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edenfallingI'm avoiding my essay on Spenser's Faerie Queene and decided to write fiction instead. This is sort of backstory to "The Summoner's Tale," an original novel-type thing. It's set in an alternate America where
A) some magic works (particularly alchemy)
B) as a result, technology is both different and less advanced than in our world
C) Christianity has a significantly greater focus on Mary than in our world, and
D) the English settled North America by dividing it into great estates for new noble families; the Revolution thus created a sort of constitutional oligarchy rather than a straight-up republic.
Catherine is one of the main characters in "The Summoner's Tale" and is the basic instigator of the plot. This is an exploration of her childhood. Well, it's also about her mother, but Catherine's the one telling the story.
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Leah's Garden
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I was eight when Father died, smashed in a December train wreck on his way home from Philadelphia. Mother read the telegram to us in a still, calm voice, and then told us to finish our vegetables and pray for him. She spooned peas into her mouth and stared at Elizabeth until she swallowed her peas as well.
"Will Daddy be home tomorrow?" Elizabeth asked.
"No," Mother said. "He isn't ever coming home again."
Elizabeth frowned. "But he said he was coming home. He promised!"
"Your father is dead, Elizabeth. He can't keep any promises anymore. Catherine, put your sister to bed." Mother swept away from the table, off to her library, leaving me to explain death to my five year old sister.
To this day, I don't know if Mother ever cried for Father.
The next years were not pleasant. Mother wouldn't take us on summer train rides to Canada, or to the East. She pulled me from the village school and hired tutors from New England and the Carolinas. And she spent all her time in the library, the laboratory, the chapel, or the rose garden.
The house belonged to Mother, who was the last direct descendant of the Whitcombe family, Earls of St. Paul. Father was only the third son of a minor New England lord. He was always away on business in any case, so Mother arranged the house, and spent her time on magical researches without anyone to disagree.
The rose garden was her one vanity, the one part of the estate that was not ruthlessly functional. The kitchen garden fed us, the herb gardens supplied her researches, and the pastures kept our horses, but the rose gardens served no purpose.
I never did know what Mother saw in roses. Minnesota is too far north for many of them, and she spent hundreds of dollars on glass houses, mulches, and warming charms. And yet for all that care, for all the time she spent in the garden, I never saw her smile or smell a flower or caress a petal. Once she pricked her finger on a thorn and rubbed the blood between fingertip and thumb, staring east into the darkened evening sky, but she stopped when she saw my reflection in a window.
That is why I have always thought it strange that she chose to die in the garden. It was winter, early December, and the ground was lightly dusted with snow. Mother did not come to breakfast, so I left Elizabeth with the tutors and set out to find her; she had given me permission to be sure she ate even when caught up in her potions.
The library was empty, as were the laboratory and the chapel, though a dying candle at the Lady's feet gave witness to Mother's earlier presence. I went to the garden then, suddenly sure of where to find her. And she was there, in the center ring, lying at the base of the sundial. Her feet were bare and she wore only a pale nightdress, white to match her skin. Her dark hair curtained her face, and in her outstretched hand she clasped one petal, a deep, brilliant red.
Her hand pointed east.
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Inspired by the November 9![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
15minuteficlets picture. I went about three minutes over, but didn't notice until I went to save the file. *shrug*
A) some magic works (particularly alchemy)
B) as a result, technology is both different and less advanced than in our world
C) Christianity has a significantly greater focus on Mary than in our world, and
D) the English settled North America by dividing it into great estates for new noble families; the Revolution thus created a sort of constitutional oligarchy rather than a straight-up republic.
Catherine is one of the main characters in "The Summoner's Tale" and is the basic instigator of the plot. This is an exploration of her childhood. Well, it's also about her mother, but Catherine's the one telling the story.
---------------------------------------------
Leah's Garden
---------------------------------------------
I was eight when Father died, smashed in a December train wreck on his way home from Philadelphia. Mother read the telegram to us in a still, calm voice, and then told us to finish our vegetables and pray for him. She spooned peas into her mouth and stared at Elizabeth until she swallowed her peas as well.
"Will Daddy be home tomorrow?" Elizabeth asked.
"No," Mother said. "He isn't ever coming home again."
Elizabeth frowned. "But he said he was coming home. He promised!"
"Your father is dead, Elizabeth. He can't keep any promises anymore. Catherine, put your sister to bed." Mother swept away from the table, off to her library, leaving me to explain death to my five year old sister.
To this day, I don't know if Mother ever cried for Father.
The next years were not pleasant. Mother wouldn't take us on summer train rides to Canada, or to the East. She pulled me from the village school and hired tutors from New England and the Carolinas. And she spent all her time in the library, the laboratory, the chapel, or the rose garden.
The house belonged to Mother, who was the last direct descendant of the Whitcombe family, Earls of St. Paul. Father was only the third son of a minor New England lord. He was always away on business in any case, so Mother arranged the house, and spent her time on magical researches without anyone to disagree.
The rose garden was her one vanity, the one part of the estate that was not ruthlessly functional. The kitchen garden fed us, the herb gardens supplied her researches, and the pastures kept our horses, but the rose gardens served no purpose.
I never did know what Mother saw in roses. Minnesota is too far north for many of them, and she spent hundreds of dollars on glass houses, mulches, and warming charms. And yet for all that care, for all the time she spent in the garden, I never saw her smile or smell a flower or caress a petal. Once she pricked her finger on a thorn and rubbed the blood between fingertip and thumb, staring east into the darkened evening sky, but she stopped when she saw my reflection in a window.
That is why I have always thought it strange that she chose to die in the garden. It was winter, early December, and the ground was lightly dusted with snow. Mother did not come to breakfast, so I left Elizabeth with the tutors and set out to find her; she had given me permission to be sure she ate even when caught up in her potions.
The library was empty, as were the laboratory and the chapel, though a dying candle at the Lady's feet gave witness to Mother's earlier presence. I went to the garden then, suddenly sure of where to find her. And she was there, in the center ring, lying at the base of the sundial. Her feet were bare and she wore only a pale nightdress, white to match her skin. Her dark hair curtained her face, and in her outstretched hand she clasped one petal, a deep, brilliant red.
Her hand pointed east.
---------------------------------------------
Inspired by the November 9
15minuteficlets picture. I went about three minutes over, but didn't notice until I went to save the file. *shrug*