Actually that title's a bit of a misnomer. One of the nice things about judging a writing competition populated by talented newcomers is that the judge sometimes feels it's an opportunity to get a sense of who's going to be worth reading in the near future. And then he (I'm using the specific pronoun here because I'm only referring to myself) feels mildly superior because he can tout those unfamiliar names to friends and colleagues, and then look like a prescient champ when the newbie starts accumulating sales, critical acclaim, and reader affection.
So last year, as entries would have it, I awarded the top contest spot to Larry Taylor for a really wonderful hybrid of fantasy, sf, science, and history. The very close second award went to Theodora Goss for another mutant blend of nineteenth century magic and science. Now this year, I could do nothing other than give the first place award to Ms. Goss for her story "The Tile Merchant's Garden," the tale which you can read a bit further down on this web page.
And I was so proud of myself. This Goss woman, I thought, has shown herself in two stories to be an extraordinarily talented new writer. Now here is a writer with a future. So I was all psyched to crack the whip over the heads of the horses of promotion and crank the bandwagon into gear. Imagine my chastened humility when I suddenly discovered that the whole damn world is already learning about Theodora Goss with no help from me. I guess we're all teamsters on this bus.
Okay, enough with the tragically mixed metaphors.
Rewind tape to a couple months ago when Dan Simmons told me about his new website and how one major feature would be a "new voices" feature in which first Dan and then other invited observers would take the opportunity to tout new and interesting writers who were not yet household names. He kindly invited me to contribute. The night before www.dansimmons.com was to be officially opened, I called it up to do some proofing and just to check things out purely from curiosity. I'd been thinking about impressive new writers and had narrowed my choices to fewer than a handful when I checked the initial "new voices" entry.
Ah. Hmm. Well, there was one name I could cross off my list. Dan's debut "new voices" endorsement was a warmly laudatory essay about none other than Theodora Goss, a young writer whose work Dan had encountered while teaching at Jeanne Cavelos's Odyssey Writers Workshop. Dan's a writer of extremely high critical standards. He just ain't that easy to impress. He can't be snowed. So if I hadn't already encountered the Goss mystique, I would have duly taken a note at Dan's website.
Now, as I carve out this introductory word, I've got open in front of me the current (April 2002) issue of Locus Magazine, the definitive trade publication of the science fiction and fantasy world. On page 15, in Rich Horton's short fiction review column, he begins a survey of the April issue of Shawna McCarthy's slick fantasy magazine this way: "Speaking of new writers, one of the most impressive debuts I can recall is in the April Realms of Fantasy. This is 'The Rose in Twelve Petals' by Theodora Goss. Fairy tale retellings are a dime a dozen, and Sleeping Beauty ones probably as common as any, so this story has to be special to stand out, and special it is. Most striking is the assured voice of the author." And Mr. Horton's review continues on in that vein.
About a century ago, Charles Fort, journalist and observer of the absolutely weird (something of a more articulate Art Bell of his time), used the phrase "steam engine time" to describe the cultural phenomenon of how there seem to be certain portentous juncture points at which select important inventions come into existence through the independent efforts of a variety of isolated creators. Now that analogy breaks down if applied too literally to Theodora Goss. None of us invented her. She has invented herself most admirably. But it seems that all at once, a variety of us observers have taken notice. That group will, I predict, grow exponentially.
At any rate, it's steam engine time for Theodora Goss and all of you can get in on the fun.
About her 2000 runner-up, part of what I said in the judge's report was: "Author Goss displays both a sensuously poetic voice and a gift for creating what once would have been called a scientific romance."
About her 2001 winner, I said this: "First prize for 2001 goes to Theodora Goss for 'The Tile Merchant's Garden,' a cool, unsentimental, strangely affecting fable about a young woman's soul trapped in a sterile ceramic garden, and of the good-hearted, but mentally slow young man who attempts to please and rescue her. Ms. Goss adroitly sketches a rich palette of characters to populate her fantasy/historical period French setting. They're not a pretty lot, and all the more striking for that."
