Empty. Why was it empty?

  The flame flickered in the fireplace with no one to tend it. I called out again, lingering on the threshold, but the tiny cottage really was empty. My eyes went back to the flame, captivated. Took me a moment to figure why. The longer I looked, the clearer it became. The flame… didn’t… move. The light on the walls flickered and danced the way it should but the actual fire was frozen perfectly in place, caught in the picturesque instant of a roaring hearth.

  I insinuated myself into the place, instantly warm, perfectly warm. Slid my cloak off and rolled it in my arms. Adventured from the tiny hall into the main room, fire still unmoving, glowing on an armchair and a delicate side table supporting the world’s most exquisite vase. Also empty. And it smelt a little odd in a way I couldn’t place but that sent a shiver skittering through me. I peered round the walls stocked high with shelves bowing under the weight of the books. Took myself back, ducked into the other room, painfully aware of every rasp of boot on floorboard, every hint of breath, even the gentle rustle of my cloak as I clutched it against my chest. The other room equally overflowing with books and papers and tomes and diagrams and all sorts of schematics on ancient papers pinned up like they were frozen in a whirlwind. Nothing I recognised. But on the desk, mounted like a precious gem, a single foxglove embedded in a bell jar.

  Indescribably beautiful, its form and colour perfect in every way.

  It struck me with the thought that seeing something of this beauty should make me joyful for its existence, and yet here I was, drenched in a spitting sadness that I would never see anything this immaculate again. I yearned for it, desired it, my entire heart ached for it. It pulled me in like the way of the magnets I’d read about. Inexorably lured. I needed to touch it, to hold it. To revel in its unrivalled magnificence.

  The front door eased open and I did not turn. “It is a guest that I have in the house that I own,” came a voice made of glass. “No expectation of guests but no surprise but no fear.” The words came with no emotion. Merely stating the fact.

  “I’m –” I shook my head hard. Maybe from seeing the flower, maybe from the place itself, maybe something else, but I was dizzy. So dizzy. “I never knew anyone lived here. I’m sorry, I’ll leave, I was just admiring how perfect this cottage is. It is really such a lovely place. I’m just going –”

  “In the visitation to admire the action of the creation. Of the elaboration of the perfection. To encounter to enquire is to seek is to desire.” I turned slowly, unsteadily, and I’d seen her face before. The flickering firelight made no effect on it. A portrait of a woman. “To share is to care for all that is fare for all that is fair.” The words spilled from her mouth like blood from a wound. “To make one and the same is to make one the aim the arcane is the game to reign is the gain.”

  The room spun, or maybe I did, I couldn’t tell. Maybe both. But not her. She stood like a shard of glass, serenely still. I didn’t even know if she was breathing. Intentionally or otherwise she was blocking the doorway, my one way out. I wasn’t sure I could dart past her. I wasn’t sure of anything right now. “To… rain? Is the rain for your flowers? – they really are better than any I’ve seen before…”

  “To reign is to take to the reins or the rains but the rains may take you though the reins may too.”

  I blinked hard. Didn’t help the dizziness. Was her mouth moving when she talked? “That’s… very nice,” I said. She crackled with an energy, like lightning waiting to strike. “Can I –”

  “To reign over rains to divine the divine,” she wittered on, “to remake what is made to refine all the fine.” She moved towards me like she’d been moving the whole time and I had to hop out of her way, like she didn’t realise she would’ve bumped into me. Or maybe she would’ve passed straight through me. I wasn’t going to find out, not now the exit was clear anyway. I snuck away, inching out as she examined the bell jar, her focus locked on the flower within. She still had the grey void for the back of her head. Everything inside me screamed to leave. So why couldn’t I? “To collect to inspect to effect to perfect,” she gabbled as she tampered with some of the papers on the desk. “Directly dissectly depict it subjectly.”

  It sounded like insanity but… with something buried inside it. Felt like the same something that had captivated about this cottage – one small place in the entire world and yet it had sunk deep into my head the first time I’d seen it. Like it was growing within me. Like a pearl inside an oyster. This wasn’t like the distant, abstract ramblings of my professors – I needed to know more. “Everything you’ve got here, it all looked… fascinating.” I glanced at the papers hanging from the walls and the shelves, and when I looked back at her, her gaze was nailed onto me. Unblinking. A perfect portrait. “I’d like to know what you’re working on here, if you wouldn’t mind me –”

  “An injection of perfection,” she smiled. I think it was meant to be a smile. “An unnatural selection of superior architection.”

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “You’re…” My head swam. Eyes went to the foxglove in the bell jar. The more I focused, the more the sense clarified between her words. “You found a perfect flower and you’re trying to recreate it using the arcane? Is that what –”

  “Essentially synonymically,” she burst feverishly, “the essence of facsimile!” Every sentence was like being buffeted by a gust of gale wind from a new direction, snatching at words I’d maybe read at most a few times, and she rotated on the spot again, back to the desk. This close, I could see what she was up to: picking up her pens one by one and replacing them in a different place, a different angle. Seemingly at random, but then what did I know?

