Hawthorn had nod­ded off. The book on his knee, a trea­tise on ear­ly Pro­l­ish cave mark­ings, had act­ed as an effec­tive seda­tive. Between it and the press­ing warmth of the fire, the schol­ar was lolling in his arm­chair.

Out­side the hotel suite, bloat­ed snowflakes were mak­ing an attempt at bat­ter­ing in the win­dows. Through the dark and pelt­ing snow showed the crook-chim­neyed sky­line of Forten­shire. Dis­tant­ly, the bells of Cari­g­an Tow­er struck mid­night. Hawthorn snored.

There was a bang, a mut­tered curse, anoth­er wood­en bang. Hawthorn snort­ed, star­tled.

“Sor­ry, Duane,” said Pied­mont, del­i­cate­ly releas­ing the han­dle of the door he’d just slammed. He strolled to the fire, dropped a half-deplet­ed wine bot­tle and a small bou­quet on the side table. The oth­er arm­chair creaked as he flopped into it.

“Hel­lo Wal­lace,” said Hawthorn, gri­mac­ing. He pushed his glass­es up his nose. “What time is it?”

“It’s just about the witch­ing hour, if old Cari­g­an is still to be trust­ed.”

“I thought you were abed,” said Hawthorn. He watched Pied­mont take a pull from the bot­tle. “I can’t imag­ine you were still at the con­fer­ence?”

“I went to din­ner with Lotte de Porsche. Love­ly con­ver­sa­tion­al­ist.”

“The alienist?” said Hawthorn.

“The alienist.”

Hawthorn pulled an odd expres­sion, nod­ded, looked at the bou­quet: Pur­ple orchids, red ger­beras. Lush, grown in a hot­house. All on the brink of becom­ing pix­ies. “She gave you those?”

“Well, I didn’t buy them.”

They sat a moment in silence. Hawthorn frowned at the bou­quet. Pied­mont offered him the wine. Hawthorn turned him down.

“I’m sure there’s some cryp­tic, sym­bol­ic non­sense behind them,” said Pied­mont, lean­ing for­ward.

“How do you mean?”

Pied­mont rolled his eyes. “Flo­ri­og­ra­phy. All the rage in Empereaux. Send secret mes­sages by flower arrange­ment. It’s not a secret, of course. Every­one knows what they mean.” He looked side­ways at Hawthorn. “You’d not know about it, Duane. It’s too haute.”

“Well, what do these ones mean, then?” Said Hawthorn, ges­tur­ing, irri­tat­ed, with his book.

“I’ve not an idea. Prob­a­bly ‘eat me like an iced tart.’”

“Well, doesn’t red denote lust?”

“Good­ness, Duane. Vio­lets, bego­nias, tulips. Red, orange, char­treuse. Don’t all flow­ers mean sex? It’s all they do, sex.”

“Well, yes. I think the sym­bol­ism tends to for­get the pix­ie part of the equa­tion,” said Hawthorn.

“I sup­pose,” said Pied­mont. He took anoth­er swig, raised a fin­ger to Hawthorn. “Speak­ing of that, have I ever told you of the time I met a Lil­lian?”

“You met a woman named Lil­lian?” said Hawthorn, blunt­ly.

“Not a per­son-Lil­lian. A flower-Lil­lian. It was on the expe­di­tion to the inte­ri­or of the Tow­er­lands of Kendúrsvynon, past Mimos Val­ley.”

Hawthorn reclined in his chair, screwed up his eyes. “I’m not get­ting out of this sto­ry, am I?”

“Pish posh. You’ll like it,” said Pied­mont, wav­ing a hand. “Now, the Tow­er­lands. It was the sev­enth day into the inte­ri­or, and we had already lost two porters to the heat. Wretched, that heat. Bleed you dry of sweat.

“Some­how, the mesas seemed to have all the shade and water, so we decid­ed to climb one. Hard work, but we could smell some­thing sweet, like mar­malade, at the top. By night­fall, we had one rope up. The lads were exhaust­ed, so they called it a night.”

Pied­mont grinned wry­ly, swirling his bot­tle. His cheeks dim­pled. “Except me. I’d had enough of not hav­ing the source of that sweet smell, so I climbed up dur­ing the night. Moon was large as I’ve ever seen it. Seemed it was lean­ing in to have a look.

“By moon­light, I winched my way up that rope. A hun­dred feet of rock, at least. Dinged up my knees ter­ri­bly. Worth it, though. The top of that mesa was a par­adise. Vol­canic soil, all spongy, and grow­ing in it were the most curi­ous sorts of tree: Just a a droop­ing lamp post, but with some­thing like a grape­fruit for a head. Of course, I resist­ed eat­ing one. Couldn’t risk it being poi­son, that far East.

“At the cen­ter of that mesa was a pool. Not a pond. I’d say pond if I meant it, because this was no pond: Clear as crys­tal, with a rock basin. Sur­round­ed by the most beau­ti­ful pur­ple ferns. Now, tempt­ed as I was, I took a bit of a bath in it.

