A Tale of Two Gardens

1st Day of Autumn

766 Karloman’s Peace

A bouquet of earthy aromas flooded Ekkehard, and his body floated upon the mosaic stream of scents. Each muscle unwound, releasing tension, as his bones softened and rolled outward, smoothing away all strain. He inhaled deeply, savouring the blend of fresh dew on grass, the sweet floral notes, and the earthy musk of nature. The warmth of nests and burrows merged with whispers of airy plumage and tranquil waters.

He opened his eyes to the shimmering veil of mirrored water, cradled once more in the monolithic embrace of the ancient plinth. The spectral faces that once haunted the liquid’s surface were gone; today, the water hosted a dance of hope.

He watched as boys tucked wooden swords beneath their beds, freeing them from the dim confines of their rooms to dance and laugh with a city’s daughters. A smile graced his lips as he glimpsed a young woman, her hair interwoven with wildflowers, dressed in silk of pink and white, exchanging tender gazes of devotion before nature’s altar. He bowed his head in reverence to a weary silhouette, rejuvenated by newfound love and purpose.

Warmth enveloped him as arms, radiant as molten gold, embraced him from behind. The warmth soothed his core and melted his essence.

He merged with the mirror waters, overfilling its basin and overwhelming the stoic monolith. The foundation stone splintered and broke, unable to bear the weight of his transformed being. Water and stone cascaded in torrents onto the lightless floor below, a transient tempest in an otherwise harmonious world.

Fear eluded Ekkehard.

He inhaled a world anew, reborn from the once limited pool, now a boundless lake teeming with life. The whispered lullabies of rippling water melded with the nocturnes of crickets and toads. Birds of countless kinds serenaded as they circled the cherry blossom tree, its boughs stretching skyward, its petals composing a canopy of falling pink hues that floated gently onto lily-padded waters.

Ekkehard emerged onto the bank and took refuge in the tree's dappled shadow, shielding himself from the radiance emitted sourcelessly from the abyss above. He stood there unadorned, his physique lean and muscular, sculpted by the crucible of his journeys. The grass whispered against his feet, tendrils soft between his toes. He inhaled for the third time, the air a benediction of purity.

Exhaling, he felt lighter than ever before, a being unburdened at last, reborn into a world of his design.

He rested by the lakeside and watched the ballet of nature unfold before him. Eons flowed like a gentle creek as he beheld his garden’s growth. The tree at his back soared relentlessly skyward, while meadows spread out before him, full of infinite promise. Creatures of every kind claimed his haven, living out the cycle of their existence and resonating with profound purpose.

A sudden chill prickled his skin; the symphony of life hushed. He raised his eyes to the branches above, a fleeting worry dancing through his thoughts. His avian choir had abandoned their perches; nests lay unwatched, their keepers absent.

Yet one winged form lingered, casting its colossal shadow over Ekkehard. Its plumage blended shades of indifferent grey and haughty silver, each feather becoming ever paler as he stared. A mask of engulfing darkness sported a hooked beak that twisted menacingly in line with its gaze. For a moment, the beast locked eyes with Ekkehard, craving his bare and vulnerable flesh.

Then, the empty pools of its eyes blinked.

In an instant, the silent garden erupted into a cacophony, a tempest of feathers. Golds, browns, and radiant reds swarmed the intruder. Though the unwelcome visitor dwarfed its assailants, it surrendered to their aerial might, fleeing with a trail of pursuers nipping at its retreating tail feathers.

As his sanctuary was defended, Ekkehard closed his eyes in agony, fresh weight and tension clambering into his chest.

When he opened his eyes next, he was awake, lying in the bed of Vedast’s guest room, alone. He rolled over to confirm his fear. Auriana was not there. He took a deep breath to steady himself and looked around the room, his eyes quickly adjusting to the darkness. Only slight shimmers of moonlight penetrated the sealed shutters, but Ekkehard could tell the room was empty.

"Where could she be?" he thought to himself.

The room struck a balance between intimacy and space, its dimensions thoughtfully accommodating a low-slung canopied double bed crafted from dark, lacquered wood. Positioned at the room's centre, the bed exuded a sense of freedom, as though it had room to breathe rather than being hemmed in by the walls. Its design was understated, bearing only minimal abstract carvings.