  I tried not to look like I was watching her but I felt like it made little difference to her anyway. “I was told in my, uh, education, about how arcane scholars committed themselves to discovering something new once they’d graduated, something totally new that they can have their name behind forever. This is yours, right?” She nodded at a speed I didn’t know people could nod, still mechanically reorganising the pens. “I can really see why you’d want to invest your life into that. Everything in the world is so messy and it causes so many problems, so much hurt. Everyone especially. I’ve been seeing that a lot lately. Supposedly everyone wants things to be better, so why aren’t they better, right? It’d be so nice to have a few perfect things you can rely on…” By this point, I wasn’t sure how much she was listening, if ever, but I felt I needed to keep speaking. “When I first passed your cottage a couple months back, it captivated me. I couldn’t forget it. And the garden of foxgloves, each one of them almost perfect… It fixed itself inside my head. I wanted to live here. Visions of a perfect life here. I didn’t realise anyone lived here, and now, well – you’ve got it all.”

  “All except the tall and the small,” she returned disgruntledly, “and excepting the thrall is not accepting at all. To be big to be grand to be taking the stand to split twixt the strand to have same in each hand.”

  I had to hold onto my head to keep it steady. “Okay, well yeah, maybe once you’ve actually worked out how to replicate the flower, but I’ve seen the garden and you’ve got probably a thousand out there! You must be –”

  “A flower a week is no power but weak like flour in bread that is all dry and bleak.” The pens stopped, and my heart pumped. “Not to seek a peek at the peak so to speak.” She drew herself up, somehow taller than before. A foxglove had appeared in her hand and I didn’t know where from – I sure hadn’t seen it appear. It looked… almost perfectly like the one in the jar. Almost perfect. Almost. “To enact the exact is the act of the pact. To distract from the fact to detract to subtract.”

  “You seek perfection – I know, I understand.” I felt way more connected to her than I really wanted to. “And I hope it works out just the way that you… planned…” Too connected. I shook my head out again. The world lurched sideways and I felt myself tip the other way. “Sorry, uh… I don’t think I caught your name?”

  She smiled like she’d read how to do it in a book. “Miss Belladonna. Am sure it’s an honour.”

  “Right, thank you, Miss Belladonna, I –”

  “Given three things and on we shall go to linger to four is to live life too slow,” she declared, immediately striding at me again. I dodged out of her way and staggered to the wall, gasping. She passed so close to me this time, I expected to get a noseful of her or at least the flower, but… nothing. Nothing. I’d seen a pitch black night before, and I’d been out to where it was totally silent, but I couldn’t remember ever being in a place that smelt of nothing. Not cleaning fluid, not the background forest scents, just – empty. As if she’d scoured herself clean of anything remotely traceable or human.

  I needed to run.

  I reached the front door and on the snowy path, making no hints of footsteps, she traversed down the garden, scanning the sides for a place to put her newly manufactured flower. The almost perfect place, to go with her thousand-and-one almost perfect flowers. Had each one really taken her a week? I did my best to skirt around her and at the nearest, I again felt the searing crackle of that lightning energy radiating from her. “To create one perfect to create one more,” she mumbled as she picked her way through the plants. “A singular instance will open the door. To be not left but to be what is right.” I kept one eye on her, backing towards the gate. I wasn’t even sure she was aware she was talking. “To be one to be two to be all to the light. The monks while they sunk they were growing too skilled.” Felt the gate behind me. Levered it open. “A threat to the light so it’s what got them –”

  I ran.

  *

  I couldn’t believe how glad I was to see my dorm and my bed again. I tumbled into it and my body stopped moving, but the world around me wasn’t interested in agreeing. I felt like I’d been run over by a charging stallion. “A thousand years of history and yet there’s no arcane for healing up headaches?” I muttered, cradling my head. “When’s someone gonna work on that?”

  “I believe Holly’s mentioned an interest,” said Grove from the desk, scribbling out something in a spiral. They rotated the page a tad. Watching them sure wouldn’t help me right now. “I hope keeping her occupied was the right thing.”

  “Huh?” I groaned.

  “Yesterday. You seemed in a bad mood.” They glanced over, offered a sympathetic expression, went back to their work. “I didn’t want to see you and Holly quarrelling again so I kept her occupied in conversation.”

  “Oh, right. I kinda assumed… Never mind. It helped a lot.” I rubbed at my head, and that didn’t fix anything. “Thanks, Grove. It helped.”

  “No problem. I’ll likely do the same again today when she comes in. You look rough, but I didn’t ask because you tend to tell people if you want them to know.”

  I felt understood in a completely inverted way to how I’d understood whoever in the hells lived in that weird little cottage, and even the emotion alone was enough to make the room spin more. “I respect that,” I said. Settled back against the headboard and let my eyes shut. “You’re really good to know.”