Futility of Roses

Sillage

O'Leary knew when he awoke it was his last.

He had seen the signs for weeks, now. A chill swung through his house and nested in the corners. Darkness didn't seem to dim like it had; he imagined the sun had risen sometime in the gaps in his memory. An icy touch settled in his bones, deep enough his days in the fields weren't enough to glimpse it, and harsh enough he was left in a shivering sweat.

The fields weren't aflame, yet. He was certain, in his youth, only ashes would force him from this land. He supposed the novelty of it faded years ago. Instead of replanting the fields last season, he left the fields empty.

They weren't barren; he remembered that much. The rows had yielded surplus consistently. Capable hands had tended to the seeds, then the stocks, then the plants themselves. That wasn't to say there weren't trying times. The draughts had taken half his produce, blown their remains through the air like sand, on enough occasions to make him wary of the country. The frost tumbled from the mountains as quickly as the snowmelt; many nights were spent with his linens over his poppies, his quilts over his lemon trees, and him asleep under the boughs of the closest oak.

He could feel the family shame already. Not that they should have minded-they'd never minded that their uncle, their brother, had holed himself away in some godforsaken town where only the insane and the sentimental stayed-but he was sure someone had to care. One of his nieces, maybe. The nephew had his own problems, had his father's affair to cover up, and had legal issues to dispute. Dimly, he wondered if there were any legal ventures he had to make, before the end caught up to him. He was sure the coroner wouldn't want a tip. The woman was enough of a pariah already; she didn't need a man falling dead on her practice's doorstep. She was a decently kind woman, if a bit airy for his tastes. It hadn't stopped him from inviting her over for dinner, and she hadn't cared enough about social norms to avoid falling asleep on his threadbare couch, bread left warm on his table.

With a sigh, he fed wood into the stove and attempted to stoke more heat from the embers. She wouldn't have remembered, surely, their discussion on death. She wouldn't have remembered his disdain of the cold, the innate fear ingrained into his head, or the shaking in his palms. He didn't blame her. The roads were difficult enough to navigate without the ice-draped woods in your periphery; she wouldn't have made it home, not in the last bouts of an unseasonably early snowstorm. The conversation had been sane enough to lull into nearly forgotten territory. They had both shared secrets that should have remained secured in closets. She had an acute fear of drowning; he wasn't going to plant the fields this year.

He had hoped, albeit naïvely, his strength would return. He was going to leave, to a town closer to the city, closer to people who could help him, and start up a smaller farm with more strangers. He would live his last year there, without the pressure of people, without the guilt. But the snow was melting, now, and the weakness was still in his knees, trembling in his fingers. He didn't know what he hoped to come from that meeting, but he had the deed to the property in his desk, it only needed an address, and the coroner would be off to a better town, to a better property, the place he had wanted for his own, where these local idiots wouldn't touch her.

He'd promised himself, that night with the snowstorm, to give in, to stop the magic, the witchcraft. Whatever time he had left, it would be his own, and it would be lived as a mortal man. If he didn't make it to Bellemoor so be it. If he had to remain here and let someone else seek refuge, he told himself he didn't mind. He had notified the governor; he wouldn't be providing aid to the produce, wouldn't invigorate his herbs for the apothecary, not anymore, and that was the end of it. Let them hate him for it, if they wished. It would be a poor answer to the years he worked towards providing staples for the lifeless town, but he wouldn't be surprised, if they had. People were remarkably ungrateful when it came to expecting sacrifice of others. The fact people hadn't flocked to the area didn't better things, certainly.