A GARDENER IN PARRAVON
by Brian Craig
 
 
This tale, said the story-teller, was told to me by a man of Parravon in far Bretonnia. He said he had no wish to add to the evil reputation which the city of his birth already had, but that he did not care to bear alone the burden of speculation as to whether his late friend, Armand Carriere, was as utterly and completely mad as everyone chose to believe.
You have heard of Parravon, and know of it what everyone knows. You know that it lies beside the great river Grismarie in the foothills of the Grey Mountains. You know that it is a prosperous city, whose wealthy folk are numerous and much devoted to the arts, as all men are when they need not work for their living and must find some idler way to spend their time. You also know that the beautiful face which it presents in the daylight wears an ugly mask when darkness descends, and that strange and evil things are said to stalk its streets.
The man who told this tale, whose name was Philippe Lebel, recommended that those who might have occasion to listen to it should also bear in mind certain other features of the town, which do not figure so large in its reputation, but which have some relevance to his story.
Firstly, he asked that hearers of the tale should remember that the crags and crannies of the chalky cliffs which rise around the city provide nesting-sites for very many birds, including some which are seen nowhere else in the Old World. Eagles can often be seen about the taller peaks, and it is said that both firebirds and phoenixes have nested there. It is also said that some of the creatures which fly by night about these rookeries are neither birds nor bats, but other things with wings.
Secondly, he asked that hearers of the tale should remember that among the arts of which the leisured classes of Parravon are fond, the construction of beautiful and exotic gardens has a special place, and that it is by no means extraordinary for men to devote their lives to the cultivation of rare and special flowers.
Thirdly, he asked that hearers of the tale should remember that although the people of the town are apparently orthodox in their religion, following the familiar gods, other kinds of worship are conducted there in secret. There are druids in the neighbouring hills, whose mysterious ceremonies are attended by some of the humble folk of Parravon—and there are other gods, perhaps older still, whose veneration is forbidden throughout the Old World, whose true nature none know and few care to contemplate, but whose influence on the affairs of men is sometimes felt in incidents of a specially horrible nature, which may befall the incautious and the unlucky alike.
 
Philippe Lebel had known Armand Carriere since boyhood, and yet had never really known him. Although their fathers were both respectable corn-chandlers, like enough in their habits and beliefs to pass for brothers, Philippe and Armand were very different.
Where the former strove always to follow convention and to fit in with the society of his peers, the latter set himself apart, finding anything ordinary dull. He came to fancy himself an artist of sorts, though he was equally unskilled as painter, poet and gardener, and Philippe often thought that his friend’s “art” was simply an ability to see the world from a strange angle, from which it seemed more magical and more malign. He was certainly attracted by all matters unusual and arcane.
With the aid of this tilted perception Armand might have become a spellcaster’s apprentice, but his parents would not hear of such a thing, and he excused himself from going against their wishes—and hence excising himself from his father’s will—by declaring that the wizards of Parravon were in any case a poor and shabby lot, far less powerful than they claimed.
(Those of you who have travelled will know that this is a common opinion; familiar spellcasters, if measured by their accomplishments, always seem less able than they claim to be, and less fascinating than more distant wizards whose abilities can only be measured by rumour and reputation.)
Young Carriere’s affectations offended his family, but he saved himself from total disgrace by working hard to master the arts of reading and writing, which his illiterate father commended on the grounds that they might prove very useful to a man in trade. Armand, alas, had no intention of employing these arts in such a vulgar manner; his aim was to entertain himself with books of a questionable character, and seek therein the secrets of arcane knowledge.
The Carriere house was tall, and set upon the ridge of a small hill. Armand’s room was considered a poor one, set just beneath the eaves on the side of the house which never caught the sun. He liked it, though, because his was the only window which faced that way, looking upon the wilder part of the hill, which was thick with thorn-bushes.
The only other building which overlooked that part of the ridge was a tower-house situated at its further edge, nested among dark trees alongside a high-hedged garden. Ever since boyhood Armand had believed that there was a mystery about that lonely house and its garden—whose hedges were so unnaturally high as to exclude the sun’s direct rays, save for a brief period around the hour of noon.
