The Garden of Reflection

Suffering. The Choices We’re Offered. Dignity.

A thick roiling mist crawled from the sea to blanket the village’s charred remains. Scorched cobbled streets ran between the skeletons of burnt homes. All that survived in the market square were smoldering, blackened trees; every merchant stall was obliterated, and every joyously-colored banner burned and tattered, smudged with gray grit. Drifting ash hung in the eerie stillness. And although it was mid-morning, the sun seemed like a distant, cold, shying orb, ashamed to lend its light to the tragedy.

The hamlet of Bracklenock was in ruin. 

Walking its desolate, smokey roads, a lone figure no taller than a wolfhound emerged. Her hair was black and frizzy, and her skin the color of tanned leather. She wore a heavy green travel cloak bordered by decorative embroidered knots. Sheltered by the cloak, she sported hunting breeches, a fine red-dyed cotton tunic with a leaf pattern sewn around the collar, a white long-sleeved shirt, and green leather bracers. Her feet and ankles were bare.

A weathered cedar mask concealed her face; it was tied to the back of her head with twine. The mask was made flat at its top and tapered to its chin. Two-point deer antlers were mounted against each temple, and it was crafted without slits for her eyes or nose. Instead, the mask was slightly convex, and a symbolic eye was finger-painted with owl blood on its surface.

She clasped her wrists, and while her left hand stilled her right, a wicked, crescent-bladed sickle waited patiently in her right hand.

She reverently caressed the granite statues she passed and whispered silent prayers. The statues were exceptionally life-like, for they were once lives. There were panicking, fleeing Gaelwyn men; sword-wielding, armored guardsmen with horrified faces; comely old women in skirts and aprons carrying baskets of bread, food, and fruit; frightened children cowering against walls. Carbon streaks from the fire stained their stone bodies, and they were made forever terrified, lingering silently in the ash, mist, and smog.

A halfling, she placed her hand on a girl whose fearful gaze was locked over her shoulder. The surface of the stone was still warm and smelled of burned wood.

Her mask lowered. The scope of Bracklenock’s suffering weighed heavily on her heart.

“Uriah!” she shouted.

Her voice echoed in the bleakness unanswered.

Pressing on, she came upon an intersection in the road. Her mask gazed slowly in all directions. To her right, statues of doomed villagers cast ominous shadows in the fog. She took the cross street and followed them.

“Uriah!” she called again.

Weaving her way through villager statues, burned carts, and smokey rubble, she encountered an iron gate surrounding a garden that sheltered a ten-foot rectangular pool in its center. The beautiful flowers, shrubs, and trees that once adorned this place were no more. 

“Is that what I’m still to be called?” whispered a girl from the far side.

Sheltering behind a statue of a petrified man protecting his head with his arms, the cloaked stranger asked, “Uriah?”

A young woman idled in the blackened garden. She sat on a concrete bench constructed beside the pool and was dressed in a peach-colored cotton blouse under a maroon palla; the excess cloth was draped in her arms.

“I can think of more fitting names,” she whispered. “Destroyer. Undoer. Monster.”

“Fifteen years ago, you were gifted but one name,” replied the woman under the green cloak. “It was a timeless offering made by two who loved you very much.”

“No,” replied Uriah despondently. “I don’t think I deserve it anymore. Or their love.”

The stranger’s one-eyed mask peered from behind the statue. “I’m named Jayleigh Warmhollow, a Druid of the Ancients, charged to aid the people of Bracklenock.”

“You’ve come to kill me, Jayleigh?” Uriah growled. The mass of coral snakes writhing on her head hissed defiantly.

Jayleigh tightened her grip on the hilt of her sickle.

Uriah rose from the bench, her hands clasped elegantly at her hip. As she moved, the nest of black and red vipers rolled, twisted, and coiled down her back.

“I’ve attended the reflecting pool since dawn,” she said. “A soot coats its surface. I’m convinced it bitterly remembers me and withholds the favor of my reflection.”

Jayleigh’s mask edged around the statue. “The gorgon’s curse is rare. It skips generations. You inherited it from your mother. Its manifestation yesterday wasn’t your doing-”

“They torched their homes,” Uriah interjected sullenly, “if only to burn me alive.”

“They were afraid,” Jayleigh reasoned.

“They were foolish,” Uriah replied. Politely holding her formal posture, Uriah glared at the inky-black water. “As if losing their loved ones weren’t enough.”

Appearing from behind the statue, Jayleigh’s mask avoided Uriah’s direct gaze.

Uriah sneered, “A halfling? You’re the only champion Bracklenock could afford?”

“I’m a druid. My concern is balance,” Jayleigh said as she cautiously walked to the iron fence. “Nature wails in agony, grief, and despair, reeling from the chaos of your being. I’m here to comfort, to provide remedy.”

Uriah regarded the halfling skeptically as Jayleigh crept along the iron bars of the garden. The snakes slithered, flicked their tongues, and coiled defensively at Jayleigh’s approach.