So please, now, meet Theodora Goss and her worlds. I think you'll find this new reader-writer relationship a long, rewarding, and invigorating one. Remember you heard it here first. Or second. Maybe third. Or...well...you'll be hearing it for a long time to come.
| --- Edward Bryant | ||
| April 2002 | ||
| Denver, Colorado |
 |
Some days, when the mists that always hovered over his mind lifted a little, Twig remembered that he had once been given another name--Jaques was it, or perhaps Jérome? On those days, he pulled all the weeds in the tile merchant's garden, the grass that pushed its blades between the tiles, the clover that spread its leaves like small umbrellas, the dandelions that displayed their yellow heads in the morning and discarded their silver seedpods by day's end. When Monsieur Boursin, the tile merchant himself, walked through the garden, he would say "Well done, boy," and present Twig with a sou from his capacious purse.
On other days the mists would lower again, like the edge of a storm rolling over the mountains, and he would not remember that he had been called anything but Twig, or "Brindet" in the language of the region, since like every town Petit Michélet had its proprietary words, which would have puzzled a visitor from Sainte Eugénie, or even Grand Michélet, only twenty miles distant. On those days the grass blades slipped between his fingers and the stems of the clover would not part from their roots, so that he left a green stubble in the cracks between the tiles, and the dandelions opened in spite of his best efforts.
When he walked into the kitchen afterward to eat his morning porridge, pots would spill and Marie the cook would shout after him, "Watch your elbows, you clumsy fool!" She would turn to Thérèse, the kitchen maid, and say, "I did a good deed, the day I named him Twig. It warns everybody that he's the son of old LePin. What can one expect from the son of a drunkard and a--" Twig did not understand the next word, which sounded like "putain." But he remembered his father, a man with a red nose who had slept in turn on every doorstep in the village.
Twig never thought about the garden, although it was quite different from the Jardin Municipal by the market square, which had a lawn for boules, a border of geraniums, and a pond with three ragged swans. Instead of a lawn, the tile merchant's garden had green tiles, straight rows of them, although the tiles at the edges of the garden were painted with pink and yellow flowers so that the garden appeared to have a flowering border. The walls of the garden were tiled as well, in some places with green tiles and in others with tiles that were painted with fruit. There was a fountain at the center of the garden, the outside of it covered with gray tiles to resemble stone, the inside covered with blue tiles, on some of which were painted orange fish. There was no real water in the basin, of course. Water and dirt and weeds were not allowed in the garden. On mornings after a rain, Twig would mop away the water and dirt that the rain had brought, and Monsieur Boursin would pat him on the shoulder, looking pleased.
By the fountain stood the strangest thing in that garden, the statue of a girl covered with tiles. She had creamy white tiles for her cheeks and nose and ears, and brown tiles for her hair, highly glazed to catch the light, and blue tiles for her dress, painted to resemble the embroidery of the region, which was known both for its tile making and its needlework. Each morning as Twig entered the garden to pull the weeds and clear away any debris that the rain or birds had left, he said "Good morning" to the statue, who seemed to him more friendly than not, in the way the old cart horse was friendly--that is, she never said an unkind thing to him, nor cuffed him when he was clumsy.
One autumn day, as he was sitting by the fire eating his morning porridge, Albért entered the kitchen. Thérèse, who had just pinched Twig for dripping porridge on the table, gave a giggling curtsey, and even Marie nodded, because Albért was not only Monsieur Boursin's apprentice but the mayor's son. "Hello, idiot," said Albért in Twig's general direction. He had never called Twig anything else, and Twig sometimes wondered whether Albért had forgotten that he had a name. But then he was so often uncertain about names himself that he could not blame the apprentice.
"How about some coffee?" asked Albért, pinching Thérèse on the arm--a very different sort of pinch than the one she had given Twig.
"Stunt your growth, that will," said Marie. "What are you doing here, anyway? It's not often we see you in the kitchen."
"The old man sent me with some news." Albért snatched a bun that was turning brown in the oven and began to tear it into fragrant pieces. "We're going on a trip, a long one, to Sainte Eugénie." He smiled with satisfaction and began chewing on the bread, scattering crumbs over the kitchen floor. Thérèse scarcely noticed.
"Then you'll be gone for--oh, a long time!" she said. Her lips curled downward in petulant disappointment.
"Maybe the whole winter," he responded, tossing the crust on the table. "We have important business, he and I, at the tile factory. The glazers are striking, and the painters are threatening to strike too. But we'll show them how we merchants handle such disputes!" He puffed out his chest, exactly like the rooster in a poultry yard.
