*****
Along with the purple jewel lying in the dirt, the green gems were by far the most valuable material belongings the gardener might claim, but they were not all he possessed that was of great worth: the gardener knew things such as the world itself conspires to keep secret, and such secrets will always fetch a higher price than the rarest coins in the King’s cache… but only in bazaars full of black-topped tents where men with honest earnings do not dwell.
During his long sentence of solitude and reflection, of working the land and coaxing color and life from spent earth, of listening to the psalms of the wind and the chorus of the clouds and the trees, the gardener had learned much about the heart of the world and the harmonies that govern everything from the unfolding of roots underfoot to the dance-steps of galaxies.
Only the comings and goings of men remained a mystery to him. Of courts and castles and kings he knew nothing and cared less. He had no neighbors, no friends, and no family. And yet, somehow, despite his dearth of visitors, word of his sequestered corner of the kingdom spread like birds from the crash of a felled tree.
Throughout the term of his confinement, folks who had nary caught a glimpse of his fenced-in estate nonetheless were apt and willing to invent tales about the very ancient, near-mythical mystagogue within. As they told it, he could call the spirit of life to spring from dead land; so, too, he could command it to depart; he spoke the languages of certain rare animals… or of all the animals… or of all living beasts, both animals and men; his blood ran green, his tongue black as the soil he dined on every meal; he could transform a splinter into a blade that would cut through stone; he could set a stone to lie unsinking upon water; he beckoned the clouds at will; he heard words spoken on the other side of the world, carried hither and yon over the wind; he understood the riddles of womankind; he talked to trees, and they talked back. Or was it that he turned into a tree himself? It was impossible for any one index of his secrets to retain an identity for more than a telling or two, being unavoidably tumbled up with countless other variations.
The rumors that circled longest were those as concerned the old man’s left hand. He never opened it, never had; a terrible secret he clutched therein; it had come to pass through a covenant with demons, or a long lost prince, or sometimes just an ordinary girl; if he ever opened it, his head would surely fall off. In taverns around the world, it was many a crafty traveler’s trade to swap a fresh theory about the old man’s hand for a cold drink on the house, possibly a warm bed overnight if the telling drew a gainful crowd.
There were, however, occasional truths to be found in the sledge of gossip. These truths appeared courtesy of a handful of rovers and vagabonds who had stumbled upon the garden in the wrinkles of their own adventures. Despite any good intentions, it seldom took long for such travelers’ honest words to be distorted and their good faith quite pitilessly detached. Simple details were worked against the old man: his fence was white–therefore it was made of bone; there was a large stump somewhere inside his fence–no doubt the stage of gruesome ritual beheadings; he guarded a wishing well–or, for those who knew better, a hole for the decapitated heads.
It was not long before the assorted farmers and villagers of the foothills came to regard the old man’s quiet ways as unwelcome, if not downright dark sorcery, though none ventured to go and try for an introduction, let alone an indictment.
He should leave his boastful garden, they grumbled by rote, though none of them had ever seen it. He must prove he means us no harm, they intermittently rallied. We will make him open his hand and reveal his prize, they pledged, or we will cut it off! Fortunately, for the gardener, no vinomadefied mobs ever managed to arrive at his gate before their spirits either wore off entirely or else proved too much an obstacle in and of themselves to overcome.
Those who did find him held no pitchforks or torches. They brought–more often than not–little more than a penny to toss into the well, for these were men and women who did not seek the gardener out as a scourge. Nor were they in search of the forgotten lore of the world before man. They were ramblers and drifters, bards and beggars, nomads and wanderers, not fighters, killers, or cowards; the old man’s place in their own widely strewn stories was as a law writ in stone both uninvited and overlooked. And this is precisely the model by which a clever man with a vested interest came to locate the gated haven.