While Armand studied his books and practised his script he would often sit by the window of his room, looking up occasionally to stare at the hedge. He knew that the plants which grew in the garden must be curious, partly because it was lighted for such a short time each day—and presumably contained only those flowers which could adapt to such a strange regime—but partly because the hedge was so clearly designed to keep prying eyes at bay. Once or twice when he had been a child he and Philippe had run the gauntlet of the thorn-bushes to reach the bounds of the garden (for there was no path between the two houses), but they had never been able to see what was within.
What Armand could see, however, was a certain strange traffic between the garden and the cliffs where the birds of Parravon made their nests.
Most of the gardeners of Paravon considered the birds their enemies, for they would come to peck the new-laid seeds, to spoil the pretty flowers with their droppings, and to devour the fruits which grew upon the bushes. The gardener of the tower-house seemed to be an exception, for there was never any indication of birds being shooed away, though they seemed to come in considerable numbers, especially in the hours when the garden was shadowed from the sun. At dusk, when the birds of Parravon were wont to wheel about the roofs, calling to one another stridently as they assembled in flocks before returning to their roosts, the birds which visited this particular garden would rise more sedately, one at a time, and drift away into the gathering gloom.
The more Armand watched, the more he became convinced that far more birds flew down to the garden than ever flew up again.
Armand called the attention of Philippe Lebel to this phenomenon on more than one occasion, but Philippe believed that his friend was trying to make a mystery out of nothing, and paid no attention. This disinterest served only to make Armand more determined to find a mystery, and he began to seek through the pages in his books for records of carnivorous plants which could trap birds. He found various travellers’ tales containing believable accounts of plants which trapped insects, and rather unbelievable accounts of plants which devoured men, but no trace of any rumour about plants which fed on birds.
 
* * *
 
Investigation of the hillside beyond the tower-house revealed that there was no proper road to its gate, but only a path. Armand began to linger at the bottom of that path, waiting to catch a glimpse of the owner of the house—whose name, his father had gruffly told him, was Gaspard Gruiller. When Armand had asked further questions his father had simply disclaimed any further knowledge, and had stated that honest men did not pry into their neighbours’ affairs.
Armand soon ascertained that Gruiller emerged from his solitary lair only two or three times a week, carrying two large bags which he took to the marketplace and filled up with food. He began to study the man, from a distance, and twice followed him into the town to watch him go about this humdrum business. Gruiller was tall and bald, with eyes which were very dark yet seemed unnaturally keen and bright—but if he noticed that he was under observation by Armand he gave no sign of it.
Armand asked several of the tradesmen who dealt with Gruiller what they knew of him, but none of them could tell what manner of man he was, or how he earned his coin, or to what gods he addressed his prayers. None of the tradesmen had a word to say against their customer, but on one occasion Armand saw a gypsy woman make a sign as he passed, which was supposed to ward off the evil eye.
This might have meant nothing at all, for gypsy women are ever so anxious to ward off spells that they frequently make such signs without any reason or provocation, but Armand was nevertheless encouraged to believe that she might have a reason. He knew that gypsies were usually followers of the Old Faith, and wondered whether this Gaspard Gruiller might be known to the druids as a bad man—and perhaps a cleverer one than any of those who went about the city boasting of their prowess as spellcasters.
On two or three occasions when he knew that Gruiller was not at home, Armand approached the lonely house, and peered through its windows. He tried to peer through the hedge, too, as he had done when he was a boy, but it was very thick as well as very tall, and he could see no more now than he ever had. He could hear something from the other side, though, and what he heard was a low rustling sound, which might have been the sound of birds fluttering their wings as they moved among the branches of bushes, or even the murmur of their voices as they clucked and chattered to one another. These sounds fed his curiosity so temptingly that he hungered to find out more, and this hunger grew in him by degrees, until he became determined that he would one day find a way to look into that garden, to see what went on there in the shady hours of the morning and the afternoon.
It was unfortunately typical of his frame of mind that he never once considered taking a straightforward course, seeking to make the acquaintance of Gaspard Gruiller so that he might quite legitimately ask what plants the garden contained.