“Now, it fig­ures: As soon as I was hap­pi­ly nude and step­ping into that cool water, I heard a rustling. If it had been a a night-cat, as I feared, I would have been dead. Now, much to my sur­prise, it turned out to be a woman.”

Pied­mont closed his eyes, grinned, waved one hand idly about. “A nude one. Prob­a­bly the oppo­site of a night-cat, on the scale of for­tune. And, well, I say woman, but I don’t mean human. She was pale as a calla lily, slim as an alf. No nails on her hands or feet. No hair, what­so­ev­er. And, let me tell you, Duane:

“She had petals instead of hair!” Said Pied­mont, waved his slosh­ing bot­tle. “Petals, and trail­ing stems. Like a flower bud. Like a pix­ie, Duane. A giant pix­ie!”

He frowned. “And by giant I mean human-sized. Any­way, she steps out of those weird trees, looks at me with these eyes like red roe, and she starts to sing. Sooth­ing, croon­ing. It was like a schoolboy’s fan­ta­sy. She joins me in the pool, takes my hand, and I real­ize some­thing: It’s her that smells like mar­malade.

“And, Duane, I know what you’re think­ing.” Pied­mont adopt­ed a grumbly tone. “‘You bet­ter not have snogged that flower woman, Wal­lace. You know about the dan­gers of nymphs. You know its unpro­fes­sion­al to shag the wildlife, Wal­lace.’”

Pied­mont shrugged. “I will sim­ply say we had an inter­est­ing cul­tur­al exchange. We spent sev­er­al days at that mesa. It turns out they’re very much like pix­ies, only more intel­li­gent. You’d have loved it, as an anthro­pol­o­gist.” He look at Hawthorn.

Pied­mont scowled “Duane, you tit.”

Hawthorn had nod­ded off.

Lilli­um super­mundo­rum is the largest species of pix­ie known to Lit­torans. It grows only in seclud­ed, wet areas of the South-East­ern wilder­lands. The stalk of Lil­li­um resem­bles a sin­gle, droop­ing growth, three meters in height. At this end of this stalk grows a sin­gle bud, which resem­bles a very large, hard cit­rus fruit.

This bud, over a decade-long peri­od, will trans­form into the furled body of a Lil­li­um pix­ie. These pix­ies, come an appro­pri­ate astral event, will drop from their stem and become ambu­la­to­ry. 

Such pix­ies are known as Lil­lians, giv­en their heads’ resem­blance to many-petaled lily blooms. Lil­lians behave much like usu­al pix­ies, but exhib­it much high­er forms of intel­li­gence. Stan­dard pix­ies are born with a cer­tain inbred knowl­edge, are rarely able to learn. Lil­lians, how­ev­er, are as teach­able as a human child. With the abil­i­ty to learn, com­bined with a lifes­pan of up to thir­teen years, Lil­lians main­tain small colonies (also known as gar­dens) which may last for cen­turies.

Despite their intel­li­gence, Lil­lians use no form of ver­bal lan­guage. Instead, they com­mu­ni­cate as the pix­ies do, using a species-spe­cif­ic song. Attempts by Coastal researchers to com­mu­ni­cate via cel­lo have been only par­tial­ly suc­cess­ful.

Litoran con­tact with Lil­lian spec­i­mens has been lim­it­ed. Occa­sion­al­ly, an enter­pris­ing expe­di­tion will cap­ture one, bring it home for study or show. Such cap­tured Lil­lians usu­al­ly become quite pop­u­lar. Sto­ries abound of beau­ti­ful, flir­ta­tious men and women made of flow­ers appear­ing in the courts of Empereaux and Alagore. These spec­i­mens live grand, sad lives before wilt­ing pre­ma­ture­ly. 

Most Litorans observe Lil­lians to pro­duce a strong smell akin to mar­malade. This thick, cit­rus odor only enhances their allur­ing nature. It is incred­i­bly potent, may be smelt a hun­dred square meters away from the Lil­lian itself. Some enter­pris­ing hunters have sought to trap a Lil­lian for its scent. They have made a for­tune in the process, but are said to have become mad with guilt.

Rumors tell of a rogue Princess of Antille who keeps a glass palace filled with Lil­lians. They are her friends, her guards, her lovers.   

Reports of Lil­lians in civ­i­lized, South­ern lands have increased, of late. It is sus­pect­ed a gar­den has been some­how estab­lished in the wild lands East of Solfe­li­na, but none have dis­cov­ered it. Whether this gar­den is a nat­ur­al occur­rence or a Lit­toran effort is unknown. Either way, many par­ties are inter­est­ed in it. Whether they seek to pre­serve or exploit the love­ly flower peo­ple, none yet know.

Note

This arti­cle is an old frag­ment that was orig­i­nal­ly made avail­able only to Patre­on patrons, when we did such a thing. Now it is just a frag­ment.

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