No Harm in Tears, By Lissa Sloan

Editor's note: Still catching up with winning entries to EC's contests. This story, by Lissa Sloan, is sad, touching, and beautiful--and features a lot of plants, so naturally, I love it. Read on for an enchanting take on "Rapunzel."

You were always a restless child. When you were a baby you were never content to lie curled in my arms. You writhed and struggled until I carried you to the window and held you upright so you could look out over my shoulder. I would hold you there, for hours at a time, my back to the window. I tried not to think of the garden you looked out on. I tried not to picture the neat rows of vegetables, the trellised beans and peas, the apples and pears, trained against the wall. That place had brought me nothing but trouble.

Trouble I had begged and pleaded for. I could not resist my neighbor's rampion. It seemed like such a little thing at the time. The first time your father went over the wall to get me some, it even seemed a bit of a joke. He came back laughing, flushed with his success. And I ate every last bit of it, too. Leaves, roots, even the flowers.

Fruit and Flowers, by Edmund Blair Leighton

But one bunch was not enough. I had to have more the next week, and soon it was every day. And it was wonderful. Raw with vinegar and pepper, cooked with butter and garlic, chopped into a thick vegetable stew. Sometimes I could hardly be bothered to brush the dirt off. I never even noticed the slump to his shoulders when he handed it over, his weak attempt at a smile.

It was months before he told me. I was sitting by the fire, licking my fingers. He sat on the floor and put his arms around my knees and his head in my lap. "She caught me," he whispered.

I sat up straight. "No more rampion?"

"You can have as much as you like," he said dully. I relaxed back into the chair, sighing contentedly. "But I 

have to tell you," he put his hand on my rounded belly, confessing to you too. "I have to tell you now."

"What?" I said, not all that concerned anymore. Nothing could be worse than no more rampion.

He told me. And now I knew the price for all the rampion I could eat, I sickened at the very thought of it. I haven't touched so much as a leaf since that day. But it was too late of course. Our neighbor would come for you one day, and we must give you up.

"We mustn't get attached," your father told me, swiping at his eyes with the back of his hand after putting you in your cradle. "It will only make things worse." I knew he was right. But it made no difference. I tried to hold you while I could, but you always wanted to be free. When I fed you, you would arch your back and turn away. Sometimes I wondered if it was because of the tears. I cried so much in those days I feared the salt tears would seep into my milk and make you bitter.

But all those tears did you no harm. You were not bitter. You were only restless. Even after she took you. I watched you, you see, taking your first steps in that garden, climbing trees and looking out over the wall. It gave me a little satisfaction. You would not be content with her either.

"Come away from the window," your father would say. "She isn't ours any more." He couldn't stand to watch you. I couldn't stand not to.

I tried to meet you once, when I thought she was out. I scaled the wall and hid in the branches of the pear tree below, hoping you would come outside. You did, but you were barely through the door before I heard her voice. "Rampion!" she snapped, and her hand grabbed your arm and pulled you back inside. I climbed back over the wall and sat with my back against it, my heart thudding in my ears.

I don't know how she knew I was there, but somehow, she did. She took you away that very night, after sunset. After that she was gone for several hours every day. I tried to follow her, to find out where you were, but she always eluded me. One moment she was there on the path before me, and the next she was gone, almost like magic.

But I knew she was seeing you. Some days she would come home happy, some days annoyed, just as when you were still living there. How I envied her, even her frustration or anger, because it was from you. As I had once watched you in the garden, I now watched her when she came home, and wondered how her time with you had been. Had you pouted when she tried to comb the tangles out of your hair? Had you thrown your arms around her in delight when she gave you the dress she had spent weeks making? I was hungry for any scrap of you I could get.

Then one day she came home, and she sat down in her garden and cried. She cried as if her heart would break. What could make her cry like that, I wondered. Watching her, I felt a knot in my stomach, a catch in my throat. I had cried like that too--once, on the day she took you. The day you were lost to me. Were you lost to her now too?

You might think I hated her, and maybe I did, for a while, back when I could see her touch your hair, feel your smooth cheek on her wrinkled one. But on that day, all I felt was pity. I found myself thinking she could use some chamomile. I thought she might have trouble sleeping that night, and chamomile tea is good for that--I know. I also know that in her garden, with all its fruit trees and well tended herbs and roots, she grows no chamomile.

But I do. I have taken to growing a few things in a little patch outside my window. Nothing like her garden, of course. No carrots or leeks, no turnips or cabbages. No rampion. Just a few things I like to have on hand. Mint for a sour stomach, lavender to freshen the bedclothes, chives to put in soup.

And the chamomile. I had plenty to spare, so that night, I crept over the wall and left some on her threshold. I knew she needed it, because I could hear her pacing behind the door. In the morning it was gone.

I think I must have been right, about her losing you somehow. She does not make her daily trip anymore. I have stopped trying to follow her. What would be the point? But I do leave her more chamomile from time to time. She gives me a nod these days, if we ever see each other, out in our gardens or at the market. Once, I even dared to go to her front door, carrying a pot of tea. I thought she might not let me in. But she did. We sat in silence a while, sipping our tea.