Uriah’s eyes welled. She demurred, tears streaming down her porcelain cheeks as she whispered, “Then be quick, smallfoot. Strike. Restore your balance. I wish nothing more than to disappear.”

“I will do what is needed,” Jayleigh warned. “Still, I see injustice in slaying the innocent.”

Uriah looked longingly at the pool. “Your mask shields you from my gaze, champion?”

“Yes,” Jayleigh admitted, creeping along the gate. “It sees the world for me, but I’m hesitant to test its limits.”

“You are brave.”

Jayleigh shrugged. “Fearlessness is an enduring aspect of my people, albeit most confuse Halfling bravery with witlessness.”

Drowning in her sadness, her chin quivering, Uriah extended her naked wrists to Jayleigh. The snakes reared in anger. “Here. I pray for half your courage. I promise to be still. I will neither cringe nor cower.”

Jayleigh involuntarily quaked with fearful trepidation. She hesitantly turned her mask toward the gorgon. Her eyes went to Uriah’s hands.

“If only it were so simple,” Jayleigh sighed. She crouched in front of Uriah and laid her sickle on the ground.

Uriah whimpered, “You have the courage to face me, yet the cruelty to disarm?”

Jayleigh knelt; her voice trembled. “Forgive me. You conflate cruelty for compassion and perhaps courage with Halfling puerility. I rest my weapon so we may speak.”

The snakes draped down Uriah’s backside and menacingly lashed at Jayleigh. She was too distant to suffer their bite. Uriah’s face wilted, and she sobbed. She covered her face with her hands. “Please. I beg you. Kill me, druid.”

“You survived the fire,” Jayleigh said, inching her sight up Uriah’s torso, “for the curse immortalized your flesh. Save decapitation, your life will have no end.”

Uriah wailed, tearing herself away from the halfling to stand near the concrete bench. She put her hands to her throat. “I’m … I am forever … this? My mere visage turns all to stone! I-I cannot endure such loneliness!”

“The sickle is a kindness,” Jayleigh whispered, staring at it. “A merciful companion, although not our only option.”

“What damned alternatives are there?” Uriah scolded, her voice quivering. “What more could there possibly be?”

Fighting her cold sweats, Jayleigh dared to meet Uriah’s gaze. Her mask’s enchantments displayed a blurry rendition of her immediate surroundings saturated in a bluish-gray hue. Jayleigh saw the snakes nested in Uriah’s scalp and could see them slither over her arms and shoulders. She also saw Uriah’s forlorn face drenched in moist wet of tears.

Jayleigh clenched her hands repetitively as a test and sighed in relief. Happily, the mask had warded against the gorgon’s curse. Jayleigh rose with greater confidence and faced Uriah head-on.

Uriah sobbed, “I-I’ll never know love. I’ll be repelled. Isolated in this world. Shunned by all.”

Jayleigh listened as Uriah lamented.

“I’ll never bear a child,” Uriah whispered, eying the pool, the snakes hissing and rolling across her back. “I’ll never be buried by those who came after me.”

Uriah’s fists clenched with rage.

“I am alone,” she breathed.

Jayleigh’s mask leaned slightly, and her eyes fell to the sickle.

Uriah glowered at Jayleigh, saying, “You miserable smallfoot! What am I but a horror?”

“You’re a young gorgon, Uriah, just a day old. Seething hate and self-loathing have yet to rot your mind, but if you’re willing, I’ve means to ease your pain, to right the injustice.”

Uriah glanced venomously at Jayleigh, and Jayleigh could see it Uriah’s eyes: her faculties were retreating from the news of her condition, yielding to an impulse to despise and resent. As moments passed, the poison of the gorgon’s curse would make Uriah more dangerous and unpredictable. If there were another alternative to the sickle, hope would need to root to stymie the erosion of her mind.

The snakes coiled around Uriah’s shoulders and arms, hissing at Jayleigh while Uriah stared resentfully at the memory pool.

Jayleigh said solemnly, “We will bargain, but no matter what you choose, living will be the hardest choice.”

“I will hear your bargain,” Uriah whispered, “but reserve the right to accept nothing.”

“The sickle is merciful,” Jayleigh said. “Your line will end, as will this instance of the curse. Nature heals. Bracklenock rebuilds.”

“Or?”

Jayleigh’s mask looked to the ground. “Isolation. It is within my power to take you to a distant isle in the sea where you’re of no harm to anyone.”

“But I would be so alone,” Uriah whimpered. “What am I to purchase with that?”

Jayleigh wrapped her cloak around her shoulders. “Life.”

“What is the purpose of living if there’s no one to share it with?” Uriah snarled. Her eyes flared a deep emerald green. “It is a convenience that vanishes me from their sight.”

“I’ve a third offer,” Jayleigh said, folding her arms under her cloak. Her mask turned to the northwest. “In the steep hills are a people immune to the gorgon’s curse. They, too, are long-lived and accommodating. If you’re willing, I can take you to them. They would surely accept you as one of their own.”