The white curtains hanging from the bed’s canopy were open and the bedroom door was ajar. He walked toward it and stepped into the corridor.

The jumbled walkways of the misshapen house were pitch black, and Ekkehard had to fumble his way, hands held out before him, as he navigated the darkness. He tripped but did not fall.

Turning to see what had caught his foot, Ekkehard saw the silhouette of an old dead man and stumbled backward, aghast. Blinking heavily, he watched as the shadow blended with the rest of the darkness. Kicking about with his foot, he realized nothing was there. His heart beat rapidly in his chest.

He took a deep breath of cold night air. It stung his lungs but still managed to help calm him. Once his heart settled, he continued his search through the house, trying to stay quiet as he went.

Ekkehard hadn't spent enough time in the house to memorize its confusing layout and thus struggled to place himself as he searched. Out of respect for the house's inhabitants, he did not attempt to open any of the closed doors, particularly those from which snoring, both soft and loud, could be heard. Several times he found himself going down four steps here just to go up three there, realizing that the interior of the building was deceptively bigger than he had imagined.

After what he thought must have been half an hour, he found himself back in the receiving room where Vedast and his family had provided the Reubkes dinner. From one of the doorways of the room, pale moonlight emerged, joined by a fresh breeze of icy air.

Ekkehard walked down the corridor and around one corner. There, he came across a door that led out of the house. Peering through its threshold, he looked out onto the small private garden of Vedast’s home.

Enclosed by a tall wooden fence that had seen better days, the garden cut off the rest of the city and provided a peaceful sanctuary where one could sit and embrace the nurturing presence of enduring nature. There, sitting on a bench under the garden's small wooden pavilion, was Auriana. She gazed down upon the garden’s small reflecting pond, a mirror image of the night’s full moon captured on its surface. He took a third breath of icy air, its bitterness biting his chest, and stepped out into the night.

He went and sat beside her. She did not look up at him, but her eyes drifted across the pond’s waters, from the image of the moon to the reflection of Ekkehard’s still scarred face. Her mirror smiled at him, and Ekkehard smiled back.

Her blonde hair was slightly messy, kinked from the little sleep she had managed and her pale blue eyes were half-hidden beneath tired eyelids. She wore a thick cotton nightgown that matched them, with a crisp white fur trim. It was bound tightly to her by a fur belt of equally unblemished colours.

She was beautiful. She had always been beautiful. Since the day he had first seen her, she had always been the most beautiful woman he had ever known. He didn’t think it was possible for another to be more beautiful than his wife. He had been so lucky to have won her, to have stolen her. He thanked every and any gods that would listen, for keeping her safe on their journey to this new place.

She remained beautiful even with the skin on her face tightened, pulling back against the flesh beneath. Anxiety and trauma had left their mark upon her and made her thin, too thin.

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She blinked hard. "Was she crying?" he wondered.

"Are you okay?" Ekkehard asked, placing a hand on her shoulder to pull her away from the illusory couple in the water. She shrugged him off and continued to stare.

"Have I done something wrong?" he asked. She did not answer. "Auriana," he said again, "Auri?"

"What do you think?" she muttered half to herself. She brought up a hand to wipe her eyes as she sniffled from the night’s chill. Ekkehard had been lost in her beauty, but now the frozen essence of the night soaked through him as his wife’s distress became his own.

"I don’t wish to upset you further," Ekkehard began, "but I do not know what is wrong. Please speak with me?"

"There is nothing to say," Auriana replied. "Just leave me be. You don’t want to talk about this."

"I don’t understand," Ekkehard said, shaking his head. "I thought you’d be happy. At least for tonight. We made it. We are safe at last."

"Are we?" Auriana snapped, spinning to face him. Her tone and glare caused Ekkehard to back away a little.

Her question confused Ekkehard, and he was taken aback by her harshness. "Yes," he mumbled. "I think so. Vedast is intimidating to be sure, but I think we can trust him. Dreux is certainly a good man. And we have this house to stay in. It’s not the largest, but it is comfortable, and no one would think to find us here. No one even knows who we are. We could have a new life here."

"Well, that’s good then," Auriana answered sarcastically. "Well done."

"I don’t understand why you're so mad," Ekkehard replied.