"Do you ever hear from her?" I asked at last. She shook her head. "Do you think she's alright?" She shrugged. Then she stood and turned her back to me. It was time for me to go. I gathered up my tea things and went to the door. She held it open for me, her eyes bright with tears she refused to let fall. "There's no harm in tears, you know." I said.

She turned her head away. "There's no good in them either." I left then, the door standing open between us.

Perhaps she is right, perhaps there is no good in tears. But these days I wonder. I have heard fantastic tales in the village lately. Tales of the king's son, blinded by thorns and separated from his love, wandering for years as a beggar. Tales of how he returned to the palace, his love and their children by his side, his eyesight healed by her tears alone. It is only a story, so it makes no difference to me I suppose. 

So, from either side of the garden wall we still wonder, my neighbor and I, what has become of our Rampion. Are you free, as you always wished to be? I hope so. I imagine you are, as I work in my little garden. And if I cry into the occasional midnight cup of chamomile tea, it does me no harm.

Lissa has contributed a story, poems and guest posts to Enchanted Conversation. She loves to plant her garden, but hates to weed it.

Fleet Is the Sand, By Patricia Scott

Editor's Note: I've got some catching up to do on publishing (sometimes my own writing gets in the way of EC). Today, we have a mystical, touching story from Patricia Scott. It's not often we get stories set in the Middle East, so this delightful story is an intriguing change of pace.

As they grow, the boys of Mahdjikistan play a particular game found only in their culture. Once they are old enough to play away from the watchful eyes of their mothers, they go tumbling and brawling, as little boys everywhere are wont to do, to a corner where there is nothing to be found but sand. The older boys teach the younger the words to say and they practice, focusing their will as they chant. Eventually, sometimes only after days of trying, the boys will summon sand wraiths.

 

The sand wraiths look like nothing more than a tendril of grains writhing with the currents of the air, especially to the untrained eye. The boys of Mahdjikistan know better, though. These creatures, born of magic and the desert, know every thing that comes into contact with the dunes that surround the only city in all of the country. A pact was made, long ago, by the Mahdjikistani men. The sand wraiths would serve as guides and protectors for the men who summoned them and they, in turn, would be kept alive and thriving by the unshakable belief in them that the men carried. That promise, made so many years earlier had led to a towering reputation for the men of Mahdjikistan as infallible escorts for either trade or travel.

Anyone who practices magic would be able to assert that in order to give something form and strength, it must have a name. Once a boy has managed to summon his sand wraith, he promptly gives it a name, fostering the connection between them. With each successive summoning, the sand wraith grows more defined and lingers about its chosen boy longer. For many of the boys, the sand wraith is the closest thing to a pet that any of them will ever have.

And, so it was, that a boy named Hassim, born to a seller of books and a baker of flatbread, summoned the sand wraith that he named Fleet only three days after his sixth birthday. Upon that first time that it rose into the warm golden sunlight of the morning and twined curiously about Hassim's skinny ankles, Hassim named it Fleet, and thereafter, he was never seen without the swift eddy of sand at his heels. His parents gave no more thought to the presence of the sand wraith than any other parent of Mahdjikistan. It was simply part of their way of life.

Hassim was too little to understand what it meant when a tyrant seized power of the nation. When the dictator slaughtered all of the Mahdjikistani poets in the city square in front of his people, the little boy hid his face in his mother's robes and turned away, trembling. He tried to cover his ears against the blood-curdling sound of the emotional heart of their country being destroyed. Fleet never left its position at Hassim's toes.

Time passed and, little by little, the tyrant tore away the fabric of Mahdjikistani existence. The magics the people used every day as a matter of course were banned and those caught using them were put to death. 

The men did not forget about their wraiths. Instead, they waited until they were out in the desert to summon them. Without the wraiths, however, the tyrant could seize no more money, for without the hiring of guides, no money would come into Mahdjikistan. He saw little threat in the creatures. They were, after all, common. The dictator himself had one that he had named Skirmish.

As with any tyrant, he made enemies, and he soon found himself in need of an army. Hassim was fifteen years old when his mother and father received the official summons to bring him to the armory near the palace and present him for military duty. His mother wept silently as she folded his clothes into a small cloth bundle and would only say, “It is all right. It must be. When they see him, they will see he is too small and much too young for their army.”

Hassim's father said nothing. When the day arrived when they were expected to report to the army, Hassim kissed his mother's cheek and tried not to be afraid when the hug she gave him crushed the air from his lungs. She was not allowed to accompany them to the headquarters of the army, and so, she stood and watched as her husband and her son walked down the streets, away from the house. His father's hand was heavy on Hassim's shoulder, the weight of it doubled by the weight of a father's love for his only child and trebled by the complete loss of hope.