As Uriah stood from the bench, the snakes coiled behind her head as if she were wearing her hair up. Recovering her poise, she gathered her palla and clasped her hands at her hip. She sniffed and wiped away her tears. She glanced mournfully at the pool. “And what if I were to wait here until the afternoon? For the mist from the sea to recede so I might see my own reflection?”

Jayleigh’s mask looked up at Uriah. “A spiteful choice. Your body would petrify. You’d stain this memory garden to memorialize you, this day, above all else.”

Uriah’s eyes flashed green; the snakes hissed and snapped. Her gaze contemptuously fell upon the smoldering ruins of Bracklenock. “And why not? I didn’t seek this. They attempted to murder me for what I am.”

“When I arrived,” Jayleigh said, circling Uriah, “you wished to disappear. Why now do you wish to haunt these people?”

Uriah stammered, her eyes returning to the water. “I-I am not an inconvenience. A locust to be burned from the field.”

Jayleigh’s mask looked up at her, and she said, “Then let us resolve this matter on your terms.”

* * *

On the outskirts of Bracklenock, refugees gathered in make-shift tents and shelters built from brambles and fallen trees. Cooking fires were built, mothers cradled their babies, stilled children wore shell-shocked faces, and men talked of ways to rid themselves of the gorgon should the druid fail.

“Look!” cried a guard, pointing to the distance.

Another guard grasped him by his ringmail vest. “It’s the gorgon!” he breathed. 

Wresting his sword from its scabbard, the guard shouted to all, “Turn away! Hide your eyes! Blankets! Throw them over the children!”

A panic ensued. Young girls screamed. Fathers grabbed their children and blocked their line of sight with their own bodies. Mothers bundled up toddlers in blankets. Able-bodied men drew their swords and raised their pikes to threaten Uriah as she approached.

But as Uriah emerged from the seaside mist, they saw she wore Jayleigh’s cedar mask with a single painted eye, and as her gaze was obstructed, the curse had no effect; no one was turned to stone.

Holding Uriah’s hand, Jayleigh Warmhollow escorted the gorgon. All quieted as they passed but kept their weapons raised and at the ready. Uriah proudly marched by with dignity and clung to her palla, undeterred.

“She should die,” grumbled a solitary man in the crowd. And soon after, others followed. They called for punishment, for retribution, for Uriah to be drowned in the ocean.

“There’ll be none of it!” Jayleigh cried, facing the mob. “Uriah leaves you, cursed, yet she’s chosen to live. Live, on her terms. None of you, not a single one, have a say in the choice of her suffering.”

“Takin’ her elsewhere, smallfoot, don’t take her from our memory,” an old woman cried.

Jayleigh gripped Uriah’s hand. “Then be bigger: try to remember her as she was.”

Jayleigh turned to lead Uriah further up the path just as a young man lunged with a sword to take Uriah’s head.

In a blur of her sickle, Jayleigh cut deep into the man’s kneecap. The blow sent him to the ground and, crouching to touch the soil, Jayleigh commanded nature.

“Déntra implicare detineo,” she hissed, and roots erupted from the earth. They broke free of the soil, writhed about his feet, crawled up his body, and wrapped themselves around the man’s legs and torso. The roots bound and gagged him, holding him still against the ground.

Jayleigh held her sickle above his subdued body in a warning. “All have a right to life. All have a right to die. Uriah leaves so that you might live out yours in peace. Remember her bravery.”

The villagers fell silent and stayed back.

Returning to her feet, Jayleigh retook Uriah’s hand and escorted her away from the land of Man. They disappeared from sight into the nearby wood.

They wandered for four days, following game trails, climbing steep passes, and scaling punishing crags. The weather fouled, and they slogged up muddy slopes. When the rains came, Jayleigh hid them within caves to let the squalls pass. Eventually, there came a time when Bracklenock wasn’t visible any longer.

At the end of the fourth day, Jayleigh brought Uriah to a rock-strewn clearing full of boulders that’d fallen from the cliffs above.

Jayleigh hummed a Halfling song of sorrow and regret, and the rocks stirred, moved, and shifted. She placed her palm to her chest, closed her eyes, and sang louder. The rocks shuddered and took form, rising in the shape of Man with legs, arms, and a head. Eye slits opened, and a crevice parted for a mouth.

“Friend Druid,” it spoke in an ancient and timeless voice. “The Galeb Dur heed your summons.”

Jayleigh bowed. “My greetings and fair tidings, Rock of the Mountain. I bring onto you the woman I spoke of earlier to your seaside brethren. This is Uriah. She is in need.”

Closing her eyes and turning her face away, Jayleigh said to the gorgon, “Uriah, remove the mask and give it to me.”

Uriah did so, and Jayleigh bound the twine to her head to wear it.

The gorgon’s snakes snapped and coiled, and her gaze spilled upon the Galeb Dur.

The rock man bowed respectfully and extended his hand. “It is my pleasure to welcome a friend of Jayleigh Warmhollow.”

Astonished, her pale face awash in elation, Uriah reached out to accept it.