"Exactly," Auriana said. Ekkehard couldn’t tell if she was shaking with anger or shivering from the cold.

"What could I possibly be upset by?" she asked.

"I really don't know." Ekkehard shook his head.

Auriana smacked her lips together, biting back whatever she was about to say. She looked away from him and blinked rapidly to keep the tears from becoming too noticeable.

The two sat in silence for several minutes.

"You don’t care about me," she said, having composed herself a little.

"Of course I care about you," Ekkehard replied. "Why do you even say that?"

"You don’t speak to me," Auriana explained in an exasperated tone. "After everything that happened to us, to me, you don’t talk to me. Our child died, and it's like you don’t care, like you don’t even think about him or me ever."

"That is not true."

"It is," Auriana snapped.

"Not at all," Ekkehard stated with another shake of his head.

It was true that they had barely spoken. There had been little time for it. From the moment their home was raided, they had been on the run, and death had been at their heels. Ekkehard couldn’t worry about anything other than survival. But that didn’t mean he didn’t care. It didn’t mean he wasn’t hurting too. He just didn’t have time for it. Not if he was going to keep her and the others safe.

"I think of him all the time," Ekkehard confessed. "I think of all of them. Of mother, grandfather, my sisters and brothers, my niece, and our son. Sometimes I hear them screaming when I close my eyes."

She turned and looked at him at last. They sat in silence a while longer.

"You say you care, yet the first thing you do when we are finally safe is immediately go and put yourself back in danger."

"You mean in agreeing to help Vedast?" Ekkehard asked.

"Yes," Auriana confirmed.

"Auri," Ekkehard began, shaking his head, "you know I must. Yes, we are safe here, but only by Vedast's generosity. Audomar and I have to do this so that we can build that new life here. You do understand that, don't you?"

Auriana didn't respond. Instead, she looked around the garden, taking in the reflections of the pond. She unenthusiastically admired the various flower arrangements that formed a semi-circle kaleidoscope of colours along the pond's far bank. She turned further from Ekkehard, looking to the shaded silhouettes of the two plum trees whose shadows rose at the rear of the garden; sentinel towers to the curtain wall of wooden panels.

"I worry you can no longer love me, Ekkehard," she said, her voice honest and vulnerable. That cut him. He had endured such pain and horror to get her to safety, and she was unconvinced of his love for her. How could that be?

"Don’t say that," Ekkehard replied.

"I do not blame you," Auriana continued, "not really. How could you love me after what happened? It just hurts that you try so hard to get away from me. Sometimes I wonder if it would have been better if they had killed me."

Ekkehard put his face into his hands. She had also suffered greatly, more so than he ever could, in that time before he and his brothers arrived at the manor. They had not talked about it. He had moved forward as if it were a bad dream. He thought pretending it had not happened was the best thing to do, that doing so had helped Auriana forget it. He realized now that he was wrong. In his pretending, he had hidden her pain from himself and forced her to face it alone.

"Am I a blind man?" Ekkehard asked.

"What?" Auriana replied, looking back at him, her turn to be confused. "I don’t know what you mean."

"I must be," Ekkehard explained. "I must be the blindest man who ever lived." He turned away from her as he continued, unable to face her eyes as he revealed his shame.

"I thought Audomar was simply consumed by grief, and I thought it best to let him deal with that in his own time. It turns out it's not grief that plagues him, but guilt. He blames himself for what happened and has been tearing himself apart since that day. Gisla is so wounded, and I haven’t the first idea what is going through her mind. I don’t even know if I can help."

He shook his head and looked up to the stars above, seeking guidance that did not come.

"Gerwald and Florentin," Ekkehard continued. "I mean, they seem fine, but I worry about what we have done to them. Gerwald is so young and already so accustomed to killing. While Florentin, I mean, Florentin has always been cold, but he has become so calculated. Hells, Marcovefa murdered a man before my own eyes, and I didn’t even blink. I was so lost in my own selfish, indulgent, isolated grief that her pain, her struggle, didn’t even register with me. Why didn’t she say anything? Why didn’t she talk to us?"

He paused for a breath, feeling his throat strain under the weight of his confession. "We don’t talk about it either," he pressed on. "We just burned her and moved on. It’s like she never even existed. She was due to get married around now. I wonder if her groom even knows she’s dead."