Three days later, Twig watched Albért carry Monsieur Boursin's bags through the garden gate and out to the alley that ran in front of the tile merchant's house. As he wiped frost from the basin of the fountain, he heard the hooves of the cart horse clopping on the cobblestones and Albért grunting as the heavy bags thumped into the cart. Then he heard, "Boy." He turned and saw Monsieur Boursin standing by the statue. "I'll be gone from Petit Michélet, perhaps for the whole winter. Be sure you take care of the garden while I'm gone. Don't let the snow stand on it, or the ice freeze over it. Shovel and mop and sweep, that's the way. You understand me, don't you?" Twig nodded. Monsieur Boursin looked at the statue for a moment, nodded as if in satisfaction, and then reached into his purse and handed Twig an entire franc piece.
The autumn rains were followed by winter snows. Marie and Thérèse, having nothing to cook and nothing to clean, sat by the fire in the kitchen and gossiped over their embroidery. Both were working on table cloth and napkin sets for their trousseaus, although Twig could not imagine who would marry Marie--she was so fat and had such black teeth. Every morning he tended the garden, even when the winter winds whipped about his neck. He had no scarf, so his cheeks and ears were always chapped with cold.
One morning he saw from the kitchen window that the snow lay thick and even over the garden, high enough to cover his ankles. It had formed a white dome over the fountain, and the statue of the girl wore a white hat.
"How stupid you are, to go out every morning," said Thérèse, looking up from her embroidery. "Monsieur Boursin won't be back for months. I don't see why he cares whether the garden is cleaned anyway, while he's gone."
"It's for the girl," said Marie, holding the linen she was working on up to her eyes, the better to see a knot she was trying to pick loose.
"But that was years ago," said Thérèse. "You can be sure my father wouldn't build me a garden if I died. It's not proper, her being buried there, under that statue. She should have a nice stone in the churchyard, like everyone else."
"Who's buried there?" asked Twig. "Lisette," said Marie. "Monsieur Boursin's daughter. And if you don't keep that garden clean, I'll pull your ears. You don't listen to a slut like Thérèse, hear me?"
"Did I know her?"
"No, stupid. Pis aller!" This was not for him but for the knot, which she had finally broken off with her teeth. "She died when you were a baby."
"He's still a baby," said Thérèse. "Why don't you go down to the cellar, Twig, and get more coal? The fire's so low that the cold's creeping into my bones."
That day, when Twig went into the garden, he looked at the statue for a long time. She seemed comfortable under her layer of snow, as though she were wrapped in a coat of white fur.
"Hello, Lisette," he said. "I hope you're not feeling the cold today. I'm sorry I'll have to brush off your coat." Then he began to shovel away the snow on the ground.
He had gotten to the back corner, where the snow was covering the border of painted flowers, when he heard a voice. "Cruel and heartless boy, why are you clearing away my pretty snow?"
He looked around so suddenly that he strained his neck. The garden was a white emptiness around him, except where he had shoveled and the tiles showed through. "Who spoke?" he asked. "Thérèse, are you playing a trick?"
He walked back to the house and looked through the kitchen window. Thérèse was sitting by the fire, her embroidery set aside, drinking cider with Marie and laughing with her head thrown back.
He must have imagined it, then. He was aware, sometimes, of the mists, and knew that not everything was right in his head. But he had never heard voices before.
Christmas came. Twig was sad that Saint Nicholas had left nothing in his boots, but Marie told him he should be glad he had not received a switch, the saint's gift to stupid and clumsy boys. Marie had received many bottles of cider, which she claimed came from the saint although Twig had seen bottles just like them in the cellar, and Thérèse had received a pair of silk drawers that Twig was ashamed to look at. He suspected that they had come from the Jean-Pierre, the blacksmith, who had begun to pay calls on Thérèse. It did not seem an appropriate gift for a saint.
After Christmas came a succession of bleak white days, when it both rained and froze. Every morning, Twig found ice in the basin of the fountain. He would melt it with hot water and then carry the water away and wipe the basin clean. One morning, as he was pouring hot water into the basin, he heard the voice again. "Cruel and heartless boy, why are you melting the ice in which I can see my own reflection?"
