Beyond the World by Marilyn Sun

He wondered whom the roses were for.

In a world where there was so little love and so much coldness, he always had an abundance of red roses. People were reluctant to buy these passionate flowers, even more so than falling in love, it appeared.

Despite the bad business, he never stopped growing red roses and he never stopped selling them. They peeked shyly from behind pale curtains of trumpet flowers and were tangled amongst the other vines. Their tendency to hide made them difficult to gather, but the beauty of these elegant flowers was worth the scratches and thorns, no matter how temporarily they bloom. He would let them sit at the front of the shop as passerbys blatantly ignored them, let them enjoy the sun and fresh air before they withered and were replaced.

The first time he spotted her loitering outside his shop, most of the roses have already withered, while those that were left were also beginning to wilt at the edges of their petals. Even so, she asked him to pick out for her the most beautiful flower, and left with a single red rose tucked tenderly to her chest. He stared after her, the first person in a long, long time who had bought a single red rose, until she disappeared amongst the faceless crowds.

From then on, she came every few days, each time parting with a carefully-wrapped red rose.

It was strange, he couldn’t help but think one day as he cut a simple piece of wrapping paper to nestle the bloom in. What could one do with a single red rose? In the stories, red roses were given in bunches of passion to express pure and genuine love. A single rose was like the depth of emotion stripped down and categorized with a single word. Like anger, perhaps—however awful it may seem, there are so many layers of anger that makes it a curiously profound thing.

She took the vivid red rose with a small, pale hand.

“Whom is the rose for?” he spoke suddenly. It was the first time they had spoken after the first exchange, when she had asked for the price and he had given her the number.

She paused in the middle of turning and leaving, and he could already envision her threading through the crowd, the red rose the only splash of colour amongst a mass of grey and monotone vessels, the only sign of life in an otherwise dying world.

She answered in a rather thoughtful voice. “It is for the green willow trees by the lake.”

How curious! A flower for the trees. He peered curiously out the storefront, watching the people mill by. The world seemed muffled, as always, but he thought he could hear ducks quacking in a close distance as children tossed them morsels of bread under the willows, whose ropey green tendrils brushed the water surface like a lover’s careful touch.

Truly, he was curious. That evening, he closed the shop a bit early, and by the finals rays of sunlight, he went for a stroll around the lake. She was not there, and neither was the rose, but he found a crude crown of green willow leaves lying discarded by the water’s edge. He took it home, where its green leaves, tinged with the beginning signs of decay, decorated a single lamp by his bedside.

She came three days later, as expected. He had just brought out a new batch of red roses, and she entered as he was stripping off some of the dark green leaves so that the roses were not too bushy and wild.

She picked the most brilliant rose, and as he was wrapping it, he couldn’t help but ask, “Is this rose for the willows again?”

“No,” she replied after a moment’s thought. “They are for the brown earth upon which we build our civilisations.”

That evening, as he loosened the soil in the flower pots filling his greenhouse, he marvelled for the first time how their dark shade stood out against his light skin and found their way under his nails. As a gardener, he had never been disturbed by dirt, but he had never loved it either. For the first time, he noticed the earthy smell that was the under-scent of everything worldly, and he realised that she was right. Without earth, nothing would exist.

This was a revelation to him. He never thought that there could be such crude, raw beauty in life.

The willow leaves were browned and wilted by now, but for some reasons he couldn’t bring himself to toss out the little crown. He could smell the sickly sweet yet strangely comforting scent of decay as he lied in bed that night. His thoughts ran wild with the shadows, but it couldn’t stop returning to her.

She had brown hair, he remembered. The colour of dark chocolate and mahogany—or dead bark, but it didn’t seem like something elegant enough to describe her. Then again, he mused, perhaps it wouldn’t matter to her: the dead belonged to the earth, and so did her single red rose.

Several days later, however, her rose was no longer for the earth.

“For the golden rays of sunlight,” she declared with a radiant smile, “And the darkness it leaves behind.”

If gold was to be melted into liquid, and—like water—evaporate, it would become sunlight, he thought.

He watched the flowers turn their faces towards the sun when it successfully struggled past the layers of clouds. The red roses seem to drink it up, while the green leaves that waved at and brushed tenderly past him glowed gold beneath the sunlight, as if Midas had come to his greenhouse and held every leaf, every stem, every thorn and petal in his god-cursed hands.

That night, he left the curtains open, and noticed that the silver moon shone just as brilliantly and the stars were a symphony of a billion wishes and dreams and hopes.

Winter came between one sunrise and the next. He woke up one morning with a chill settling in his bones, frost misting the greenhouse glass and the blossoms quivering and stiff against the morning shock. Luckily, it didn’t take long for the sunlight to warm the greenhouse again, and he was able to gather a few ripened flowers to replace the withering ones in the shop.

He found that winter roses were the most beautiful of them all. There was a certain elegance of the dark red against a snow white drop that took his breath away. Winter roses were stronger too, persevering through the cold that suspended it in a state of frozen bloom. He admired these winter roses even more when he discovered how fond she was of them.

To her, winter roses were much more precious even though they lasted longer.

One day, very near the end, she asked him abruptly how these winter roses came to be. She, with all the answers, had asked him a question, and he had hesitated for only a moment before offering shyly to show her. She, of course, graciously accepted, and this was the first time he introduced his greenhouse to anyone.

There had been a strange twinge in his chest when he showed her inside, as if he was taking out a fragile piece of his heart and placing it in her hands. Probably she would be the last person outside himself whom he gave access to his greenhouse, but he didn’t regret it. He couldn’t, not when she marvelled at each bloom and vine, brushing frost off of quivering leaves.

It was the most tenderly and lovingly that she treated the winter roes, and she was, in a way, quite similar to the blooms she admired so much. There was a frailty to her porcelain skin, cracked and threaded through with dark veins. Her brown hair seemed brittle, like they were spun from withered strips of rose petals. And it was the most tenderly and lovingly she treated the winter roses.

She placed the red rose she had purchased beside those still thriving on their stems. “This rose,” she declared, “is for the world. For this world.”

What a small world, he thought. But there is nothing outside a world, no matter the size.

“But whom are the roses for?” he couldn’t help but ask, a little bit teasingly, a little bit exasperated.

“The world,” she repeated.

She left with a piece of his soul tucked carefully in her pocket, yet she didn’t give anything back. Not an answer, not a name, just a single red rose.

For the world.

But even when the winter roses were gone and spring returned with a gentle sigh, she never bought another red rose.

Featured Image – Frozen rose – Photo courtesy of wallup.net