"You cannot blame yourself for things like that," Auriana attempted to comfort Ekkehard. "Our child, our baby boy, had just been murdered. You cannot blame yourself for grieving."

Ekkehard hardly registered the words.

"And now," he said after a short pause, putting his head in his hands, "I find that my own wife, a woman who sleeps beside me every night, thinks I no longer love her. I find out that you have been thinking that of me, and I had no idea. I must be the blindest man there has ever been."

Silence fell between them again as Ekkehard allowed himself a moment of sullenness. He did not know what Auriana was thinking. She too remained silent, seeking her own internal reflection on the asymmetrical pain they both shared. Then Auriana whispered something, almost as if to herself.

"What?" Ekkehard asked, trying to grasp the words.

"You still haven’t said it," Auriana repeated.

"Said what?" Ekkehard asked.

"Since the day of the attack," Auriana explained, "you have not said the words 'I love you' to me. That is how I know. In the past two cycles, you have barely spoken to me. Barely even looked at me. Earlier today, I thought you were going to say it, and still, you could not. You think I am tainted. You think I am soiled."

Ekkehard was stunned, his power of speech arrested as he looked upon the breaking expression of his wife. Before he could regain control of himself, she continued. "I am sorry," Auriana said, her voice croaking, "I am so sorry. I am sorry you are chained to a woman as damaged and defiled as I. I am so sorry for that."

Ekkehard shook his head, finding his words at last. "No," he said, "no, you cannot think that. You have nothing to apologize to me for. I do not think any of those things. You are not soiled."

"Yes, I am," Auriana replied. She cried openly.

"No, you are not," Ekkehard said back, a hint of sternness in his voice. He would not let her argue this. He could not even humour the notion that she might believe he felt anything other than boundless love for her. He reached out to touch her, but she flinched from him.

"You know what was done to me, Ekkehard," she replied, "what those men did to us."

"I can’t even imagine," Ekkehard began to say, but she cut him off.

"No," she snapped through her sobs, "you know what was done." Her tearful eyes bore into his, and he knew she would not accept any placating half-truths.

"I know," Ekkehard conceded.

"Yes," Auriana confirmed, "and so you know that I am rotten, and I know that that is why you no longer love me. I wish, for your sake, that I had the courage Marcovefa had."

Ekkehard shook his head and grabbed Auriana tightly by the shoulders, pulling her to him. She tried to resist, but he overpowered her.

"No, do not say that. Never say that," he said. "Nothing you have said is true. Not even a little bit. I still love you. I have never, since the day we met, stopped loving you. I do not see you as rotten. The only rot I see is the corruption of the world we live in. The only taint I know of is the taint inside the men who did that to you, to us. My love for you has not gone away."

"You’re lying," Auriana said, screwing her tearful face and trying to push away from him. Ekkehard still held her tightly in his arms, but she struggled to break free. "You are ashamed of me, I can see it in your eyes."

"If either of us should be ashamed then it is me," Ekkehard said, trying to force Auriana to look at him, "I failed you. It is I who should fear that your love for me is lost, not the other way around. I had a duty to keep you and our son safe, and I failed in that more than anyone ever has. I am sorry, Auriana."

"Let me go," she said, still trying to break free of his grasp.

"Listen to me, my love," he continued, pulling her into him, holding her head against his chest, "you are all I care for in this world." Auriana struggled for a moment but then acquiesced, gently wrapping her arms around Ekkehard and sobbing against him.

"I know it may take time," Ekkehard whispered to her, "I know things won’t ever be just as they were, but I make this promise to you. I promise, from now on, I will do everything within my power to ensure you are safe, to ensure you have the life you deserve; one of comfort and joy. I promise no evil will ever find you again. Whether Vedast takes us in or not, I, as your husband, will build us a life here, one of comfort and ease for you. Because I love you, and I will never fail you again."

Auriana pulled herself back from Ekkehard and looked up at him. Tears still ran down her cheeks, and her eyes glistened like silver in the moonlight. To Ekkehard, she was as beautiful as she had ever been. He leaned his head down and kissed her, the wetness of his cheeks brushing against hers. They embraced, lying across the pavilion bench in marital intimacy for the first time since their trials began.