 
Armand knew that he must get higher up if he was to see over the hedge of the enigmatic garden, and there was only one way to do this that was immediately obvious to him. There was no other room above his, but the house had a steeply-sloped roof of red tile, and a chimney-stack, which could offer him an extra twelve or thirteen feet of elevation if only he could scale it.
Because this seemed a hazardous project, he called upon the help of his friend Philippe, asking him to secure a rope within his room and pay it out yard by yard while he climbed, so that if he fell the rope would save him from serious injury. Philippe agreed, reluctantly, and waited impatiently when Armand had clambered out, wondering what possible account he could give to the Carriere family should the escapade go wrong. But he need not have worried, because Armand soon came back through the window unharmed, in a state of some excitement.
“What did you see?” asked Philippe, caught up for once in the tangled threads of the mystery.
“I could not see so very much,” replied Armand, “but more than I have seen before. There is a trellis-work erection—perhaps a kind of summer-house, though I could only see the top of it—which is longer than it is broad, having the house at one end and an open space at the other. The trellis-work looks like the sort which is sometimes placed against the wall of a building to assist climbing roses and honeysuckle, but I could not tell whether there was a wall within. The roof of the trellis bears flowers of several different hues—huge flowers, with heads like trumpets. There are birds there, wandering about.”
“And did you see these flowers seizing and devouring the unfortunate birds?” asked Philippe.
“No, I did not,” admitted Armand. “But I have not seen the like of those flowers before, and I feel sure that there is something strange about them.”
“Oh Armand,” said his friend, “are you not satisfied? Must you still insist that although what you have seen is by your own account most ordinary, what remains hidden from you must be something unparalleled in its strangeness?”
“The birds are ordinary,” replied Armand, insistently. “But their situation is not. I have never seen the flowers before, nor have I seen such a structure to mount them. What pleasure could it give a gardener to place his best blossoms on the roof of a structure, where he could not see them?”
“Ah,” said Philippe, “but he can see them, can he not, from the upper windows of his own house? And you have said yourself that the garden gets too little sun—is it not probable that the entire purpose of this structure is to lift the flowers up, so that they receive more?”
If this speech was intended to set Armand’s mind at rest it failed, for Armand was no longer listening. Instead, he was standing by his window looking out in the direction of Gaspard Gruiller’s house.
Philippe went to stand by him, to see what he was looking at, and saw that the shutters of the one window which faced this way—which had been closed only a few minutes before—had now been thrown back. There was a man standing at the window, just as Armand was standing at his, and he was staring at the Carriere house. Philippe drew back reflexively, but could not resist peeping around the angle of the window to see what would happen.
After standing there for little more than a minute, Gruiller went away, leaving the shutters undone.
“He must have seen you on the roof!” said Philippe.
“I suppose he must,” replied Armand. “But what of it? A man may climb upon the roof of his own house, if he wants to!” Despite the bravado of his words, however, Armand’s face was pale, and frightened; it was as though all his excitement had been turned by that cool stare into anxiety.
“And yet,” muttered Armand, hardly loud enough for his friend to hear the words. “There is some secret about that garden, and I would dearly love to know what it is. I feel an attraction to it, as though it had placed a spell on me.”
“It is only a garden,” said Philippe, soothingly, “and by no means the only one in Parravon to contain special blooms whose owner strives to hide them from potential thieves.”
 
That night, Armand closed the shutters of his window tightly, as he always did—as all men do in Parravon, if they have any sense. But in his sleep he had a very curious dream, in which there was a tapping at those shutters, and a fluttering sound of wings in hectic motion, and a sharp scraping sound as though a claw was dragged momentarily across the outer face of each shutter.
Had he been really awake Armand would have clapped his hands to his ears and prayed for the morning to come, for he knew well enough that monsters were reputed to haunt the night in that city. But he was not awake, and in his dream he rose from his bed to go to the window, and threw back the shutters, so that he looked out boldly into the starlit night, as he had never dared to do before.
He was startled by the eerie brightness of the light which the stars gave, and as he peered out into that imperfect gloom he saw black shadows moving within it—sinister night-flyers larger by far than those birds which filled the sky by day.
