Cashmere Botanical Gardens pt 5 High Summer

And that is how I came to be kneeling in the lily pool, the cold nose of Carls shotgun against my spine.

I could see little between my wet bangs other than the Pale Lady as she looked down on the five of us as though we were a show put on for her amusement. Carl didn’t hold me cruelly at gunpoint, but I was hardly in any position to thank him. The creatures arrayed around us, the Brandylou, I supposed, looked on with interest, but I had eyes only for the lady. I hadn’t much cared for the phrase “Meat from my table” and I felt pretty sure I was about to discover more than I ever wanted to.

The Pale Lady stepped from the small window she had been looking from, and until I saw it I would have said such a thing was impossible. It was like a doll stepping from the window of a doll house and becoming a real person before your eyes, and I heard the doctor gasp as she stepped out over the water. The roots from beneath it, lily stalks and cords of water grass, rose to catch her feat and created a stair for her as she came closer to our group. She was dressed as she had been on the night I’d seen her, and her young old face still looked at odds with itself.

She smiled as she paused halfway down the steps, and Thurston looked a little unsure of himself.

His shaking legs were making ripples that I was likely the only one who could see.

“And if I choose to refuse your generous offer? What would you do then, boy? I have my servants to call me, just as He does, and my time at your knee is over.”

As she took another step, however, she halted as if she had stepped on a rock.

Doctor Thurston seemed to get a little of his courage back, his hand slipping into his pocket.

“I was afraid you might say that. My father spent years telling me that you were nothing but a benevolent Goddess, a creature of magic and light, but I knew better. He said he found you in a beautiful garden, but I researched that place. It's the sight of a great battle, of a mass grave, and what better fertilizer for your riot of plants than the flesh of the fallen? After you agreed to honor the fifty years accord with my father, the last ten passing to me, I did my research. I discovered your counterpart, though it cost me a fair amount of sanity to do so. I’ve spoken to his children, they’ve told me of this Green Man,”

She let out a hiss like a scalded cat and several of her Brandylou covered their ears.

“And how you and he have lain waste to your world again and again. He brings the cold, that which kills the plants, and when my weed killer began to go missing, I knew I had been right to plan a contingency. You were afraid that I would poison all these plants, but you were wrong. I love this garden more than you could know. Many of these plants came from my fathers own garden, years of cross breading and cataloging that are now the only record of him left. I would sooner smash your totem and see this garden ravaged by winter than pick a petal from a single flower. You thought the worst of me,” he said, sliding his trump card from his pocket, “but I also thought the worst of you.”

In his hand, steam rising as it, undoubtedly, burned his skin, was an ice sickle as large as a blacksmith's hammer. It did not drip like it’s inferior cousins, it did not so much as dampen the outside of his coat pocket. His hand shook a little as he held it, but his face was set in a pronounced smirk of victory.

He didn’t look like Pa Cartright now.

He reminded me more of Gargamel as he held up his latest plot to destroy the smurfs.

The effect it had on the lady was sudden and immediate. Her lips skinned back from her teeth, her pretty face looking more like a moray eel. Her eyes became the no-color of lilies, her skin the milk white of an orchid, and her hands became the talons of a harpy. She was furious, the hatred baking from her, but she was also powerless to do anything in the face of that smoking ice slab.

“You dare? YOU DARE? You would dare threaten me with hearts ice? You foolish simian, I should drag you below this pond and let you see the faces of the other fools that went before you. I am Summer, I am Spring! Your forebears once called me Titania and worshiped me as a Goddess! I have been alive since time immemorial, and I have never been insulted so by one such as you!”

“Good to know I left an impression. Now, shall we talk terms?” Thurston asked, taking a step forward, “This ice pop is pretty cold, but I’m sure it could be colder if I were to drop it into this little puddle.”

She had taken a step away as he stepped forward, hiding her face behind her hands as he taunted her. Even so, I couldn’t miss the smile those nightmare teeth attempted to hide. Even in my current state, I wanted to tell him to watch out, but Doctor Thurston’s comeuppance didn’t come from the lady on the island.

When Randy turned, it sounded like a bomb went off when he pulled the trigger.

The Icicle shattered into a thousand pieces, right along with the good doctor's wrinkled old hand.

Doctor Thurston screamed in agony, falling to his knees as he cradled his stump. Even occupied as he was, I felt Carl spring into action. He tried to bring his own gun to bare, but it was fowled behind him. He stopped leaning on me long enough to jerk it around to the front, but when I leaned back hard and crashed into his leg, he wobbled and his shot went high. Randy had no such handicap, and when he fired, I thought I was free for half a heartbeat.

When my back registered hot coles beneath my skin, however, I realized that Carls stomach wasn’t the only thing that had been shredded.

Even wounded, Carl tried to get a last shot off at his killer. His shaking hand, the one that wasn’t holding his guts in, had brought the gun up stutteringly. He was trying to get a bead on Randy, the barrel shaking badly, when Randy worked the slide and evaporated him from the nose up.