He spun around. "Who's speaking? I can't see you."
"Certainly you can see me. I'm right beside you."
Twig spun around again, but saw only the fountain and the statue, whose shoulders were glazed with ice.
"There, you see? You looked right at me without seeing me, exactly as though you were blind. I think you're stupid as well as cruel."
He spun around again, although he was beginning to feel dizzy. "Why do you call me cruel?"
"Because you come every morning into my garden, and you pull out all my blades of grass and clover, and you mop away my rain, and you sweep away my snow. If a bird drops a twig in my garden, you steal it from me."
He looked with suspicion at the fountain, then with greater suspicion at the statue. It stared at him with blue tile eyes.
"You see? You're looking at me now. You shouldn't wrinkle your forehead so. It will stay that way, and then you'll look ugly forever."
He reached out and touched the statue on its shoulder.
"How rude you are! You shouldn't touch a lady unless you're dancing with her, and then only after you've been introduced."
The statue was as motionless as ever, and yet he was certain that it had spoken to him. "I'm Twig," he said. He felt foolish talking to an inanimate thing, but he did not know how else to respond.
"What a funny name. I'm Lisette Boursin, and my father is a merchant of tiles, the richest merchant in Petit Michélet. I can't curtsey to you, but you must bow."
Twig made a clumsy bow.
"Now that we know each other, Twig, you must no longer steal from my garden."
He had to puzzle this out before he could answer. His neck was very cold from standing still, and the mists in his mind seemed thicker than ever. "But this is a garden of tiles. Monsieur Boursin says such things don't belong here."
"Once, it was a garden of plants. These green tiles were a lawn, where I played with my dolls. At its edges grew jonquils, that smelled so sweet, and tulips like Turk's caps. In summer there were roses, Empress Josephine and Reine des Violettes. In autumn we plucked figs and apricots from the fruit trees growing on the walls. The goldfish in the fountain would eat bread crusts from my hand. Rain fell on the garden, and in winter snow covered it like a blanket while it slept. The plants remember that they once grew here, and want to take it back. That's why the grass grows so insistently between the tiles."
Twig's fingers were beginning to go numb. "What do you mean, the plants remember?" he asked. There was no response. "Lisette?" He called her name again several times, walking around the statue, but she did not answer.
One day, when ice had formed a clear crust over the cobblestones in front of the tile merchant's house, the baker came with news that Marie's mother, who lived in Grand Michélet, had taken ill. "I've got to stay with my old bear," she told Thérèse, "though much good it will do me. She'll spend all her savings on medicine, and I won't see a sou of the money she's been hiding in a stocking under her mattress all these years."
"Take the money and buy her medicine yourself," said Thérèse. "You can always tell her it's more expensive than it really is."
"Ah, you don't know my old bear," said Marie. "There isn't a trick she doesn't know. Why, where do you think I learned all of mine? Now, while I'm gone, remember to take the coal from the back, so Monsieur Boursin won't notice how much we've used when he returns. Drink only half of each cider bottle, and fill up the rest with vinegar. He'll think they've gone bad, and never blame us. And as for this idiot--" she pointed to Twig "--beat him with a switch if he doesn't behave himself, though your arms are too thin to do much damage." She threw back her head and laughed so that Twig could see every one of her black teeth.
The next morning, Marie drove away in the baker's cart, which she had rented, as she said, for "far too much, which my old bear will never repay." As soon as the cart had driven away from the tile merchant's house, Thérèse poked her head out of the kitchen doorway and called to Twig, who had begun his morning work in the garden. "Come inside for a moment, Twig. I want to tell you something."
Once Twig had closed the kitchen door behind him, shutting out the bitter cold, she said, "Look, Twig, I want you to do something for me. You will, won't you, for Thérèse?" She smiled at him in a way that reminded him of a piece of candy the apothecary had once given him, which was sweet on the outside and sour within.
"What do you want me to do?" asked Twig.
"Why, nothing at all. That's what makes it so easy. You see, Jean-Pierre has asked me to marry him, and I've said yes. Imagine, Twig, I'm going to be a married woman! But my father, he doesn't want me to marry so young, and he doesn't like Jean-Pierre. So we'll be married in Sainte Eugénie, where his brother has a shop and I can work as a seamstress. Since Marie isn't here, she won't know that I'm gone. And unless you tell him otherwise, Twig, my father will think I'm here and that Marie is looking after me. So all you have to do is tell no one that I've left!" She turned and reached into the cabinet behind her, taking out a satchel. "Oh, Holy Mary. My clothes will smell like cheese for a week!"
