InsaneJournal

Edwin had never seen the gardens at Sutton Cottage look so bad. Not at home, in the months he now remembered living there, and not while he’d been here. Certainly not since Briar had taken over the gardening. Sutton Cottage had never looked better than it had under Briar’s caring hands.

But now… he frowned. The rosebeds were browning and wilted, drooping toward the ground. The hedge mage, too, was looking worse for wear, the yew needles brown and in spots, he could see the branches beneath. When he placed his hand on those walls, he could feel that something was wrong. The plants felt sick somehow, the magic that ran through them sludge. He’d felt the wrongness of it since he’d woken up that morning, had felt almost ill with it, but it was stronger here.

He sent his will through the house, Summon Briar to me, and he could feel it come through him with the command: a queasy, greasy feeling, like motor oil on the magic.

But the command went regardless, slower than it might otherwise have done, as though it were wading through tar. The window panels rattled, and the lights flickered in a way that seemed to say follow me to the young man; the house was attuned enough to Briar that it was confident that it would understand its slow guiding to Edwin in the gardens.

Briar was no stranger by now to the way the house sometimes did odd things apparently at Edwin’s request. He looked up from where he was fitting chains and clasps to Chime’s latest pile of glass leavings, a chore he’d been putting off for too long but had finally caught up enough to his other work to attend to. “All right, I’m coming,” he muttered, when his door failed to stop swinging back and forth in impatient invitation.

As soon as he came out of the door into the gardens his heart sank. “What in the Green Man’s trousers…” he exclaimed, hurrying over to Edwin’s side. He had already sent his magic out into the earth without thinking, and it felt almost immediately as though he’d tried to find green things in a tar pit. His stomach turned. “Was there some kind of… plague overnight?” he asked, looking around in alarm.

“I don’t know for sure,” Edwin said, gravely. He reached, tentatively, toward the grounds again, but pulled back. He felt guilty about it; he should be diving in deeper, trying to get to the root of it. But it repulsed him in a way he couldn’t quite put words to.

“There’s something wrong with the magic,” he said after a pause. “The magic of Sutton Cottage. It’s gone wrong somehow. I can’t…” he swallowed. “Sometimes, when something terrible happens on the land, it can turn the magic bad. If there was violence, or if a guest dies, it can… it can twist things. The grounds would have told me if something bad was happening, but perhaps… perhaps while I was at work…”

He trailed off. Everything had seemed fine when he’d come back from work the night before, and surely, surely if something had happened during the night, Sutton Cottage would have woke him…

“It takes some work, but the keepers of the land – me, and to some extent, you,” though Briar had never given his blood and his pledge to Sutton Cottage, “can make things right. With care, and tenderness. I believe there’s some rites, though I don’t know them yet; I’m sure there will be some books on it in the library, and I’ll take them to work with me today. But… Briar, do you think you could do anything for the garden? Perhaps that will help.”

“I can try,” Briar said, determined despite the growing sense of unease. “The earth feels all kind of wrong.” He reached out to the roots of the nearest rosebush, trying to burn the sickness out and infuse it with health the way he usually would. The roses seemed to rally for a moment, the petals brightening and leaves turning their proper shade of green, but only for a moment before the wrongness, whatever it was, took over again, forcing Briar to withdraw. He felt drunk and lightheaded and had to swallow back bile. “Fuck,” he said, upset enough to use one of Katou’s swearwords. “I don’t… is there a chance this could be a Vallo thing? Not just a cottage thing?”

Edwin hesitated, and then swallowed his discomfort; he stepped closer to Briar to offer support should Briar need it to stay on his feet. “It could be,” Edwin admitted. “It would account for why I wasn’t made aware of anything going wrong while it was happening.

He worried, a little, that he was eager to jump onto that explanation because Vallo-based problems seemed to often be more easily resolved than an issue with Sutton’s magic itself though.

“I’ll have to do some research,” he said. “There are some texts at the Great Library that hypothesize where Vallo’s magic could stem from; if, perhaps, one of those sources were contaminated…”

“Or we could ask someone?” Briar breathed, still feeling like he might throw up. “If it’s not just here?”

Edwin stared in surprise for a moment, and then felt a slow flush come up his neck. “Yes, I suppose that would do it too,” he conceded. “I’ll do that.” He frowned, concerned, at Briar’s face. “You’re looking a little pale. I think you should lay down and get some rest.”

“I don’t get sick,” Briar protested, ignoring the horrible churning feeling in his stomach that was still threatening to creep up his throat. “You don’t look so great yourself, by the way.” He made a face. “I really hope it’s not a plague. I’ve had enough plague for one lifetime thanks.”

Edwin nodded. There’d been plenty of deadly illnesses in his day, and one of the things he enjoyed about Vallo was how few of them remained. “It does seem to be linked to the magic, though whether it’s only Sutton’s or Vallo’s as a whole, I couldn’t say yet.” He sighed. “I will go to the library today; I think I’m well enough to go to work. But you should rest a little and try to avoid using magic for the rest of the day until we figure out what is happening.”

Briar made a face. Resting while something important was going on did not appeal to his nature. On the other hand, he really did feel like hell all of a sudden. He started to worry almost right away about the shakkan; he didn’t know what he’d do if it got sick and there was no way for him to treat it magically. “I’ll check the rest of the garden first,” he decided aloud. “Just to see how bad it is.”

Edwin frowned, but Briar was his own man and could make his own decisions and so, after a moment, he nodded. “If you know of any mundane means to treat them, then I would appreciate it. But do try not to use magic again.” Perhaps the warning was superfluous, but he felt better for having said it.

Briar nodded. He wanted more than anything to go back into the roots, to burn out with his own power anything that was sick or wrong. But he already knew he wouldn’t be able to, which was a kind of helplessness he hadn’t experienced since before he’d come into his own magic. He fixed plants. That was who he was. And he’d spent a year by now coming to know the green things in this garden, which were now almost as much a part of him as the shakkan was. To not be able to cure them instantly was painful. He’d have to do his best with regular methods, which didn’t give him a lot of hope for whatever this was. “Got it,” he said, somberly. “You either.”

Edwin hesitated as if he would like to have said more, but what else was there to say? “I’ll come check up on you when I’m finished work,” Edwin promised him instead, nodded his head, and turned to go.