Disheartened expressions melted away and both blue ladies beamed up at him with pearly-white teeth.
“You will?” Aoi asked, her expression brimming with hope.
“But what of Lord Azamont?” Bleu asked, excited. “They are in his possession, after all. He’s the most powerful noble in the land. And the most dangerous.”
At that moment, Arwin didn’t give a damn. “No one man can own flowers. That’s absurd. They are things of nature and beauty and therefore belong to everyone. I shall liberate them for you from his garden prison.” Arwin wasn’t sure where this dashing dialogue was coming from but he felt energized at the prospect of tackling this problem. It felt good to have a goal after weeks of malaise. Perhaps his recent misery was making him reckless. Maybe his boldness was because these girls were so attractive. Either way, it felt like the right thing to do.
“Oh, thank you!” Bleu cried, clasping his hands in her own. “You’re so brave. We shall have to reward you for such gallantry.”
“With a kiss. Or two,” Aoi added with a smoky blue gaze that ignited Arwin’s imagination, making his heart beat twice as fast.
“Or three.” Bleu gave him a look that cubed Arwin’s courage.
Arwin headed off in the direction of the ringing bells, feeling like he could take on the world. He slid between dense thickets of trees and climbed a short rise. He quickly found himself standing before a tall brick wall that was just slightly higher than he could reach. Huge flowers the size of dinner plates, each with large but dimly-coloured petals, grew directly out of the wall itself. Most seemed to avoid any direct rays of light, almost as if they were shy. That puzzled Arwin for a moment, but he soon got it. “Wallflowers.” He chuckled. He stepped back, tensed his body, and then stepped forward, launching himself up towards the lip of the wall.
“Hey! Watcha doin’ there, sunny?” a voice shouted.
Arwin, surprised, slipped back down from the top of the wall and landed hard on his bottom. He scrambled up and spun about, looking for the source of the voice.
“Don’t turn yer back on me when I’m talking t’you!”
Arwin jumped in alarm, then turned about. He scanned the top of the wall but saw no figure there. Who was talking?
“Eyes front, young man. You daft or somethin’?”
Arwin lowered his gaze. Then he dropped his jaw.
Eyes and a mouth had appeared in the face of one of the wallflowers. That’s who was speaking!
“Um-um...” he stammered.
“Yes, Erysimum,” the flower spat. “Erysimum Wittmanii. That’s my name.” The eyes narrowed. “Watcha doin’ here? You know somethin’ about gardening?”
Arwin put on a confident air. “Yes. Actually, I’m Azimunk’s new gardener.”
“You mean Azamont?”
“That’s what I said.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Speech impedimonk.”
“Impediment?”
“Exactly.” Arwin nodded.
“Ah.” The wallflower sympathetically nodded. “Sorry to hear that.”
“Thanks.”
The flower’s eyes became suspicious once again. “Hey, if yer Azamont’s new gardener, why you climbin’ over this wall?”
“Shortcut.”
“Shortcut?”
“Faster than going all the way around, isn’t it?”
The wallflower tried to give that some thought, but flowers probably weren’t especially intelligent. It nodded. “Can’t argue with that. Very well. Carry on then.”
“Thank you, good sir.” Arwin leaped up and caught the edge of the wall. Gracefully, he pulled himself up and peered over the top.
A display of botanical wonder lay before him. Flowers of every shape and size could be seen, from pinhead dots of red on carpeting moss to giant blossoms the height of a man. Beyond the garden stood an orderly row of trees and a huge, three-story chateau rose beyond those. The aged edifice was formed of heavy, pale stone and sported blue roof tiles. Like the dresses worn by the blue belles, the building had a French Renaissance feel to it, with white-framed windows and black-iron balconies, flowery etching in the walls, and plenty of ornament.
The air carried a host of enchanting perfumes from the garden. It also carried the sound of bells. Arwin saw no-one else in the garden just then: the cobblestone paths were empty. He heaved himself over the wall and dropped down the other side.
Following the tinkling sound, he cautiously wormed his way through exotic foliage. He passed a trellis of grapes. On the ground rested a bucket full of picked grapes marked FOR WINE. Next to it stood a rack on which lesser fruit dried into raisins in the sun.
One of the sad, leftover raisins wined as Arwin passed, “Aw. I guess I’ll never achieve grapeness.”
Arwin followed the edge of what appeared to be a crop of riding whips. They were made of actual braided leather! Then he ducked under a palm tree. He had to move fast because the hand-shaped leaves tried to grope him. He came upon a stream babbling through smooth, water-worn rocks. Not wanting to get wet, he climbed a tree on the bank, went out on a limb and then branched out until he was able to drop down onto the opposite bank.
He found himself in a vegetable patch. Weeds smouldered between neat rows of planted foliage. He thought he recognized the leaves of the latter as potato plants. Taking a step, his toe nudged a mound of dirt, dislodging it.
A potato looked up with red, blurry eyes from where it had been unearthed. “Hey, dude. Like, watch where you’re going, man.”
“Oh, sorry.” Arwin apologized. Evidently this was a baked potato. Ah, from smoking weed.
He walked by a fenced-off square with a quaint stone well. A dying tree drooped over both the well and some colourful flowers within the fenced-off section. A brown leaf, long dead, broke from the branch of the dying tree and gently fluttered down. The leaf landed on a bed of white carnations.
Arwin leaped back in surprise as the leaf transformed into a honeybee. It hovered in the air a moment as if confused, then it shrugged and began tending to the flowers. When the bee touched the blossoms, nothing happened to it; there was no further change. Arwin realized it was because the bee was alive and the leaf hadn’t been. Those were no ordinary carnations. They were reincarnations! Arwin’s mind spun.
He continued. All of his attention quickly diverted to rows of completely nude, life-size women growing out of the ground. Their shapely, sexy, bare flesh was dark green, turning brown at the ankles where their legs entered the soil. Their breasts were a delicate, pale violet, though their nipples turned dark enough to rival black. The women possessed various shades of purple hair that curled in gentle points about their luscious bodies, falling like petals all the way past their wide hips. Each had golden eyes and golden lips that sweetly smiled. The women beckoned Arwin into their soft embrace.
Arwin tore his eyes off the plant-women long enough to read a small, black sign at their feet, er, roots?
AMARYLLIS
(aka. Belladonna or Naked Ladies)
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