"Well, I can't lie," said Twig.
"Oh, but you won't need to," said Thérèse, smiling at him again. "You have everything you need here in the house, for a month at least--cheese and turnips and cider and coal. If you don't go out, no one can ask you how I'm doing, and you won't need to lie! And by that time, I'll be far away."
Twig felt a sort of pricking, just behind his ears, that came to him sometimes when things were more wrong than right. Surely there was something troubling about her argument? Yet he could not say what, and perhaps it was he who was wrong after all. He so often was that he had no faith in his own judgement. So he answered, "All right, but I won't lie."
"No need to," said Thérèse, tapping a country dance with her shoe. "You're a good boy, Twig. Just remember that Thérèse has always been your friend, and that you wouldn't want to make her unhappy." She leaned over and kissed him on the mouth, which made Twig's ears feel as warm as if he had been holding them next to the stove. Then she swung the satchel over her shoulder and danced through the kitchen doorway, shutting the door behind her with a bang. Twig was alone in the tile merchant's house for the first time since he had come there as a small boy.
That morning, while he swept in the garden, he once again heard Lisette's voice. "So they've left you all alone," she said. "Now you no longer need to clean the garden."
Twig stopped sweeping and stared at the statue. "You sound just like Thérèse."
"Then Thérèse is a clever girl. Why should you clean the garden every day, when no one is here to care whether you do it or not? Anyway, the snow is beginning to fall again."
Twig stamped his boots to keep his toes from going numb. "But Monsieur Boursin paid me a franc and told me to clean the garden every day. I guess he cares about the garden whether he's here or not." Remembering that Monsieur Boursin had praised him for cleaning the garden, he added, "And he cares for me too."
"Does he?" Lisette's voice was sharp, and Twig leaned closer to the statue, wondering if there were lines of anger on its forehead, but the white tiles were as smooth as ever. "Don't breath on me. Stand back so I can see you. Your jacket is ragged, and there are holes in the knees of your trousers. Where is your scarf, Twig? Feel the snowflakes falling on the back of your neck, feel how cold your fingers are growing as you stand here talking to me. That's how much my father cares about you."
Her words stung Twig more than the wind or the snow, which was beginning to collect in his collar. He felt a tear freeze on the side of his nose, and rubbed it so that it fell and broke on the tiles. "He does care, I know it. Each morning when he walks through the garden he tells me that I'm doing a good job." Through the mists in his mind, which were thick now with pain and anger, came a way he could hurt her as she was hurting him.
"And he cares for you, doesn't he? Thérèse's father wouldn't build her a garden like this, but he has built it, and told me to clean it for you, and--and you're an ungrateful, ugly girl!"
The snow fell more heavily, swirling around them as though they stood in a white funnel, and the wind whistled. Twig wiped his eyes and sniffed, but could not keep another tear from freezing on his cheek or his nose from dripping and forming a line of ice over his mouth, like a transparent mustache.
When she finally answered, her voice was so low that he could hardly hear it over the wind. "You're the stupidest boy I have ever known. Do you think I want a garden where nothing grows? My father built this garden because tiles are what he understands, tiles, tiles--" her voice rose into a wail "--tiles that last, tiles that never die. I'm dead Twig, dead, but in this garden nothing is allowed to die, not a flower, not a fruit, and not me!" Her voice rose until it joined the wind shrieking around him, and then both suddenly fell silent.
"Lisette?" Twig tried to open his hand, but it was frozen around the broom handle. "Lisette?" The snow covered her hair with a white handkerchief and spread a shawl over her shoulders. She did not answer. Twig walked back toward the kitchen, dragging the broom beside him.
It snowed all week and Twig stayed in the kitchen, huddled beside the fire, trying to warm the coldness inside him. When the snow finally stopped, he did not shovel it away but let it stand, three feet deep in the garden, covering the statue to her waist. When the snow melted, he went out to the garden with his broom. Dirt still covered the tiles, but poking from it were the green tips of grass blades. The statue's dress was covered with dirt as well, and grass was growing around its painted hem. Twig stood and looked at the garden, then put the broom away in the cellar and went to sit once more by the kitchen fire.
