WE HAVE ARRIVED. LISTEN CAREFULLY, MY LOVELY. Can you hear? Shrieking. Moaning. All I hear is suffering. What is this place? It is like a museum of death!
Not a museum. Think of it as a laboratory.
Is it yours?
No. Only a person who thirsted to know – who insisted on knowing, no matter the cost – would create a place such as this.
You mean, a person like my father?
There’s an interesting notion. Your father knows a great deal about plants. So does your beloved Crabgrass, come to think of it. Why, if I were you I would be very suspicious of both of them! People like that are prone to do anything to get the knowledge they crave.
Look around you. If one wished to determine, for example, how much strychnine it would take to kill a grown man – or how many hours a generous dose of hemlock would take to paralyse, but not kill, the victim – there really is only one way to find out.
Where are we, Oleander? Who are these people?
You need not concern yourself with who they are; no one else does. A madhouse is a very convenient place to find people whom no one will miss. And the madhouses in London are overflowing! The city alone is enough to drive a man out of his wits.
Then – we are in London?
Why the stricken face, Jessamine? You always wanted to visit London, did you not?
I thought Father might take me someday – he goes there – often, he goes there – he does not tell me what he does there though. Oh, I do not like this! Is this what you wish me to think? That my father experiments on madmen to learn about the poisons he grows?
He is a clever man. And that would be a clever plan.
It would be murder!
Life and death, death and life, is that all you flesh bodies can think of? Look at the plants: we die back to the ground every winter. We wither and fade; our leaves turn to ash and blow away. And yet you do not hear us complain. Happily we return to the earth and die our little, temporary death, for we know we will come back, one way or another.
That is because you do not die like we do. For you death is not even real.
Death is real, make no mistake. But it is also an illusion. An interesting paradox, is it not? Why do you weep, my lovely?
My father – a murderer, a poisoner! – surely it cannot be true—
If you did not think it were true, you would not be weeping. Another interesting paradox! But cry, cry as much as you like – we have to fly again, back the way we came, but we will travel faster now, for time is running out…and there is one more thing you must see…
Here we are. Unfortunate creature. Open your eyes, Jessamine: do you see? The resemblance is striking; she looks just like you. Poor girl, she must be in agony. See how she screams and screams, and begs for her suffering to be over – have all your questions been answered yet?
Oleander, tell me the truth – who is she?
The truth? I fear that is unwise, but if you insist: she is you, my dear. You seem to have taken a turn for the worse. That dim-witted fiancé of yours is certainly in no rush to cure you of whatever it is that ails you.
Stop this! I cannot bear it any more, please—
You see why it is better to leave the frail flesh body behind? Imagine being trapped inside all of – that. The mess, the noise. The pain! Truly, you are much better off here, with me. Stay with me, Jessamine. Stay…no answer? You are considering my offer though, I can see how it tempts you – I hear it in the terrified flutter of your heart, fast as a bird’s—
From the look of it I will soon be dead. You will have to find another companion.
Perhaps I will, or perhaps you will change your mind – oh, dear; it appears your incompetent caretakers have found some new, vile potion to force down your throat. Come away now, this is not something you ought to watch…it is much, much too upsetting…
I stagger back to the garden, sticky with blood.
“Dumbcane? Snakeweed? I have returned.” There is silence. I sense only the chilling silver mist, enwrapping me in its tendrils.
“Moonseed? Larkspur? Speak, Poisons! I have performed the tasks you asked of me. Now you must give me the cure I seek.” I shout in anger to keep myself from weeping, for I know my soul is lost. I have killed, and killed, and killed again, and there is no amount of grace that can save me now.
“My subjects – the ones you call the Poisons – are not here.”
A young man rises from the earth. Some might call him beautiful. His hair is silver as wormwood, his lips are stained red as a yew berry. Twinned dark shapes – can they be wings? – lie folded against his back. He approaches me with outstretched arms.
“Welcome home, Weed,” he says.
I am exhausted with games and trickery, and murder still flows in my veins. It takes all my strength not to strike out at this smug creature and let his own crimson blood dye the earth beneath our feet.
“Who are you?” I hiss in fury.
The dark shapes on his back rise and flex. They are enormous wings made of dark, leathery leaves, stretched over a skeleton of branches that are gnarled and forked as a witch hazel tree. Only now does he lift his eyes to mine. They are wide and vividly green, like my own.