As Hassim's father had feared, Hassim was ushered into the gates by imposing men in dark uniforms who informed him that upon delivery of his son he must leave. Later that night, in a crowded barracks that stank of sweat and fear, Hassim wept onto the hard tiles of the floor. It was the first time he had ever been away from his parents and the first time that Fleet did not come when summoned. Across the city, in a small house on a narrow street, Hassim's parents wept into each other as they feared for the life of their sweet, gentle boy.

Fleet tried for days to find a way into the army base to see the boy to whom it was tied. There was no entry, though Fleet nearly dashed itself to scattered grains against the heavily warded walls. Great pains had been taken to prevent the wraiths from accessing the men they looked after and many of the creatures languished in the shadows of the walls, waiting to hear the call of the ones who gave them form.

As battles erupted, the men were called forth to fight. Most of them were still little better than boys. At each opportunity, Hassim would immediately summon Fleet. The sand wraith was the only measure of comfort he had left. Attempting to see his parents would require Hassim to run away from the barracks and to do so would mean that his parents would die at the tyrant's hand. So, he made no plans, wanting, instead, to be able to think that his parents were still alive and still in the city.

It happened, from time to time, that on border patrols, soldiers would disappear. They were snatched by rebels, it was assumed. All that would be found was a pair of boots abandoned at the edge of the desert and a gun emptied of its clip and flung out of reach. Hassim was nearly nineteen years old when he was allowed to stand guard at the border. He had come to understand, over those brutal years of warfare, that if he wished to survive to his twentieth birthday, he would have to find a way out of the army.

He planned for months, storing away a few canteens he took as battle trophies and building a supply of food. The night before his escape, Hassim sat in the sand, his back against the brick wall. He summoned Fleet and explained in a hushed, fearful voice that as much as he wanted to, he could not take the sand wraith with him. Mahdjikistani men could never be lost in the desert through either treachery or disorientation because the sand wraiths left traces of magic along the path. That magic carried a signature unique to the wraith and the man bound to it and could be tracked for two weeks. Were Fleet to accompany him, they would be found quickly and Hassim and his parents would be publicly executed.

Two days later, in a small house, on a narrow street, in the only city in Mahdjikistan, a scuffed pair of black army boots were presented to a woman who took them without a word. Once the door was shut and the uniformed man was well away from her home, she cursed the tyrant soundly as had all of the other mothers who had lost children to his senseless greed. The boots themselves were placed carefully beside the door to wait, unclaimed, by a boy who would never come home. When Hassim's father came home and saw them, he dropped to his knees in the middle of the room and poured his shattered heart to the tiles in a burning stream of tears.

Hassim made his way across the desert, relying on nonexistent instincts and blind luck. Each day, when he stopped to rest in the heat, Fleet rose from the sands, unsummoned to keep watch over him. Without the spell to track, they would not be able to find the sand wraith or the boy. Hassim walked, finding his way into the neighboring country and sneaking onto a ship bound across the ocean. Fleet could not follow him onto the water and so it turned back, returning to Mahdjikistan and the small house on the narrow street.

The sand wraith took great comfort in knowing that Hassim was safe across an ocean on another continent, where the tyrant would likely never find him. As it watched Hassim's mother and father struggle to learn how to live without him, it longed to tell them that Hassim was not dead. It was unsure, however, if the knowledge that their son was still alive but unable to contact them at all would only be another cruelty to already broken hearts.

Fleet mourned his absence as much as they did. It longed for the confessions Hassim offered up under the stars when he had been young. They had chased each other in the waning light over dunes and down the streets, Hassim's laughter ringing against the stone walls. When the pain of loss became too great, a tendril of sand could be seen sliding under the door and winnowing across the floor, curling its way into the battered boots which still stood where the footsteps of a grown man should have echoed. The sand wraith would stay there, encased in the leather and cloth which no longer carried the familiar feel of the boy who had owned them, but remained the only physical reminder of the young man who was no longer fifteen. Years passed and the sand wraith waited, hoping for the miracle of Hassim's return.

It happened, one night, that Fleet felt a familiar tug at its senses. As the sand wraith roused, it recognized a familiar call it thought to never hear again. All it once, Fleet gathered itself and rushed out into the desert, speeding with all the power of its name to the border where a man who wore a familiar shape waited under the light of a full moon.

The sand wraith twined itself around thee ankles of the man who had finally returned home, smelling of deep and foreign magics and knowledge gained for the purpose of overturning an injustice. Hassim laughed with delight and explained that he needed Fleet to take him to the cave where the Djinn could be summoned, that he might enlist their aid against the tyrant still in power. Fleet agreed as easily and as readily as he always had to the boy asking him for a game of chase before bedtime.

“Then we will go, my oldest friend, but we will go in the morning, with the light of the sun upon us so that all will know that we do not act in fear and anger, but instead with bravery and utmost faith in our purpose,” he said, the smile on his face coloring his voice.

And so, bathed in the silver glow of the moon, the sand wraith and the boy whom it had waited for over so many years danced across the sands of their homeland.

Patricia Scott writes primarily fantasy works, though she also writes a bi-monthly column called "Geek Girl Navigating the World" at Boomtron.com. She rides a moped, collects dragons and books, and still has a day job.