One morning as he sat there, staring into the flames, he heard her voice again, quite close, as though she were standing beside him. "Come see my garden, Twig." He stood, walked to the kitchen door and hesitated a moment, then pushed it open.
The garden was a disaster. In the weeks he had not cleaned it, grass had taken root in the dirt that covered the tiles and had grown into a thick mat, so that the garden now looked like a meadow. Violets were already blooming in it, here and there, and Twig could see the furred stems of what would in a few months be poppies.
"Isn't it beautiful?" Her voice sounded joyful, as thought the still, white face were smiling. "Look at that sparrow. He has been coming again and again for the last hour, to bathe in my fountain. See how he scatters the water everywhere, and then preens himself with his bill!"
Twig knelt down and felt the grass. How soft it was, how fresh everything looked, how warm the breezes were that caressed his neck. The mists that had wrapped themselves around him for weeks dissipated, and he looked around the garden and laughed.
"You see," said Lisette. "I knew you would like it better this way."
"Yes," he said. "This is better. This is beautiful."
When Spring came, Twig began to spend every morning in the garden, but now he brought no shovel or broom with him. Instead, he sat on the grass, which grew taller daily, and watched the birds come to bathe in the basin of the fountain. Sometimes Lisette would sing to them, songs she had learned as a child or that she made up, about worms and nests, the sorts of songs, she said, that birds would like. Once Twig tried to sing as well, but she said to him, "Hush before you frighten them away! You sound like an old crow."
Day by day, he watched honeysuckle and ivy grow over the garden walls, so that the green tiles were entirely hidden from view. In one corner, a wild rose began to spread its arching canes.
Finally, when the turnips had run low and the cheese was entirely eaten, Twig told Lisette that he would have to buy some bread. "I have my franc, you know," he said to the statue, whose brown hair was covered with yellow butterflies. "And if the baker asks after Thérèse, I won't lie. What do I care if he tells Thérèse's father?" But she did not answer.
As he reached the garden gate, it opened with a clatter, and he ran right into the heaving chest of Marie. Her face was red and her luggage lay on the ground beside her, as though she had just been carrying it. "Watch where you're going, idiot!" was the first thing she said to Twig. "That damn cider cart dropped me off at the market. He said this alley was too narrow for him. Can you imagine? The lazy bastard."
And then she looked past Twig. "Holy Mary, Mother of God," she whispered. "What in the name of the saints of heaven have you been up to? Where is that slut Thérèse? If Monsieur Boursin sees what you've done . . ."
"Thérèse has run away with Jean-Pierre, to be married." There, he had not lied. And then he heard a familiar neigh. It was the cart horse, clopping down the cobbled alley and glad to be home again. Marie turned, and they both watched as Albért drove the cart, with Monsieur Boursin seated beside him, to the tile merchant's house.
Monsieur Boursin stepped down from the cart and walked around it until he was standing in front of Marie. Albért stepped down also and stood behind him, grinning. "You," said Monsieur Boursin, "are dismissed. I won't have a slothful, careless servant running my house."
Marie opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Her face grew redder, until it was the shade of a pickled beet.
Monsieur Boursin put one hand on his purse and pointed at Marie with the other. "What do you think I saw, walking down the street in Sainte Eugénie? Thérèse, that's what. And she tells me that she's eloped with that rascal Jean-Pierre, from my house--my house! Do you know that her father is suing me for corrupting her morals? As though that one could be corrupted. Five hundred francs, he's asking. And who's been taking care of the house while I've been gone and the two of you have been running around, eh? Tell me that!"
Suddenly he noticed Twig standing behind Marie. "Ah, at least the boy has been here. You've taken care of things, I suppose, in the absence of these creatures." He stepped through the garden gate and extended the hand that had been pointing at Marie, as though to pat Twig on the shoulder. Then he saw the garden. The statue, still with a few butterflies perched on its head, stood in a tangle of vegetation. His hand went to his chest, his cheeks turned as purple as a side of veal, and he fell.