The gorey remains of our chief of security fell into the fool, and the red began tinged the water around him.

Gabe looked shocked, his gun turning like he hadn’t a clue who to shoot.

When Randy put a hand on it and slid it out of his hand, Gabe seemed almost relieved.

“Don't be stupid kid. It’s over. The question now is whether or not you’ll play for the winning team?”

I heard all of this blearily. I had fallen over at some point, and I wasn’t really sure I could get up. The water felt nice on my back, and as my own blood ran into the water, I started to wonder if I was going to die too?

“He doesn’t look good,” Gabe said, the two coming to stand over me, “I think he caught some of that buckshot.”

“Nothing gets past you, kid.” I mumbled weakly.

Randy laughed, “Hear that, Gabe? Looks like you get to be the kid now. Come on,” he said, helping me up. As I left the water, I was aware of that white hot pain in my back and nearly passed out. I could hear my blood as it pattered into the water, and my vision was getting a little blurry around the edges.

“Miserable traitor,” Doctor Thurston said, still cradling his hand, “How long have you been under her control?”

“Not long.” he answered, keeping a beed on the old man as he threw an arm under me to keep me upright, “Chuck came to me a couple nights ago and told me about her. He told me her plans, and told me I could be on the right side of history or dead at the bottom of the lily pond. Sorry, Doc, but I choose life.”

“You have no idea what you have done,” he muttered, but as Her shadow fell across us, we all looked up to see her standing on a walkway of plantlife.

She was radiant, like a spring dawn, but I understood that she could be cruel like the hottest summer day imaginable.

“Randy, you have done me good service. For that, I raise you to the head of my guardsman here within my desmae. You, the one they call Gabe, you are welcome in my service as well, as is this one if he doesn’t want to die.”

I looked up, her words confirming what I was already worried about.

“And if I choose not?”

She shrugged, and the motion looked so pedestrian on her regal shoulders, “Then you will die, as this manling will die. You are all so much nourishment to me, though you could be much more in my court.”

I wanted to deny her a second time, but God help me I didn’t want to die.

“I agree.” I said, my tongue feeling heavy in my mouth.

“Me too,” said Gabe, “Aint like I got much to look forward to here but student debt.”

“Fools.” Thurston said, “You don’t have a clue what she’s offering you. She’s not some benevolent fairy, she’s a,” but whatever she was, we would never know.

The same plants that bore here suddenly reared up and drug the old man beneath the water, silencing him forever.

The Pale Lady knelt and dipped a golden cup into the waters of the pond, a cup that had suddenly and inexplicably appeared in her hands.

She pressed it to her lips, and when she offered it to me, the pinkish pond water was tinged with golden light.

“Drink this and take up the mantle of the Brandylou. Drink this and become my champions.”

I wavered a little, nearly falling, but my hands only shook a bit as I reached for the cup.

The water was cold and crisp and soothed my pain like nothing else ever had.

When I felt my back begin to mend, I saw her smile when I stood up on my own.

“Now,” she whispered, “Let's begin building something new.”

Epilogue

It’s been a year since the coup and the Cashmere Botanical Gardens have never been better.

The Lady has formally placed herself as the head of the park, though she certainly doesn’t tell people that she’s an other worldly being. Doctor Thurston stepped down as the chairman, placing Her as the head of the Gardens. He talked about his declining health and how he hoped his niece, Titania, would continue to run the gardens just as he had and continue his fathers legacy and his own.

Well, someone who looked like Doctor Thurston did, at least.

In what I’ve been told will be a very long life, I hope one day to understand how my lady does the things that she does.

Randy is now the head of security here. We have more than enough help now, since the other Brandylou have decided to stay here to be close to their Lady. They all pose as Botanists or Groundskeepers or Security personnel, but their duty is to the Pale Lady and her ever growing power within the Gardens. The original staff were let go after Thurston “left,” and the backers have all been paid off and told that the Botanical Gardens no longer need their support.

I heard the Governor was pretty mad about this, but one meeting with The Lady and he was happy to see reason.

She controls the Botanical Gardens now. All the displays are of her choosing, and it looks more like a prehistoric landscape now than a proper garden. The sidewalks are covered in grass and dirt, the walls are gone, save those that protect the garden from outsiders, and the collection of flora has become something unmatched. Theres talk about growing things, eatable things, and cornering the produce market in the area, but who knows what she’s planning.

I still keep this journal, so I can remind myself that I wasn’t always one of her Brandylou. I see that many of the older ones don’t have names anymore, they are simply Brandylou, and I want to keep myself from forgetting who I was. It’s strange how much you can get done when time doesn’t seem to matter anymore.

So when you find yourself in Cashmere, come see the Botanical Gardens. They are unlike anything you’ve ever seen before, I guarantee it, but be warned. People still go missing from the Gardens. The disappearances have remained the same, but they still occur. Who's to say that you may not get a better look at the Gardens mysterious benefactor than you ever could have imagined.