”
“No more,” Ferdinand murmured to her, and smiled as he saw her eyes widen in hope. Then he raised his voice so that all around should hear.
“No more!” he said again. “No longer will our finest maidens be sacrificed in the name of another kind of beauty. It ends today. The giant flowers are gone and will never be seen again.”
He reached out to take Anthea’s hand. She came into his embrace and returned his kiss as if it were a dance they had practiced a hundred times. For an instant they felt quite alone; the next moment all the people were cheering.
“Not the sunflowers,” Anthea said. “Please. I planted them myself and I swear that no blood has been shed here.”
“Let them serve as a reminder,” Ferdinand said. “Lest we forget what is the true beauty.” And so it was done.
Ferdinand and Anthea were married and as they returned to the Great House the way was lined with well-wishers who showered them with handfuls of tiny blossoms. They lived a long and happy life together and raised three children, two daughters and a son, all of whom were beautiful. But there are no giant flowers in the valley any more, except for the sunflowers, and they still bow their heads in the summer heat, as if with the shame of remembering.
- End -
© Copyright Philip J. Lees 2004