After the apothecary had left, Marie beat Twig with a switch while Albért held him down on the kitchen floor by sitting on the backs of his legs. The first blow felt like nothing, like being stung by bees while robbing their hive. The second blow felt like falling backward into a blackberry bush. When the third blow came, Twig screamed. His back was being lashed with strips of fire, and he thought for one delirious moment that he smelled burning flesh. That pain gave him the one moment of complete lucidity he had ever known. In its heat, the mists in his mind dried up, and he knew, for the first time in his life, that he was Jaques LePin, and that one day he had found his father twisted at an impossible angle and smelling of sour milk, on the front doorstep of the mayor's house. Then he heard Albért say, "Another, Marie. It's no more than he deserves." The mists came, dense, opaque. The world faded, and with it the pain.
When he woke, it was late afternoon. He was still lying on the kitchen floor. The door was open, and he looked out into the garden. The grass and meadow flowers, the honeysuckle and ivy, all were gone. He saw a floor of green tiles, painted on the borders with pink and yellow flowers, stretching to a wall of green tiles painted here and there with fruit. The statue stood, its hair gleaming in the sunlight, beside the fountain in which no birds bathed. But the garden was not as it had been in the days when Twig had cleaned it with scrupulous care. The tiles were uneven now and chipped, marked by the effort of pulling up grass, of tearing honeysuckle from the walls. In the corner where the wild rose had grown, tiles were missing altogether, and the dirt that had always lain beneath the garden showed through the gaps.
He heard voices in the pantry. Bees seemed to have settled in one of his ears, where they made a buzzing sound, so he turned his head, almost slipping again into the mists that were waiting to receive him.
"Do you think the old man will survive?" That was Albért. He remembered a weight on his legs, like river stones.
"If he does, the worse for me," said Marie. He remembered her in a halo of fire.
"Your mother died, didn't she? That gives you a good enough excuse. But the idiot . . ."
"He should have been sent to the asylum years ago. Father a drunkard, mother a whore--it would have been better if he'd been killed at birth."
"Well, he'll be sent now. They'll know how to deal with him there. He'll remember us with great fondness, after a month in that place. He'll remember the toe of my boot anyway, every time he feels his teeth." Twig heard Albért's laughter, abrupt, unpleasant. The mists were there, waiting, and he curled into them, willing the buzzing in his ears to increase so he would hear no more.
When he woke again, it was night. The moon was shining into the ruined garden. "Twig." This was what had woken him, this voice, calling his name. "Twig, wake up."
He whispered, because it was all he could do. What had happened to his jaw? Somehow it had forgotten how to move. "Lisette."
"Twig, you must destroy the garden."
He could not feel the floor beneath his cheek or the shirt on his back, but the buzzing in his head was gone.
"Twig, are you listening to me?"
Yes, he was listening. "Lisette."
"Destroy the garden, Twig. It's my prison, don't you see? Destroy it, Twig, and set me free."
He would be sent to the asylum. His wrists and ankles would be manacled, and he would be chained to a wall.
"Twig!" Her voice was urgent and pleading. He had never heard such pain in it before.
He counted the kitchen tiles as he crawled over them, five, ten, fifty, then counted the steps to the cellar as he crawled down them, head first, facing into the darkness. He counted them again as he crawled, dragging the shovel, up from the cellar and over the kitchen floor.
In the moonlight, the tiles of the garden were black. He could not stand--his legs and back did not exist. He knelt on the black expanse of tile and wedged the blade of the shovel into the cracks, digging out the tiles and tossing them behind him so that they clattered in the darkness. But he was working slowly, too slowly. Somehow, by leaning on the shovel, he managed to stand. Then he wedged the blade of the shovel into the cracks between the tiles on the wall. These were fixed more securely and would not come down, so he swung the shovel at them, breaking them across, and they began to fall in showers of black dust.
A light appeared in an upstairs bedroom. "Burglars! Burglars!" cried Marie. "They're stealing the master's money!"
"Don't be stupid," said Albért. "The noise is in the garden."
He swung again and again, watching the black dust cover his boots, which were filled with feet he could not feel.
"Twig, the fountain." Lisette was right, the fountain must be destroyed.
A light appeared in the kitchen. "The idiot's gone! Holy Mary, what's happening in the garden?"