Though he could not follow these shadows as they wheeled and soared in the starry sky, he became convinced that it was around the roof of the tower-house that they gathered. And when he looked at the tower-house he saw that the window from which Gaspard Gruiller had looked out in the daytime was unshuttered, with a red light burning within it, and that someone stood there looking out, just as Armand was—perhaps Gruiller, perhaps another. And there was a strange scent in the air, like exotic perfume, which made him intoxicated as he breathed it in, and made him almost ready to believe that he could fly.
 
The next day, when he tried to recall this dream, he could remember it up to that point, but not beyond—he did not know what had happened next, if anything further had happened at all. He told what he could remember to Philippe Lebel, and found himself quite carried away when he told it, so that he argued very fiercely that the night-flyers he had seen were too huge to be ordinary birds. They might, as he assured Philippe with rapt insistence, have been anything.
“Well,” said Philippe, “what of it? In our dreams, we may see whatever we will. We meet more daemons there than we ever could in everyday life.”
Armand did not take offence at this remark, but simply took his friend to the window, where the shutters had been thrown back to let in the daylight. He pulled one of them back until it was closed, and invited Philippe to crane his neck and inspect its outer surface. Then he opened that one and pulled the other back in order to allow a similar inspection.
Philippe saw that there were three long scratches in the wood, extending across both shutters, and when he measured their span with his hand he shuddered to think what manner of claw it might have been which had made them.
“But after all,” said Philippe, “even if the scratching sound was real, the rest was only a dream—for you did not actually rise from your bed and open the shutters, did you?”
“Did I not?” said Armand, quizzically. But then, after a moment’s hesitation, he threw the shutters wide again. “You are right,” he said. “I did not—and I surely never will.”
Armand attempted to put Gaspard Gruiller out of his thoughts for the remainder of that day, and returned with a new will to the study of a book he had found which had much to say about the tenets of the Old Faith. He tried not to dwell on the matter of the garden, but could not help pausing whenever he found a reference to flowers, lest he find some clue regarding the nature of the unknown blooms which he had seen upon the trellis in the hidden garden. But there were far too many flowers mentioned in connection with the worship of the Old Faith, with far too little in the way of description to allow them to be easily identified.
The next night, and the next, he slept very fitfully. Once or twice he was convinced that he heard the nearby flutter of wings, but nothing tapped at his shutters and nothing scratched the wood. He did not dream—indeed, it seemed that whenever he was about to escape from anxious wakefulness into the comfort of a dream he was snatched back from its brink so that he might continue to toss and turn upon his pallet.
By day he tried to tell himself that he had done everything he could to fathom the mystery, and must be content to let it alone. Indeed, he came close to convincing himself that he had had enough of Gruiller’s garden, and did not care about it anymore. But this was a mere sham, which could not stand the test of temptation.
Three days after his expedition onto the roof Armand and Philippe were walking in the street, intent on their conversation, when they suddenly found their way blocked. When they looked up to see who had accosted them, they were most surprised to discover that it was Gruiller.
“You are Carriere’s son, are you not?” he said, addressing Armand, after directing a brief but polite smile at Philippe. “Vou are my nearest neighbour, I believe. You are interested in my garden.”
All the colour had drained from Armand’s cheeks, and he was too surprised to reply.
“I would like to show it to you, now that the proper season has come,” Gruiller continued, amiably. “The birds love to visit it, as you must have observed.”
Armand still did not seem disposed to reply, so Philippe intervened, saying, rather uncertainly: “You are kind, sir. Armand and I would be pleased to see your flowers.”
Gruiller responded with a little bow. “The time is not exactly right just yet,” he said. “I think you will see the blooms at their very best in three days’ time. I would like you to see them at their very best.”
“Shall we come at noon?” asked Philippe.
“That would be perfect,” replied the other, bowing again and walking on.
“Well,” said Philippe proudly to his silent friend, “here is something to set your mind at rest for once and for all. We will see his garden, and the mystery will be extinguished. But I do think you might have spoken to him yourself—he seems a pleasant enough fellow, after all.”
