Free Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley Page B

you’re the one we’ve kind of been waiting for, see? Because
you’re the one always in the garden. Alt your family says so. ‘That Beauty, you
can’t hardly get her indoors to have her meals.’ And we maybe got our hopes up
a bit. Ah, well, it’s as I told Patience, we can’t have everything, and I dunno
but what your wreaths are even better’n the old woman’s.” She had picked up
Beauty’s last remaining wreath and was looking at it as she spoke. She hesitated
and glanced at Beauty again. “D’you know why everyone wants a rose wreath,
dear? Forgive me for insulting you by asking, but you look as if maybe you don’t
know.”
    “No-o,” said Beauty. “Not because they’re beautiful?’’
    The woman laughed with genuine amusement. “Bless you. Maybe
it’s no wonder they grow for you after all. You know—pansy for thoughtfulness,
yew for sorrow, bay for glory, dock for tomorrow? Roses are for love. Not
forget-me-not, honeysuckle, silly sweethearts’ love but the love that makes you
and keeps you whole, love that gets you through the worst your life’II give you
and that pours out of you when you’re given the best instead.
    ‘There are a lot of the old wreaths from Rose Cottage
around, not just over my door. There’s an old folk-tale—maybe you never heard
it in your city—that there aren’t many roses around anymore because they need
more love than people have to give ‘em, to make ‘em flower, and the only thing
that’ll stand in for love is magic, though it ain’t as good, and you have to
have a lot of magic, like a sorcerer, and I ain’t never heard of a kind
sorcerer, have you? And the bushes only started covering themselves with thorns
when it got so it was only magic that ever made ‘em grow. They were sad, like,
and it came out in thorns. Maybe it was different when the world was younger,
when people and roses were younger.”
    The woman stood up, and briskly took out her purse, and paid
Beauty for her wreath, picked up her shopping basket, and turned to go; but she
paused, frowning, as if she could not make up her mind either to say something
or to leave it unsaid.
    “I’d much rather know,” said Beauty softly, and the woman
looked at her again with her friendly smile.
    “You may not, dear, but I’m thinking maybe you’d better,
I’ve told you there’s no magic hereabouts. There are tales about why, of
course. I’d make one up meself if no-body’d taken care of the job before me.
There was some kind of sorcerers’ battle here, they say, long, long ago, no one
knows rightly how long, and it ain’t the kind of thing the squire puts down in
his record book, is it? ‘One sorcerers’ battle. Very bad. Has taken ail magic
away from Longchance forever’—if we had a squire in those days, though Oak Hall
is as old as anything around here, and sorcerers don’t live in wilderness. But
there’s a curse tacked on to the end of it, like the sting on a manticore’s
tail. It don’t rightly concern you. because the tally calls for three sisters,
and there’s only the two of you—”
    “My . . . brother?” said Beauty faintly.
    The woman laughed. “Oh, the menfolk don’t count—like usual,
eh? No, you want sorcery, you got to go to a man, but there’s nothing anybody
should want to have done a greenwitch can’t do.... Now, now, don’t go all
wide-eyed and trembly on me like that. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. There’s
nothing wrong with you and nothing wrong with Rose Cottage. And we’re all glad
of you: that Jeweltongue can almost outtalk me when she puts her mind to
it, and you should see her wrapping that old Miss Trueword round her finger!
That’s a sight, that is.
    “Pity you ain’i a greenwitch then. We could use one. A greenwitch
would make a good living here, you know. You could even afford a husband.” And
the woman winked. “Maybe you should talk to your roses about it, see if they’ll
tell you a few charms.”
    Ask her roses to tell her