“Don’t you know me, Weed? We have met before, more than once. Surely you remember – the first time was long ago…”
The hypnotic power of his voice is impossible to resist. I close my eyes. My nostrils fill with the tang of salt air.
“I remember,” I say, dazed, as the long-forgotten images wash over me. “When I was a boy I used to run off; one time I made it to the docks and stowed away on a trading vessel bound for the Low Countries. A fortnight into the voyage, the ship was boarded by pirates. The crew bargained for their freedom. They offered to hand me over as a slave. I was terrified. I prayed for some way to defend myself.”
“And your prayers were answered. Remember?”
The horrors of the past flood my senses: the sudden, violent illness that swept over our captors but left us untouched, the vomiting, the stench of decay, the bodies thrown overboard one by one as the pirates died in agony…
“Our attackers grew sick and weak,” I answer in a daze. “Their numbers dwindled, and soon we were able to defeat them.”
“There is more, Weed. Remember?” His sinuous voice lures the memories from my mind. “The pirates were starving; they had been sailing for weeks with no provisions left but hardtack and whisky. After seizing your vessel, they bound the crew in ropes. They took you for the ship’s boy, and ordered you to the galley to prepare a meal.”
“I remember,” I whisper hoarsely.
“You made a stew, and seasoned it with rare spices from the hold of the ship – the same precious cargo they had hoped to steal. It was I who guided your hand that day.”
“It seems my thanks are overdue.” I bow my head, more in shame than in gratitude.
“You are most welcome. And now that your memory has been rekindled, do you recall my name as well?”
I close my eyes once more and conjure the smell of the sea. “Oleander,” I whisper. “I remember now. But I called you Angel – because of the wings.”
“And I called you Weed.” His wings spread and arch upward. “Poor, straggly Weed. Because no one ever wanted you, no matter where you went or how many seeming ‘miracles’ you performed. How was I to know the name would stick?”
“Will you come to my aid again now?” My heart twists with a last, agonising surge of hope. “I seek a cure for Jessamine Luxton. I have done all that was asked of me in exchange for it. Time is short – I beg of you—”
He ignores my pleading. He looks up at me, and I am again startled by the emerald colour of his eyes, so similar to my own. “Poor Jessamine,” he murmurs. “She was truly quite lovely.”
“What do you mean?” I cry, stepping towards him. ld;Is it already too late?”
“Not yet. Not quite. Foolish, brave girl! She is so near death, on the precipice really. And oh, how she suffers! Unlike your many victims, Jessamine still bears the full burden of life in the flesh. It is terrible, terrible. Most people would rather die than endure what she now endures.”
“Give me the cure,” I say thickly. “Please.”
“There is something we need to discuss first.” His wings rise and flex again, chilling me with their shadow. “Time and again you have entered my realm to bargain for a cure for your beloved. You have demanded it, begged for it, you have even killed for it. But you have never bothered to ask: what is it, exactly, that ails your sweet Jessamine?”
“To save her is all that matters to me.”
“But aren’t you in the least bit curious? Is it the dropsy? The ague? A rare intestinal parasite perhaps?”
“Enough!” It is all I can do to keep from throttling him. “She is near death, you said so yourself. There is no time left for talk—”
“I find your lack of curiosity…curious, that is all. Almost as if you would prefer not to know.” He looks at me intently. “Humour me. Ask me what ails her.”
This is a trick, I can feel it, yet once again I have no choice but to play along. “What ails her?” My voice is hollow.
“She is being poisoned.”
“It is impossible,” I retort, but fear plummets through my body like a stone. “I have scarcely left her side. No one has been to the cottage. No food or drink has passed her lips except what I have fed her myself.”
“That’s just it, my dear Weed. Those vile potions you keep dribbling through her tender, kissable lips – blech! Enough poison in there to paralyse a cow.”
“That medicine was prepared by her father! No one else has been near her.” But already my hands begin to clench with rage – It cannot be—
Oleander’s powerful wings beat in a slow, accusing rhythm. “Think, Weed! Did you never wonder what truly happened that night, the night you and your bride-to-be went half mad with passion and entered her father’s study to taste the forbidden fruit, as it were? Did you not suspect for one moment that there were forces more powerful than your simpering calf love at work? That perhaps there might have been something in the tea that Jessamine’s beloved father so carefully prepared for you both before he left for London?”