Armand seemed to be about to disagree, but in the end he simply nodded, and said: “Perhaps it is all for the best. We will go together, and see what there is to be seen.”
 
At the appointed hour, Philippe and Armand made their way up the path to Gaspard Gruiller’s door. Armand had told his father about the invitation, and had asked again what he knew about his neighbour, but the elder Carriere had simply shrugged his shoulders and said that tradesmen had no right to pry into the affairs of others unless their credit was suspect, and that as far as he knew, Gaspard Gruiller had no significant debts.
When Armand knocked he was promptly answered, and Gruiller took them through his house to the side door which was the entrance to the garden. The rooms through which they passed were well-furnished, the quality of the rugs and wall-hangings suggesting that Gruiller was not a poor man, but there was no clue to his occupation. They did not linger in the house, passing rapidly into the garden.
As they came through the garden door such a sight met their eyes that Philippe drew in his breath very sharply, and Armand released a gasp of surprise.
As they had already discovered, the centre-piece of the garden was a rectangular trellis-work erection, which formed a kind of tunnel, arching over a path which led from the doorway of the house to the open space at the garden’s further end. This tunnel now extended before them, so that they saw it from the inside. It had many open spaces like small windows in the top and the sides, and because the sun was high in the sky the ones set in the roof were admitting distinct shafts of sunlight slanted from the south, which made a pattern on the paving stones beneath the bower, as if to mark out a series of stepping stones.
There were no green leaves or coloured flowers inside the tunnel. Its walls were matted with dangling tendrils, which were white or pale pink in colour. The great majority of these tendrils lay limp and still, though some trembled even though they were not busy. The minority, however, had a most curious occupation, for they were wrapped tightly around the still corpses of birds, writhing ceaselessly as they played with their prey and passed the shrivelling bodies slowly along the wall.
While they watched, Philippe and Armand saw a tiny bird come from without to perch upon the rim of one of the windows, peering into the tunnel with evident curiosity, as though wondering whether it had somehow stumbled upon a paradise of edible worms. But then it began fluttering its wings in panic, trying to launch itself back into the air, as it became aware that its tiny feet had been caught and held. Within thirty seconds the tendrils had pulled their victim inside, away from the window, and were dragging it across the inner face of the tunnel.
Its struggles were short-lived, though Philippe could not tell precisely how it had been killed.
Gruiller said nothing at first, but simply watched his guests, smiling at their confusion. Eventually, he said: “I know that you have not seen their like before, my friends. There is nothing like this in any other garden in Parravon. But this is not a pretty sight, and I am sure that you would prefer to look at the lovely flowers.”
He led the two youths to the outside of the bower, where they could see the woody trunks of the climbing plants embedded in the soil, and the pale green leaves which surrounded the huge blossoms. The nearest flowers grew just above head height, and there was little foliage close to the ground because that part of the bower never caught the sun at all. The growth was lush, but the pattern of the trellis-work could clearly be seen from without, whereas it had been masked within by the sheer profusion of the clinging tendrils.
There were many birds fluttering about the garden. They were all—as Armand had lately observed from the roof of his house—perfectly ordinary. They wandered aimlessly about, as though they too were visitors invited for a leisurely inspection, come to enjoy the beauty of the blooms. They went unmolested as they perched on the outer stems and branches; only when they alighted by the windows, within reach of the pale tentacles, were they seized and pulled inside, without so much as a cry of alarm.
The flowers, as Armand had reported, were of many different colours, but all of one shape. Each flower was the size of a man’s head, shaped like a bell, with a bright waxen style which rather resembled (Philippe could not help but notice) a male sex organ—but there were no stamens gathered around the styles, unless they were confined to the most secret recesses of the bells.
“These flowers are very rare,” Gaspard Gruiller assured them. “You will not find their like anywhere in Bretonnia, save perhaps for the deepest parts of the wild forests. Nowhere in the world, I think, are so many gathered in any one place, for these plants are usually solitary. The bower is my own design, and I am proud of it—I knew that unusual steps would have to be taken if these beautiful things were to be persuaded to grow in such profusion as this. Perhaps Parravon is the only place in the world where it could be done—where else could one find so very many silly birds?”