"Put down that rolling pin. What are you going to do, flatten him to death like a piece of dough? I'll get the old man's gun."
Twig swung, and silver fish scattered over the black ground.
"And now me, Twig."
What did she mean? "Lisette." It was the only word his frozen mouth could mumble.
"Don't you see? You must destroy me as well."
The face of the statue shone silver in the moonlight, like a fish swimming through the darkness. The first blow chopped the statue in half at the waist, so that its torso fell to the ground. The second blow chopped through the neck and sent its head clattering over the tiles. Its silver eyes stared at him, expressionless. The third blow shattered the head into silver shards.
Voices came from the kitchen again. "Give me that. You think I'm going to let a woman carry a gun?" The kitchen door swung open. Light fell across the garden. "Where is the idiot? Lift the lamp higher."
Light flickered over broken tiles, over stubble, black and spiky, over growing grass. Flowers unfolded, silver in the moonlight. Water splashed in the fountain, where silver fish slid in and out of the shadows. Wind ruffled the leaves on the garden walls, and the scent of honeysuckle and wild rose filled his nostrils. A flurry of moths, wings silvered by the moonlight, settled on the fountain's rim.
"Hey, idiot! Where is that boy? He couldn't have crawled far."
"I see something--there, against the wall."
He heard a bang, like a hammer hitting an anvil. High upon the walls, a nightingale began to sing.
"Twig, come away. Come away into the garden." Her face was silver, like a fish, or the wing of a moth, or the petal of a flower. She smiled, and he thought how pretty she looked, holding her arms out to him in the moonlight.
Behind her lay the garden, a meadow of silver flowers stretching away to the forest, whose leaves ruffled in the wind, and beyond the forest rose the mountains with their silver snows. She was calling to him in a voice like the song of a nightingale, and the mists were gathering and hiding the mountaintops, and the air of the garden was filled with the scent of wild rose.
SFWoE Note: SFWoE thanks Theodora Goss, the author of "The Tile Merchant's Garden," for allowing SFWoE to place her SFWoE 2001 Contest First Place Story on the SFWoE Website. If you would like to learn more about the author, please read SFWoE's interview with Theodora Goss.
Theodora and Peter Taschioglou, who created the illustration for this story, have also worked together to create the Great Space Collision, which features one of Theodora's poems and some stunning artwork by Peter.
To learn more about Peter Taschioglou's artwork in this story and to view illustrations from past winning stories, click on the SFWoE Swirl below.
Well, what's your opinion of Theodora Goss' story? SFWoE invites you to send us your comments on "The Tile Merchant's Garden." Please keep your opinion relatively short and to the point, and we will place your remarks online.
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Wow. I loved "The Tile Merchant's Garden." It was beautifully written. The setting was so vivid, and the characters so real. I thought it was a really great story. Ms. Goss is a fine writer. Frankly, I'm surprised to have finished so close to such a terrific story! Well done.Thanks for the opportunity to read it.
--- Angella Lofthouse Springville, UT USA
I am an English teacher in Central Amman, and I wish to say that Theodora Goss selects her words very well for maximum effect. The result is a very fine story that brings vivid pictures to mind as one reads "The Tile Merchant's Garden."Edward Bryant is one of my favorite authors. I thank him for introducing Ms. Goss to the SF/F community.
--- Andrea Abousaid Amman, Jordan
I just read the 2001 SFWoE winning story from Theodora Goss. She has a fantastic writing style and I think the first prize is well deserved.
--- Raiko Milanovic Heidelberg, Germany
This is one of the most original stories I've ever read! Ms. Goss has an evocative storytelling style that fellow writers can only admire.
--- Donna Beltz Topanga, CA USA
What a delightful story! Ms. Goss paints with words, and the paintings come to life. I have a passion for fine writing, and "The Tile Merchant's Garden" gives me that on every level. What a gift she has.
--- Larry Taylor Princeton, NJ USA
I enjoyed both Ed Bryant's editorial and Theodora Goss's story. Great stuff, in a great contest!Keep up the good work with the contest.
--- Marg (Magee) Gilks Paris, ONT Canada
(SFWoE Note: Magee placed in the SFWoE Top Ten several times before she became a published author. She will be teaching an 8-week writing course via email starting on 3 June 2002. If you are interested, click here.)