“How do you know this?”
Oleander’s eyes flash as if they would burst into flame. His voice soars with rage. “I know because it was here he came – without my permission! – to my realm, knife in hand, to shear the tender growth from my loyal subjects and mix their very limbs into an elixir of love that would inflame the blood and erase inhibition! A few sips would all but guarantee that you, you callow, ardent misfit, and that perfectly ripe, lovestruck girl would lose all reason, abandon all restraint—”
“Curb your tongue, evil prince!”
“Evil? I am nearly a saint compared to that clever, wicked Thomas Luxton! He witnessed the spark of affection between you; all he had to do was nurture it into a mighty, consuming flame.” Oleander spreads his great wings fully, until they blot out half the sky. “That you and his quivering, untouched daughter performed so lavishly, even providing him with grounds for a betrothal – why, it must have been more than any proud father could have hoped for! Now you were bound together, in life and in death. Now he could ask anything of you, for her sake, and you, righteous prig that you are, would jump to comply.”
“But to what end would he do this?” I cry. “For what purpose?”
“For what purpose, you ask. How appropriate.” With a powerful thrust of his wings he rises into the air. “You flesh bodies are so obsessed with goodness, yet no other form of life on earth is capable of such cruelty. You need only convince yourselves your transgressions serve some ‘purpose’. Even if it is only greed, or lust, or the raw desire for power that drives you. You will spill the blood of your kinsmen, lay waste to the earth itself, wreak havoc and cause unspeakable suffering – any and all sins are justified, as long as they are a means to your precious, righteous ‘purpose’.”
His voice pierces me through. The icy wind from his beating wings freezes my blood.
“So it has been with you, Master Weed. You would do anything if you thought it might save Jessamine; in that you have proven yourself human to the core. And so it is with Luxton. Once he fixed on his ‘purpose’, the rest of his misdeeds followed with barely a moment of remorse. First, a venomous toast—”
The earth shifts beneath me. “The absinthe—” I stammer. “The toast for our engagement – the sugar cube—”
“You see how carefully the trap was laid? For, unless you were willing to die for your precious fiancée, you would never have dared come here, to my intoxicating garden of death. Luxton made you willing to kill, even willing to die – all in exchange for a few measly recipes.”
“Recipes?”
“Of course.” His laughter is like a rain of daggers. “Without your heroic efforts, Master Weed, all those pages in the apothecary’s precious book of poisons would still be blank.”
Now in flight, he swoops and circles me like a vulture. “How shocked you look!” he crows. “How horrified! That a man would poison his own daughter to gain power, in the form of a little deadly but exquisitely valuable knowledge – does this surprise you, Weed? Even after all my Poisons have taught you? Haven’t you been paying attention at all?”
He swoops down once more. The tip of his finger, sharp as a thorn, draws itself gently across my cheek. It is no more than the touch of a breeze, but I feel the hot blood well up and drip to the corner of my mouth, until the sharp metal taste is on my tongue.
Now rage fills me, the bile rises. I am poisoned, finally, with my own blood and anger, and there will be no cure for me but killing Thomas Luxton – not with a coward’s secret poisons, but with my own avenging hands…
Speechless with fury, I turn and sprint back to the cottage.
“Off you go then, Master Weed! Consider it your fourth task.” Oleander’s laughter carries on the wind. “Vengeance against the wicked!”
I feel everything now, Oleander. Every moment is agony. Please – make it stop—
It is what you wished for, lovely. Remember?
I only wished to live. Not to die. And not to stay – oh, have mercy! – not to be trapped eternally in this poisoned half-life, with you—
You can still change your mind. My lips are sweet as the juice of the belladonna berry; one kiss and you will be in bliss, and stay in bliss, forever more. As will I. How glorious it would be, if only you would let me relieve your suffering and anoint you with pleasure instead. My poison princess; that is what you could be—
You said you would give Weed the cure for me. Did you?
I said I would, and unlike some people, I never break my promises.
You told him I was dying?
Of course, lovely. I told him everything. He knows what ails you, and how to save you.
Then where is he?
Hmm. I am not sure. Perhaps he had something more important to attend to…
Oh, I cannot bear it, the pain is too much – I am run through with blades still glowing from the forge, truly these are the fires of hell – Weed!