Neither of his guests knew how to reply, but this time it was Armand and not Philippe who found his tongue. “They are very beautiful,” he admitted. He reached up to touch one, and ran his finger around the rim of the bell. Then he touched the tip of the style—which Philippe would have been embarrassed to do, given its shape—but took his hand away suddenly, with a slight start of surprise. He looked at the tip of his finger, where there was a tiny droplet of liquid, red as blood.
“Do not worry,” said Gaspard Gruiller. “When the flowers are at their best, they produce wonderful nectar.” He reached upwards to another blossom, so that his sleeve fell away from his unusually thin arm, and Philippe was surprised to see that his hand was slightly deformed, and that the fingers were like the claws of a bird. Gruiller did as Armand had done, and brought his finger away from the flower-head with a drop of red liquid on its horny tip. He put the finger to his mouth, licking away the drop with the tip of his tongue.
“It is sweet,” he said. “Please try it. It will do you no harm.”
Armand hesitated, but then put out his tongue and touched the liquid to it.
“Oh yes,” he said, with evident surprise. “Very sweet indeed.”
They both looked at Philippe, inviting him to try the experiment for himself, but he looked away and pretended not to notice.
While this occurred they had been walking along beside the flowered wall, and now they came to the further end of the bower, to the open space which separated the trellis from the hedge. Here there grew in a ragged circle five remarkable things which looked like giant toadstools, each one with a thick chitinous pedestal and a wide cap coloured black and silver. This colour was so odd that Philippe thought at first they might be carved from stone, but when he came closer he saw that they had the proper texture of fungal flesh.
He did not want to touch one merely to make sure, but Armand was not so shy, and placed his hand upon the nearest one.
“It is warm!” he said, in surprise.
“An ugly thing,” said Gruiller, apologetically. “But not everything rare and precious is beautiful, and these are no more common than my lovely blossoms. They are not so attractive to birds, but they have their own place in the scheme of Nature, as all things have.”
This little speech reminded Philippe of Armand’s earlier conviction that Gruiller was known to the followers of the Old Faith, and he wondered if the man might be a druid spellcaster, who cultivated these strange things because of some virtue which they had, but it was not the sort of matter which could be raised in polite conversation, and so he held his tongue.
As Gruiller led them back to the house he said: “I am sure that you will think my garden odd, and so it is. Perhaps you will think it cruel to raise flowers which feed on birds, but they are very beautiful flowers, are they not? And Parravon has no shortage of birds, as you must certainly agree. There is room in the great wide world for many different gardens, and many different kinds of beauty.”
Afterwards, he watched them as they walked down the path towards the town, but he had gone inside by the time they turned the corner to walk around the foot of the ridge, returning to the house where Armand lived.
 
Philippe was eager to discuss what they had seen in Gaspard Gruiller’s garden, but Armand was disinclined to accommodate him. It had surprised Philippe to learn that Armand’s wild surmise about the fate of the birds which visited the garden was actually correct, and it seemed to him an item of gossip worth spreading (for Gruiller had not asked them to keep silent about what they had seen). Armand, on the other hand, seemed only to desire solitude and the company of his books, so Philippe soon left him alone.
When night fell, Armand closed and locked the shutters of his window as usual, and went to his bed in a state of some exhaustion, having slept so badly of late. This time, however, sleep came very quickly to claim him, and he did not toss and turn at all. He was later to tell Philippe that he believed he had slept dreamlessly for a long while before he was visited by a very dreadful nightmare.
The nightmare began, as had his peculiar dream of some days earlier, with the sound of something attempting to gain admission at his window—first by rapping as though to demand that he open the shutters, and then by tearing at the edge of the wood with clawed fingers.
In the end, Armand explained, his dream-self had risen from the bed and gone to the window, unlocking the shutters and throwing them open. There, hanging upside-down from the eaves like a great bat, was a monstrous creature with brightly-coloured feathered wings and a manlike face with thick, rubbery lips. Its body resembled a plucked bird, the skin all puckered and dappled, and its limbs (of which there were four in addition to the wings) were like the limbs of eagles, scaly and taloned.
This creature snatched at Armand’s dream-self, and lifted him as though he weighed hardly anything at all—but this action was not hostile, and almost seemed protective, for as the daemon launched itself into flight it hugged Armand to its bosom as a mother might clutch a child. Fearful of falling, Armand wrapped his arms about the waist of the peculiar creature, as though accepting and returning its embrace. He reported that as they flew he could feel the beating of the great muscles in the daemon’s breast, where his face was pressed against the wrinkled skin.
There were, he said, no teats upon that breast at which an infant could suck.
The flight was but a short one, for it took him only to the further end of the ridge, where Gaspard Gruiller’s house stood, with the facing window wide open and brightly-lit, as though the tower were a lighthouse for the insidious things which haunted Parravon at night.
Armand was delivered by his carrier into the garden beside the house, and found himself in the space between the end of the bower and the five great toadstools, which did not form a circle—as Armand now perceived them—but a pentacle.
Inside the pentacle stood a creature like the one which had brought him, but bigger by far, standing almost as tall as that strange high hedge. Its vast wings were feathered like the legendary firebird, glowing from within, all glorious in red and gold. Its capacious arms were stretched aloft, with the claws widespread as though to catch the silver light of the bountiful stars. Its slender legs had flattened feet like those of a fowl, so that it could stand upon the ground instead of searching for a perch, as its smaller companions must.
The expression on its face, as it looked at Armand, was paradoxical, for the face—so Armand said—was uglier than he could ever have imagined, with horrid bloodshot eyes and a nose like a huge serrated beak, mounted above a mouth crowded with sharpened teeth.
And yet, said Armand, the gaze of those foul eyes was not predatory but fond; and the black tongue which crawled in serpentine fashion between the cluttered teeth was not licking the outer lips as though in anticipation of a meal, but teasing him with its little motions as a mother might tease her child with friendly grimaces.
When his dream-self had borne this inspection for a few long minutes, Armand felt himself taken up again, and lifted to the roof of the bower where the brightest and the best flowers grew, and he was tenderly placed among them, in the middle of a crowd of perching daemons.
He already knew what to do, and bowed his head immediately to a succulent bloom, taking the central style into his mouth as all the others were doing, sucking greedily at the milk which was within, carefully prepared by the wondrous flowers from the tender flesh of captured birds.
The taste, so Armand said, was sweeter than he ever could have imagined—though his father’s table, at which he had feasted throughout his life, had been as well-supplied with sugary delicacies as that of any tradesman in the city of Parravon.
 
When Armand related this dream to Philippe he told him that there had been more, and that his wild adventure must have continued for several hours, but that the rest of it evaded his waking memory, and could not be recalled.
Philippe was more impressed by this dream than he had been by the first which Armand had related. He was almost ready to believe that there was something truly awful about the garden which they had seen, and that Gaspard Gruiller might actually have signed some dire pact with the daemons of Parravon. And yet, he told himself as he listened to Armand’s feverish recital, a dream is only a dream, and the shutters at the window had never in fact been opened—nor were there any additional scratches to be seen upon their outer face.
With these doubts in mind, Philippe told Armand that his nightmare, however frightening it may have been, could not be taken seriously as a revelation.
Perhaps, he suggested, the dream had been a kind of release, by which all the anxiety Armand had been storing up had at last been discharged.
Armand dismissed this explanation out of hand.
“There is more,” he said, excitedly, “for when I woke this morning, and went to my book I discovered at last the passage for which I have been searching—the passage which helps to explain what manner of things these monstrous flowers are, and what dreadful harm they can do.”
So saying, Armand placed the open book before his friend. But Philippe could not read, and Armand was forced to say aloud what was written there.
“The followers of the Old Faith,” he quoted, “believe that every living element of the natural world is properly destined for the nourishment of others.
“As the flower feeds the bee which will make honey for the bear, so the leaf feeds the worm which will later take flight as a brightly coloured thing, which will feed the bird which feeds the hawk, which will fall in time to earth, as the bear falls also, to feed the tiny things which crowd the fertile soil, where the roots draw nourishment to feed the flower and the leaf.
“So it is that everything which lives is born from the soil and the sea and the air, and must return in time to soil and sea and air, so that all may be renewed, forever and ever without pause or end.
“But the followers of the Old Faith say also that there is an evil in the world, which seeks to pervert the weave of destiny. There is an evil which alters the flower or the leaf to become the nourishment of daemons, so to spread the seed of Chaos within the world.
“Those who believe this have the following warning to give to the unwary: beware the treasonous beauty of that which is food for daemons, for though it harbours the milk of ecstasy, it promises destruction.”
When he heard this, Philippe Lebel felt a chill in his heart, and for just one moment he saw the world as Armand Carriere saw it: as a peculiar and magical place full of threats and confusions, in which no man could live in comfort and safety.
It was not the kind of world in which he desired to spend the remainder of his days.
“Can you not see,” said Armand, “that Gruiller keeps his garden for the nourishment of daemons, who fly there by night? I cannot tell whether he is their servant or their master, or what he may have to do with the other horrid things which happen in Parravon by night, but this I know: that man’s soul is not his own, and his garden is a thing so vile as to terrify the mind of any honest man!”
But Philippe would have none of this. “Armand,” he said, truly believing that he was reaching out a helping hand to save his friend from unworthy fears, “this is nonsense. The Old Faith is for gypsies and the ragged men of the forests. We are of the town, and have better gods to guide us. The excellent gardeners of Parravon have shown us that the flowers of the wild are there to be tamed, arranged and regimented to our pleasure. Gaspard Gruiller is but a gardener, after all. He does not seek to make a secret of his garden, but willingly took us into it to show off his pride in his achievement. Lay down that book, I beg you, and take up another, which will teach you the ways of the merchant in the market and the arts of civilized men.”
Philippe said that his friend looked long and hard at him then, but said nothing, and finally laid the book aside. They both went to the window, to stare across the ridge at the tower-house and the tall dark hedge which surrounded its garden.
“Did we really play along that ridge when we were children?” asked Philippe, with a small laugh. “The thorn-bushes must have been sparser then, for I am sure that we could not find a way among them now.”
“It was a long time ago,” Armand replied. “And we were children then, very different from what we have become.”
 
Early the next day, Armand’s mother came to his room to search for him, because he had not come to breakfast. She found the room empty, with the bed in disarray and the shutters wide open.
She went to the window and looked out, and immediately saw her son’s body, some little distance from the wall, deep in the bosom of a thorn-bush.
It was not easy to reach the body, and the elder Carriere had to call upon the assistance of his neighbours to hack a way through to it. Philippe was one of those who helped with this dire work, and thus was able to see the corpse of his friend before it was taken—with great difficulty—from the bush.
It was plain that Armand had fallen into the bush from a height, and the only sensible hypothesis which could be offered in explanation was that he had undone the shutters of his window during the hours of darkness, climbed up on to the sill, and launched himself from it in a prodigious leap, which had delivered him inevitably to his fate.
The thorns had punctured him in very many places, hard-driven by the force of his fall, and when they had finally pulled him free of the bush they saw that there was hardly an inch of his flesh unmolested.
It was as though he had been ripped and rent by many wicked claws.
When the company returned to the Carriere house Philippe told them all about the dreams which Armand had suffered, and about their visit to Gaspard Gruiller’s strange garden.
Because it was the first time he had told the story it was far more confused in the telling than the version which you have just heard, but it would probably have made no difference if every detail had been in its proper place, for these were townsmen and tradespeople, and though they bolted their doors most carefully at night, they were inclined to believe that whatever the dark might hide was no concern of theirs. Nightmares, they agreed, were a sign of madness and folly, and if any more proof were needed that poor Armand had been utterly deranged, one only had to look at the peculiar books which he had chosen to read.
As for Gaspard Gruiller, the elder Carriere and all his friends were unanimous in declaring him a good neighbour. If the plants in his garden captured and devoured birds, that was certainly peculiar, but Parravon had no shortage of birds, and the great majority were a nuisance to other gardeners, so Gruiller’s activities must be counted to the public good.
And if any further proof were needed that the gardener was worthy to live among honest tradespeople, there was the universally acknowledged fact that he was a man with no significant debts.